KEYS (10k)
3 The Mother
3 Sri Aurobindo
1 Swami Ramakrishnananda
1 Saint Basil
1 Pseudo-Dyonisius
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
1 Aleister Crowley
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
22 Lisa Kleypas
12 F Scott Fitzgerald
12 C S Lewis
11 Gabriel Garc a M rquez
10 Charles Dickens
9 Henry David Thoreau
9 Anonymous
7 Bill Bryson
7 Alexis de Tocqueville
6 Raymond Chandler
6 J R Ward
6 Eric Hoffer
5 Thomas Paine
5 Robyn Carr
5 Marissa Meyer
5 Mahatma Gandhi
5 Herman Melville
5 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 Charles Baudelaire
5 Albert Einstein
| 1:When one has misfortune, they turn to God; but in a short time they are drawn down to the world by its irresistible attractions. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS |
| 2:By an irresistible and purely unconditioned going out from yourself and from all things, you will be lifted up to the supersubstantial ray of divine shadow, setting aside all things and turned loose from all things. ~ Pseudo-Dyonisius, #KEYS |
| 3:Today you're vigorous in body, fattened by luxury, and in the prime of life, with complexion fair like the flowers, strong and powerful and of irresistible energy; tomorrow you'll be an object of pity, withered by age or exhausted by sickness. ~ Saint Basil, #KEYS |
| 4:Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS |
| 5:The charm of Maya is so irresistible, it is only when God is gracious to us that we can lift the veil and get a little glimpse of Him. All Maya is localized in ego. Take away the ego and the whole structure of Maya will fall. Then you will realize a state of perfect calmness ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda, #KEYS |
| 6:Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say "no." I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible. ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS |
7:Its touch can turn difficulties into opportunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaultering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS |
8:Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS |
9:The more complete your faith, sincerity and surrender, the more will grace and protection be with you. And when the grace and protection of the Divine Mother are with you, what is there that can touch you or whom need you fear? A little of it even will carry you through all difficulties, obstacles and dangers, surrounded by its full presence you can go securely on your way because it is hers, careless of all menace, unaffected by any hostility however powerful, whether from this world or from worlds invisible. Its touch can turn difficulties into opportunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaltering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS |
10:Four Powers Of The Mother
In talking about the four powers of the Mother, it helps to know that in India, traditionally, the evolutionary principle of creation is approached, and adored, as the great Mother. Sri Aurobindo distinguishes four main powers and personalities through which this evolutionary force manifests.
Maheshwari - One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness.
Mahakali - Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force.
Mahalakshmi - A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace.
Mahasaraswati - The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things.
~ ?, https://www.auroville.com/silver-ring-mother-s-symbol.html,#KEYS |
11:Art is the human language of the nervous plane, intended to express and communicate the Divine, who in the domain of sensation manifests as beauty.
The purpose of art is therefore to give those for whom it is meant a freer and more perfect communion with the Supreme Reality. The first contact with this Supreme Reality expresses itself in our consciousness by a flowering of the being in a plenitude of vast and peaceful delight. Each time that art can give the spectator this contact with the infinite, however fleetingly, it fulfils its aim; it has shown itself worthy of its mission. Thus no art which has for many centuries moved and delighted a people can be dismissed, since it has at least partially fulfilled its mission - to be the powerful and more or less perfect utterance of that which is to be expressed. What makes it difficult for the sensibility of a nation to enjoy the delight that another nation finds in one art or another is the habitual limitation of the nervous being which, even more than the mental being, is naturally exclusive in its ability to perceive the Divine and which, when it has entered into relation with Him through certain forms, feels an almost irresistible reluctance to recognise Him through other forms of sensation. ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, 122,#KEYS |
12:
Sweet Mother, is there a spiritual being in everybody?
That depends on what we call "being". If for "being" we substitute "presence", yes, there is a spiritual presence in everyone. If we call "being" an organised entity, fully conscious of itself, independent, and having the power of asserting itself and ruling the rest of the nature - no! The possibility of this independent and all-powerful being is in everybody, but the realisation is the result of long efforts which sometimes extend over many lives.
In everyone, even at the very beginning, this spiritual presence, this inner light is there.... In fact, it is everywhere. I have seen it many a time in certain animals. It is like a shining point which is the basis of a certain control and protection, something which, even in half-consciousness, makes possible a certain harmony with the rest of creation so that irreparable catastrophes may not be constant and general. Without this presence the disorder created by the violences and passions of the vital would be so great that at any moment they could bring about a general catastrophe, a sort of total destruction which would prevent the progress of Nature. That presence, that spiritual light - which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness - is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows Nature's work to be accomplished.
And this presence becomes quite obvious in the human being, even the most rudimentary. Even in the most monstrous human being, in one who gives the impression of being an incarnation of a devil or a monster, there is something within exercising a sort of irresistible control - even in the worst, some things are impossible. And without this presence, if the being were controlled exclusively by the adverse forces, the forces of the vital, this impossibility would not exist.
Each time a wave of these monstrous adverse forces sweeps over the earth, one feels that nothing can ever stop the disorder and horror from spreading, and always, at a certain time, unexpectedly and inexplicably a control intervenes, and the wave is arrested, the catastrophe is not total. And this is because of the Presence, the supreme Presence, in matter.
But only in a few exceptional beings and after a long, very long work of preparation extending over many, many lives does this Presence change into a conscious, independent, fully organised being, all-powerful master of his dwelling-place, conscious enough, powerful enough, to be able to control not only this dwelling but what surrounds it and in a field of radiation and action that is more and more extensive... and effective.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, 339-340,#KEYS |
13:
What is the exact way of feeling that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us?
You must not feel with your head (because you may think so, but that's something vague); you must feel with your sense-feeling. Naturally one begins by wanting it with the mind, because that is the first thing that understands. And then one has an aspiration here (pointing to the heart), with a flame which pushes you to realise it. But if you want it to be truly the thing, well, you must feel it.
You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weight-lifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force infinitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know. That does happen.
It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is infinitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insignificant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.
Yes, at no cost must the experience be disturbed. If suddenly you say: "Oh, look, how strange it is!"...
How can we reach that state?
Aspire for it, want it. Try to be less and less selfish, but not in the sense of becoming nice to other people or forgetting yourself, not that: have less and less the feeling that you are a person, a separate entity, something existing in itself, isolated from the rest.
And then, above all, above all, it is that inner flame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind of - how to put it? - luminous enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.
At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.
But that moment should be absolutely sincere and as integral as possible; and all this must occur not only in the head, not only here, but must take place everywhere, in all the cells of the body. The consciousness integrally must have this irresistible need.... The thing lasts for some time, then diminishes, gets extinguished. You cannot keep these things for very long. But then it so happens that a moment later or the next day or some time later, suddenly you have the opposite experience. Instead of feeling this ascent, and all that, this is no longer there and you have the feeling of the Descent, the Answer. And nothing but the Answer exists. Nothing but the divine thought, the divine will, the divine energy, the divine action exists any longer. And you too, you are no longer there.
That is to say, it is the answer to our aspiration. It may happen immediately afterwards - that is very rare but may happen. If you have both simultaneously, then the state is perfect; usually they alternate; they alternate more and more closely until the moment there is a total fusion. Then there is no more distinction. I heard a Sufi mystic, who was besides a great musician, an Indian, saying that for the Sufis there was a state higher than that of adoration and surrender to the Divine, than that of devotion, that this was not the last stage; the last stage of the progress is when there is no longer any distinction; you have no longer this kind of adoration or surrender or consecration; it is a very simple state in which one makes no distinction between the Divine and oneself. They know this. It is even written in their books. It is a commonly known condition in which everything becomes quite simple. There is no longer any difference. There is no longer that kind of ecstatic surrender to "Something" which is beyond you in every way, which you do not understand, which is merely the result of your aspiration, your devotion. There is no difference any longer. When the union is perfect, there is no longer any difference.
Is this the end of self-progress?
There is never any end to progress - never any end, you can never put a full stop there. ~ The Mother,#KEYS |
*** WISDOM TROVE *** |
| 1:The force of necessity is irresistible. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove |
| 2:The gospel to me is simply irresistible. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove |
| 3:Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove |
| 4:Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove |
| 5:Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove |
| 6:Willpower and desire, when properly combined, make an irresistible pair. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove |
| 7:You are so vulnerably haunting. Your eeriness is terrifyingly irresistible. ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove |
| 8:True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove |
| 9:A superior who works on his own development sets an almost irresistible example. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove |
| 10:A positive mental attitude is an irresistible force that knows no such thing as an immovable body. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove |
| 11:Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove |
| 12:How little people know who think that holiness is dull... When one meets the real thing, it's irresistible! ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove |
| 13:Marriage is the only known example of the happy meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force. ~ ogden-nash, @wisdomtrove |
| 14:Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove |
| 15:Wisdom and policy dictate that we must do as destiny demands and keep peace with the irresistible march of events. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove |
| 16:People who do not need to please are irresistible because they radiate wholeness, a rare delicacy in a world of hungry hearts. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove |
| 17:The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove |
| 18:Holiness is irresistible. If even 10% of the world's population had it the whole world would be converted and happy before the year's end. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove |
| 19:Besides, when you say you're a feminist it annoys the bigots and the old farts and the prissy ladies so much, it's kind of irresistible. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove |
| 20:There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove |
| 21:Onward, my brave boys - money or no money - men or no men! Have you love? Have you God? Onward and forward to the breach, you are irresistible. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove |
| 22:Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove |
| 23:She let him come further, his lips came and surging, surging, soft, oh soft, yet on, like the powerful surge of water, irresistible, till with a little blind cry, she broke away. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove |
| 24:You must originate, and you must sympathize; yon must possess, at the same time, the habit of communicating and the habit of listening. The union is rather rare, but irresistible. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove |
| 25:Man loves the marvelous. It has an irresistible charm for him. He is always ready to leave that with which he is familiar to pursue vain inventions. He lends himself to his own deception. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove |
| 26:Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove |
| 27:Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove |
| 28:To be in love involves the most irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove |
| 29:Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove |
| 30:In modern European thought a tragedy is occurring in that the original bonds uniting the affirmative attitude towards the world with ethics are, by a slow but irresistible process, loosening and finally parting. Out of my life and Thought. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove |
| 31:What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove |
| 32:You are not bound. You have got free will. You cannot change the experiences, the results of Prarabdha but you can change your future by right thinking and right action and thus make your will pure and irresistible. You can attain Self-realisatio n with the help of a dynamic will. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove |
| 33:This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration and awe- - that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove |
| 34:When all has been considered, it seems to me to be the irresistible intuition that infinite punishment for finite sin would be unjust, and therefore wrong. We feel that even weak and erring Man would shrink from such an act. And we cannot conceive of God as acting on a lower standard of right and wrong. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove |
| 35:Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove |
| 36:We declare, upon Scriptural authority, that the human will is so desperately set on mischief, so depraved, and so inclined to everything that is evil, and so disinclined to everything that is good, that without the powerful, supernatural, irresistible influence of the Holy Spirit, no human will ever be constrained towards Christ. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove |
| 37:It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove |
| 38:You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars. Enthusiasm is the spark in your eye, the swing in your gait, the grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of your will and your energy to execute your ideas. Enthusiasts are fighters, they have fortitude, they have strong qualities. Enthusiasm is at the bottom of all progress. With it there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove |
| 39:Love has to spring spontaneously from within And it is no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; But though love cannot be forced on anyone, It can be awakened in him through love itself. Love is essentially self communicative; Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible, And it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, Until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove |
| 40:The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hinderances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove |
| 41:The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove |
| 42:The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove |
| 43:He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced& |
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M *** |
| 1:DARE TO BE IRRESISTIBLE! ~ Sahara Sanders, #NFDB |
| 2:Weakness is an irresistible lure. ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB |
| 3:The force of necessity is irresistible. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB |
| 4:Many have an irresistible itch for writing. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB |
| 5:Don’t’ pin this on me, Mr. Irresistible. ~ Lucian Bane, #NFDB |
| 6:I must yield to you, for you are irresistible. ~ Plato, #NFDB |
| 7:Confine your kissing to the irresistible. ~ Rudolf Bing, #NFDB |
| 8:The power of gentleness is irresistible. ~ Henry Martyn, #NFDB |
| 9:The gospel to me is simply irresistible. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB |
| 10:That you’re lonely, and I’m irresistible? ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB |
| 11:Any sincere thought is irresistible. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB |
| 12:His intensity was magnetic, irresistible. ~ Susan Vreeland, #NFDB |
| 13:I find the lure of the unknown irresistible. ~ Sylvia Earle, #NFDB |
| 14:The hankering of the mind is irresistible. ~ Adam Weishaupt, #NFDB |
| 15:Sometimes I hate being an irresistible rock god, ~ Eva Simone, #NFDB |
| 16:Algunas frases tienen un efecto irresistible en mí ~ Kerstin Gier, #NFDB |
| 17:he who sticks to one thing is irresistible. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB |
| 18:An irresistible glimpse into his complex and often ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB |
| 19:The irresistible force meets the immovable object. ~ Gorilla Monsoon, #NFDB |
| 20:A smile with just enough arrogance to be irresistible. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB |
| 21:If anything is more irresistible than Jesus, it's Mickey. ~ Carl Hiaasen, #NFDB |
| 22:Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB |
| 23:There was something irresistible about popcorn. ~ Elizabeth George Speare, #NFDB |
| 24:The love-bite, it is the beginning. You will be irresistible. ~ Bela Lugosi, #NFDB |
| 25:Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB |
| 26:Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB |
| 27:There really is something irresistible about a lost cause. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB |
| 28:The job of the writer is to make revolution irresistible. ~ Toni Cade Bambara, #NFDB |
| 29:In the tiny torn up pieces of his mind he's irresistible too. ~ Elvis Costello, #NFDB |
| 30:It is gentle manners which prove so irresistible in women. ~ Theophile Gautier, #NFDB |
| 31:Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.’ ~ Daria Snadowsky, #NFDB |
| 32:The purpose of a writer is to make revolution irresistible. ~ Toni Cade Bambara, #NFDB |
| 33:It’s because your subconscious finds my subconscious irresistible. ~ Julie James, #NFDB |
| 34:There is great power in the irresistible force of love. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
| 35:I always wanted to find oil. It was always an irresistible calling. ~ Harold Hamm, #NFDB |
| 36:No one is young after forty, but one can be irresistible at any age ~ Coco Chanel, #NFDB |
| 37:The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible ~ Toni Cade Bambara, #NFDB |
| 38:Sentía una necesidad irresistible de amarla y protegerla. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
| 39:The onset of bayonets in the hands of the valiant is irresistible. ~ John Burgoyne, #NFDB |
| 40:What happens when an irresistible force hits an immovable object? ~ Robert Muchamore, #NFDB |
| 41:[S]he was my Muse, my alcoholic's bourbon on the rocks: irresistible. ~ Claire Messud, #NFDB |
| 42:like Belgian chocolate—absolutely sinful and completely irresistible’. ~ Joss Stirling, #NFDB |
| 43:Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. —Robert Frost ~ Marie Force, #NFDB |
| 44:When the fear of the Lord matures in you, Christ becomes irresistible. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB |
| 45:Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead? ~ Rob Zombie, #NFDB |
| 46:El progreso llega a través de la capacidad de aprender, y es irresistible. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB |
| 47:I had an irresistible desire to make a last effort to awaken your memory. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB |
| 48:Willpower and desire, when properly combined, make an irresistible pair. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB |
| 49:Every man should stand for a force which is perfectly irresistible. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB |
| 50:You are so vulnerably haunting. Your eeriness is terrifyingly irresistible. ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB |
| 51:Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion. ~ Walter Jon Williams, #NFDB |
| 52:True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB |
| 53:The lyrics, in English, were meaningless to him, the bass line irresistible. ~ Katherine Boo, #NFDB |
| 54:I’m not good at many things, Addison, but I can be irresistible if I want to. ~ Jennifer Foor, #NFDB |
| 55:Irresistible force. Immovable object. Choose the one you want to be, and do it. ~ Chloe Neill, #NFDB |
| 56:After the passing of irresistible music you must make do with a dripping faucet. ~ Jim Harrison, #NFDB |
| 57:An artist represents an oppressed people and makes revolution irresistible. ~ Toni Cade Bambara, #NFDB |
| 58:The martyrs shook the powers of darkness with the irresistible power of weakness. ~ John Milton, #NFDB |
| 59:A superior who works on his own development sets an almost irresistible example. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB |
| 60:It appears we have found a woman who does not consider you so irresistible.” Nick ~ Sarah MacLean, #NFDB |
| 61:She was his siren--the seductive, irresistible being that would lead him to his doom. ~ Nadia Lee, #NFDB |
| 62:Sometimes I stumble upon a wonderfully irresistible to me voice, unexpectedly. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB |
| 63:It was an irresistible novelty having a conversation about books with a stranger. ~ Jaclyn Dolamore, #NFDB |
64:Stop being so..."
"Charming?Attractive?Irresistible?
"I'm going with arrogant. ~ Rachel Caine,#NFDB |
| 65:To a lover of books the shops and sales in London present irresistible temptations. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB |
| 66:Amazement + Gratitude + Openness + Appreciation = an irresistible field of energy ~ Frederick Dodson, #NFDB |
| 67:He is seized by an unthinking, irresistible call to hunt. To possess. To own her. ~ Georgia Le Carre, #NFDB |
| 68:The most irresistible beauty is the radiant glow from a kind and gentle heart. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB |
| 69:When restraint and courtesy are added to strength, the latter becomes irresistible. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB |
| 70:All things at last yield to the silent, irresistible, all conquering energy of purpose. ~ James Allen, #NFDB |
| 71:When I'm around you it's all right there for me in an irresistible, tattooed package. ~ Jamie McGuire, #NFDB |
| 72:I must be irresistible. You can’t stay away from me for more than twenty-four hours. ~ Catherine Doyle, #NFDB |
| 73:They had an almost irresistible tendency to degenerate into a kind of lolloping amble. ~ Nikolai Gogol, #NFDB |
| 74:I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract. ~ Gustave Moreau, #NFDB |
| 75:Some mysteries are simply irresistible,” she said. “They have components that alter a life. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB |
| 76:An irresistible fascination with terrifying death killed me ahead of time. ~ Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont, #NFDB |
| 77:The lure of seeing new places, different ways of life, has been almost irresistible. ~ Walter Dean Myers, #NFDB |
| 78:I am gripped by an irresistible urge to kill myself, but I know it's the devil tempting me. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB |
| 79:Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity. ~ Henry Louis Gates, #NFDB |
| 80:To have been described long ago to a recent acquaintance by nameless people is irresistible. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB |
| 81:Everyone is possessed with an irresistible desire to know his relationship to the Infinite. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB |
| 82:You can be gorgeous at thirty, charmimg at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life. ~ Coco Chanel, #NFDB |
| 83:You can be gorgeous at thirty, charming at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life. ~ Coco Chanel, #NFDB |
| 84:You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It's the playing that's irresistible. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB |
| 85:It’s so hard for women—even nice women—to realize that their bodies are not irresistible. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB |
| 86:Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity. ~ Henry Louis Gates Jr, #NFDB |
| 87:The ocean was magical to her, its depths and mysteries were boundless, its call irresistible. ~ Jeff Mariotte, #NFDB |
| 88:...what one ought to capture in beauty is that which is treacherous and irresistible... ~ L szl Krasznahorkai, #NFDB |
| 89:How is it possible that this woman can be so irritating and so irresistible at the same time? ~ Sarah Robinson, #NFDB |
90:I scowl at him. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Standing here being charming and irresistible? ~ Julie Johnson,#NFDB |
| 91:Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB |
| 92:Make Every Man Want You: How to Be So Irresistible You’ll Barely Keep from Dating Yourself!, ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB |
| 93:With his venom irresistible and bittersweet that loosener of limbs, Love reptile-like strikes me down ~ Sappho, #NFDB |
| 94:Buildings keep being pushed around by three irresistible forces—technology, money, and fashion. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB |
| 95:Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB |
| 96:It’s so hard for women – even nice women – to realize that their bodies are not irresistible. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB |
| 97:There are men whom one has an irresistible desire to tease: men whose virtues one doesn’t share. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB |
| 98:Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB |
| 99:All the while they were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB |
| 100:A positive mental attitude is an irresistible force that knows no such thing as an immovable body. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB |
| 101:ejercían la atracción irresistible de las mujeres alegres y sonrientes y proclives a la carcajada; ~ Javier Mar as, #NFDB |
| 102:Find the right price for an irresistible offer, which, by the way, isn’t necessarily the lower price. ~ W Chan Kim, #NFDB |
| 103:She had always found platypuses irresistible proof that God likes a joke as much as anyone else. ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB |
| 104:They both had that quality I found irresistible in women - they appeared to lack better options. ~ W Bruce Cameron, #NFDB |
| 105:Dark forces dragged me away from the keyboard, swirling forces of irresistible intensity and power. ~ Boris Johnson, #NFDB |
| 106:When it comes to betting on a sure thing, greed trumps common sense and makes the bet irresistible. ~ James Rickards, #NFDB |
| 107:As usual, when confronted with heights, my greatest fear was the irresistible urge to fling myself off. ~ Sue Grafton, #NFDB |
| 108:How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
| 109:It is the combination of thought and love which forms the irresistible force of the law of attraction. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB |
| 110:By the irresistible maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB |
| 111:geology demonstrates the existence, wisdom and goodness of an Almighty Creator with irresistible evidence. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 112:Infinite Spirit open the way for great abundance for --. She is an irresistible magnet for all ~ Florence Scovel Shinn, #NFDB |
| 113:Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB |
| 114:How little people know who think that holiness is dull... When one meets the real thing, it's irresistible! ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
| 115:Ahimsa must be placed before everything else while it is professed. Then alone it becomes irresistible. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB |
| 116:Banks are an almost irresistible attraction for that element of our society which seeks unearned money. ~ J Edgar Hoover, #NFDB |
| 117:Marriage is the only known example of the happy meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force. ~ Ogden Nash, #NFDB |
| 118:Dr. Becky was a huge fan of Zach’s, even though she hadn’t met him. Figured. Zach was pretty irresistible. ~ Sarina Bowen, #NFDB |
| 119:I secretly understood: the primitive appeal of the hearth. Television is - its irresistible charm - a fire. ~ John Updike, #NFDB |
| 120:It is the combination of thought and love which forms the irresistible force of the law of attraction. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB |
| 121:«La combinación del pensamiento y el amor es lo que crea la irresistible fuerza de la ley de la atracción.» ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB |
| 122:But I could control these flames. It was an irresistible urge, one that I didn’t want to ignore. - Aurora ~ Candace Knoebel, #NFDB |
| 123:Janie had robbed him of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all men cherish, which was terrible. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, #NFDB |
| 124:perception of intention and emotion is irresistible; only people afflicted by autism do not experience it. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB |
| 125:But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB |
| 126:Her kisses reminded me of lemon slices drizzled with sticky honey. Bitter, sweet and strangely irresistible. ~ Michael Faudet, #NFDB |
| 127:She had always known that Jared was attractive. His dark hair, strong jaw, and gray eyes made him irresistible, ~ Chanda Hahn, #NFDB |
| 128:Sì is my tribute to modern femininity, an irresistible combination of grace, strength and independent spirit. ~ Giorgio Armani, #NFDB |
| 129:What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth. ~ Boris Pasternak, #NFDB |
| 130:It was a very bad idea. It was a terrible idea. It was the worst idea he had ever heard. It was irresistible. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB |
| 131:...an irresistible sleep fell deeply on his eyes, the sweetest, soundest oblivion, still as the sleep of death itself... ~ Homer, #NFDB |
| 132:But the moment our eyes meet, I'm right back under his spell, a helpless hunk of steel to his irresistible magnet. ~ Alyson Noel, #NFDB |
| 133:It appeared that his sister, usually an irresistible force, had finally met a sufficiently immovable object. ~ Stephanie Laurens, #NFDB |
| 134:The perception of intention and emotion is irresistible; only people afflicted by autism do not experience it. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB |
| 135:we are created in the image of God we all have an irresistible impulse to create and to establish order. When ~ Stephen Altrogge, #NFDB |
| 136:(...) y se planta ante mí con los ojos brillantes y esa sonrisa facilona, anárquica, irresistible a más no poder. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB |
| 137:Fitzgerald’s plot may suggest that the American Dream is a mirage, but his words make that dream irresistible. ~ Maureen Corrigan, #NFDB |
| 138:I'm sorry," he breathed. "You're just extremely irresistible." "Strange, men have been resisting me for years. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB |
| 139:Violence is the great attractor of human history, Dr. Iverson. A force almost as irresistible as gravity. ~ Robert Charles Wilson, #NFDB |
| 140:[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB |
| 141:Damn you’ve got an irresistible mouth. You should hold it against me more often.” ~Luke, Kissing the Maid of Honor ~ Robin Bielman, #NFDB |
142:Devyn: “But what can I say? I'm irresistible.”
Bride: "No, you're a ho, but the good news is I’m ok with that! ~ Gena Showalter,#NFDB |
| 143:There are many ways to be beautiful. Fighting, swearing, and ignoring tradition could make a women irresistible. ~ Fatema Mernissi, #NFDB |
| 144:On a library bookshelf, thought progresses in a way that is logical but also dumbfounding, mysterious, irresistible. ~ Susan Orlean, #NFDB |
| 145:the islands of Italy combine all the elements - fire, water, earth, and air - and that is irresistible. ~ Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, #NFDB |
| 146:death is not the enemy; snakes are. And cheese: it is addictive and irresistible. I have had three kinds so far today. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB |
| 147:Destiny, noun: 1. The inevitable or irresistible course of events. 2. The inescapable future. 3. See also “screwed. ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB |
| 148:Skin bathed in summer sunset light is sultry and sublime. Every woman looks irresistible in its glow-relaxed and sensual. ~ Tom Ford, #NFDB |
| 149:It is the combination of thought and love which forms the irresistible force of the law of attraction.” Charles Haanel ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB |
| 150:That’s oxycodone—one of the most irresistible opioid narcotics ever cooked up in the six-thousand-year history of dope. ~ John Temple, #NFDB |
| 151:The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB |
| 152:Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB |
| 153:The man was irresistible. What’s with that? she thought. It was like wanting to bake cookies for the spawn of Satan. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB |
| 154:There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad. ~ Homer, #NFDB |
| 155:A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB |
156:Beth: "You're ridiculous."
Xavier: "I think you mean irresistible."
Beth: "Yes, ridiculously irresistible. ~ Alexandra Adornetto,#NFDB |
| 157:My scientific work is motivated by an irresistible longing to understand the secrets of nature not by other feelings. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB |
| 158:…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad. ~ Homer, #NFDB |
| 159:Wisdom and policy dictate that we must do as destiny demands and keep peace with the irresistible march of events. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB |
| 160:Estáis destinados a Dios y la fuerza de su amor es irresistible. Podéis cerrar la puerta a su llamada, pero Él la derribará. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 161:People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible. Sometimes ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB |
| 162:There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I'm not in that state now and that makes me sad. ~ Jack Nicholson, #NFDB |
| 163:los enemigos no nacen de nuestra voluntad de tenerlos y sí del irresistible deseo que tienen ellos de tenernos a nosotros. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB |
| 164:The only thing in this world more irresistible to human beings than greed is curiosity, and the need to know the answers. ~ Luke Smitherd, #NFDB |
165:I'm
sorry," he breathed. "You're just extremely irresistible."
"Strange,
men have been resisting me for years. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB |
| 166:There's nothing like the word dangerous to generate interest: it's irresistible to young males, scary to most young females. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB |
| 167:Guys who lack confidence in so many ways still manage to delude themselves into thinking they are irresistible to all women. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB |
| 168:Look at you.” He gazed down at me as if staggered by what he found in his arms. “I carry my greatest treasure.” Irresistible ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB |
| 169:There is no form of conviction more intimate and irresistible than that which arises from the inward teaching of the Spirit. ~ Charles Hodge, #NFDB |
| 170:The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB |
| 171:They were all just sitting here. Waiting. What were they meant to be doing? The desire to interact was an irresistible itch. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB |
| 172:Reese Witherspoon is as cute as a button on Raggedy Ann's overalls, but irresistible raw sex appeal is not one of her qualities. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB |
| 173:In this astonishing novel Amirrezvani reminds us what all human hearts suffer and dare. Equal of the Sun is an irresistible novel. ~ Jonis Agee, #NFDB |
| 174:What’s improper about it?” retorted the clerk. “Everybody does it in Paris!” It was an irresistible and conclusive argument. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB |
| 175:Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal; the shock of beauty is when the irresistible force hits the immovable post. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB |
| 176:Damn you’ve got an irresistible mouth. You should hold it against me more often.” ~ Robin BielmanLuke, Kissing the Maid of Honor ~ Robin Bielman, #NFDB |
| 177:How did you sleep?” she asked. I wondered if she knew just how irresistible her voice was, if she made it that way on purpose. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB |
| 178:Charlotte comprende que el futuro no es un panorama ni una perspectiva, es un puño que te agarra, fuerte, irresistible, ineludible. ~ Jude Morgan, #NFDB |
| 179:In his excellent book Irresistible, Adam Alter writes about the rise of behavioral addictions in contemporary society. ~ Seth Stephens Davidowitz, #NFDB |
| 180:Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible. ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB |
| 181:God's irresistible grace binds our wandering hearts to himself and frees us to love him back and overflow in love to our neighbors. ~ Gloria Furman, #NFDB |
| 182:Great writers arrive among us like new diseases - threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible. ~ Craig Raine, #NFDB |
| 183:Our ever-present mobile devices provide the immediate and convenient information necessary to make sharing things truly irresistible. ~ Lisa Gansky, #NFDB |
| 184:Technological possibilities are irresistible to man. If man can go to the moon, he will. If he can control the climate, he will. ~ John von Neumann, #NFDB |
| 185:fluidity of the sea, not the rigidity of irresistible law, characterizes human conduct, especially in the midst of a calamity. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick, #NFDB |
| 186:Having been challenged by Colonel Pickering, Higgins: You know, it's almost irresistible. She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty. ~ Rex Harrison, #NFDB |
| 187:Infinite Spirit, open the way for my great abundance. I am an irresistible magnet for all that belongs to me by Divine Right. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn, #NFDB |
| 188:Before you shoot an irresistible subject, mute all your senses except sight to find out how much is left for the camera to record. ~ Andreas Feininger, #NFDB |
| 189:Holiness is irresistible. If even 10% of the world's population had it the whole world would be converted and happy before the year's end. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
| 190:It is useless to contend with the irresistible power of Time, which goes on continually creating by a process of constant destruction. ~ E T A Hoffmann, #NFDB |
| 191:[Kitty] was the type of woman Hamilton found irresistible: pretty, coquettish, somewhat spoiled, and always ready for flirtatious banter. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB |
| 192:La incalificable verdad es que cuando amaba a Estella con amor de hombre, la amaba sólo y sencillamente por considerarla irresistible. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB |
| 193:When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB |
| 194:Thrilled with the knowledge that she loved me, it took me a moment to realize that she was angry. I found her tantrum irresistible." #Ren ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB |
| 195:Besides, when you say you're a feminist it annoys the bigots and the old farts and the prissy ladies so much, it's kind of irresistible. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB |
| 196:For me, physical love has always been bound to an irresistible feeling of innocence and joy. Thus, I cannot love in tears but in exaltation. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB |
| 197:He knew that one should not punch people who annoyed one, although there was a case for it at times, a seemingly irresistible case. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB |
| 198:I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them. ~ L M Montgomery, #NFDB |
| 199:Infinite Spirit open the way for great abundance for — —. She is an irresistible magnet for all that belongs to her by divine right. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn, #NFDB |
| 200:Come, my dear. This has been far too much excitement for me this morning. Feel an irresistible urge to stare at some roses and make notations. ~ Cindy Anstey, #NFDB |
| 201:There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB |
| 202:A soldier fights with an irresistible strength when he has blown up his bridges and burnt his boats. Even so, it is with a soldier of ahimsa. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB |
| 203:I see drawings and pictures in the poorest huts, in the dirtiest corner. And my mind is drawn toward these things by an irresistible force. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB |
| 204:As yet his other passions lay dormant; But they only needed to be once awakened, to display themselves with violence as great and irresistible. ~ Matthew Lewis, #NFDB |
| 205:There is something so beautiful inside you that if you knew it, you would fall in love with it. It is irresistible. You can truly experience that. ~ Prem Rawat, #NFDB |
| 206:Your passion is your true power. The more you discover and express your passion for life, the more irresistible you will become to others. ~ Barbara De Angelis, #NFDB |
| 207:Optimism is infectious, and opportunity irresistible. Progress follows progress. Someone, even government, just has to get it started. ~ Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, #NFDB |
| 208:Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB |
| 209:I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery, #NFDB |
| 210:Onward, my brave boys - money or no money - men or no men! Have you love? Have you God? Onward and forward to the breach, you are irresistible. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB |
| 211:Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and in the end makes itself irresistible. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB |
| 212:He raised his brows and smiled, displaying those irresistible dimples. It sent my mind into a frenzy wondering how many women he took out like this. ~ Jennifer Foor, #NFDB |
| 213:It’s like irresistible poison: I’m mesmerized by the way it’s making me feel though it has the potential to crush my soul and I drink it down anyway. ~ J A Redmerski, #NFDB |
| 214:The connection between vice and meanness is a fit subject for satire, but when the satire is a fact, it cuts with the irresistible power of a diamond. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB |
| 215:There is an Irish way of paying compliments as though they were irresistible truths which makes what would otherwise be an impertinence delightful. ~ Katharine Tynan, #NFDB |
| 216:Nothing in this world takes over your blood like a murder case, nothing demands you, mind and body, with such a huge and blazing and irresistible voice. ~ Tana French, #NFDB |
| 217:Sometimes you meet someone who’ll have a hold on your heart and will never let go, and the second they cross your path, an irresistible bond is forged. ~ Soraya Naomi, #NFDB |
| 218:The weave of the personal and the political finally proves as irresistible as it is moving, partly because it has been drawn from extraordinary life. ~ Manohla Dargis, #NFDB |
| 219:Gamblers play just as lovers make love and drunkards drink—blindly and of necessity, under domination of an irresistible force.” Jacques Anatole Thibault ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB |
| 220:Time is a kind of river, an irresistible flood sweeping up men and events and carrying them headlong, one after the other, to the great sea of being. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB |
| 221:To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB |
222:As she took a deep breath, all she smelled was him, the scent going in her nose and blooming all over her body.
Bastard, she thought. Irresistible bastard ~ J R Ward,#NFDB |
| 223:It was irresistible, like they were being tickled themselves. Their eyes met across the table, and at that instant, Rachel’s laughter turned into a sob. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB |
| 224:A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB |
| 225:platypuses irresistible proof that God likes a joke as much as anyone else. ‘A platypus is intrinsically much less likely than a unicorn or a sea serpent. ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB |
| 226:We must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB |
| 227:His accent is kind of irresistible, she says. It makes him feel a little lonely to realise how easy it is to be liked by someone who has no idea who he is. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB |
| 228:Railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink. ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB |
| 229:Such highly qualitative leadership is demanded especially in the realm of the fostering of right international relations. Here the demand is simply irresistible. ~ John Mott, #NFDB |
230:Su ingenuidad y su bondad parecían convertirlo en un imán irresistible
para mujeres que devoraban hombres para desayunar y después escupían los restos ~ Camilla L ckberg,#NFDB |
| 231:He wanted to write someone and demand a refund on his dark side which clearly ought to have irresistible magical power but had turned out to be defective. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky, #NFDB |
| 232:The poetry of heroism holds an irresistible appeal for people who aren’t involved in a war, especially when they’re making piles of money out of one. ~ Louis Ferdinand C line, #NFDB |
| 233:All dancers have a cumulative tendency, because each beat of the tom-tom has an almost irresistible appeal. Soon, those who were just spectators would dance too. ~ Camara Laye, #NFDB |
| 234:...trying to establish the boundary between an irresistible impulse and an impulse not resisted was like trying to determine when twilight ended and dusk began. ~ Mark Salzman, #NFDB |
| 235:Language was both his livelihood and his addiction and he was often preyed upon by a near irresistible compulsion to eavesdrop on conversations in public places. ~ Amitav Ghosh, #NFDB |
236:That was out of line.”
“No, it wasn’t, querida.” He smiled, the devastating smile she found irresistible. “You’re my wife, and you do have an amazing mouth. ~ Delaney Diamond,#NFDB |
| 237:There is no "playing with truth" in the Charkha programme, for satyagraha is not predominantly civil disobedience but a quiet and irresistible pursuit of Truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB |
| 238:A noble soul spreads even over a face in which the architectonic beauty is wanting an irresistible grace, and a often even triumphs over the natural disfavor. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB |
| 239:Beyond the physical desire, she was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman, a beauty that went soul deep and an irresistible combination of strength and fragility. ~ Melinda Leigh, #NFDB |
| 240:Was he being devoured by one of those secret rages, all the more terrible because contained, and which only burst forth, with irresistible force, at the last moment? ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB |
| 241:Admiral Croft's manners were not quite of the tone to suit Lady Russell, but they delighted Anne. His goodness of heart and simplicity of character were irresistible. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB |
| 242:As an actor myself, the opportunity to sing and dance and be dramatic and be funny - it's really irresistible to actors. You get to show all sides of your talent. ~ Elizabeth Banks, #NFDB |
| 243:Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. ~ Washington Irving, #NFDB |
| 244:Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights. ~ George Will, #NFDB |
| 245:God’s grace is resistible in the sense that we can and do resist it. It is irresistible in the sense that it achieves its purpose. It brings about God’s desired effect. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB |
| 246:However devoutly a girl may worship the man of her choice, there always comes a time when she feels an irresistible urge to haul off and let him have it in the neck. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB |
| 247:Preston smirked. “You’re gonna have to stop calling me things like ‘gorgeous’ and ‘beautiful.’ I’m gonna get a complex. Why can’t I be ‘sexy,’ or maybe ‘irresistible’? ~ Abbi Glines, #NFDB |
| 248:These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart. ~ Pat Conroy, #NFDB |
| 249:We are surrounded by abysses, but the greatest of all depths is in our own heart, and an irresistible leaning leads us there. Draw thyself from thyself! ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB |
| 250:Ivan felt an intense hatred for him before he had thought about him at all. Suddenly he realised his presence and felt an irresistible impulse to knock him down. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB |
| 251:The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB |
| 252:The temptation to use mathematics is irresistible for economists. It appears to convey the appropriate air of scientific authority and precision to economists' musings. ~ Paul Ormerod, #NFDB |
| 253:Catherine [...] enjoyed her usual happiness with Henry Tilney, listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB |
| 254:He looked so—what was it that gave him his irresistible charm? He looked so accessible. That was it. A great simple truth struck me with surprise: charm is availability. ~ Elaine Dundy, #NFDB |
| 255:I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant. ~ Edward Snowden, #NFDB |
| 256:How can any Action be meritorious of Praise or Dispraise, Reward or Punishment, when the natural Principle of Self-Love is the only and the irresistible Motive to it? ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB |
| 257:Society seems to find it irresistible to characterise the “unworldliness” of the male intellectual and academic in terms of his failure to control the women in his life. ~ Germaine Greer, #NFDB |
258:We do not admire their president.
We know why the White House is white.
We do not find their children irresistible;
We do not agree they should inherit the earth. ~ Alice Walker,#NFDB |
| 259:I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth... ~ Robert W Chambers, #NFDB |
| 260:My life is filled with buckets of tears; thousands of people shouting in my ears; the humming and chirping of hundreds of Himalayan birds, which are irresistible to hear. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB |
| 261:Enlist the interests of stern Morality and religious Enthusiasm in the cause of Political Liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB |
| 262:To render my works properly requires a combination of extreme precision and irresistible verve, a regulated vehemence, a dreamy tenderness, and an almost morbid melancholy. ~ Hector Berlioz, #NFDB |
| 263:Translators can be considered as busy matchmakers who praise as extremely desirable a half-veiled beauty. They arouse an irresistible yearning for the original. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB |
| 264:A garden is like those pernicious machineries which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg , and his whole body to irresistible destruction. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB |
| 265:Each person has to answer that question for himself—” said Wirtanen. “Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB |
| 266:Karla Jay's intimate account of life in the early years of feminism and gay liberation is as irresistible as a novel, but as credible, humorous, and unexpected as real life. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB |
| 267:The interval of space separating her from him was one which he must as inevitably traverse as he must descend, by an irresistible gravitation, the steep slope of life itself. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB |
| 268:It is my experience that no one, in the course of conversation, can fail to give themselves away sooner or later. Everyone has an irresistible urge to talk about themselves. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB |
| 269:Poetry’s got a really particular kind of magic. It brings together storytelling, music,lyric,really deep intense feeling, it just seems like a really irresistible concoction to me. ~ Liz Berry, #NFDB |
| 270:Maybe she’ll fall victim to your irresistible charisma and you can get Monty back with your suave and debonair repartee?” “We’ll take William.” LD nodded. “Yeah, thought so. ~ Orlando A Sanchez, #NFDB |
| 271:She let him come further, his lips came and surging, surging, soft, oh soft, yet on, like the powerful surge of water, irresistible, till with a little blind cry, she broke away. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB |
| 272:To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB |
| 273:Violence is the method of ignorance, the weapon of the weak. The strong of heart and brain need no violence, for they are irresistible in their consciousness of being right. ~ Alexander Berkman, #NFDB |
| 274:Pain is a coward. He flees when faced by the irresistible power of the will-to-live, which is more strongly rooted in the flesh than the intensest passion is rooted in the spirit. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB |
| 275:What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB |
| 276:Forget trendy designer labels. Jeans, a sweater or a t-shirt worn under a jacket that seems welded to you. When it's just right, when you don't see the effort, it's irresistible. ~ Emmanuelle Alt, #NFDB |
| 277:He had all the most charming and irresistible gestures that a girl deeply in love looks for and who refuses to tell herself that they may have been acquired through long practice. ~ Victoria Holt, #NFDB |
| 278:The 1789 Revolution had given the French a political script of unequalled drama. For the better part of the following century the temptation to reenact the play was irresistible. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB |
| 279:Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there's no denying it: you're the one he can't help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That's just how irresistible you are. ~ Paula Hawkins, #NFDB |
280:Butch clapped V on the thigh, then stood up, as if he knew exactly what V was thinking. "Listen, I don't want you to feel bad. It's my animal magnetism. I'm irresistible."
"Smart-ass. ~ J R Ward,#NFDB |
| 281:Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistible urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB |
| 282:His intense craving begins to pull at God with an irresistible force. The Lord, as the Cosmic Vision, is drawn by the seeker’s magnetic ardor into his range of consciousness. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB |
| 283:My mind can take no hold on the present world, nor rest in it a moment, but my whole nature rushes onward with irresistible force towards a future and better state of being. ~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte, #NFDB |
| 284:He could see now that she looked tired; the delicate tissue under her eyes bruised violet with fatigue. He fought an almost irresistible desire to trace the half-circles with his finger. ~ Meg Rosoff, #NFDB |
| 285:The source of my difficulties has always been the same: an inability to accept what to others seems natural, and an irresistible tendency to voice opinions no one wants to hear . . . ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB |
| 286:They can admit the new world exists, dangerous and irresistible. Cosy is not what awakening youth wants. Safety is not what it wants. The material world is not what it wants either. ~ Kathleen Winter, #NFDB |
| 287:You must originate, and you must sympathize; yon must possess, at the same time, the habit of communicating and the habit of listening. The union is rather rare, but irresistible. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB |
| 288:I headed towards the mountain, which was an almost irresistible beacon to my storm self. It glowed with heat, pressure, and turbulence—everything a little dust devil like me could want. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB |
| 289:Sometimes life makes us to kneel down dreadfully without knowing that man can make much better plans especially in the Land of Defeat to stand up again with an irresistible power! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB |
| 290:She would try to paint. She would always try, for the road to perfection held an irresistible lure, even if the destination remained always tantalizingly just beyond the farthest horizon. ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB |
| 291:Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force. ~ Bayard Taylor, #NFDB |
| 292:And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB |
| 293:blueprint as a metaphor for a design or plan is much overworked. If the temptation to use it is irresistible, at least remember that a blueprint is a completed plan, not a preliminary one. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB |
| 294:We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB |
| 295:Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there's no point denying it: you're the one he can't help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That's just how irresistible you are. ~ Paula Hawkins, #NFDB |
| 296:Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are. ~ Paula Hawkins, #NFDB |
| 297:Besides, it somehow helped to imagine that the orders came from somewhere else, somewhere unknowable and irresistible. It was nice to have an attic in which to stack the blame. Friendly ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB |
| 298:Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?. Of all the means I know to lead men, the most effectual is a concealed mystery.The hankering of the mind is irresistible. ~ Adam Weishaupt, #NFDB |
| 299:We recognize that we cannot survive on meditation, poems and sunsets. We are restless. We have an irresistible urge to dip our hands into the stuff of the earth and do something with it. ~ Samuel Florman, #NFDB |
| 300:[S]he felt an irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had done badly in the past. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
| 301:You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB |
| 302:Every time he calls, I nag him to study.” “I hear that boys don’t like to be nagged.” “Me too, but it’s irresistible. You always want to take the boy and mold him into something better. ~ Caroline B Cooney, #NFDB |
| 303:Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistible urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. Yippee. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB |
| 304:He was irresistible. Utterly charming and sexy and magnetic, and whatever puny power she’d had to ignore him had been well and truly incinerated by their marathon session on Saturday night. ~ Sarah Mayberry, #NFDB |
| 305:It was not seen that woman's place was in the home until she began to go out of it; the statement was a reply to an unspoken challenge, it was attempted resistance to irresistible change. ~ Rose Wilder Lane, #NFDB |
| 306:No one loved Paris better than a true Parisian. No one was prouder of his city than a true Parisian. No one was half so arrogant, so haughty, so conceited, and quite so irresistible. Why ~ Tatiana de Rosnay, #NFDB |
| 307:Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. ~ Walter Scott, #NFDB |
| 308:Why is it that words often make use of us, we see them approach menacingly, like an irresistible abyss, yet are unable to ward them off and end up saying precisely what we did not wish to say. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB |
| 309:Man loves the marvelous. It has an irresistible charm for him. He is always ready to leave that with which he is familiar to pursue vain inventions. He lends himself to his own deception. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB |
| 310:Gatsby's fall from grace may be grim, but the language of the novel is buoyant; Fitzgerald's plot may suggest that the American Dream is a mirage, but his words make that dream irresistible. ~ Maureen Corrigan, #NFDB |
| 311:Bienvenido al maravilloso mundo de los celos. Por el precio de su entrada, obtiene un maldito dolor de cabeza, un deseo casi irresistible de cometer un homicidio. Y un complejo de inferioridad. Yupi. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB |
| 312:If we could believe that Jesus...countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB |
| 313:Never did we plan the morrow, for we had learned that in the wilderness some new and irresistible distraction is sure to turn up each day before breakfast. Like the river, we were free to wander. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB |
314:Don't tell me it took you two whole days to realize that. I must be losing my touch."
Her fingertips curled against him. "You knew?"
"That you're lonely, and I'm irresistible? Yeah, I knew. ~ Marissa Meyer,#NFDB |
| 315:intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB |
| 316:Why did we find it so irresistible to make ourselves into tragic figures with tragic flaws which were responsible for our pain? Maybe unfortunate things just happened; maybe there was just bad luck. ~ Sheila Heti, #NFDB |
| 317:The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. Both Israelis and Palestinians are irresistible forces, and they’re both immovable objects. ~ Michael J Totten, #NFDB |
| 318:The Light of the Christ within now wipes out all fear, doubt, anger and resentment. God's love pours through me, an irresistible magnetic current. I see only perfection and draw to me my own. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn, #NFDB |
| 319:were in town. At dawn, NBC, along with the rest of the baseball world, awakened to the irresistible story of Joe Castle and his stunning debut in Philadelphia. Suddenly the biggest game of the day was ~ John Grisham, #NFDB |
| 320:Most communities attempting to survive under irresistible pressure from a dominant culture develop a myth that allows them to believe they are somehow a special people. Chosen. Favored by the gods. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB |
| 321:I am overwhelmed by an irresistible temptation to do my climb by moonlight and unroped. This is contrary to all my rock climbing teaching & does not mean poor training, but only a strong-headedness. ~ William Shockley, #NFDB |
| 322:Being overly smart is obnoxious, being wise is a turn on. There’s something irresistible about someone you can learn from. The need for banter and witty conversation is more imperative than you may believe, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 323:There never was a man of solid understanding, whose apprehensions are sober, and by a pensive inspection advised, but that he hath found by an irresistible necessity one true God and everlasting being. ~ Walter Raleigh, #NFDB |
| 324:Even the most irresistible flowering plant, one that I call a 'key' performer, is part of a whole cast; it has to be considered as a component in an overall look as well as for its individual charms. ~ Penelope Hobhouse, #NFDB |
| 325:Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB |
326:However, I have to warn you, I kind of like that you find me irresistible.”
“Did I say that?” he asked, a slight tint creeping up his stubbled cheeks. “I didn’t say that! I find you completely resistible. ~ Robyn Carr,#NFDB |
| 327:It was a marriage of love. He was sufficiently spoiled to be charming; she was ingenuous enough to be irresistible. Like two floating logs they met in a head-on rush, caught, and sped along together. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 328:For benefits by their very greatness spotlight the difference in conditions and arouse a secret annoyance in those who profit from them. But the charm of simple good manners is almost irresistible. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB |
| 329:She knew, even lacking as she was in feminine sophistication, that there were two open roads to the heart of a woman. One is a wedding and the other is a baby. The lure of either is irresistible. As ~ Gene Stratton Porter, #NFDB |
| 330:The little cares, fears, tears, timid misgivings, sleepless fancies of I don't know how many days and nights, were forgotten under one moment's influence of that familiar, irresistible smile. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB |
| 331:By 1940 most Europeans had made their peace with the seemingly irresistible power of Nazi Germany. Influential Americans such as Charles Lindbergh opposed war with the Nazis under the slogan “America First. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB |
| 332:Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB |
| 333:Something in her little soul was old enough and woman enough to feel the irresistible, stinging joy of being needed; she sat rocking his head back and forth, until his grief expended itself in emptiness. ~ Colleen McCullough, #NFDB |
| 334:David, on the other hand, may not be so initially alarming, but once decided on a course of action is hard to sway. When his immovable object met Roger’s irresistible force, difficulties were guaranteed to follow. ~ Nick Mason, #NFDB |
| 335:Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB |
| 336:When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very passionately ; for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty. ~ Jean de la Bruyere, #NFDB |
| 337:Cinematic and symphonic: this is a compelling story revealed in a sequence of voices that are as pitch-perfect as they are irresistible. This is a wonderfully impressive debut: tender, muscled and unforgettable. ~ Rikki Ducornet, #NFDB |
| 338:Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB |
| 339:There are some causes sosacred as to carry with them an irresistible appeal to every virtuous bosom; and he needs but little power of eloquence, who defends the honour of his wife, his mother, or his country. I ~ Washington Irving, #NFDB |
| 340:And when I concentrate on the stars, the planets, and their motions, I have an irresistible sense of machinery, clockwork, elegant precision working on a scale that, however lofty our aspirations, dwarfs and humbles us. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB |
| 341:We may find the attractions of a particular member of the opposite sex irresistible, even though the better judgment of our better self tells us that a liaison with that person is not in anyone’s long-term interests. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB |
| 342:Her hair was a tangle. Her filthy clothes would make any self-respecting debutante shriek in horror. Dirt streaked her piquant face. And still he thought she was utterly irresistible. He was in a bad way indeed. Several ~ Anna Campbell, #NFDB |
| 343:I have always found men who were funny, irresistible. It's rare that I ever based love on looks or superficial things, but it a guy made me laugh-and that didn't mean he had to be in comedy professionally - I was hooked. ~ Gilda Radner, #NFDB |
| 344:he would have repeatedly encountered irresistible words such as “freedom,” “liberty,” “tyranny,” and the “rights of man.” 19 Well before he read any serious history, he garnered and cherished a vocabulary of liberation. ~ David W Blight, #NFDB |
| 345:Space and silence weigh equally upon the heart. A sudden love, a great work, a decisive act, a thought which transfigures, all these at certain moments bring the same unbearable anxiety, linked with an irresistible charm. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB |
| 346:I have said that I cannot explain my desire for her, and it is true. I loved her with a love thirsty and desperate. I felt that we two might commit some act so atrocious that the world, seeing us, would find it irresistible. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB |
| 347:Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music; the same faults are engendered by over-study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible impulse in both the poet and the, composer. ~ Edmund Clarence Stedman, #NFDB |
| 348:Tess and Clare unconsciously studied each other, ever balanced on the edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping out of it. All the while they were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB |
| 349:I like to think of myself as the Rutger Hauer of this show Star Trek: The Next Generation. But then I like to think of myself as Rutger Hauer in real life: strikingly handsome, irresistible to women, an intergalactic enigma. ~ Brent Spiner, #NFDB |
| 350:To run to anything else is to resist the irresistible. To seek other than The One (al Wahid), is to become scattered, but never filled. How can we find unity, completion of heart or soul or mind in anything other than Him? ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB |
| 351:Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB |
352:Master of masters,
O maker of heroes,
Thunder the brave,
Irresistible message:
'Life is worth living
Through every grain of it
From the foundations
To the last edge
Of the cornerstone, death. ~ William Ernest Henley,#NFDB |
| 353:Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB |
354:Mines!” Patsy shouts, pointing at Tim. He goes to her, rumples her scanty hair.
“See, hot Alice? Even the very young feel the pull of my magnetism. It’s like an irresistible urge, a force like gravity, or—”
“Poop! ~ Huntley Fitzpatrick,#NFDB |
| 355:Secrets always tend towards a domino effect, dividing and mutating and acquiring as they multiply the force of irresistible momentum. One soon learns to live in the reality of the alternative unreality of one’s making. ~ Panayotis Cacoyannis, #NFDB |
| 356:Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB |
| 357:He had a fund of small talk, a pleasant voice, a caressing glance and his moustache was irresistible. Crisp and curly, it curved charmingly over his lip, fair with auburn tints, slightly paler where it bristled at the ends. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB |
358:THE LUXE IS . . .
Pretty girls in pretty dresses, partying until dawn.
Irresistible boys with mischievous smiles and dangerous intentions.
White lies, dark secrets, and scandalous hookups.
This is Manhattan in 1899. ~ Anna Godbersen,#NFDB |
| 359:How, in twenty days, do you create for a man a new and irresistible motive for his existence? And how, this done, do you preserve him and his family from a blow so devastating as to be, in some ways, worse than self-destruction? ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB |
| 360:What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can old man, — you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind,– I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB |
| 361:Yet, he is greatly loved,” said Marcus. Scaevola nodded, and frowned. “Perhaps it is because a totally evil man has an irresistible charm, and excites the envy and admiration of those who dare not display themselves so completely. ~ Taylor Caldwell, #NFDB |
| 362:He saw the irresistible allure of high school sports, but he also saw an inevitable danger in adults’ living vicariously through their young. And he knew of no candle that burned out more quickly than that of the high school athlete. ~ H G Bissinger, #NFDB |
| 363:How can so much beauty hide such a bruised and steely heart, and why must I love him, why must I lean in my weariness upon his irresistible yet indomitable strength? Is he not the wizend funeral spirit of a dead man in a child's clothes? ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB |
364:You think you're so irresistible," she blurted out, mortification overruling discretion. "You don't think there's a woman alive who would say no to you, do you?"
"Well, let's just say that I haven't met her yet," he said dryly. ~ Sarah Morgan,#NFDB |
| 365:One battle in twelve might be won by a brilliant military stratagem. The rest stood or fell by somebody’s blunders. Only rarely, there came the feel of a great campaign evolved by a stylist: imaginative, comprehensive, irresistible. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB |
| 366:...We are intensely proud of their noble record and are glad to have had the whole world see how irresistible they are in their might when a cause which America holds dear is at stake. The whole nation has reason to be proud of them. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB |
| 367:Embellishment is an irresistible and consuming impulse, going back to the beginnings of human history. ... Probably the strongest motivating force is the simplest: the inability of almost everyone to ever leave well enough alone. ~ Ada Louise Huxtable, #NFDB |
| 368:He had a particular liking for olde England, especially if the olde was spelled with an e. He found things like croquet, cream teas and cricket both incomprehensible and irresistible and he would have been in his element here. ~ Anthony Horowitz, #NFDB |
| 369:To be in love involves the most irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
| 370:Yes we are devilish; that is true we cackle. Yes we are dark like the soil and wild like the animals. And we turn to each other and stare into this darkness. We find it beautiful. We find this darkness irresistible. We cease all hiding. ~ Susan Griffin, #NFDB |
371:Ella: "Why can't I stay mad at you?"
Clay: "Because I'm irresistible."
Ella: "You probably use that line on the ladies. And it probably works."
Clay: "It does."
Ella: "God. You're unbelievable."
Clay: "They all say that, too. ~ Jaci Burton,#NFDB |
372:He laughs. "Having a hard time resisting me after that dance?"
"That dance was..." I pretend great interest in my thumbs as I send the video file to my email and close the phone up.
"Irresistible? Sensuous? Seductive?"
"Nauseating? ~ Stacey Jay,#NFDB |
373:The villains were always ugly in books and movies. Necessarily so, it seemed. Because if they were attractive—if their looks matched their charm and their cunning—they wouldn't only be dangerous.
They would be irresistible. ~ Nenia Campbell,#NFDB |
| 374:You have; and I’ve restrained a good many of them,” replied the insect. “But there are opportunities for so many excellent puns in our language that, to an educated person like myself, the temptation to express them is almost irresistible. ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB |
| 375:The lonely wanderer, who watches by the seashore the waves that roll between him and his home, talks of cruel facts, material barriers that, just because they are material, and not ideal, shall be the irresistible foes of his longing heart. ~ Josiah Royce, #NFDB |
376:-You think I’ve got a big ego and an attitude problem?
-I don’t think you do, Carlos. I know it. Unfortunately, it’s a Fuentes flaw.
-I’d call it an asset. It’s what makes us Fuentes brothers irresistible.
Carlos and Brittany ~ Simone Elkeles,#NFDB |
| 377:Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it. Those whistles sing bewitchment: railways are irresistible bazaars... Anything is possible on a train... ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB |
| 378:Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB |
| 379:Modern science, then, so far from being an enemy of romance, is seen on every hand to be its sympathetic and resourceful friend, its swift and irresistible helper in its serious need, and an indulgent minister to its lighter fancies. ~ Richard Le Gallienne, #NFDB |
| 380:When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB |
| 381:In modern European thought a tragedy is occurring in that the original bonds uniting the affirmative attitude towards the world with ethics are, by a slow but irresistible process, loosening and finally parting. Out of my life and Thought. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB |
| 382:I regard it as the irresistible effect of the Copernican astronomy to have made the theological scheme of redemption absolutely incredible ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124, #NFDB |
| 383:Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction. ~ Harriet Martineau, #NFDB |
| 384:Because our dominance won’t arise from subjugating peoples. We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB |
| 385:I straightened up, pulling just a little away from him. He looked at me questioningly. “Something wrong?” “Nice aftershave,” I said. No need to confess that I’d had an almost irresistible urge to nibble his neck. It was too embarrassing. The ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB |
| 386:At one point I was introduced to a devastatingly handsome young man -- beautiful, really -- with black unruly hair, large sensitive eyes fringed by long dark lashes, a full sensuous mouth -- and an irresistible personality. His name was Tony Curtis. ~ Janet Leigh, #NFDB |
| 387:El encanto irresistible de su belleza era tal, que yo quedé fascinado, mientras la música parecía cantar en mi oídos: Aspira su mirada como el vino, Mientras que su esplendor se funde Lánguido en medio del silencio, Como un acorde dentro de un acorde… ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 388:She puckered her bubble gum mouth until its exaggerated sensuality drew attention away from the blood-blue crescents beneath her eyes. “My bags may be packed, but I haven't left town. No wonder Ricki finds me irresistible. She's only human.” Leaning ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB |
| 389:Most communities attempting to survive under irresistible pressure from a dominant culture develop a myth that allows them to believe they are somehow a special people. Chosen. Favored by the gods. Gypsies, Jews-- plenty of historical precedents ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB |
| 390:June Jordan once said something which is just wonderful. I'm paraphrasing her-that her function as a poet was to make revolution irresistible. Well o.k. that is the function of us all, as creative artists, to make the truth, as we see it irresistible. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB |
| 391:Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB |
| 392:There is an irresistible demand to strengthen the leadership of the constructive forces of the world at the present momentous time. This is true because of stupendous, almost unbelievable changes which have taken place in recent years on every continent. ~ John Mott, #NFDB |
| 393:A sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB |
394:Change
is the one unavoidable,
irresistible,
ongoing reality of the universe.
To us,
that makes it the most powerful reality,
and just another word for
God.
Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Lauren Oya Olamina ~ Octavia E Butler,#NFDB |
| 395:Homo logicus are driven by an irresistible desire to understand how things work. By contrast, Homo sapiens have a strong desire for success. Programmers also want to succeed, but they will frequently accept failure as the price to pay for understanding. ~ Alan Cooper, #NFDB |
| 396:Air is breath, weightless and irresistible. Love does not hold back. Fire is heat, passion and light. Love delights in desire. Water is emotion, still and stormy. Love is deep with feeling. And earth is bounty, nourishment and nest. Love is home.” He ~ Susan Fanetti, #NFDB |
| 397:Ambition, as that passion is generally understood,- a strong desire to rise above others, to occupy the first place, - formed no part of Lafayette's character. In him the passion was nothing more than a constant and irresistible wish to do good. ~ Marquis de Lafayette, #NFDB |
| 398:A sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future, imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB |
| 399:Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle. ~ Robert Kennedy, #NFDB |
| 400:Twitter Terrorist, billionaire heir, ex-con, computer geek, bad boy—none of those terms came close to describing Kyle Rhodes. He was, simply, a good person, and a confident, intelligent man to boot, and she found that combination absolutely irresistible. ~ Julie James, #NFDB |
| 401:Falstaff something roughly similar—a gentleman sinking into mire—but darker and deeper: a debauched genius; a fathomlessly cynical, almost irresistible confidence man; a diseased, cowardly, seductive, lovable monster; a father who cannot be trusted. ~ Stephen Greenblatt, #NFDB |
| 402:seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB |
| 403:There's something really sweet about the way he's playing the part and he's kind of irresistible in a way. They're both really lonely. That's kind of established from the very beginning in the movie. The way they meet is just classic, lonely losers. ~ Mary Louise Parker, #NFDB |
| 404:Wherever people gather for selfless ends, there is a vast augmentation of their individual capacities. Something wonderful, something momentous happens. An irresistible force begins to move, which, though we may not see it, is going to change our world. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB |
| 405:Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB |
| 406:Yet the story line blaming environmental activists for its problems proved irresistible. Life magazine produced an elegiac photo essay called “End of a Company Town,” and The Wall Street Journal lamented the crushing new regulatory burden on corporate America. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB |
| 407:All trembling, I reached the Falls of Niagara, and oh, what a scene! My blood shudders still, although I am not a coward, at the grandeur of the Creators power; and I gazed motionless on this new display of the irresistible force of one of His elements. ~ John James Audubon, #NFDB |
| 408:Gemma told me that women like being courted, so please read the following reasons that you should marry me. (I only included five. I didn’t want to overwhelm you.) And yes, I realize this isn’t a traditional courtship. It’ll work anyway; I’m irresistible. ~ Elizabeth Hunter, #NFDB |
| 409:The dangerous one was Ren. Innocent though the white tiger he appeared to be, he was a compelling predator. Utterly irresistible -- like a Venus flytrap. So alluring, so tempting, so deadly. Everything he did was seductive and possibly hazardous to my health. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB |
| 410:A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB |
| 411:I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all: I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope,against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB |
| 412:Las almas grandes están siempre dispuestas a hacer de una desgracia una virtud. Existe además un atractivo irresistible en obstinarse en hacer un bien en aquello en lo que los demás ven un motivo de reproche: la inocencia tiene el atractivo propio del vicio. ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB |
| 413:the supposedly Darwinian belief in natural selection as a pervasive, irresistible cosmic force. Neo-Darwinian theorists offer this force as the final explanation, not just of evolution, but of all sorts of deep social, physical and metaphysical mysteries as well. ~ Mary Midgley, #NFDB |
| 414:A long tradition of barter was born that day. An extended series of negotiations during which, at exactly the right moment, Mom would promise something irresistible in exchange for my doing something that, ironically, I would usually be willing to do otherwise. ~ Melissa Francis, #NFDB |
| 415:The reason that stuff goes bad is because it’s crappy old tech. Internal augs are less failure-prone than your own brain.” “So they’ll work flawlessly when some spambot hacks in and leaves me with an irresistible urge to buy a year’s supply of bubble bath for cats. ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB |
| 416:My scientific work is motivated by an irresistible longing to understand the secrets of nature and by no other feeling. My love for justice and striving to contribute towards the improvement of human conditions are quite independent from my scientific interests. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB |
| 417:What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB |
| 418:You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time. ~ Paul Val ry, #NFDB |
| 419:Have you ever wondered why doughnuts are so irresistible? Nutrition- ists speculate that we are attracted to doughnuts— despite their deadly biological effects— because sweet and fatty tastes were associated with getting nutrients when food was both natural and scarce. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 420:Whatever the losses in warmth and comfort, the gains in space proved irresistible. So the development of the fireplace became one of the great breakthroughs in domestic history: they allowed people to lay boards across the beams and create a whole new world upstairs. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB |
| 421:I kissed you because it was beautiful and you make me feel..." he bit out, his voice a harsh whisper. "You make me feel...crazy things. Desperate things. Impossible things. You make me feel. And feeling that much is irresistible sometimes. You are irresitible sometimes. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB |
| 422:What about you, this week? First you completely ignore me like some Hitler Youth ice-maiden, then you turn into an irresistible sex kitten, looking at me over the computer with not so much ‘come-to-bed’ as just ‘come’ eyes, and now suddenly you’re Jeremy Paxman.” We ~ Helen Fielding, #NFDB |
| 423:The men who rush into undertakings of vast change usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power. The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of man’s reason and the boundless range of his intelligence. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB |
| 424:But here in Pruet, Marigold had discovered a new kind of tired. At night her limbs were loose and happy, tingling with a memory of the sun. And when her head hit the pillow on her boat bed, sleep became as sweet and irresistible as a bowl of peppermint stick ice cream. ~ Leila Howland, #NFDB |
| 425:A great commotion immobilized her in her center of gravity, planted her in her place, and her defensive will was demolished by the irresistible anxiety to discover what the orange bells and whistles and the invisible globes on the other side of death were like. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
| 426:A great commotion immobilized her in her center of gravity, planted her in her place, and her defensive will was demolished by the irresistible anxiety to discover what the orange bells and whistles and the invisible globes on the other side of death were like. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, #NFDB |
| 427:In another place was a vast array of idols—Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly took my fancy. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB |
| 428:¿Cómo debe comportarse el hombre si el Estado lo obliga a ciertas acciones que su conciencia considera injustas? La respuesta es fácil: dependes por completo de la sociedad en que vives. No tienes responsabilidad por esas acciones, cumplidas bajo coacción irresistible. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB |
| 429:It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 430:How did I not see this? How could I not have seen this incredible man for what he is? In a matter of life-altering hours, Theo has just become the most irresistible man I’ve ever known. If I’m completely honest, I’ve been falling for him, in pieces, since the night we met. ~ Kate Stewart, #NFDB |
| 431:She was an irresistible dichotomy of sweet charm and heart-stopping sexy, and she threw him off guard with every look, be it a smile or a glare. In fact, he kinda liked when she gave him dirty looks, which meant he was seriously losing his shit. And he never lost his shit. ~ Jill Shalvis, #NFDB |
| 432:In general, when the imagination is at all noble, it is irresistible, and therefore those who can at all resist it ought to resist it. Be a plain topographer if you possibly can; if Nature meant you to be anything else, she will force you to it; but never try to be a prophet. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB |
| 433:To yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of “historical necessity,” but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless, and unreal. The ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB |
| 434:La necesidad de confirmar la realidad y dilatar la experiencia mediante fotografías es un consumismo estético al que hoy todos son adictos. Las sociedades industriales transforman a sus ciudadanos en yonquis a las imágenes; es la forma más irresistible de contaminación mental. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB |
| 435:All generous social irradiations spring from science, letters, arts, education. Make men, make men. Give them light that they may warm you. Sooner or later the splendid question of universal education will present itself with the irresistible authority of the absolute truth; and ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB |
| 436:I think all Internet comments should be disengaged. But I kind of live and die by it. It's completely irresistible. It's not like comedy. When I do a podcast or write an episode of TV, I have no feedback for that. That's the only way you know what you're doing is good or bad. ~ Harris Wittels, #NFDB |
| 437:Love is . . . needing to be with this one person. No—it’s more like wanting to need to be with this one person. Last semester my English professor read us this great Robert Frost quotation that went something like, ‘Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. ~ Daria Snadowsky, #NFDB |
| 438:The dilemma of modern medicine, and the underlying central flaw in medical education and, most of all, in the training of interns, is the irresistible drive to do something, anything. It is expected by patients and too often agreed to by their doctors, in the face of ignorance. ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB |
| 439:The theologian Paul Tillich once observed that among scientists only physicists seem capable of using the word "God" without embarrassment. Whatever one's religion or lack of it, it is an irresistible metaphor to speak of the final laws of nature in terms of the mind of God. ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB |
| 440:When great causes are on the move in the world, stirring all men's souls, drawing them from their firesides, casting aside comfort, wealth and the pursuit of happiness in response to impulses at once awe-striking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB |
| 441:You are not bound. You have got free will. You cannot change the experiences, the results of Prarabdha but you can change your future by right thinking and right action and thus make your will pure and irresistible. You can attain Self-realisatio n with the help of a dynamic will. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB |
| 442:His youth had been so long ago that he could remember nothing of it but he presumed, erroneously, that he had tasted the purple fruit, had broken hearts and hymens, had tosses flowers to ladies on balconies, had drunk champagne out of their shoes and generally been irresistible. ~ Mervyn Peake, #NFDB |
| 443:It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 444:When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born. ~ Charles Krauthammer, #NFDB |
| 445:This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration and awe- - that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB |
| 446:Women want to be loved like roses. They spend hours perfecting their eyebrows and toes and inventing irresistible curls that fall by accident down the back of their necks from otherwise austere hair-dos. They want their lover to remember the way they held a glass. They want to haunt. ~ Eve Babitz, #NFDB |
447:A combination of more convenience, better service, aggressive pricing, and better results will make you irresistible to some people.
It wonʼt work for everyone. Some folks may never switch. But thatʼs okay. You donʼt need everyone. Just enough to keep you busy and the cash flowing! ~ Seth Godin,#NFDB |
| 448:It always came back to love. More than freedom, more than acceptance—love. True love, like they sang about in the second era. The kind that filled up a person's soul. The kind that lent itself to dramatic gestures and sacrifices. The kind that was irresistible and all-encompassing. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB |
| 449:Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhaltations laden with slow death, And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB |
| 450:Here again is the tendency we can discern in the reasoning of so many of the actors in this crisis, to perceive oneself as operating under irresistible external constraints while placing the responsibility for deciding between peace and war firmly on the shoulders of the opponent. ~ Christopher Clark, #NFDB |
| 451:For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB |
| 452:If you do not feel a fervent love and profound pity for humanity, be assured that the gift of Christian eloquence has been denied you. You will not win souls, neither will you acquire that most excellent of earthly sovereignties - sovereignty over human hearts....Love is irresistible. ~ Dwight L Moody, #NFDB |
| 453:What we hear now is great-sounding records with great-sounding grooves and loops. And the sound of these records is irresistible, but the craft of songwriting is just about over. That's why, whenever I get an opportunity to do an album full of standards, I jump at it because I miss it. ~ Barry Manilow, #NFDB |
| 454:period of time. A curiously irresistible expression for many writers, as here: ‘Marcos claimed that the seizures could be expected to continue for a considerable period of time’ (Sunday Times). Make it either ‘a considerable period’ or ‘a considerable time’. Both together are unnecessary. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB |
| 455:She was his reason for being. His every defining moment occurred because of her, and only in her presence did he know peace. She was his brightest shining star. She made him a better man, and to men who know how fundamentally and deeply they’re flawed, such a woman is irresistible. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB |
| 456:Love. It always came back to love. More than freedom, more than acceptance—love. True love, like they sang about in the second era. The kind that filled up a person’s soul. The kind that lent itself to dramatic gestures and sacrifices. The kind that was irresistible and all-encompassing. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB |
| 457:Man, by means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates his inner nature; he represents it as out of himself. The nature of man, of the species – thus working on him through the irresistible power of the imagination, and contemplated as the law of his thought and action – is God. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB |
| 458:Take my advice, dear reader, don’t talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But resist it. Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to be somewhat chiselled, as it were, before it will quite fit into an epigram. ~ Joseph P Farrell, #NFDB |
| 459:Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say no. I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB |
| 460:Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say "no." I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB |
| 461:I have no idea. I get involved because I think there's value in the project and because I love the character that is presented to me. I love the opportunity to examine a character, and to have him examine me, live inside me and move my hands. I love that. It's irresistible. It's a drug. ~ Donald Sutherland, #NFDB |
| 462:Looking backward through life, one can see the points of change like great locks through which one glides on a flood wave, so smoothly, on such irresistible power that one is hardly aware of any movement. But life is never the same again. One has gone through the lock and lives on a new level. ~ Mary O Hara, #NFDB |
| 463:You would realize that all the cookies were formed in the same mold. And what is more, Sophie, you are now seized by the irresistible desire to see this mold. Because clearly, the mold itself must be utter perfection - and in a sense, more beautiful - in comparison with these crude copies. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB |
| 464:It used to take me forever to read and comprehend stuff, so I decided not to make the 'Captain Underpants' books too challenging. Don't get me wrong - the humor and ideas are often sophisticated - but the books aren't hard to read. I wanted kids who hate reading to find these books irresistible. ~ Dav Pilkey, #NFDB |
| 465:When once it is no longer possible to understand how a man gives his life for his country--and the time will come--then all is over with that faith also, and the idea of the Fatherland is dead; and then, perhaps, we shall be envied, as we envy the saints their inward and irresistible strength. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB |
| 466:Scarlet sat up, heat rushing to her face as she was struck with an almost irresistible yearning to crawl toward him—not to get off the train’s roof, but to be wrapped up against him again. To feel warm and safe and content, just for another moment. She smashed the desire down into her gut. Wolf ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB |
| 467:The media have become masters at packaging stimuli in ways that our brains find irresistible, just as food engineers have become expert in creating “hyperpalatable” foods by manipulating levels of sugar, fat, and salt.11 Distractibility might be regarded as the mental equivalent of obesity. ~ Matthew B Crawford, #NFDB |
| 468:Oh, he was ever a leading spirit in controversies," Bernard said. "I well remember his sentiments. He believed that men, when confronted with a vast plenitude of anything, feel an irresistible urge to take it all, then to smash and destroy what they cannot use." (4th Estate, London, 2016, p. 211.) ~ Annie Proulx, #NFDB |
| 469:I don’t tell people things like that unless they buy me dinner first.” The drawl sounded deep Cajun. The drawn-out words and the lilting, easy roll of his voice made Prophet want to throw a chair at him, mainly because it had always been an accent he’d found irresistible. On anyone but this guy. Okay, ~ S E Jakes, #NFDB |
| 470:I would rather have bowel surgery in the woods with a stick. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB |
471:Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul:
There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires
That trample on the dead to seize their spoil,
Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible
As exhalations laden with slow death,
And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys
Breathes pallid pestilence. ~ George Eliot,#NFDB |
| 472:Time stopped and for a few blissful moments there was nothing except Connor, intoxicating and irresistible, the taste of him, the scent of him, the raw male power of his arms, and the tender seducing touch of his lips... And then I was out of the car and gone before the power of that kiss wore off. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB |
| 473:Everyday he saw better, and he began to climb slowly, one by one, almost reluctantly at first then, with intoxication and, as though drawn by an irresistible fascination, steps that started off dark, then gradually became dimly illuminated, only to end in the luminous and splendid blaze of enthusiasm. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB |
| 474:Gathered around me were the weak instead of the strong, the ugly instead of the beautiful, the losers instead of the winners. It looked like it was my destiny to travel in their company through life. That didn’t bother me so much as the fact that I seemed irresistible to these dull idiot fellows. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB |
| 475:Passion acts like a magnet that attracts us to its source. We are drawn to people who radiate with passion, who live with passion, who breathe with passion. Your passion is your true power. The more you discover and express your passion for life, the more irresistible you will become to others. ~ Barbara De Angelis, #NFDB |
| 476:I am, a spectator, so to speak of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis; an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me – and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world. ~ Henri Fr d ric Amiel, #NFDB |
| 477:I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me - and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB |
| 478:As I read Mann in German for the first time, the full achievement - both literary and philosophical - of Death in Venice struck me forcefully, so that, when I was invited to give the Schoff Lectures at Columbia, the opportunity to reflect on the contrasts between novella and opera seemed irresistible. ~ Philip Kitcher, #NFDB |
| 479:When all has been considered, it seems to me to be the irresistible intuition that infinite punishment for finite sin would be unjust, and therefore wrong. We feel that even weak and erring Man would shrink from such an act. And we cannot conceive of God as acting on a lower standard of right and wrong. ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB |
| 480:Hell had at least been familiar; she knew that, if she'd been capable of feeling anything, she would have felt afraid of this irresistible force that had picked her up like a scrap of paper and was sweeping her into the void, right out of the world as she knew it, as if whirling her off the earth altogether. ~ Anna Kavan, #NFDB |
481:Its touch can turn difficulties into opportunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaultering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#NFDB |
| 482:By George Eliot Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires That trample on the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhalations laden with slow death, And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB |
| 483:You’ve never been to school, ever? If that’s true— and you’re right, I don’t think it is—what made you decide to come this year?” “You....Your eyes, Nora. Those cold, pale gray eyes are surprisingly irresistible.” He tipped his head sideways, as if to study me from a new angle. “And that killer curvy mouth ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB |
| 484:Her temperament, however, was Akbar’s own creation. No real woman was ever like that, so perfectly attentive, so undemanding, so endlessly available. She was an impossibility, a fantasy of perfection. They feared her, knowing that, being impossible, she was irresistible, and that was why the king loved her best. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB |
| 485:He sounded so certain. Whenever they had an argument about a point of fact, he was always so utterly confident that he had it right and she had it wrong. He never even entertained the possibility that he might be mistaken. It drove her bananas. She struggled with an irresistible urge to slap him across the face. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB |
| 486:There are a lot of things that are in the show that harken back to the old show, but I really wanted to resist doing a greatest hits. It was irresistible to do a greatest hits, but it was almost too easy. There are things that I know are still ahead of us, in the future of whatever Arrested Development brings. ~ Mitchell Hurwitz, #NFDB |
| 487:Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB |
| 488:Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So muchfate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB |
| 489:In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are totally alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB |
490:¿Quién puede concebir los horrores de mi
encubierta tarea, hurgando en la húmeda oscuridad de las tumbas o atormentando a algún animal vivo
para intentar animar el barro inerte? Ahora me tiemblan los miembros con sólo recordarlo; entonces
me espoleaba un impulso irresistible y casi frenético. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,#NFDB |
| 491:It's an American thing, but it's particularly a southern thing, and its romanticization is hyper-Southern. And it's still irresistible to me, even in middle age. There's something that pulls me to that, but at the same time, I have this increasing awareness of how banal it really is - that evil is inherently banal. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB |
| 492:He sounded so certain. Whenever they had an argument about a point of fact, he was always so utterly confident that he had it right and she had it wrong. He never even entertained the possibility that he might be mistaken. It drove her bananas. She struggled with an irresistible urge to slap him across the face. This ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB |
| 493:The Law of the Few says that there are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them. The lesson of stickiness is the same. There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB |
| 494:What attracted me was less art itself than the artist’s life and all that it meant for me: the idea of creativity and freedom of expression and action. I had been attracted to painting and drawing for a long time, but it was not an irresistible passion; what I wanted, at all costs, was to escape the monotony of life. ~ Pierre Bonnard, #NFDB |
495:You’ve never been to school, ever? If that’s true— and you’re right, I don’t think it is—what made you decide to come this year?”
“You....Your eyes, Nora. Those cold, pale gray eyes are surprisingly irresistible.” He tipped his head sideways, as if to study me from a new angle. “And that killer curvy mouth. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,#NFDB |
496:El amor es una enfermedad de las más jodidas y contagiosas. A los enfermos, cualquiera nos reconoce.
Hondas ojeras delatan que jamás dormimos, despabilados noche tras noche por los abrazos, o por la ausencia de los abrazos, y padecemos fiebres devastadoras y sentimos una irresistible necesidad de decir estupideces. ~ Eduardo Galeano,#NFDB |
| 497:It is not true that Satan makes work for idle hands to do; that is just what he doesn't. Satan should be at hand with all manner of glittering distractions, false but irresistible promises, inducements to reprehensible behaviour. Instead of which one is simply offered a choice between overwork and half-hearted idleness. ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB |
| 498:There is little difference between the Zulu warrior who smeared bis body with lion's fat and the modern woman who dabs hers with expensive perfume. The one was trying to acquire the courage of the king of beasts, the other is attempting to acquire the irresistible sexuality of flowers. The underlying principle is the same. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB |
| 499:Wherever people gather for selfless ends, there is a vast augmentation of their individual capacities. Something wonderful, something momentous happens. An irresistible force begins to move, which, though we may not see it, is going to change our world. In this lies the power and the meaning of spiritual companionship. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB |
| 500:One night in the early sixties I passed something on the Long Island Expressway just before the Queens tunnel that I must have seen for years. The billboard advertising cigars, Dutch Masters. I realized it was sort of perfect. It's weird isn't it? You're looking at Rembrandt - in neon! It was too much, it was irresistible. ~ Larry Rivers, #NFDB |
| 501:But I still read Shaw on a regular basis. What I love is the nakedness of the polemic and the irresistible good humour. For me, 'Major Barbara' is the greatest of all the plays in that it starts from the rational and proceeds to the ecstatic in a spectacular way, and leaves you very confused if you cling to Euclidean logic. ~ Tony Kushner, #NFDB |
| 502:All these torments which the fish undergoes during the period of love are called “migration to death” in Russian, because they inevitably lead to death, and not a single one of the fish ever returns to the ocean – they all die in the rivers. “Irresistible bouts of erotic attraction leading to one’s demise,” says Middendorf. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB |
| 503:I don't torture myself. And I do the work because of the pleasure involved. I'm satisfying a compulsion I find nigh-on irresistible. It's not necessarily because of the work itself. I just feel the need for a period of regeneration afterwards. Like leaving a field fallow when you've grazed too much on it. I feel depleted. ~ Daniel Day Lewis, #NFDB |
| 504:Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB |
| 505:The downside of shuffle soon revealed itself, though. I became fascinated with the mechanism itself, and soon was always wanting to know what was coming up next. It was irresistible to click onto the next random selection. Even if it was something great, there was the possibility something greater still would flash up next. ~ Simon Reynolds, #NFDB |
| 506:The evocative power of the drum can be compared to the Trinity. The drum's frame comes from the trunk of a tree, and that tree has a spirit. It is not dead wood. There is also spirit in the animal skin. If there wasn't, it would not produce sound. Those, plus the spirit of the person playing become an irresistible force. ~ Babatunde Olatunji, #NFDB |
| 507:If you won’t marry me for the sake of your own honor, then do it for the sake of everyone who would have to tolerate me otherwise. Marry me because I need someone who will help me to laugh at myself. Because someone has to teach me how to whistle. Marry me, Lillian… because I have the most irresistible fascination for your ears. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB |
| 508:Who we loved wasn’t always a choice. Sometimes it was an irresistible pull, a gravitational force, something we couldn’t see or control that drew us toward another. Sure, we could try to fight it. But in the end, love always won because it didn’t fight fair. It had a secret weapon, a tool of sheer force to use against us—our heart. ~ J Sterling, #NFDB |
| 509:She prayed to God to give him at least a moment so that he would not go without knowing how much she had loved him despite all their doubts, and she felt an irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had done badly in the past. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
| 510:There are millions receiving government payments who have come to consider them as an earned right, who of course find them inadequate, and who are outraged at the slightest suggestion of a critical re-examination of the subject. The political pressure for constant extension and increase of these benefits is almost irresistible. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB |
| 511:The favorable omen inspired an assurance of victory; the siege was renewed and prosecuted with fresh vigor; a large breach was made in the part of the wall from whence the stork had taken her flight; the Huns mounted to the assault with irresistible fury; and the succeeding generation could scarcely discover the ruins of Aquileia. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB |
| 512:This surpassed the fear of death. Death would be a mercy if it would make the feeling stop, the uncontrollable panic mingling with the mind-scrambling certainty of something sinister approaching, something with no need to hurry, something that would not be so kind as to let him die. The fear was palpable, suffocating, irresistible. ~ Brandon Mull, #NFDB |
| 513:Each thing, just by looking at it, aroused in me an irresistible longing to write so I would not die. I had suffered this on other occasions, but only on that morning did I recognize it as a crisis of inspiration, that word, abominable but so real, that demolishes everything in its path in order to reach its ashes in time. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
| 514:I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats of any kind, whether of jail or retribution, then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer, not the prophet who sacrificed himself.... What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth. ~ Boris Pasternak, #NFDB |
| 515:I saw the sea-gods come, moving with an irresistible momentum, not rising into the air as the riders rose, but deep in their own element, unhasting, unresting; for the power of the sea is in the weight of the waters and not in the wind-blown crests. These Great Ones rose with the tide, and like the tide, nothing might withstand them. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB |
| 516:The American people are as devoted to the idea of sin and its punishment as they are to making money—and fighting drugs is nearly as big a business as pushing them. Since the combination of sin and money is irresistible (particularly to the professional politician), the situation will only grow worse.” I suppose, if nothing else, I was ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB |
| 517:The thought that something we cannot see, of unsurpassable skill and unimaginable form, exists in the back room’s locked safe—isn’t this, for any artist, for any person, an irresistible hope, beautiful and disturbing as the distant baying of Thoreau’s lost hound that tells us, not least, that the mysteries of distance are endless? ~ Jane Hirshfield, #NFDB |
| 518:We declare, upon Scriptural authority, that the human will is so desperately set on mischief, so depraved, and so inclined to everything that is evil, and so disinclined to everything that is good, that without the powerful, supernatural, irresistible influence of the Holy Spirit, no human will ever be constrained towards Christ. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB |
| 519:What is it about Trump that acts as an irresistible magnet with ferocious attraction or repulsion? Is Trump the end product of our culture of narcissism? Is he what we get and deserve because he epitomizes the god or gods we currently worship in our mindless, consumerist, hyperindulged cult of continuous stimulation and entertainment? ~ Bandy X Lee, #NFDB |
| 520:Calwyn felt suddenly very solemn and serious. Usually during lessons and lectures she felt only a fierce desire to be elsewhere or an irresistible urge to fidget, but now she sat as still as a statue, sensing that what Marna was about to tell her was more important, and certainly more interesting, than herb lore or weaving patterns. ~ Kate Constable, #NFDB |
| 521:Our disappeared were everywhere, irresistible, in waking, in sleeping, a reason for violence, a reason for forgiveness, destroying the peace we tried to possess, creeping between us as we dreamed, leaving us haunted by the knowledge that history is not redeemed by either peace or war but only fingered to shreds and left to our children. ~ Kim Echlin, #NFDB |
| 522:A vital Christian, radiating that hidden beauty of the heart, is more attractive to the right sort of Christian man (the only kind you want) than the raving beauty who is hollow within. A woman who is developing her domestic abilities, who is reasonably attractive, and who is a vital Christian in her own right is an irresistible person. ~ Jay E Adams, #NFDB |
| 523:I just may be the strangest person you will ever know. I am filled with too many oddities and too few consistencies and I will always lack the spongey filter that should live between brain and mouth. These defining traits these enduring characteristics, and these fingers crossed that in all of it, you will find them irresistible. ~ Tyler Knott Gregson, #NFDB |
| 524:on legal matters, the idea of a crime novel set on Sandhamn was irresistible. However, this book would never have been written if a significant number of kind individuals had not offered their time and expertise. I would like to begin by warmly thanking Gunilla Pettersson; she lives on the island and has answered countless questions about ~ Viveca Sten, #NFDB |
| 525:He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced- or it seemed to face-the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 526:[T]he main evil of the present democratic institutions of the united states does not raise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB |
527:You didn’t think I’d let you go alone, did you?”
“No, but I’m grateful that I had you with me.”
“Grateful is all I’m going to get, isn’t it?”
“What else were you hoping for?”
“Adoration, devotion, affection, infatuation, or just plain finding me irresistible.”
“Sorry, Don Juan. You’ll have to live with my undying gratitude. ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB |
| 528:He is the representative of no constituency, but of the whole people. When he speaks in his true character, he speaks for no special interest. If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible; and the country never feels the zest of action so much as when its President is of such insight and caliber. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB |
529:I wasn’t one of those women who only gave head begrudgingly. It wasn’t a special events and on my period pity thing. I genuinely enjoyed the power that came from knowing a man you loved, cared about, or just found irresistible was fully at your mercy, that their pleasure was owned by you.
I liked that.
I got off on that in a way. ~ Jessica Gadziala,#NFDB |
| 530:But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB |
| 531:I'm constantly pitching one episode where we see life through Castle's eyes. I think Castle's just a little off as far as his perception goes. A very, very clever man, but I want to see the world as Castle sees it - kind of a rose-colored glasses, all the women find him irresistible, all the guys find him super cool and do whatever he says. ~ Nathan Fillion, #NFDB |
532:Acting with speed and decisiveness will garner you respect, awe, and irresistible momentum. War is such that the supreme consideration is speed. This is to take advantage of what is beyond the reach of the enemy, to go by way of routes where he least expects you, and to attack where he has made no preparations.
SUN-TZU, FOURTH CENTURY B.C. ~ Robert Greene,#NFDB |
| 533:It was 4 or 5 years into my first design job before the idea of doing graphic design on computers started taking hold. I started working in 1980, the Macintosh was introduced in 1984, then the real desktop publishing only started coming around in 85-86, but it wasn't really until the end of the decade that the transition became irresistible. ~ Michael Bierut, #NFDB |
| 534:refused any aid until the oil issue was settled. Matters came to a head in August when Mossadeq for three days, backed by the Communist Party, seemed the irresistible dictator of Iran. . . . But fortunately the loyalty of the Army and fear of communism saved the day. —President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a speech entitled “Peace with Justice ~ Ervand Abrahamian, #NFDB |
| 535:Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses force. It desires to be irresistible, to rule. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB |
| 536:The tortured clinging to an earlier expression of The Gift very often precedes the emergence of some new version. We’re aware of the dryness at the center, yes, but this aridity is usually not quite enough to propel us forward. We must first get just a whiff of the new. The surprising and intoxicating whiff of a new dharma is quite irresistible. ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB |
| 537:How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism. ~ James Monroe, #NFDB |
| 538:I felt shame - I see this clearly, now - at the instinctive recognition in myself of an awful enfeebling fatalism, a sense that the great outcomes were but randomly connected to our endeavors, that life was beyond mending, that love was loss, that nothing worth saying was sayable, that dullness was general, that disintegration was irresistible. ~ Joseph O Neill, #NFDB |
| 539:I refused any aid until the oil issue was settled. Matters came to a head in August when Mossadeq for three days, backed by the Communist Party, seemed the irresistible dictator of Iran. . . . But fortunately the loyalty of the Army and fear of communism saved the day. —President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a speech entitled “Peace with Justice ~ Ervand Abrahamian, #NFDB |
540:She was staring at you.'
'What can I say? Irresistible.'
'Shane, it’s not funny. I just—you should be careful.
'Always am.' Which was an absolute lie. Shane’s eyes fixed on hers, and she felt a burst of heat inside that crept up to burn in her cheeks. He smiled slowly. 'Jealous?'
'Maybe.'
'No reason. I like my ladies with a pulse. ~ Rachel Caine,#NFDB |
| 541:And man is the greatest killer, the greatest hunter of them all. The whole world of nature knows man for the irresistible master. The roar of his gun, the cunning of his trap, the strength and agility of his arm place all else beneath him. Should man then be treated by nature differently from the other dominants, the army ants and the wasps? It ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB |
| 542:Silverman also contends that a baby’s demands on the mother can be “very flattering to the mother’s narcissism, since it attributes to her the capacity to satisfy her infant’s lack, and so—by extension—her own. Since most women in our culture are egoically wounded, the temptation to bathe in the sun of this idealization often proves irresistible. ~ Maggie Nelson, #NFDB |
| 543:The barbarian chieftain, who defended his country against the Roman invasion, driven to the remotest extremity of Britain, and stimulating his followers to battle, by all that has power of persuasion upon the human heart, concludes his exhortation by an appeal to these irresistible feelings - "Think of your forefathers and of your posterity." ~ John Quincy Adams, #NFDB |
| 544:Contrary to general belief, humans imitate apes more than the reverse. The sight of monkeys or apes induces an irresistible urge in people to jump up and down, exaggeratedly scratch themselves and holler in a way that must make the primates wonder how this otherwise so intelligent species has come to depend on such inferior means of communication. ~ Frans de Waal, #NFDB |
| 545:Man is a spiritual being, a soul, and at some period of his life everyone is possessed with an irresistible desire to know his relationship to the Infinite. . . . There is something within him which urges him to rise above himself, to control his environment, to master the body and all things physical and live in a higher and more beautiful world. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB |
546:The cocktails were fizzy and pink toward the top, then became a dark red at the bottom of the glass.
"What's in this thing?" murmured MJ.
"I call it a First Kiss," Doyle said.
"Why?"
Doyle's mouth twitched into a saucy grin.
"Because it's sweet and simple with the first sip. But each sip after becomes more intense and irresistible. ~ Amy E Reichert,#NFDB |
| 547:If you ask where a relationship is going too often the question has a habit of turning into where the relationship went. Unfortunately, however, God has given women an inbuilt irresistible urge to insist on knowing where their relationships are going, and to force their partners to discuss the matter at length whenever they are late for something. ~ Helen Fielding, #NFDB |
| 548:That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re irresistible.” “I am not.” “I’m not happy about it. You really are the most irritating person I’ve ever met. I’d managed to avoid any women of any temptation whatsoever for four years—a very easy task in Pembrook Park. Things were going splendidly, I was right on track to die alone and unnoticed. And then … ~ Shannon Hale, #NFDB |
| 549:1962 to 1965, where suddenly the guitar became this icon of youth culture all over the world, thanks mostly to the Beatles. Add to that, that I saw A Hard Day's Night 12 or 13 times, and that the guitar was the one instrument that my parents absolutely refused to let in the house. So you add it up and see that irresistible forces led me to the guitar. ~ Pat Metheny, #NFDB |
| 550:I told myself I deserved some good luck, overlooking the fact that it would call for substantially more than luck to thrust me into one of those narratives where plain-Jane new girl catches the eye of inexplicably single Prince Charming, because somehow the new school has revealed her wild, irresistible beauty, of which she was never before aware. ~ Robin Wasserman, #NFDB |
| 551:Frankenstein feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms. It appeals to something very primal, but it's also about profound things, the very nature of life and death and birth - about, essentially, a man who is resisting the most irresistible fact of all, that we will be shuffling off this mortal coil. ~ Kenneth Branagh, #NFDB |
| 552:Genius is a sovereign power; it forms schools; it lays hold on the spirits of men, with irresistible might; and it exercises an immeasurable influence on the whole condition of human life. This sovereignty of genius is a gift of God, possessed only by his grace. It is subject to no one and is responsible to him alone who has granted it this ascendancy. ~ Abraham Kuyper, #NFDB |
| 553:All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm. It ~ E B White, #NFDB |
| 554:Shane knew this wasn't love, at least not any kind of love that extended beyond the desires of two selfish bodies. No future, only fleeting pleasure. This was addiction, plain and simple...irresistible need coupled with painful consequences and regret, moments of pure happiness like islands, spread out in a thrashing sea of insecurity and interminable waiting. ~ Cara McKenna, #NFDB |
| 555:I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady-because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her-because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB |
| 556:Unless some effective world supergovernment for the purpose of preventing war can be set up ... the prospects for peace and human progress are dark ....If .... it is found possible to build a world organization of irresistible force and inviolable authority for the purpose of securing peace, there are no limits to the blessings which all men enjoy and share. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB |
| 557:As a matter of fact, despite your obstinacy, your infernal prying, and the fact that you invariably blurt out whatever comes into your head, regardless of the consequences, I admit that there are times when I find you irresistible, too.' I stared in astonishment at Robert's back as he rose to pay the bill. What in heaven's name, I wondered, did he mean by that? ~ Shirley Tallman, #NFDB |
| 558:He had never lost his temper since his childhood except once — almost — in Durthing. That burst of fury had frightened him, but it had still not taught him what a jotunn rage could be. Now he felt it in its full adult form for the first time. It was wonderful, irresistible, intoxicating. He might regret this after, for as long as he might live, but now that did not ~ Dave Duncan, #NFDB |
559:Jackie had now changed her tune, clinging to me as if she liked it. “I’m irresistible, brother, he’s swapping sides for me.”
“I can’t fight it any longer,” I said, nonchalantly.
Wade shook his head at us. “I’ll be sure to pass this news along to your husband, sis.”
“He can have the kids,” Jackie said, causing everyone to chuckle.
“We insist,” I tossed in. ~ Ethan Day,#NFDB |
| 560:The most important one was the belief, which went back to Lenin, that capitalists would never be able to cooperate with one another for very long. Their inherent greediness—the irresistible urge to place profits above politics—would sooner or later prevail, leaving communists with the need only for patience as they awaited their adversaries’ self-destruction. ~ John Lewis Gaddis, #NFDB |
| 561:I see the origin of the irresistible attraction of metaphor and analogy, the explanation of our strange and permanent need to find similarities in things. I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the center of things; a dim, almost lost memory, or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax. ~ Roger Caillois, #NFDB |
| 562:Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB |
| 563:Please, fuck me,” I beg softly. “I’m not going to fuck you this time,” he says in a hushed tone. “I’m going to go slow.” He leans down and kisses me deeply, swirling his tongue with mine as I moan, begging for more. “I’m going to show you how sexy and irresistible you are, how you test my patience.” He nips at my ear and then runs his tongue over where he just bit. ~ Corinne Michaels, #NFDB |
| 564:This power becomes particularly irresistible when exercised by those who, because they hold and control money, are able also to govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the lifeblood to the entire economic body, and grasping, as it were, in their hands the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will. ~ Pope Pius XI, #NFDB |
| 565:It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark. ~ Friedrich A Hayek, #NFDB |
| 566:I wish I could show you how an interrogation can have its own beauty, shining and cruel as that of a bullfight; how in defiance of the crudest topic or the most moronic suspect it keeps inviolate its own taut, honed grace, its own irresistible and blood-stirring rhythms; how the great pairs of detectives know each other’s every thought as surely as lifelong ballet partners ~ Tana French, #NFDB |
| 567:Los imprevistos y decisivos acontecimientos del día anterior lo gobernaban de un modo poco menos que automático. Era como si alguien le llevara de la mano y le arrastrara con una fuerza irresistible, ciega, sobrehumana; como si un pico de sus ropas hubiera quedado prendido en un engranaje y él sintiera que su propio cuerpo iba a ser atrapado por las ruedas dentadas. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB |
| 568:Fear is the tool of a man-made devil. Self-confident faith in one's self is both the man-made weapon which defeats this devil and the man-made tool which builds a triumphant life. And it is more than that. It is a link to the irresistible forces of the universe which stand behind a man who does not believe in failure and defeat as being anything but temporary experiences. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB |
| 569:You’re sexy. You’re innocent. Or at least, you come across that way. But there’s more to you than that. Behind all that sweetness, all that pretty hair and cute outfits and red lipstick, there’s a power. You’re sure of yourself. You know what you’re doing. And you don’t compromise, you don’t back down. It’s what makes you irresistible to my clients. And irresistible to me. ~ Chance Carter, #NFDB |
| 570:No matter what happened, there was always one thing Isla could rely on: the sheer arrogance of male wolves. That, and their overriding assumption all females found them irresistible and were desperate to get them in the sack. Mostly she was desperate to get them in the sack, if only to stop their whining, but she didn't think a sack six feet under was precisely what they meant. ~ Mina Carter, #NFDB |
| 571:I knew well therefore what would be my father’s feelings, but I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB |
572:Gradually the earliness of the morning and the cozy warmth of my bedroom got the better of us, and before we knew it we’d sunk into the irresistible softness of my bed, our arms and legs caught in a tangled maze.
“I think I love you,” his raspy voice whispered, his lips nearly touching my ear. His arms wrapped even more tightly around my body, swallowing me almost completely. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB |
| 573:Let him [the President] once win the admiration and confidence of the country, and no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him.... If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible; and the country never feels the zest of action so much as when the President is of such insight and caliber. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB |
| 574:For Desire, who is male and female, fair and dark, old and young, anything and everything you have ever wished for, or coveted, or needed, is irresistible. And so what would be the point, after all? Love is not a game to Desire, as it is to so many mortals, or if it is, it is a game with a foregone conclusion: Desire always wins. And Desire hates more than anything to be bored. ~ Lisa Goldstein, #NFDB |
| 575:I was particularly drawn to Berlin because of its literal, concrete division. Two halves making a whole, or two entities that were altered doubles of each other? Twins that had been separated and kept in neighbouring houses and raised according to different sets of rules as a social experiment? It was irresistible as a metaphor for division in the mind, for a split personality. ~ Nicholas Royle, #NFDB |
| 576:It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek, #NFDB |
| 577:It’s impossible not to! Love is volatile. Recalcitrant. Irrepressible. We do our best to tame it, to name it and plan for it and maybe even to contain it between the hours of six and twelve, or if you’re Parisian five and seven, but like much of what is adorable and irresistible in this world it eventually tears free of you and, yes, sometimes you get scratched up in the process. ~ Lisa Halliday, #NFDB |
| 578:The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, - you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, - I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB |
| 579:These two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some affairs for mutual and general advantage. I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands, and better days. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB |
| 580:She prayed to God to give him at least a moment so that he would not go without knowing how much she had loved him despite all their doubts, and she felt an irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had done badly in the past. But she had to give in to the intransigence of death. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
| 581:The men who rush into undertakings of vast change usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power. The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of man’s reason and the boundless range of his intelligence. Never, says de Tocqueville, had humanity been prouder of itself nor had it ever so much faith in its own omnipotence. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB |
582:I'm not sure I'll be doing a lot of dancing in the near future."
Marcus tucked the end of the bandage securely into place and reached for the radio to call his Da to turn the Serpent around and come get them. But first, he gave in to irresistible impulse and kissed Beka so hard their teeth clashed.
"Just so long as you save a dance for me," he said. "I'll wait as long as it takes. ~ Deborah Blake,#NFDB |
| 583:She prayed to God to give him at least a moment so that he would not go without knowing how much she had loved him despite all their doubts, and she felt an irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had done badly in the past. But she had to give in to the intransigence of death. Her ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
584:Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#NFDB |
| 585:I am he who cometh out of the depths. My lords, you are great and rich. There lies your danger. You profit by the night; but beware! The dawn is all-powerful. You cannot prevail over it. It is coming. Nay! it is come. Within it is the day-spring of irresistible light. And who shall hinder that sling from hurling the sun into the sky. The sun I speak of is Right. You are Privilege. Tremble! ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB |
| 586:If we believe that he [Jesus Christ]really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanisms, which his biographers [writers of the New Testament]father upon him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB |
| 587:Sonrió comprensivamente. mucho más que comprensivamente. Era una de esas raras sonrisas, con una calidad de eterna confianza, de esas que en toda la vida no se encuentran más que cuatro o cinco veces. Parecía contemplar por un instante el universo entero y después se concentraba en uno con irresistible parcialidad; lo comprendía a uno hasta el límite en que uno deseaba ser comprendido. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 588:One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB |
589:Depends on whether you talk to the Montgomery sisters," he said to Lindsey.
Holly chuckled lightly. "Now, that's a whole other old TV show mash-up right there. Hmm...I'd say 'Charmed' meets 'The Golden Girls'."
"With a little 'Bewitched' thrown in for fun." Carden pressed his index finger to the tip of his nose and twitched it back and forth, somehow making himself seem more irresistible. ~ Tracy March,#NFDB |
| 590:It occurred to him, for the first time, that it did unflattering things to a person when affection was taken away from them. For there had been a time when she had seemed gorgeous, and fun, and all of her naughtiness had had for him a kind of irresistible pull. It was only after he decided he didn't want her anymore that she became a shrew, and obliterated his memory of the girl she used to be. ~ Anna Godbersen, #NFDB |
| 591:Sex differences in the brain are irresistible to those looking to explain stereotypic differences between men and women,” she told reporters when her paper came out. “They often make a big splash, in spite of being based on small samples. But as we explore multiple data sets and are able to coalesce very large samples of males and females, we find these differences often disappear or are trivial. ~ Angela Saini, #NFDB |
592:When he'd been younger and first starting to feel the urge to rut with females - and before he'd grown up to the point where many of the opposite sex found him irresistible - he'd tried to court girls by bringing them meat and shiny things. It turned out he'd scared them.
"Most women and girls," Dmitri had told him, "don't know what to do when a man drops a hunk of raw meat in their hands. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB |
| 593:But the commandments were absolute. The stone tablets Moses brought down from the mountain had not said Thou shalt not kill except when fighting Nazis, or in self-defense, or in some other situations, listed below. Thou shalt not steal unless thou art near death with hunger fighting in a just cause, or hath a family to support, or if perhaps an irresistible opportunity to get rich presenteth itself. ~ Maile Meloy, #NFDB |
| 594:Strange is the vigour in a brave man's soul. The strength of his spirit and his irresistible power, the greatness of his heart and the height of his condition, his mighty confidence and contempt of danger, his true security and repose in himself, his liberty to dare and do what he pleaseth, his alacrity in the midst of fears, his invincible temper, are advantages which make him master of fortune. ~ Thomas Traherne, #NFDB |
| 595:After the Second World War, Europeans, Americans, and others created myths of righteous resistance to Hitler. In the 1930s, however, the dominant attitudes had been accommodation and admiration. By 1940 most Europeans had made their peace with the seemingly irresistible power of Nazi Germany. Influential Americans such as Charles Lindbergh opposed war with the Nazis under the slogan “America First. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB |
| 596:I don’t remember everything that was happening around me at the time, but gangster life was intoxicating and irresistible. It’s difficult to describe the feeling. It’s that jungle culture, the lion syndrome, the Tarzan tag; the invincibility, the lure of living on the edge; having not just one woman but a whole brothel on your tail; the shooting irons, the fast cars and the endless supply of cocaine. ~ Jacques Pauw, #NFDB |
| 597:Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly... Irresistible impulses seized him. he would be lying in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift and his ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring on his feet and dash away, and on and on, for hours, though the forest aisles. ~ Jack London, #NFDB |
| 598:Ty’s fingers dug into the front of Zane’s hip as he held him in place and went down on him. It took him a few attempts, but he finally got the head of Zane’s cock to the back of his throat and swallowed around it. A strangled yell from Zane echoed off the stone walls around them, and he strained uselessly to snap his hips up for more. The hot slide of Ty’s tongue all over him was irresistible. Someone ~ Abigail Roux, #NFDB |
| 599:Creo que la negativa al servicio militar por razones de conciencia, en caso que fiera hecha por cincuenta mil soldados, sería un poder irresistible. El individuo solo no puede obtener mucho. Aunque tampoco puede ser deseable que justamente los seres de más valor sean objeto de la destrucción por parte de esa maquinaria detrás de la cual se esconden tres grandes poderes: Imbecilidad, Temor y Codicia. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB |
| 600:One of my favorite ways to have sex was right before a blackout, when I was still there but I'd gone feral, and I could let all those low and dirty words spill out of my mouth. Do this. Do that. But now I wasn't sure if I liked sex that way because it felt good or because guys dug it when I got wild. That's what I wanted more than my own pleasure. To make myself irresistible. To blow his freaking mind. ~ Sarah Hepola, #NFDB |
601:Raising one hand, he tilts his hat to that sexy slant. "You want me. Admit it."
Even if he's partly right, I'll never tell him. "Why would I want you?"
He lifts three fingers to countdown. "Mysterious. Rebellious. Troubled. All those qualities women find irresistible."
"Such an optimist."
"My cup is never empty."
"Too bad your brain is." The words bite, but my smile softens with affection. ~ A G Howard,#NFDB |
| 602:With Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney establishes herself as one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today. What makes this book as important as anything published in the last decade is the irresistible music, the formal dexterity and the imaginative leaps she makes with metaphor and language in these simply stunning poems. This is a very, very important achievement. ~ Kwame Dawes, #NFDB |
| 603:Because of the irresistible nature of our own Imagos, I think the replication of it in music is a siren song - we love those tormented songs, and we listen to them over and over and over the way that we smash ourselves into our lovers, or the same kind of lover, over and over. That drive is tireless, until it is resolved. And we can "enjoy" it safely through music, which is a simulacrum we have power over. ~ Melissa Febos, #NFDB |
| 604:It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB |
| 605:I thought that, given the system of rewards central to our economic system, in which profit maximization is valued above all else and specifically above life, it is probably just as irresistible to the owners of capital (human or otherwise) to exploit workers (and the land): "Nothing personal," they say as they load their property onto the ship bound for the Middle Passage, "but a man's gotta turn a dime." ~ Derrick Jensen, #NFDB |
| 606:Elio Vittorini observed in 1957 that ever since Napoleon, France had proved impermeable to any foreign influence except German philosophy: and that was still true two decades later... By the time German philosophy had passed through Parisian social thought into English cultural criticism, its difficult vocabulary had achieved a level of expressive opacity that proved irresistible to a new generation of students. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB |
| 607:Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live. ~ Robert Kennedy, #NFDB |
| 608:Who doesn't want a Bad Boy? Hmm... I prefer to let them bake for a while. Those misbehaving boys will rise to irresistible, dominant, and controlling men. When cooked at the right temperature they'll still taste disobedient but with the right amount of heat, they'll become succulent and tantalizing. The men in my recipes will never leave you feeling hungry. They will fulfill even the most insatiable appetites. ~ Kelly Gendron, #NFDB |
| 609:But the trouble was that the hysterics could not go on for ever, and (I am writing the loathsome truth) lying face downwards on the sofa with my face thrust into my nasty leather pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of a far-away, involuntary but irresistible feeling that it would be awkward now for me to raise my head and look Liza straight in the face. Why was I ashamed? I don't know, but I was ashamed. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB |
| 610:To the extent to which the pull that moves me really is irresistible, like an invincibly strong addiction, the normal procedures of evaluation, deliberation, choice, decision, etc. that constitute the substance of our political life are not operating. The same is true of overwhelming aversion. The person being tortured who simply wants it to stop, period, is also not a good model for an agent acting politically. ~ Raymond Geuss, #NFDB |
| 611:If we were not pushing, fighting, claiming what is ours and challenging what is not yet ours, others would be doing it to us. It is the way of the world. You can be the aggressor, you can fight against crusaders on their own land, or you can stay at home and wait for them to come to you. And they would come. They would come with fire, with disease, with swords and blood and death. Weakness is an irresistible lure. ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB |
| 612:Se puede dar o rehusar de una manera mucho más efectiva, elaborada, útil, por completo invisible para las personas que piensan que dar o rehusar es un hecho producto de evaluación externa. Si buscas algún indicio de favor o “promoción”, debes saber que no estás listo. El progreso llega a través de la capacidad de aprender, y es irresistible. Nadie puede interponerse entre tú y el conocimiento, si eres apto para éste. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB |
| 613:He may say he is different. He may want to be different. He may even go so far as to become your lover. But he'll always feel guilty and dirty. He'll be ashamed to be seen with you and try to blame you for his own desires. He'll claim you seduced him or that you are somehow irresistible because you're Haldiim. If the two of you are discovered together, he'll press charges to save himself. That's how Cadeleonian men are. ~ Ginn Hale, #NFDB |
| 614:I looked at her again. She lay still now, her face pale against the pillow, her eyes large and dark and empty as rain barrels in a drought. One of her small five-fingered thumbless hands picked at the cover restlessly. There was a vague glimmer of doubt starting to get born in her somewhere. She didn't know about it yet. It's so hard for women - even nice women - to realise that their bodies are not irresistible. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB |
| 615:It wasn't so much that my mother always had to have her own way; it was more that if you disagreed with her, the rhetorical power this unleashed would shock you into seeing things from her point of view. The minute she sensed resistance, all of her intellect would be summoned into an irresistible arrowhead of purpose, and the most sensible strategic approach was therefore never to disagree with her too forcefully. ~ James Scudamore, #NFDB |
| 616:I spent so much time thinking about regret. Regret and its accompanying conviction that there is a perfect, placid life, one's own alternate existence, pristine and simple, existing in a neighboring reality in which certain turns in the road were never set upon. And it isn't true. Any of it. I knew that. I had learned it. But it is an irresistible fantasy, if only because it implies we have some control over our fates. ~ Robin Black, #NFDB |
| 617:The people as a body cannot deliberate. Nevertheless, they will feel an irresistible impulse to act, and their resolutions will be dictated to them by their demagogues... and the violent men, who are the most forward to gratify those passions, will be their favorites. What is called the government of the people is in fact too often the arbitrary power of such men. Here, then, we have the faithful portrait of democracy. ~ Fisher Ames, #NFDB |
| 618:There was something about a guy in a uniform most women found irresistible. Ceelie and Sonia had pondered this peculiar phenomenon over late-night glasses of moscato back in Nashville. They'd decided it had to be the belt and all the equipment that dangled from it when the guys walked, which not only was phallic but probably released extra sex pheromones into the air and turned women into nectar-seeking honeybees. ~ Susannah Sandlin, #NFDB |
| 619:I remember, in hot floods, the way he slept, still as death, with his face washed flat, stony as a carved tomb and exquisite. His weakness and his ravening bitter needs were terrible, and beautiful, and irresistible as an earthquake. He scalded or smothered anyone he needed, but his needing and the hurt that it caused me were the most life I have ever had. Remember what a poor thing I have always been and forgive me. ~ Katherine Dunn, #NFDB |
| 620:For with each bite he tasted not just the irresistible sweetness of the dessert, but the deliciously agonizing negative flavor of all the imagined foodstuffs that he could have bought with that nickel instead—a turkey leg the size of his forearm, or a milkshake with a pair of deep red strawberries floating on its surface. The single relinquished nickel sat in the custard seller's till, its gold transmuted back to lead. ~ Dexter Palmer, #NFDB |
| 621:Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes too of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB |
| 622:Le rogó a Dios que le concediera al menos un instante para que él no se fuera sin saber cuánto lo había querido por encima de las dudas de ambos, y sintió un apremio irresistible de empezar la vida con él otra vez desde el principio para decirse todo lo que se les quedó sin decir, y volver a hacer bien cualquier cosa que hubieran hecho mal en el pasado. Pero tuvo que rendirse ante la intransigencia de la muerte. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
| 623:loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB |
| 624:On 17th July there came to us at Potsdam the eagerly-awaited news of the trial of the atomic bomb in the [New] Mexican desert. Success beyond all dreams crowded this sombre, magnificent venture of our American allies. The detailed reports ... could leave no doubt in the minds of the very few who were informed, that we were in the presence of a new factor in human affairs, and possessed of powers which were irresistible. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB |
| 625:Kolkata is like an ex-girlfriend who you know is bad for you, but about whom you cannot stop thinking. She has always let you down and treated you badly, and you have promised yourself hundreds of times that you are not going to spend any more time in her company. But, then, just as you think you are finally over her, she does something so utterly alluring, so impossibly irresistible, you find yourself falling in love again. ~ Simon Majumdar, #NFDB |
| 626:My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination—it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs, #NFDB |
| 627:We are punctual, a stressed, marked characteristic. We need order around us, in the house, in the life, although we live by irresistible impulses, as if the order in the closets, in our papers, in our books, in our photographs, in our souvenirs, in our clothes could preserve us from chaos in our feelings, loves, in our work. Indifference to food, sobriety; but this, we admit, is the part of the war against a threatening fragility. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB |
| 628:Who we loved wasn’t always a choice. Sometimes it was an irresistible pull, a gravitational force, something we couldn’t see or control that drew us toward another. Sure, we could try to fight it. But in the end, love always won because it didn’t fight fair. It had a secret weapon, a tool of sheer force to use against us—our heart. And once that son of a bitch got involved, you could kiss away all options you thought might exist. ~ J Sterling, #NFDB |
| 629:Delacroix, Wagner, Baudelaire - all great theorists, bent on dominating other minds by sensuous means. Their one dream was to create the irresistible effect - to intoxicate, or overwhelm. They looked to analysis to provide them with the keyboard on which to play, with certainty, on man's emotions, and they sought in abstract meditation they key to sure and certain action upon their subject - man's nervous and psychic being. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB |
| 630:Jeeves," I said, "listen attentively. I don't want to give the impression that I consider myself one of those deadly coves who exercise an irresistible fascination over one and all and can't meet a girl without wrecking her peace of mind in the first half-minute. As a matter of fact, it's rather the other way with me, for girls on entering my presence are mostly inclined to give me the raised eyebrow and the twitching upper lip. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB |
| 631:The jobs that have come back have been extremely insecure low-wage benefit poor temporary jobs. Young people are screwed. They don't have a way to pay off their debt. And when they discover that they could come out and vote Green to cancel that debt, that I am the one candidate who will bail out the students like we bailed out the crooks on Wall Street, then it becomes an irresistible motivation to actually come out and vote Green. ~ Jill Stein, #NFDB |
| 632:As for working with a partner, he didn’t like that either. It cut the score right down the middle. It put an apple on your head, and handed the other guy a shotgun. Because grifters, it seemed, suffered an irresistible urge to beat their colleagues. There was little glory in whipping a fool—hell, fools were made to be whipped. But to take a professional, even if it cost you in the long run, ah, that was something to polish your pride. ~ Jim Thompson, #NFDB |
| 633:I have always loved Naoko, and I still love her. But there is a decisive finality to what exists between Midori and me. It has an irresistible power that is bound to sweep me into the future. What I feel for Naoko is a tremendously quiet and gentle and transparent love, but what I feel for Midori is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB |
| 634:This sudden deluge of cerebralisation, this biological invasion of a new animal type which gradually eliminates or subjects all forms of life that are not human, this irresistible tide of fields and factories, this immense and growing edifice of matter and ideas—all these signs that we look at, for days on end—to proclaim that there has been a change on the earth and a change of planetary magnitude. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB |
| 635:You weren't just furious at those evil [men]...but at evil itself, at the fact that evil exists, infuriated by the very idea of evil allowed to go unrestricted, unchecked. ...But this righteous anger seems always to lead to an irresistible compulsion to act regardless of the risks, and not merely a compulsion to act, but to do the right thing. We can exercise freewill and turn away - but only at a cost in self-respect that's intolerable. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB |
| 636:From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be - Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of Man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity - to feel these things and know them is to conquer them. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB |
| 637:It is to do with John Overall’s lust. The poor man, who was forty-four in 1604, found it easier, he told his friends, to preach in Latin, which he had studied so hard and so long, and that he found it ‘troublesome to speak English as a continued oration’. Despite (or perhaps because of?) that rather unworldly removal from everyday discourse, the dean fell in love with and married the sexiest girl in London. Anne Orwell was irresistible: ~ Adam Nicolson, #NFDB |
| 638:Late in August the lure of the mountains becomes irresistible. Seared by the everlasting sunfire, I want to see running water again, embrace a pine tree, cut my initials in the bark of an aspen, get bit by a mosquito, see a mountain bluebird, find a big blue columbine, get lost in the firs, hike above timberline, sunbathe on snow and eat some ice, climb the rocks and stand in the wind at the top of the world on the peak of Tukuhnikivats. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB |
| 639:Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB |
| 640:For three years, all through junior high, my social death was grossly overdetermined. I had a large vocabulary, a giddily squeaking voice, horn-rimmed glasses, poor arm strength, too-obvious approval from my teachers, irresistible urges to shout unfunny puns, a near-eidetic acquaintance with J.R.R. Tolkien, a big chemistry lab in my basement, a penchant for intimately insulting any unfamiliar girl unwise enough to speak to me, and so on. ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB |
| 641:The almond blossom from the tree has gone, to be replaced by new green shoots. It smells of spring, and mown grass, and tilled earth from the fields beyond. Now is the month of Germinal in the Republican calendar: the month of hyacinth, and bees, and violet, and primrose. It is also the windy month; the month of new beginnings, and I have never felt it so strongly as I feel it now: that sense of possibility; that irresistible lightness. ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB |
| 642:Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB |
| 643:He was tall—6’ 3” or so—with haunting green eyes that seemed to smolder despite his lazy smile. His eyes were a great contrast to his thick, shiny, dark hair. And not that I’d ever seen it personally but judging from the way his t-shirt clung to his torso, he had a body that completed the entire handsome package. He was every inch a rock star. He was charming, playful and confident. He was practically irresistible. His only flaw was that he knew it. ~ Kelly Oram, #NFDB |
| 644:if we think we are facing an irresistible cosmic force of evil, it will invariably lead to giving in and giving up—usually with very little resistance. If you can convince yourself that you are helpless, you can then stop struggling and just “let it happen.” That will seem a great relief—for a while. You can once more be a normal human being. But then you will have to deal with the consequences. And for normal human beings those are very severe. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB |
| 645:So many things seemed to come in plastic bags now that it was difficult to keep track of them. The main thing was not to throw it away carelessly, better still to put it away in a safe place, because there was a note printed on it which read 'To avoid danger of suffocation keep this wrapper away from babies and children'. They could have said from middle-aged and elderly persons too, who might well have an irresistible urge to suffocate themselves. ~ Barbara Pym, #NFDB |
| 646:The confused medley of meditations on art and literature in which he had indulged since his isolation, as a dam to bar the current of old memories, had been rudely swept away, and the onrushing, irresistible wave crashed into the present and future, submerging everything beneath the blanket of the past, filling his mind with an immensity of sorrow, on whose surface floated, like futile wreckage, absurd trifles and dull episodes of his life. ~ Joris Karl Huysmans, #NFDB |
| 647:We can so easily slip back from what we have struggled to attain, abruptly, into a life we never wanted; can find that we are trapped, as in a dream, and die there, without ever waking up. This can occur. Anyone who has lifted his blood into a years-long work may find that he can't sustain it, the force of gravity is irresistible, and it falls back, worthless. For somewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB |
| 648:You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars. Enthusiasm is the spark in your eye, the swing in your gait, the grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of your will and your energy to execute your ideas. Enthusiasts are fighters, they have fortitude, they have strong qualities. Enthusiasm is at the bottom of all progress. With it there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB |
| 649:Eden hid her smile in my hand and leaned down and kissed me. I took her face in my hand, her velvety skin like energy against my fingertips. Her love for her family and for people who were hurting all collided with her stunning beauty and made her irresistible. I kissed her forehead, her cheek, her neck, and her chin. Our noses touched, and she drew a shaky breath. Her hair hung around my face, creating a veil that hid us from the world. ~ James Russell Lingerfelt, #NFDB |
| 650:The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB |
| 651:The first step toward becoming rational is to understand our fundamental irrationality. There are two factors that should render this more palatable to our egos: nobody is exempt from the irresistible effect of emotions on the mind, not even the wisest among us; and to some extent irrationality is a function of the structure of our brains and is wired into our very nature by the way we process emotions. Being irrational is almost beyond our control. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB |
| 652:At the time, I used to say, "We should market this like Everybody Loves Raymond. It's just a guy dealing with his family." Instead, it was irresistible to show all these funny people. So, I actually think this could be more inviting to a new audience because they can just watch one character, find out what's going on in his life, and then meet another character and find out what's going on in her life, and then see how it intersects the other one. ~ Mitchell Hurwitz, #NFDB |
| 653:…I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people…who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication. These born “islomanes”…are direct descendents of the Atlanteans ~ Lawrence Durrell, #NFDB |
| 654:I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen, and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortcha-koff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB |
| 655:Si se permite qué tal sensación subsista, pero no que se haga irresistible y florezca en un verdadero arrepentimiento, tiene una invaluable tendencia: aumenta la resistencia del paciente a pensar en el Enemigo. Todos los humanos, en casi cualquier momento, sienten en cierta medida esta reticencia; pero cuando pensar en Él supone encararse —intensificándola— con una vaga nube de culpabilidad sólo a medias consciente, tal resistencia se multiplica por diez. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
| 656:I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. ~ Robert W Chambers, #NFDB |
| 657:My lord, is all well?” He offered her a brief, tired smile. “As well as can be expected, I imagine. I confess, I am happy to be here tonight.” “We are happy to host you. I imagine things will look better in the morning…or at least brighter.” “One can certainly hope.” “Neither my mother nor I would have stood for your being alone at Blackmoor House this evening.” Gavin smiled wearily. “The two of you are an irresistible force. I shan’t put up a fight.” In ~ Sarah MacLean, #NFDB |
| 658:Handbrake found the drive to Jaipur that morning particularly frustrating. The new tarmac-surfaced toll road, which was part of India’s proliferating highway system, had four lanes running in both directions, and although it presented all manner of hazards, including the occasional herd of goats, a few overturned trucks and the odd gaping pothole, it held out an irresistible invitation to speed. Indeed, many of the other cars travelled as fast as 100 miles ~ Tarquin Hall, #NFDB |
| 659:Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, "in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face," which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB |
| 660:La burocracia desempeñaba en la visión general de Weber lo mismo que el capitalismo en Marx. Entendía su fuerza, cada vez mayor y su imposición irresistible —porque incluso él, en su propio trabajo pretendía ser un técnico competente y profesional—, pero era incapaz de encontrarle ningún encanto. Pero mientras que Marx tenía confianza en que la historia derrocaría al capitalismo, Weber no tenía tantas esperanzas respecto de la burocratización del mundo. ~ Lawrence Freedman, #NFDB |
| 661:From the first, Giles had enjoyed staying with the Talbots. They welcomed him with a generosity that he’d always known was exceptional. But envy tinged his gratitude. Because however kind this noisy, loving, exuberant clan was, however willingly they included him in their festivities, he remained an outsider. An outsider yearning after the lovely daughter of the house like grim Hades yearned after bright Persephone. Darkness hungering for irresistible light. ~ Anna Campbell, #NFDB |
| 662:Let the advocate of animal food, force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror let him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB |
| 663:When the child separates from its parents to explore the new world, the parents can do one of two things. They can fight it with rules, pleading, tears and anger: 'Why do you want to go out in minus-fifteen-degree temperatures in that T-shirt when you could wear the wool I've warmed for you over the woodstove? It's so cosy.' Or they can admit the new world exists, dangerous and irresistible. Cosy is not what awakening youth wants Safety is not what it wants. ~ Kathleen Winter, #NFDB |
| 664:Before this war is over,' [Walter] said - or something said through his lips - 'every man and woman and child in Canada will feel it - you, Mary, will feel it - feel it to your heart's core. You will weep tears of blood over it. The Piper has come - and he will pipe until every corner of the world has heard his awful and irresistible music. It will be years before the dance of death is over - years, Mary. And in those years millions of hearts will break. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery, #NFDB |
665:Cade thought about this. “Let me get this straight—you secretly pretend to like poetry to impress the smart girl in your English class, while she’s secretly pretending to like football to impress you.” He paused. “That’s gotta be the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I guess her subconscious finds my subconscious pretty irresistible,” Zach said, all teenage confidence right then.
“You were lucky to pull that line off once, Garrity. I wouldn’t push it. ~ Julie James,#NFDB |
| 666:If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB |
| 667:Things are not yet perfect, of course,’ sighed the Collector. ‘All the same, I should go so far as to say that in the long run a superior civilization such as ours is irresistible. By combining our advances in science and in morality we have so obviously found the best way of doing things. Truth cannot be resisted! Er, that’s to say, not successfully,’ the Collector added as a round shot struck the corner of the roof and toppled one of the pillars of the verandah ~ J G Farrell, #NFDB |
| 668:Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB |
| 669:She hung up and I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB |
| 670:The means of communication, the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers to the producers and, through the latter to the whole social system. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood...Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB |
| 671:The popularity of disaster movies expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB |
| 672:She'd never trusted her own natural impulses and instincts Among her greatest fears was the possibility that she might never discover and develop her deepest talents and intuitions. Her special gifts. Her life would be wasted in pursuing the goals set for her by other people. Instead, she wanted to reclaim a power and authority - a primitive, irresistible force - that transcended gender roles. She dreamed of wielding a raw magic that predated civilization itself. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB |
| 673:I don’t predict the demise of object-oriented programming, by the way. Though I don’t think it has much to offer good programmers, except in certain specialized domains, it is irresistible to large organizations. Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. Large organizations always tend to develop software this way, and I expect this to be as true in a hundred years as it is today. ~ Paul Graham, #NFDB |
| 674:Temporary delusions, prejudices, excitements, and objects have irresistible influence in mere questions of policy. And the policy of one age may ill suit the wishes or the policy of another. The constitution is not subject to such fluctuations. It is to have a fixed, uniform, permanent construction. It should be, so far at least as human infirmity will allow, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. ~ Joseph Story, #NFDB |
| 675:That advice should be taken wherever example has failed, or precept be regarded where warning is ridiculed, is like a picture of hope resting on despair; but when time shall stamp with universal currency the facts you have long encountered with a laugh, and the irresistible evidence of accumulated losses, like the handwriting on the wall, shall ad terror to distress, you will then, in a conflict of suffering, learn to sympathize with others by feeling for yourselves. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB |
676:Silain sat up straighter. She had heard tales of the headwoman of the People of the Tree. She was a warrior so ferocious the Yxtrang revered her as a hero; a lover so skilled that she had captured the heart and hoard of a Dragon; a woman who gave her word but rarely, and always kept her promises.
It was that last which concerned Silain; after all, there were irresistible lovers and fiery warriors in plenty among the Bedel. But promise-keeping, that was dangerous. ~ Sharon Lee,#NFDB |
| 677:When I’d transferred to the Episcopalian school in sixth grade, I’d found irresistible the idea of a God who loved me unfailingly, scars and all. Here was a man who would never leave, I thought. Someone whom I would never disappoint. Later, I would fall away from the church when the rigidity of the doctrine and hypocrisy of some of the most devout Christian students I went to school with became apparent to me. In the end, I realized sometimes some people were forsaken. ~ Jesmyn Ward, #NFDB |
678:I had been taught to read the words of men like Madison as a cast into which I ought to pour the plaster of my own mind, to be reshaped according to the contours of their faultless model. I read them to learn what to think, not how to think for myself. Books that were not of God were banished; they were a danger, powerful and irresistible in their cunning.
To write my essay I had to read books differently, without giving myself over to either fear or adoration. ~ Tara Westover,#NFDB |
| 679:One, which I mention several times elsewhere, is the need for patience if big profits are to be made from investment. Put another way, it is often easier to tell what will happen to the price of a stock than how much time will elapse before it happens. The other is the inherently deceptive nature of the stock market. Doing what everybody else is doing at the moment, and therefore what you have an almost irresistible urge to do, is often the wrong thing to do at all. ~ Philip A Fisher, #NFDB |
680:Did I hurt you?” she asked, her hand resting lightly at the side of his waistcoat.
His smiling lips grazed her temple. “Of course not, you little makeweight.”
They stayed together in that delicious moment of scattered light and fragrant spruce and irresistible attraction. The entrance hall was quiet now; the guests had proceeded en masse to the drawing room.
Devon’s head lowered, and he kissed the side of her throat. “I want you in my bed again,” he whispered. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
| 681:If I were convinced that any nation had made up its mind to dominate the world by fear of its force, I should feel that it must be resisted. Under such a domination, life for people who believe in liberty would not be worth living. But war is a fearful thing, and we must be very clear, before we embark on it, that it is really the great issues that are at stake, and that the call to risk everything in their defence, when all the consequences are weighed, is irresistible. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB |
| 682:Disdain of the reserves was augmented by the new doctrine of the offensive which, it was felt, could only be properly inculcated in active troops. To perform the irresistible onslaught of the attaque brusquée, symbolized by the bayonet charge, the essential quality was élan, and élan could not be expected of men settled in civilian life with family responsibilities. Reserves mixed with active troops would create “armies of decadence,” incapable of the will to conquer. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB |
| 683:Had I been alone, a casual glance in passing would have contented me, but for Ukridge the spectacle of somebody else working always had an irresistible fascination, and, gripping my arm, he steered me up to assist him in giving the toiler moral support. About two minutes after he had started to breathe earnestly on the man's neck, the latter, seeming to become aware that what was tickling his back hair was not some wandering June zephyr, looked up with a certain petulance. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB |
684:The tickling narrative, unlike the sexual narrative, has no climax.
Is the tickling scene, at its most reassuring, not a unique representation of desire and, at its most unsettling, a paradigm of the perverse contract?
Does it not highlight, this delightful game, the impossibility of satisfaction and of reunion, with its continual reenactment of the irresistible attraction and the inevitable repulsion of the object, in which the final satisfaction is frustration? ~ Adam Phillips,#NFDB |
| 685:She looked about her again, on her feet, at her scattered melancholy comrades -- some of them so melancholy as to be down on their stomachs in the grass, turned away, ignoring, burrowing; she saw once more, with them, those two faces of the question between which there was so little to choose for inspiration. It was perhaps superficially more striking that one could live if one would; but it was more appealing, insinuating, irresistible in short, that one would live if one could. ~ Henry James, #NFDB |
| 686:You are far from bloodless,” he said into her ear. “On the contrary. You stick your chin out and practically invite people to bash up against you.” His thumb pressed harder into her arm as his voice lowered. “And I will admit it, Miss Boyce: I find the prospect of a bashing irresistible. I’m always looking for new ways to break my head open.” “You’re raving again,” she whispered. “No. You take my meaning. That’s the joy of seducing an intelligent woman: you follow me perfectly. ~ Meredith Duran, #NFDB |
| 687:Here is the salient fact which distinguishes the English Revolution from all others: that those who wielded irresistible physical force were throughout convinced that it could give them no security. Nothing is more characteristic of the English people than their instinctive reverence even in rebellion for law and tradition. Deep in the nature of the men who had broken the King’s power was the conviction that law in his name was the sole foundation on which they could build. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB |
| 688:There is no definitive census of all the intelligent species in the universe. Not only are there perennial arguments about what qualifies as intelligence, but each moment and everywhere, civilizations rise and fall, much as the stars are born and die. Time devours all. Yet every species has its unique way of passing on its wisdom through the ages, its way of making thoughts visible, tangible, frozen for a moment like a bulwark against the irresistible tide of time. Everyone makes books. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB |
| 689:Gail Anderson-Dargatz has a noticing eye, a voice as unique as the countryside she writes about, and a heart large enough to love her entire cast of distinct and memorable characters. In The Cure for Death by Lightning she fashions an irresistible song out of the joys and dangers of growing up, the mysteries and wonders of life on a farm, the thrilling terror of trying to outrun the awful unseen force that pursues a growing girl. This novel opens a door to a shining, surprising world. ~ Jack Hodgins, #NFDB |
| 690:One can truly say that the irresistible progress of natural science since the time of Galileo has made its first halt before the study of the higher parts of the brain, the organ of the most complicated relations of the animal to the external world. And it seems, and not without reason, that now is the really critical moment for natural science; for the brain, in its highest complexity-the human brain-which created and creates natural science, itself becomes the object of this science. ~ Ivan Pavlov, #NFDB |
| 691:Everything in life can be taken away from you and generally will be at some point. Your wealth vanishes, the latest gadgetry suddenly becomes passé, your allies desert you. But if your mind is armed with the art of war, there is no power that can take that away. In the middle of a crisis, your mind will find its way to the right solution. Having superior strategies at your fingertips will give your maneuvers irresistible force. As Sun-tzu says, “Being unconquerable lies with yourself. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB |
| 692:Love has to spring spontaneously from within And it is no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; But though love cannot be forced on anyone, It can be awakened in him through love itself. Love is essentially self communicative; Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible, And it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, Until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches. ~ Meher Baba, #NFDB |
| 693:I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract. The expression of human feelings and the passions of man certainly interest me deeply, but I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvellous effects of pure plastic art. ~ Gustave Moreau, #NFDB |
| 694:one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on YOU with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 695:The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hinderances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB |
| 696:This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with its beautiful stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth--a world which now trembles before the King In Yellow. ~ Robert W Chambers, #NFDB |
| 697:By himself, man adjusts everything to his own comfort. By himself, he is an irresistible liar. For he never says anything truly unpleasant to himself without instantly counterbalancing it with something flattering. The sentence [aphorism] from the outside has an impact because it comes unexpectedly: one does not have any counterweight ready for it. One helps it with the same strength one would have met it with in other circumstances. ~ Elias Canetti, The Human Province, Seabury Press (1986), tr. 1978, p. 146, #NFDB |
| 698:Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of the police and of its opinion. ~ John N Gray, #NFDB |
| 699:Help me,” Stefano added earnestly. “In return, I’ll help you. I’ll guard you and your family until every single one of the Lords is dead. Those demons will never hurt you again. You have my word of honor.” To know her family was safe and would remain safe…She wouldn’t have cared about the terms of the deal even if she had to sign her soul over to the devil. The hope that Stefano could help her mother and sister was irresistible. The thought of revenge was overwhelming. “What do I have to do? ~ Gena Showalter, #NFDB |
| 700:In any human endeavor, some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will consume them utterly. One has to look no further than individuals who feel compelled to devote their lives to becoming concert pianists, say, or climbing Mount Everest. For some, the province of the extreme holds an allure that’s irresistible. And a certain percentage of such fanatics will inevitably fixate on matters of the spirit. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB |
| 701:It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on YOU with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 702:To resume, in a few words, the system of the Imperial government, as it was instituted by Augustus, and maintained by those princes who understood their own interest and that of the people, it may be defined an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth. The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB |
| 703:In How to Be an American Housewife Margaret Dilloway creates an irresistible heroine. Shoko is stubborn, contrary, proud, a wonderful housewife and full of deeply conflicted feelings. I wanted to shake her, even as I was cheering her on, and this cunningly structured novel allowed me to do both. It also took me on two intricate journeys, from post-war Japan and the shadow of Nagasaki to contemporary California, and from motherhood to daughterhood and back again. A profound and suspenseful debut. ~ Margot Livesey, #NFDB |
| 704:For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB |
| 705:The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB |
| 706:I’d always worried about being practically empty, about having no serious reason for living. And now, confronted with the facts, I was sure of my individual nullity. In that environment, too different from the one where my petty habits were at home, I seem to have disintegrated, I felt very close to nonexistence. I discovered that with no one to speak to me of familiar things, there was nothing to stop me from sinking into irresistible boredom, a terrifying, sickly sweet torpor. Nauseating. ~ Louis Ferdinand C line, #NFDB |
| 707:The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection . ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB |
| 708:I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened; that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse -- the things which often make dialogue impossible. And after a long interval he said, 'I want you. I want you more than anything in the world. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB |
709:Oh, Lord Montgomery, what do you mean to do with me in this bedroom when you have me all alone? An innocent maiden, and unprotected? Is my virtue safe?
'I, ah- what?'
'I know you are a dangerous man. Some call you a rake. Everybody knows you are a devil with the ladies with your poetically puffed shirt and irresistible pants. I pray you will consider my innocence. And my poor, vulnerable heart.'
Simon decided this was a lot like role-playing in D&D, but potentially more fun. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB |
| 710:For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and the potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB |
| 711:[H]e could see the island of Manhattan off to the left. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight.Just think of the millions, from all over the globe, who yearned to be on that island, in those towers, in those narrow streets! There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening-and he was among the victors! ~ Tom Wolfe, #NFDB |
712:I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened; that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse -- the things which often make dialogue impossible.
And after a long interval he said, 'I want you. I want you more than anything in the world. ~ Anne Rice,#NFDB |
| 713:Jesus alone is worthy of our highest admiration. Jesus alone is worthy of our trust. He can show us the Father (Matthew 11:27). He can give us irresistible wisdom (Luke 21:15). He can see how to make all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28). Not one of his judgments about anything is ever mistaken (John 8:16). He teaches the way of God with infallible truthfulness (Matthew 22:16). Trust him. Admire him. Follow him. For "in [him] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). ~ John Piper, #NFDB |
| 714:The Blessed Sacrament is the magnet of souls. There is a mutual attraction between Jesus and the souls of men. Mary drew Him down from heaven. Our nature attracted Him rather than the nature of angels. Our misery caused Him to stoop to our lowness. Even our sins had a sort of attraction for the abundance of His mercy and the predilection of His grace. Our repentance wins Him to us. Our love makes earth a paradise to Him; and our souls lure Him as gold lures the miser, with irresistible fascination ~ Frederick William Faber, #NFDB |
| 715:Water is patient; it can stagnate and let itself be coated with scum if need be. It is as gentle as the morning's dew. It is non-confrontational, even respectful, in circumventing the rocks in a stream. It makes room for everything that enters its pools. It accommodates by assuming the shape of any vessel it is poured into. And it is humble, seeking always the lowest level. Yet along with - or rather because of these adaptive, yielding properties, it is ultimately irresistible; it carves canyons out of stone. ~ Huston Smith, #NFDB |
| 716:Enero 4 Tierra que llama Hoy nació, en 1643, Isaac Newton. Newton nunca tuvo, que se sepa, amantes ni amantas. Murió virgen, tocado por nadie, aterrorizado por la amenaza de contagios y fantasmas. Pero este señor miedoso tuvo el coraje de investigar y revelar el movimiento de los astros, la composición de la luz, la velocidad del sonido, la conducción del calor y la ley de la gravedad, esa irresistible fuerza de atracción de la tierra que nos llama y llamándonos nos recuerda nuestro origen y nuestro destino. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB |
| 717:From the empty grave of Jesus the enemies of the cross turn away in unconcealable dismay. Those whom the force of no logic can convince, and whose hearts are steeled against the appeal of almighty love from the cross itself, quail before the irresistible power of this simple fact. Christ has risen from the dead! After two thousand years of the most determined assault upon the evidence which demonstrates it, that fact stands. And so long as it stands Christianity, too, must stand as the one supernatural religion. ~ B B Warfield, #NFDB |
| 718:This is the law of prosperity: When apparent adversity comes, be not cast down by it, but make the best of it, and always look forward for better things, for conditions more prosperous. To hold yourself in this attitude of mind is to set into operation subtle, silent, and irresistible forces that sooner or later will actualize in material form that which is today merely an idea. But ideas have occult power, and ideas, when rightly planted and rightly tended, are the seeds that actualize material conditions. ~ Ralph Waldo Trine, #NFDB |
| 719:The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, bravery, magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action, she thought it would be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she would never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling. ~ Henry James, #NFDB |
| 720:It's humbling to realise that the developmental gulf between a miniscule ant colony and our modern human civilisation is only a tiny fraction of the distance between a Type 0 and a Type III civilisation - a factor of 100 billion billion, in fact. Yet we have such a highly regarded view of ourselves, we believe a Type III civilisation would find us irresistible and would rush to make contact with us. The truth is, however, they may be as interested in communicating with humans as we are keen to communicate with ants. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB |
| 721:Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB |
| 722:Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.... If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB |
| 723:Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB |
| 724:An illiberal authoritarianism is implicit in the doctrine that women are socialized to want the things the gender feminist believes they should not want. For those who believe that what women want and hope for is “constrained” or “coerced” by their upbringing in the patriarchy are led to dismiss the values and aspirations of most women. The next step may not be inevitable, but it is almost irresistible: to regard women as badly brought-up children whose harmful desires and immature choices must be discounted. ~ Christina Hoff Sommers, #NFDB |
725:I bet you’re a real heartbreaker,” he said, giving me a nearly irresistible smile.
“I’ve never broken a single heart,” I admitted. “I’ve broken more than a few noses and stomped on several ball sacks though.”
Vaughn’s grin widened. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“I have a drink.”
“Fine. Let me take you to a booth and sweet talk your sexy ass into my bed tonight.”
“I’m abstaining from fucking guys like you.”
“Guys like me? You mean, sexy bastards that’ll make you scream their names?”
“Yeah, basically. ~ Bijou Hunter,#NFDB |
| 726:Sertorius rose up and spoke to his army, “You see, fellow soldiers, that perseverance is more prevailing than violence, and that many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little. Assiduity and persistence are irresistible, and in time overthrow and destroy the greatest powers whatever. Time being the favorable friend and assistant of those who use their judgment to await his occasions, and the destructive enemy of those who are unseasonably urging and pressing forward. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB |
| 727:That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as a dictator of Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in his ear? Or if a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, you appreciate. Yet, in the final analysis, just as irresistible as a tritium bomb. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB |
| 728:Have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles - this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB |
| 729:Unhappily for his master, as well as himself, his curiosity drew him unconsciously farther off than he intended to go. At last, having seen the Parsee carnival wind away in the distance, he was turning his steps towards the station, when he happened to espy the splendid pagoda on Malabar Hill, and was seized with an irresistible desire to see its interior. He was quite ignorant that it is forbidden to Christians to enter certain Indian temples, and that even the faithful must not go in without first leaving their shoes outside ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB |
| 730:Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force. And that Death which was present in this dear brother (who, waking up, moaned and by habit called indiscriminately on God and on the devil) was not so far away as it hitherto seemed to be. It was within himself to- he felt it. If not today, then tomorrow or thirty years hence, was it not all the same? But what that inevitable Death was, he not only did not know, not only had never considered, but could not and dared not consider. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB |
731:It was over Ed's shoulder that I really saw Milli for the first time. She was standing there just looking at me. Ed glanced at Milli and then, like a good friend, Ed walked away.
I have a few mental photographs I can see in my mind's eye. One of them is Milli, hands on her hips, looking me up and down as if the bike and I were one lean machine. Her body language, the gleam in her eyes, the tease in her smile, all combined into an erotic femme challenge. Milli set the action into irresistible motion by lifting one eyebrow. ~ Leslie Feinberg,#NFDB |
| 732:For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. ~ Max Weber, #NFDB |
| 733:The touch was exactly what the touch of a lover's hand should be: familiar, yet exciting as a whispered promise. I felt an almost irresistible urge to take her hand and place it flat against my chest, near my heart. Maybe I should've done it. I know now that she would've laughed, if I'd done it, and she would've liked me for it. But strangers that we were then, we stood for five long seconds and held the stare, while all the parallel worlds, all the parallel lives that might've been, and never would be, whirled around us. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB |
| 734:... with every Asiatic country where we operate in cooperation with the existing culture, the need for intelligent understanding of that country and its ways of life will be crucial. These nations will very likely not respond to appeals with which we are familiar, and not value rewards which seem to us irresistible. The danger--and it would be fatal to world peace--is that in our ignorance of their cultural values we shall meet in head-on collision and incontinently fall back on the old pattern of imposing our own values by force. ~ Ruth Benedict, #NFDB |
| 735:Popular revolt against materially strong rulers, on the other hand, may engender an almost irresistible power even if it foregoes the use of violence in the face of materially vastly superior forces. To call this “passive resistance” is certainly an ironic idea; it is one of the most active and efficient ways of action ever devised, because it cannot be countered by fighting, where there may be defeat or victory, but only by mass slaughter in which even the victor is defeated, cheated of his prize, since nobody can rule over dead men. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB |
| 736:Her first reaction was one of hope, because his eyes were open and shining with a radiant light she had never seen there before. She prayed to God to give him at least a moment so that he would not go without knowing how much she had love him despite all their doubts, and she felt an irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had done badly in the past. But she had to give in to the intransigence of death. (Love in the Time of Cholera) ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB |
| 737:Her first reaction was one of hope, because his eyes were open and shining with a radiant light she had never seen there before. She prayed to God to give him at least a moment so that he would not go without knowing how much she had love him despite all their doubts, and she felt an irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had done badly in the past. But she had to give in to the intransigence of death. (Love in the Time of Cholera) ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, #NFDB |
738:I kissed you," Finlay said roughly. "for the very simple reason that you are irresistible."
"I think that is what is known as serendipity," Isabella replied, "for it's the very same reason I kissed you back."
"Serendipity," Finlay said, sliding his arm around her waist. "I've always wondered what it tasted like."
"Strawberries, and lavender, and vintage wine, I believe is how you described it."
"No," he said decidedly. "It tastes of nothing other than essence of you. The most intoxicating and delicious taste imaginable. ~ Marguerite Kaye,#NFDB |
| 739:a middle-aged lady in a small country town, by doing no more than yield whole-hearted obedience to her own irresistible eccentricities, and to a spirit of mischief engendered by the utter idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily life, her morning toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the ‘machinery’ of life at Versailles; ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB |
| 740:The slightest force, when it is applied to assist and guide the natural descent of its object, operates with irresistible weight; and Jovian had the good fortune to embrace the religious opinions which were supported by the spirit of the times and the zeal and numbers of the most powerful sect. Under his reign, Christianity obtained an easy and lasting victory; and, as soon as the smile of royal patronage was withdrawn, the genius of Paganism, which had been fondly raised and cherished by the arts of Julian, sunk irrecoverably in the dust. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB |
| 741:Day after day I have to work beside you,” he whispered, “drinking in your smile, breathing in your scent, flirting my fool head off to no avail because you’re not even remotely aware. For once I’ve met a girl whose beauty on the inside is so powerful and deep, the surface beauty is almost secondary, which is something I’ve never experienced before.” He shook his head, gaze roaming her face as if she were some priceless work of art. “You’re irresistible, you know that? And I have never been more jealous of a man than I am of Hughes right now. ~ Julie Lessman, #NFDB |
| 742:Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly die--into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit. ~ J Sheridan Le Fanu, #NFDB |
743:Rhys couldn't help wondering... had he known the first time he'd met Helen that this man was her father, would it have mattered?
Maybe at first. He wasn't sure. But there was no doubt that eventually he would have succumbed to the irresistible attraction of Helen, the magic she would always hold for him. In his mind, there was no connection between Helen and Vance, regardless of physical resemblance, blood, or heredity. There was only good in Helen. That gentle, valiant spirit, that perfect mixture of strength and kindness, was all her own. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
| 744:When a legislator succeeds, after persevering efforts, in exercising an indirect influence upon the destiny of nations, his genius is lauded by mankind, whilst, in point of fact, the geographical position of the country which he is unable to change, a social condition which arose without his co-operation, manners and opinions which he cannot trace to their source, and an origin with which he is unacquainted, exercise so irresistible an influence over the courses of society that he is himself borne away by the current, after an ineffectual resistance. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 745:God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else--something it never entered your head to conceive--comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be Go without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
| 746:Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, who died in 1965, wrote of how the mere thought of the infinite led him to contemplate suicide: “A necessity I could not imagine swept over me: I had to try again and again to imagine the edge of space, or its edgelessness, time with a beginning and an end or time without a beginning or end, and both were equally impossible, equally hopeless … Under an irresistible compulsion I reeled from one to the other, at times so closely threatened with the danger of madness that I seriously thought of avoiding it by suicide.”8 ~ John D Barrow, #NFDB |
| 747:All of us have monarchs and sages for kinsmen; nay, angels and archangels for cousins; since in antediluvian days, the sons of God did verily wed with our mothers, the irresistible daughters of Eve. Thus all generations are blended: and heaven and earth of one kin: the hierarchies of seraphs in the uttermost skies; the thrones and principalities in the zodiac; the shades that roam throughout space; the nations and families, flocks and folds of the earth; one and all, brothers in essence-oh, be we then brothers indeed! All things form but one whole. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB |
| 748:All of us have monarchs and sages for kinsmen; nay, angels and archangels for cousins; since in antediluvian days, the sons of God did verily wed with our mothers, the irresistible daughters of Eve. Thus all generations are blended: and heaven and earth of one kin: the hierarchies of seraphs in the uttermost skies; the thrones and principalities in the zodiac; the shades that roam throughout space; the nations and families, flocks and folds of the earth; one and all, brothers in essence—oh, be we then brothers indeed! All things form but one whole. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB |
| 749:Curran smiled. It was a happy, genuine smile and it catapulted him from attractive into irresistible territory. He didn’t smile very often in public. That intimate smile was usually reserved for private moments when we were alone. I pulled the band off my still-damp braid and slid my fingers through it, unraveling the hair. Curran’s gaze snagged on my hands. He focused on my fingers like a cat on a piece of foil pulled by a string. I shook my head and my hair fell over my shoulders in a long dark wave. There we go. Now we were both private in public. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB |
| 750:He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 751:He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 752:He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 753:The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy. ~ David Hume, #NFDB |
754:Does the blackbird find her?”
“The song doesn’t say,” he said with a shrug.
“But I must know the ending to the story,” Helen protested.
Winterborne laughed. It was an irresistible sound, rough-soft and sly. When he replied, his accent had thickened. “That’s what comes o’ reading novels, it is. The story needs no ending. That’s not what matters.”
“What matters, then?” she dared to ask.
His dark gaze held hers. “That he loves. That he’s searching. Like the rest of us poor devils, he has no way of knowing if he’ll ever have his heart’s desire. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
755:Jilly looked at it with a sinking heart. It was difficult enough when the exotic, undeniably gorgeous creature of her fantasies had turned out to be an obnoxious bully. Of course he had to have a Harley, as well, completing the perfect bad-boy image. With the tattooed teardrops on his high cheekbones and spiky, waist-length, flame-colored hair and his long, leather-clad legs and pointy-toed cowboy boots, he was almost irresistible, despite his manners.
A Harley sealed the deal. He was all her adolescent fantasies come true.
And it was time to grow up. ~ Anne Stuart,#NFDB |
| 756:The repeated deaths of civilizations from internal disintegration and outward assault, massively documented by Arnold Toynbee, underscores the fact that the evil elements in this amalgam largely cancelled the benefits and blessings. The one lasting contribution of the megamachine was the myth of the machine itself: the notion that this machine was, by its very nature, absolutely irresistible- and yet, provided one did not oppose it, ultimately beneficent. That magical spell still enthralls both the controllers and the mass victims of the megamachine today. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB |
| 757:He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy's house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses so his idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded with a melancholy beauty. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 758:short piece of sacred choral music, typically polyphonic and unaccompanied. late Middle English: from Old French, diminutive of mot 'word'. moth n. (pl. moths ) a chiefly nocturnal insect related to the butterflies. It lacks the clubbed antennae of butterflies and typically has a stout body, drab coloration, and wings that fold flat when resting. Most superfamilies of the order Lepidoptera. Formerly placed in a grouping known as the Heterocera. INFORMAL short for CLOTHES MOTH. like a moth to the flame with an irresistible attraction for someone or something: ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB |
| 759:The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB |
| 760:This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves. ~ John Hersey, #NFDB |
| 761:A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB |
| 762:In the old days, when women were mostly illiterate, and their only “skill” with men was limited to blushing with the head down, courtesans could read, write, sing, dance, and play instruments—real and euphemistic ones—in and out of bed in a hundred different positions. Brothels were the only place a gentleman could find a worldly, elegant, irresistible, learned, challenging, understanding, interesting, and amorous woman. Many five-star courtesans became multimillionaires and eventually married distinguished suitors who immortalized their charm and beauty with poems. ~ Jason Y Ng, #NFDB |
| 763:High up on the branches, like so many of those tiny rose-trees, their pots concealed in jackets of paper lace, whose slender stems rise in a forest from the altar on the greater festivals, a thousand buds were swelling and opening, paler in colour, but each disclosing as it burst, as at the bottom of a cup of pink marble, its blood-red stain, and suggesting even more strongly than the full-blown flowers the special, irresistible quality of the hawthorn-tree, which, wherever it budded, wherever it was about to blossom, could bud and blossom in pink flowers alone. Taking ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB |
| 764:Me miró con comprensión, mucho más que con comprensión. Era una de esas raras sonrisas capaces de tranquilizarnos para toda la eternidad, que sólo encontramos cuatro o cinco veces en la vida. Aquella sonrisa se ofrecía —o parecía ofrecerse— al mundo entero y eterno, para luego concentrarse en ti, exclusivamente en ti, con una irresistible predisposición a tu favor. Te entendía hasta donde querías ser entendido, creía en ti como tú quisieras creer en ti mismo, y te garantizaba que la impresión que tenía de ti era la que, en tus mejores momentos, esperabas producir. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 765:The moral that Plato wished to draw out is that no man can resist the temptation of being able to steal and kill at will. All men are corruptible. Morality is a social construct imposed from the outside. A man may appear to be moral in public to maintain his reputation for integrity and honesty, but once he possesses the power of invisibility, the use of such power would be irresistible. (Some believe that this morality tale was the inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which a ring that grants the wearer invisibility is also a source of evil.) ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB |
| 766:And I am always flattered," Rusty continued, "but I love my sister. Not in an 'I love my sister and I want to make out with her' way, that would be terrible and disturbing, but in an 'I love my sister, and I'm not going anywhere near the girl she likes' way. Be a big mess. Life is hard for me, with all my irresistible sexual magnetism. It's a real problem, almost as bad as the fact that my steps are now the number one crying spot in Sorry-in-the-Vale. I have to maintain control of the situation at all times or my life would devolve into a nonstop romantical frenzy". ~ Sarah Rees Brennan, #NFDB |
767:For the first time since they'd left the inn, his eyes stopped roaming the hills and crags of the countryside and roamed her body's curves instead. Slowly, with a raw, possessive hunger.
A low, simmering heat sparked and built inside her, feeding off that desire in his eyes the same way a flame fed off coal.
He'd once called her uncommonly pretty in conversation, and at the time she had been tempted to argue back. But tonight, for the first time in her life, she felt irresistible. Ravishing.
Truly beautiful. In his eyes, if no one else's.
Oh, this was dangerous. ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB |
| 768:Once he’d turned around and was headed off the Sheridan property, Mel looked at Jack to find him grinning hugely. “Melinda,” he said. “Did you just get involved in someone’s relationship?” She lifted a brow. “Do you really want to mess with a woman who’s about seventeen months pregnant?” “I’m just saying…” “Try shutting up,” she advised. “I believe I was asked.” “You did,” he laughed. “You got right in there, got your hands dirty in someone’s relationship. Just admit it—it’s irresistible. You’re just as nosy as I am.” She glared at him. “Jack, no one is as nosy as you are.” * ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB |
| 769:It may be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect. It is not a sovereign and irresistible force which comes upon us as a seizure from above. It is a gift of God, indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any other gift if it is to realize the purpose for which it was given. Failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB |
| 770:n every culture, the sky and the religious impulse are intertwined. I lie back in an open field and the sky surrounds me. I’m overpowered by its scale. It’s so vast and so far away that my own insignificance becomes palpable. But I don’t feel rejected by the sky. I’m a part of it - tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity. And when I concentrate in the stars, the planets, and their motions, I have an irresistible sense of machinery, clockwork, elegant precision working on a scale that, however lofty out aspirations, dwarfs and humbles us. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB |
| 771:The irresistible proliferation of graphomania shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: we are all writers! for everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words. one morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB |
| 772:This book will prove the following ten facts: 1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there. 2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch. 3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity. 4. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result is a family fight. 5. Music does not always sooth the troubled beast. 6. An Englishman's home is his castle. 7. The female of the species is more deadly than the male. 8. One black eye deserves another. 9. Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm. 10. It pays to increase your word power. ~ Diana Wynne Jones, #NFDB |
| 773:One can truly say that the irresistible progress of natural science since the time of Galileo has made its first halt before the study of the higher parts of the brain, the organ of the most complicated relations of the animal to the external world. And it seems, and not without reason, that now is the really critical moment for natural science; for the brain, in its highest complexity—the human brain—which created and creates natural science, itself becomes the object of this science. ~ Ivan Pavlov, #NFDB |
| 774:Tax reduction has an almost irresistible appeal to the politician, and it is no doubt also gratifying to the citizen. It means more dollars in his pocket, dollars that he can spend if inflation doesn't consume them first. But dollars in his pocket won't buy him clean streets or an adequate police force or good schools or clean air and water. Handing money back to the private sector in tax cuts and starving the public sector is a formula for producing richer and richer consumers in filthier and filthier communities. If we stick to that formula we shall end up in affluent misery. ~ John W Gardner, #NFDB |
| 775:Driving back to Portland I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible. Sometimes ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB |
| 776:The happiness of the South was very formidable. It was an almost invincible happiness. It defied you to call it anything else. Everyone was in fact happy. The women were beautiful and charming. The men were healthy and successful and funny; they knew how to tell stories. They had everything the North had and more. They had a history, they had a place redolent with memories, they had good conversation, they believed in God and defended the Constitution, and they were getting rich in the bargain. They had the best of victory and defeat. Their happiness was aggressive and irresistible. ~ Walker Percy, #NFDB |
| 777:the new creation thrives in an environment of freedom and love and depends on transformation coming from within, not conformity imposed from without. But that takes time and rare is the man, woman, or institution that can long refuse the urge to give people rules to follow instead of help to discover a transformative relationship with a loving Father. The demands of religion and the needs of an institution for conformity are perfectly aligned so as to make the path of human effort virtually irresistible. It can yield quick results externally, while it saps the vitality of the Gospel. ~ Wayne Jacobsen, #NFDB |
| 778:Do I need to carry you?” “You have no idea how much I want to say yes.” She pulled away, standing straight. Mitch wanted to snatch her back, but resisted when she squared her small shoulders. “But I’ve already pissed off the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost today. It might be best not to push my luck.” A deep rumble of laughter shook his chest. With one finger, he tilted her chin. “Let me guess, you’re Catholic?” Her expression went wide. “Hey, how’d you know?” She had no clue how irresistible she was. He tucked a lock of auburn hair behind her ear. “Just a wild stab in the dark, Princess. ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB |
| 779:You are so irresistible when you get all riled up.” “I hope you’re happy. This is exactly the disaster I imagined.” She wanted to kill him. Everything had been perfect, exactly what she’d been wanting, and now it was her worst nightmare. Without letting her go, he moved up her body and loomed over her. “You have only yourself to blame.” With her free hand, she pinched him. Laughing, he shook his head, then captured her free hand and manacled her wrists together. “I knew I was going to have to restrain you.” “Jerk!” The insult did not leave her mouth with the vehemence she’d intended. He ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB |
| 780:The fact of the matter is that, since we are determined always to keep our feelings to ourselves, we have never given any thought to the manner in which we should express them. And suddenly there is within us a strange and obscene animal making itself heard, whose tones may inspire as much alarm in the person who receives the involuntary, elliptical and almost irresistible communication of one's defect or vice as would the sudden avowal indirectly and outlandishly proffered by a criminal who can no longer refrain from confessing to a murder of which one had never imagined him to be guilty. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB |
| 781:As citizen-activists the world over merge, they can become an irresistible force to create peace and protect the planet. From here will come a new movement to abolish nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. From here will come the demand for sustainable communities, for new systems of energy, transportation and commerce. From here comes the future rushing in on us. How does one acquire the capacity for active citizenship? The opportunities exist every day...Active citizenship begins with an envisioning of the desired outcome and a conscious application of spiritual principles. ~ Dennis Kucinich, #NFDB |
| 782:To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible. False priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceedings in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. Curiosity ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB |
| 783:Fine,” he said. “You had no idea it could be this good. Nobody in your past was ever that good and you know that nobody in your future will ever be this good. You’ve had a taste and you want more. You want sex. Dirty, naked hot sex. It’s floating through your head as we speak. You think you can imagine what it would be like. Trust me, you have no idea. I haven’t even started. So run from it, think it over, pretend it didn’t happen, it doesn’t matter. I’ll allow it for now. The more you fight, the more irresistible it will become, until one day I’ll motion with my hand and you’ll come running.” My ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB |
| 784:She was breathtaking in the violet gown, her slender neck encircled with diamonds, her hair rich with dark fire. Nature had blessed her with abundant beauty. But it was her smile that made her irresistible, a smile so sweet and brilliant that it warmed him from the inside out. Harry wished she would smile at him like that. She had, in the beginning. There had to be something that would induce her to warm to him, to like him again. Everyone had a weakness. In the meantime, Harry stole glances of her whenever he could, his lovely and distant wife . . . and he drank in the smiles she gave to other people. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB |
| 785:His singing made me want to fall to the ground and kiss it, as a son to a mother, grateful that someone could love it so keenly. For the first time in my life something new awoke within me, something irresistible: I still cannot explain it. It was a need to express myself, yes, to express myself, not only to see and sense the world, but to bring to others my vision, my thoughts and sensations, to describe the beauty of the earth as inspiringly as Daniyar could sing. I caught my breath for fear and joy of the unknown. At that time, however, I had not yet realized the need to take up brush and paints. ~ Chingiz Aitmatov, #NFDB |
| 786:During the trail years, reaching Independence Rock aroused a kind of collective, Paleolithic carving gene, a powerful urge among the pioneers to leave behind some evidence of their arrival. While the wagon trains rested for a day or two at the rock, the pioneers found it irresistible to scramble up the curved walls and chisel in the hard granite their names or initials, the year, and their hometowns. There is no way of knowing exactly how many pioneers left their initials or names behind on Independence Rock because erosion by wind and water over the past century has removed thousands of these inscriptions. ~ Rinker Buck, #NFDB |
| 787:Jesse, you're not going to lose me. I had the situation totally under control." Sort of. "But I have to say that after so many years of you keeping your feelings for me hidden out of propriety, it's really nice to hear you say all those things. Plus, it's emotionally healthy that you're letting them out this way. Keep unburdening yourself." I wrapped my arms around his neck. "What is it exactly, that you find so irresistible about me? Is it my magnetic personality? Or my emerald green eyes? Or maybe it's just my hot bod?" I felt something against my torso. "Oh, I'm getting the impression that it's my hot bod. ~ Meg Cabot, #NFDB |
| 788:Plutarch clearly notes that her beauty “was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it”. It was rather the “contact of her presence, if you lived with her, that was irresistible”. Her personality and manner, he insists, were no less than “bewitching”. Time has done better than fail to wither Cleopatra’s case; it has improved upon her allure. She came into her looks only years later. By the third century AD she would be described as “striking”, exquisite in appearance. By the Middle Ages, she was “famous for nothing but her beauty”. ~ Stacy Schiff, #NFDB |
789:I reeled with giddiness - flames passed before my eyes.
I remembered those precipices that drew one towards them with irresistible power - wells that have had to be filled up because of persons throwing themselves into them - trees that have had to be cut down because of people hanging themselves upon them - the contagion of suicide and theft and murder, which at various times has taken possession of people's minds, by means well understood; that strange inducement, which makes people kill themselves because others kill themselves. My hair rose upon my head with horror!
("The Invisible Eye") ~ Erckmann Chatrian,#NFDB |
| 790:Many are the scholars who make it their professional occupation to occupy themselves in this towering edifice of culture, exploring its nook and crannies, developing their responses, making their contributions here and there, and helping to hand it on to succeeding generations. For some the temptation proves irresistible to go yet farther and make this the concern of their lives, letting society go its own sorry way while they lock themselves away in this abiding, socially transcendent cultural stronghold, acquiescing in society while pursuing Bildung. As Rotterdam burns, they study Sanskrit verb forms. ~ Nicholas Wolterstorff, #NFDB |
| 791:Whether at Rome or Naples, or, in fact, wherever his abode, he selected one room remote from the rest of the house, which was fastened by a lock scarcely larger than the seal of a ring, yet which sufficed to baffle the most cunning instruments of the locksmith: at least, one of his servants, prompted by irresistible curiosity, had made the attempt in vain; and though he had fancied it was tried in the most favourable time for secrecy, — not a soul near, in the dead of night, Zanoni himself absent from home, — yet his superstition, or his conscience, told him the reason why the next day the Major Domo quietly ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton, #NFDB |
| 792:The illusion is irresistible. Behind every face there is a self. We see the signal of consciousness in a gleaming eye and imagine some ethereal space beneath the vault of the skull, lit by shifting patterns of feeling and thought, charged with intention. An essence. But what do we find in that space behind the face, when we look? The brute fact is there is nothing but material substance: flesh and blood and bone and brain…You look down into an open head, watching the brain pulsate, watching the surgeon tug and probe, and you understand with absolute conviction that there is nothing more to it. There’s no one there. ~ Thomas Metzinger, #NFDB |
793:She looked again at Fitz Alan. He was bent over with his hands in the water as if to wash them, but he looked stuck in the awkward position and did not move so much as a muscle. Curiosity finally loosened her tongue. "What are you doing?"
"Fishing," he whispered.
Kenric gave a snort of laughter. "Ian Duncan is the only man I know who can catch fish that way."
"What way?" Claudia asked.
"With his hands," Kenric answered. "Fitz Alan thinks his face irresistible, even to fish. See how he smiles down at them? He thinks to seduce a fat trout into his arms."
Claudia giggled. Even Fitz Alan's smile grew broader. ~ Elizabeth Elliott,#NFDB |
| 794:The forces of blind life that work across this hilltop are as irresistible as she said they were, they work by a principle more potent than fission. But I can’t look upon them as just life, impartial and eternal and in flux, an unceasing interchange of protein. And I can’t find proofs of the crawl toward perfection that she believed in. Maybe what we call evil is only as she told me that first day we met, what conflicts with our interests; but maybe there are such realities as ignorance, selfishness, jealousy, malice, criminal carelessness, and maybe these things are evil no mater whose interests they serve or conflict with. ~ Wallace Stegner, #NFDB |
| 795:…in that moment, as he saw and smelled how irresistible its effect was and how with lightning speed it spread and made captives of the people all around him—in that moment his whole disgust for humankind rose up again within him and completely soured his triumph, so that he felt not only no joy, but not even the least bit of satisfaction. What he had always longed for—that other people should love him—became at the moment of his achievement unbearable, because he did not love them himself, he hated them. And suddenly he knew that he had never found gratification in love, but always only in hatred—in hating and in being hated. ~ Patrick S skind, #NFDB |
796:SOSTRATUS: Observe then your injustice! You punish us who are but the slaves of Clotho's bidding, and reward these, who do but minister to another's beneficence. For it will never be said that it was in our power to gainsay the irresistible ordinances of Fate?
MINOS: Ah, Sostratus; look closely enough, and you will find plenty of inconsistencies besides these. However, I see you are no common pirate, but a philosopher in your way; so much you have gained by your questions. Let him go, Hermes; he shall not be punished after that. But mind, Sostratus, you must not put it into other people's heads to ask questions of this kind. ~ Lucian of Samosata,#NFDB |
797:Marcus gave her a slow, wicked smile, feeling the smoldering heat rise to the surface like molten lava, irresistible as a force of nature. "If you insist," he whispered, and bent his head to capture her lips with his own. He put all his yearning, all his gratitude for the gifts she'd given him, all that heat bubbling up within him into the kiss, feeling her lips yield beneath his.
She returned his fire with fire, kissing him back with a wild abandon that left them both trembling and enraptured, wrapped around each other in the midst of a crowd, focused only on each other.
Overhead, fireworks lit the sky, but neither of them noticed. ~ Deborah Blake,#NFDB |
798:So: ‘Why did you laugh?’ demanded Philippa, and shook Jerott’s hand off her arm.
‘Oh, that?’ said Lymond. ‘But, my dear child, the picture was irresistible. Daddy, afflicted but purposeful, ransacking the souks of the Levant for one of his bastards, with an unchaperoned North Country schoolgirl aged—what? twelve? thirteen?—to help change its napkins when the happy meeting takes place.… A gallant thought, Philippa,’ said Lymond kindly, sitting down at the table. ‘And a touching faith in mankind. But truly, all the grown-up ladies and gentlemen would laugh themselves into bloody fluxes over the spectacle. Have some whatever-it-is. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,#NFDB |
| 799:Because he was a real captain, and very important in the general scheme of things, Matthews had a secretary, although she liked to be called an executive assistant. Her name was Gwen, and she had three virtues far above anyone else I had ever known: She was astonishingly efficient, unbearably serious, and uncompromisingly plain. It was a delightful combination and I always found it irresistible. So as I hurried up to her desk, wiping the residue of the doughnut off my hands and onto my pants where it belonged, I could not help attempting a very small bon mot. “Fair Gwendolyn,” I said. “The face that launched a thousand patrol vehicles!” She ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB |
| 800:It was hard to imagine the icy water thawed and re-sealing, or the sky returning to a lively blue. She had a sense of contraction, of huddling against the weather. Later, it figured in her mind as Stalinist classicism, the wind tunnel of the vast and inhuman Karl-Marx-Allee, and the shapes of people in padded jackets bending against the cruel air. A scene from Eisenstein, perhaps, with a gelid lens and the special effects of monumental vision, swollen by an aerial view and historical misery. Black outlines on white snow, impersonality, extinguishment. Exaggeration of this kind was irresistible. In that early, fierce cold, Berliners coped better. ~ Gail Jones, #NFDB |
801:Pandora's dress was disheveled, her bodice askew, and her gloves were missing. A few raised red scratches marred the surface of her shoulder. The pins had been pulled from her ruined coiffure during the carriage ride, allowing a profusion of heavy black-coffee locks to fall to her waist in waves and ripples. Her coltish form quivered like a wild creature held in restraints. She gave off a kind of... energy, of... there didn't seem to be a word for it, but Gabriel could feel the irresistible voltage eating up the space between them. Every hair on his body individuated as he was flooded with the hot, humming awareness of her.
Holy hell. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
802:He had a charm about him sometimes, a warmth that was irresistible, like sunshine. He planted Saffy triumphantly on the pavement, opened the taxi door, slung in his bag, gave a huge film-star wave, called, "All right, Peter? Good weekend?" to the taxi driver, who knew him well and considered him a lovely man, and was free.
"Back to the hard life," he said to Peter, and stretched out his legs.
Back to the real life, he meant. The real world where there were no children lurking under tables, no wives wiping their noses on the ironing, no guinea pigs on the lawn, nor hamsters in the bedrooms, and no paper bags full of leaking tomato sandwiches. ~ Hilary McKay,#NFDB |
| 803:Tumbling over one another, these new realities produced nervous responses. Stratagems of defense, partly unconscious, included regression from liberal open-mindedness, nostalgia for an idyllic past when the poor had doffed their caps to their better, fearful clinging to strict rules of conduct, and psychological denials that were derisively, and unhelpfully, called hypocrisy. [...] Still, if alarm had been unanimous, the calls for a return to the old days would have been irresistible. The truth is that the agents of anxiety — those overpowering forces for change in politics, economics, science, morals, and social policy — were at the same time agents of self confidence. ~ Peter Gay, #NFDB |
| 804:When I was a little girl, if someone asked me why I was a Christian, I said it was because Jesus lived in my heart. In high school, I said it was because I accepted the atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross for my sins. My sophomore year of college, during a short-lived Reformed phase, I said it was because of the irresistible grace of God. But after watching Zarmina's execution on television, I decided that the most truthful answer to that question was this: I was a Christian because I was born in the United States of America in the year 1981 to Peter and Robin Held. Arminians call it free will; Calvinists call it predestination. I call it "the cosmic lottery. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB |
| 805:Who then was the orthodox, who the freethinker? Where lay the true position, the true state of man? Should he descend into the all-consuming all-equalizing chaos, that ascetic-libertine state; or should he take his stand on the "Critical-Subjective," where empty bombast and a bourgeois strictness of morals contradicted each other? Ah, the principles and points of view constantly did that; it became so hard for Hans Castorp's civilian responsibility to distinguish between opposed positions, or even to keep the premises apart from each other and clear in his mind, that the temptation grew well-nigh irresistible to plunge head foremost into Naphtha's "morally chaotic All. ~ Thomas Mann, #NFDB |
806:Presently Jack Pumpkinhead became uneasy.
"I wonder if riding through the air is liable to spoil pumpkins," he said.
"Not unless you carelessly drop your head over the side," answered the Woggle-Bug. "In that event your head would no longer be a pumpkin, for it would become a squash."
"Have I not asked you to restrain these unfeeling jokes?" demanded Tip, looking at the Woggle-Bug with a severe expression.
"You have; and I've restrained a good many of them," replied the insect. "But there are opportunities for so many excellent puns in our language that, to an educated person like myself, the temptation to express them is almost irresistible. ~ L Frank Baum,#NFDB |
| 807:Ivan Fyodorovich had long been feeling an intense hatred for him, before he even thought about him, and suddenly he became aware of him. He at once felt an irresistible desire to bring his fist down on the little peasant. Just at that moment they came abreast of each other, and the little peasant, staggering badly, suddenly lurched full force into Ivan. The latter furiously shoved him away. The little peasant flew back and crashed like a log against the frozen ground, let out just one painful groan: “O-oh!” and was still. Ivan stepped up to him. He lay flat on his back, quite motionless, unconscious. “He’ll freeze!” Ivan thought, and strode off again to Smerdyakov. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB |
808:Let him go, V. And let him take her where he needs to go."
As Wrath's voice cut through the drama, the urge to go pyrotechnic became nearly irresistible. Like they needed another kibitzer? And fuck-that on the command.
V squeezed the surgeon's collar trash-bag tight. "You are not taking her anywhere--"
The hand on V's shoulder was heavy, and Wrath's voice had an edge like a dagger. "And you're not in charge here. She's my responsibility, not yours."
Wrong thing to say. On so many levels.
"She is my blood," he snarled.
"And I'm the one who put her on that bed. Oh, and I'm also your cocksucking king, so you will do as I command, Vishous. ~ J R Ward,#NFDB |
| 809:The Christian has been drawn unto Christ. Those who wish to boast in having something to do with their salvation, or who insist that the final decision lays with man, resist the clear meaning of Christ's words, "draw." But this is a wondrous term. It is beautiful to hear. Drawn in love. Drawn in mercy. Drawn unto the one who died in my place. It is sovereign action, undertaken by the one who holds the entire universe by His power. It is an irresistible drawing, most definitely, but is a drawing of grace. The one drawing loves the one who is being drawn. And those drawn can never be thankful enough to God who brought them out of darkness into the marvelous light of Christ. ~ James R White, #NFDB |
| 810:We all crave latitude in life, yet simultaneously dig ourselves deeper into domestic entrapment. We may dream of traveling light but accumulate as much as we can to keep us burdened and rooted to one spot. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Because-though we all muse on the theme of escape-we stil find the notion of responsibility irresistible. The career, the house, the dependents, the debt-it grounds us. Provides us with a necessary security, a reason to get upin the morning. It narrows choice and ergo, gives us certainty. And though just about every man I know rails against being so cul-de-saced by domesic burden, we all embrace it. Embrace it with a vengeance. ~ Douglas Kennedy, #NFDB |
811:I’m about to berate his tactics, to deny any feelings for him, when he cups the nape of my neck and presses his lips to mine, velvety soft. It’s nothing but a peck, yet the flavor of the tart he sampled lingers like a warm, savory bruise—an irresistible torment to the netherling within.
He draws back and my skin glistens, radiant prisms reflected off his face and the cushions. I’m gripping his jacket lapels, yet I don’t even remember reaching for him.
“No more denials,” he says as he presses his left hand over one of mine. “I’ve seen the love in your eyes and in your actions. I felt it yesterday when I held you in my arms, and today, when you came to save me." ~ A G Howard,#NFDB |
| 812:In Chapter 5 we consider swindles and defalcations. It happens that crashes and panics often are precipitated by the revelation of some misfeasance, malfeasance, or malversation (the corruption of officials) engendered during the mania. It seems clear from the historical record that swindles are a response to the greedy appetite for wealth stimulated by the boom. And as the monetary system gets stretched, institutions lose liquidity, and unsuccessful swindles are about to be revealed, the temptation to take the money and run becomes virtually irresistible. It is difficult to write on this subject without permitting the typewriter to drip with irony. An attempt will be made. ~ Charles P Kindleberger, #NFDB |
| 813:What was the power that induced strong soldiers to put off their jackets and shirts, and present their hands to be tied up, and tortured for hours, it might be, under the scourge, with an air of ready volition? The moral coercion of despair; the result of an unconscious calculation of chances that satisfies them that it is ultimately better to do all that, bad as it is, than try the alternative. These unconscious calculations are going on every day with each of us, and the results embody themselves in our lives; and no one knows that there has been a process and a balance struck, and that what they see, and very likely blame, is by the fiat of an invisible but quite irresistible power. ~ J Sheridan Le Fanu, #NFDB |
814:The only way through is that kissing gate."
"Why is it called that?"
"I don't know." Lottie considered the gate thoughtfully. "I suppose because a kiss would be the unavoidable consequence of two people trying to pass through it at the same time."
"An interesting theory." Sydney paused inside the narrow gate. Leaning against one side of it, he sent her a challenging smile, knowing full well that she could not go through without brushing against him.
Lottie raised her brows. "By some chance are you expecting me to test it?"
Lord Sydney lifted one shoulder in a relaxed shrug, watching her with a vagabond charm that was nearly irresistible. "I won't stop you, if you feel so inclined. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
815:The irresistible ocean sucks around his hooves. But still he looks over his withers at me and he wails, again and again. The hair on my arms stands with his call. I know he wants me to go to him, but I can't go with him where he needs to go.
Corr falls silent when I do not come to him. He looks back out to the endless horizon. I see him lift a hoof and put it back down. He tests his weight again.
Then Corr turns, stepping out of the ocean. His head jerks up when his injured leg touches the ground, but he takes another labored step before keening to me again Corr takes another step away from the November sea. And another.
He is slow, and the sea sings to us both, but he returns to me. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,#NFDB |
816:Why did you want to live here? No offense, but it doesn’t really seem to be your style.”
He paused at her room. “I think I might ought to be offended by that. What exactly are you saying about my style?”
She paused, too, then shrugged. “I don’t know. You just seem to be the kind of guy to have a man cave, not something this…”
“Refined?”
She shook her head affirmatively.
“Well, that just shows what you know. For your information, I do like some fancy things.”
“Like what? Lacy underwear?”
“On my women, yeah.” He flashed that grin at her that she was learning to hate. Not for any reason other than the fact that it softened his features and made him terribly irresistible. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB |
| 817:For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap. The men who started the French Revolution were wholly without political experience. The same is true of the Bolsheviks, Nazis and the revolutionaries in Asia. The experienced man of affairs is a latecomer. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB |
| 818:Unfortunately, this unexpected, internal condition has often been called “falling in love.” This reaction to attraction, which we could also describe as a “chemically induced crush,” is actually infatuation. Who among us has not walked into a room, made eye contact with a complete stranger, and felt an instant, unexpected rush of emotion and attraction? Who hasn’t had that sudden impulse to look again? Why these moments happen and what exactly triggers them— who knows? But the feelings are definitely a temporary condition. The attraction is neither irresistible nor dependable. You can easily experience infatuation with people who would turn out to be relational nightmares. That’s why it is so dangerous ~ Chip Ingram, #NFDB |
| 819:Over the course of my many encounters with V’lane, I would attempt repeatedly to describe him in my journal. I would use words like: terrifyingly beautiful, godlike, possessing inhuman sexuality, deadly eroticism. I would call him lethal, I would call him irresistible, I would curse him. I would lust for him. I would call his eyes windows to a shining heaven, I would call them gates to Hell. I would fill entries with scribblings that would later make no sense to me, comprised of columns of antonyms: angelic, devilish; creator, destroyer; fire, ice; sex, death—I’m not sure why those two struck me as opposites, except perhaps sex is both the celebration of life and the process whereby we create it. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB |
| 820:The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life’s evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. There is also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics … these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction. Through the medium of science fiction, I seek only to create my own worlds using the power of imagination, and to make known the poetry of Nature in those worlds, to tell the romantic legends that have unfolded between Man and Universe. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB |
| 821:...the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that its fair for a woman to be fired from her job if her appearance is distracting enough to threaten the marriage of her superior -- a decision spurred by the case of a dentist who fired his hygienist because even in head-to-foot scrubs, she was simply too irresistible. In the court's finding, this was totally legitimate: employers "can fire employees that they and their spouses see as threats to their marriages." It's not up to employers, you see, to be more professional and appropriate in such cases, it's up to female employees not to unwittingly lead them on by doing nothing other than having the gall to show up for work with their god-given faces and bodies. ~ Andi Zeisler, #NFDB |
822:Miracles and happiness are a lot like each other in many ways. It is difficult to predict what will trigger a miracle. Some people go their entire lives full of persistent darkness and never feel the need to seek out a miracle. Others find they can exist with darkness only for a single night before they go hunting for a miracle to remove it. Some need only one miracle; others might have two or three or four or five over the course of their lives. Happiness is the same way. One can never tell what will make one person happy and leave another untouched. Often even the person involved will be surprised by what makes them happy.
And it turns out that owls find both miracles and happiness irresistible. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,#NFDB |
| 823:Conversely, as such a stock rises to, say, 50 or 60 or 70, the urge to sell and take a profit now that the stock is “high” becomes irresistible to many people. Giving in to this urge can be very costly. This is because the genuinely worthwhile profits in stock investing have come from holding the surprisingly large number of stocks that have gone up many times from their original cost. The only true test of whether a stock is “cheap” or “high” is not its current price in relation to some former price, no matter how accustomed we may have become to that former price, but whether the company’s fundamentals are significantly more or less favorable than the current financial-community appraisal of that stock. ~ Philip A Fisher, #NFDB |
824:The Sunset Of Romanticism
How beautiful a new sun is when it rises,
flashing out its greeting, like an explosion!
- Happy, whoever hails with sweet emotion
its descent, nobler than a dream, to our eyes!
I remember! I’ve seen all, flower, furrow, fountain,
swoon beneath its look, like a throbbing heart…
- Let’s run quickly, it’s late, towards the horizon,
to catch at least one slanting ray as it departs!
But I pursue the vanishing God in vain:
irresistible Night establishes its sway,
full of shudders, black, dismal, cold:
an odour of the tomb floats in the shadow,
at the swamp’s edge, feet faltering I go,
bruising damp slugs, and unexpected toads.
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB |
825:That night, Marlboro Man and I had a date. It was the Thursday night before our wedding, and the rehearsal dinner was the following night. It would be our last night alone together before we’d say I do. I couldn’t wait to see him; it had been two whole days. Forty-eight excruciating hours. I missed him fiercely.
When he arrived on my parents’ doorstep, I opened the door and smiled. He looked gorgeous. Solid. Irresistible.
Grinning, he stepped forward and kissed me. “You look good,” he said softly, stepping back. “You got some sun today.”
I gulped, flashing back to the agony of my facial that afternoon and fearing for the future of my face. I should have just stayed home and packed all day. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB |
| 826:I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium . . . . Shakespeare can not be recognized either as a great genius, or even as an average author. . . . far from being the height of perfection, [King Lear] is a very bad, carelessly composed production, . . . can not evoke among us anything but aversion and weariness. . . . All his characters speak, not their own, but always one and the same Shakespearian, pretentious, and unnatural language . . . . ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB |
| 827:Modern technology easily becomes the servant of this or that want and need. In modern economy, a completely irrational consumption conforms to a totally rationalized production. A marvelously rational mechanism serves one or another demand, always with the same earnestness and precision, be it for a silk blouse or poison gas or anything whatsoever. Economic rationalism has accustomed itself to deal only with certain needs and to acknowledge only those it can "satisfy." In the modern metropolis, it has erected an edifice wherein everything runs strictly according to plan— everything is calculable. A devout Catholic, precisely following his own rationality, might well be horrified by this system of irresistible materiality. ~ Carl Schmitt, #NFDB |
828:Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you."
-from "Song of the Open Road ~ Walt Whitman,#NFDB |
829:The donkey nibbled on his butt.
"What the hell!" Leaping a foot, Ozzie jerked around. The donkey was right THERE, not two inches from him, his ears laid back and his big brown eyes soulful. How had the damned thing moved so silently?
"He's just being friendly." Marci shared that special smile that felt like a caress. "He likes you."
Appalled, Ozzie said, "He likes my ass." And he backed out of the donkey's reach.
"I do, too."
No, no, no. He wasn't about to touch that one. "It'd help if you'd just be quiet, Marci."
Unaffected by his dark mood, she laughed. "Lighten up, Osbourne. It's not my fault, or the donkey's that you have such an irresistible bod."
-Osbourne and Marcie ~ Lori Foster,#NFDB |
| 830:What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum. ~ Vincent van Gogh, #NFDB |
831:On the drive home, Adam glances at me several times, clearly wanting to talk about what’s happened.
But I can barely look up from the door latch.
Exactly six pain-filled minutes later, he pulls over at the corner of my street and puts the car in park. “Do you hate me?” he asks.
“More like I hate myself.”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “Kissing me tends to have that effect on women.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, still trying to make light of the situation. “It’s my fault. It won’t happen again.”
“I let it happen.”
“Yes, but only because you couldn’t help yourself. I must admit, I’m far too irresistible for my own good.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” I can’t help but smile. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz,#NFDB |
832:The only way through is that kissing gate.”
“Why is it called that?”
“I don’t know.” Lottie considered the gate thoughtfully. “I suppose because a kiss would be the unavoidable consequence of two people trying to pass through it at the same time.”
“An interesting theory.” Sydney paused inside the narrow gate. Leaning against one side of it, he sent her a challenging smile, knowing full well that she could not go through without brushing against him.
Lottie raised her brows. “By some chance are you expecting me to test it?”
Lord Sydney lifted one shoulder in a relaxed shrug, watching her with a vagabond charm that was nearly irresistible. “I won’t stop you, if you feel so inclined.”
-Lottie & Nick ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
| 833:When a legislator succeeds, after persevering efforts, in exercising an indirect influence upon the destiny of nations, his genius is lauded by mankind, whilst, in point of fact, the geographical position of the country which he is unable to change, a social condition which arose without his co-operation, manners and opinions which he cannot trace to their source, and an origin with which he is unacquainted, exercise so irresistible an influence over the courses of society that he is himself borne away by the current, after an ineffectual resistance. Like the navigator, he may direct the vessel which bears him along, but he can neither change its structure, nor raise the winds, nor lull the waters which swell beneath him. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB |
834:The central attitudes driving the Player are:
Women were put on this earth to have sex with men—especially me.
Women who want sex are too loose, and women who refuse sex are too uptight. (!)
It’s not my fault that women find me irresistible. (This is a word-for-word quotation from a number of my clients.) It’s not fair to expect me to refuse temptation when it’s all around me; women seduce me sometimes, and I can’t help it.
If you act like you need anything from me, I am going to ignore you. I’m in this relationship when it’s convenient for me and when I feel like it.
Women who want the nonsexual aspects of themselves appreciated are bitches.
If you could meet my sexual needs, I wouldn’t have to turn to other women. ~ Lundy Bancroft,#NFDB |
| 835:A radical process of differentiation and segregation is taking place within the human mass. And it is following precisely the course we would expect: the spontaneous individualization and separation of that which moves and rises from that which remains immobile: the irresistible multiplication and aggregation, over the whole extent of the globe, of elements activated by a (hominized) reawakening of the phyletic sense; the gradual formation and emergence, at variance with former categories, of a new noöspheric zone in which human collectivization, hitherto enforced, is at last entering its sympathetic phase under the influence of the newly manifest Sense of Evolution. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, A Great Event Foreshadowed - The Planetization of Mankind, #NFDB |
| 836:Bajo el punto de vista moral e intelectual, la sociedad, o el hombre colectivo, se distingue del individuo principalmente por la espontaneidad de acción o, con otras palabras, por el instinto. Mientras que el individuo no obedece, o se figura no obedecer, más que a motivos que conoce plenamente y que es dueño de aceptar o de rechazar; mientras que, en una palabra, se cree libre, y tanto más libre, cuanto más razonador y más instruido se siente, la sociedad tiene movimientos involuntarios, donde, a la primera ojeada, no vemos nada que indique deliberación ni proyecto previos, y poco a poco, sin embargo, nos parece ver la acción de un consejo superior que existe fuera de la sociedad y la empuja con irresistible fuerza hacia un término desconocido ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
| 837:I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society meant to visit my superior at the office, Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin. He was the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life, and I wonder at the fact myself now. But I only went to see him when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential at once to embrace my fellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least, one human being, actually existing. I had to call on Anton Antonitch, however, on Tuesday—his at-home day; so I had always to time my passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a Tuesday. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB |
838:TO A GIRAFFE
If it is unpermissible, in fact fatal
to be personal and undesirable
to be literal—detrimental as well
if the eye is not innocent-does it mean that
one can live only on top leaves that are small
reachable only by a beast that is tall?—
of which the giraffe is the best example—
the unconversational animal.
When plagued by the psychological,
a creature can be unbearable
that could have been irresistible;
or to be exact, exceptional
since less conversational
than some emotionally-tied-in-knots animal.
After all
consolations of the metaphysical
can be profound. In Homer, existence
is flawed; transcendence, conditional;
“the journey from sin to redemption, perpetual. ~ Marianne Moore,#NFDB |
| 839:CUTHBERT: No, they didn't warn you about my dancing. They didn't warn you about its sensual power. They didn't warn you that the gyration of my hips is as the gyration of galaxies, that the writhing of my limbs is as the writhing of your most ancient desire. They didn't warn you that to watch me boogie is to hear ancient drums beat an eldritch, irresistible rhythm in the most primal part of your soul. (ASHTON stiffens as CUTHBERT speaks. She turns and grips him with one arm around his waist and one behind his head, and kisses him hungrily.) ASHTON: Please don't do that tonight, in front of Marty and Susan. CUTHBERT: Of course not. An orgy breaking out on the dance floor is fun once or twice, but I've learned there is a terrible price to pay for my powers. ~ Alan Ryker, #NFDB |
| 840:I miss being a mistress. I enjoyed it. I loved it, in fact. I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to, with my married girlfriends, the ones who live in terror of the pert au pair or the pretty, funny girl in the office who can talk about football and spends half her life in the gym. I had to tell them that of course I felt terrible about it, of course I felt bad for his wife, I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do? The truth is, I never felt bad for Rachel.... She just wasn’t real to me, and anyway, I was enjoying myself too much. Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are. ~ Paula Hawkins, #NFDB |
| 841:More broadly, a decent, humane, self-governing society will reject the belief that most human beings – homosexual or heterosexual – are slaves to their passions, their desires, their genetic predispositions. Our identities are not defined by sex, nor is sex itself an irresistible force. To believe otherwise is to vitiate the concept of individual responsibility and free will. Although our struggles are not all the same, we all do struggle against every sort of human desire, against our biological impulses, against our emotional longings. We do not abjure the struggle because it is difficult or beaux we seem to be battling against something deep within us – even if that something is as powerful as sexual desire; even if it seems fundamental to who we are. ~ William J Bennett, #NFDB |
842:Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering I love you, before long I die,
I have travel'd a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.
Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient--a little space--know you I salute the air, the
ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love. ~ Walt Whitman,#NFDB |
| 843:Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' These men without possessions or power, these strangers on Earth, these sinners, these followers of Jesus, have in their life with him renounced their own dignity, for they are merciful. As if their own needs and their own distress were not enough, they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation of others. They have an irresistible love for the down-trodden, the sick, the wretched, the wronged, the outcast and all who are tortured with anxiety. They go out and seek all who are enmeshed in the toils of sin and guilt. No distress is too great, no sin too appalling for their pity. If any man falls into disgrace, the merciful will sacrifice their own honour to shield him, and take his shame upon themselves. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB |
| 844:Two false images of God are particularly irresistible to many of us – mostly unconsciously. The first I’ll designate as God the negotiator and the other, God the Santa Claus. Though we have fashioned both to serve our interests, they are each other’s opposites. With one, we want to make advantageous deals. From the other, we want to get warm smiles and bagfuls of goodies. We run from one to the other. Some of their features are reminiscent of the God of Jesus Christ. But we’ve drawn these images of God mostly from two currents of the culture in which we swim – the current of hard and unforgiving economic realities, in which we exchange goods to maximize benefits, and the current of soft, even infantile, desires, in which we long to be showered with gifts simply because we exist. ~ Miroslav Volf, #NFDB |
| 845:When she sat at her sewing, talking in her quiet, tranquil voice, or looking up with her clear, kind eyes, his whole being was drawn to her with the irresistible strength of a deep, calm longing for home. He wanted to humble himself before her, to bend the knee and call her holy. He always felt a strange yearning to come close to her, not only to her present self, but to her childhood and all the days he had not known her. When they were alone, he would lead her to talk of the past, of her little troubles and mistakes and the vagaries that every childhood is full of. He lived in these memories and clung to them with a restless jealousy and a languishing desire to possess and be one with these pale foreshadowings of a life which was even now glowing in richer, riper colors. ~ Jens Peter Jacobsen, #NFDB |
| 846:It was while teaching at this school that Auden experienced the vision that lay at the heart of “A Summer Night.” He later wrote about it in these words: One fine summer night in June 1933 I was sitting on a lawn after dinner with three colleagues, two women and one man. We liked each other well enough but we were certainly not intimate friends, nor had any one of us a sexual interest in another. Incidentally, we had not drunk any alcohol. We were talking casually about everyday matters when, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power which, though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine. For the first time in my life I knew exactly—because, thanks to the power, I was doing it—what it means to love one’s neighbour as oneself. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB |
847:Harold Arnett
I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick,
Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm,
Weak from the noon-day heat.
A church bell sounded mournfully far away,
I heard the cry of a baby,
And the coughing of John Yarnell,
Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying,
Then the violent voice of my wife:
"Watch out, the potatoes are burning!"
I smelled them ... then there was irresistible disgust.
I pulled the trigger ... blackness ... light ...
Unspeakable regret ... fumbling for the world again.
Too late! Thus I came here,
With lungs for breathing ... one cannot breathe here with lungs,
Though one must breathe.... Of what use is it
To rid one's self of the world,
When no soul may ever escape the eternal destiny of life?
~ Edgar Lee Masters,#NFDB |
848:I know tonight will be no more than some very heavy petting,” Cooper said full of sincerity. “I know my hand and I will have to finish the job without you. I know all that so don’t freak out when I ask this question. Deal?”
“Ask first.”
Cooper grinned. “This weekend, I’d like you to come to my house and hang out. We have the pool and a TV the size of this restaurant. Oh, a pool table too. It’ll be fun and I’d like to spend time with you like we did tonight. You’re pretty irresistible when you’re relaxed.”
“But I’m resistible when I’m tense? I’ve been tense since we met so why do you keep asking me out?”
“Fine, you’re irresistible period, but you’re especially sexy when you let yourself be you. Teasing me like that was pretty awesome, though I think I really might need medical attention now. ~ Bijou Hunter,#NFDB |
| 849:West was remote in the minds of most New Yorkers during the holiday season of 1948. But, despite the new wealth that was flooding into the city, and the self-confidence that victory naturally brought, there was a generalized sense of anxiety about the future. “The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible,” the essayist E. B. White had observed that summer. “A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions.” White was writing at the dawn of the nuclear age, and the feeling of vulnerability was quite new. “In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning,” he observed, “New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB |
850:The more complete your faith, sincerity and surrender, the more will grace and protection be with you. And when the grace and protection of the Divine Mother are with you, what is there that can touch you or whom need you fear? A little of it even will carry you through all difficulties, obstacles and dangers, surrounded by its full presence you can go securely on your way because it is hers, careless of all menace, unaffected by any hostility however powerful, whether from this world or from worlds invisible. Its touch can turn difficulties into opportunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaltering strength. For the grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme and now or tomorrow its effect is sure, a thing decreed, inevitable and irresistible.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#NFDB |
851:He lived within himself, nourished by his own substance, like some torpid creature which hibernates in caves. Solitude had reacted upon his brain like a narcotic. After having strained and enervated it, his mind had fallen victim to a sluggishness which annihilated his plans, broke his will power and invoked a cortège of vague reveries to which he passively submitted.
The confused medley of meditations on art and literature in which he had indulged since his isolation, as a dam to bar the current of old memories, had been rudely swept away, and the onrushing, irresistible wave crashed into the present and future, submerging everything beneath the blanket of the past, filling his mind with an immensity of sorrow, on whose surface floated, like futile wreckage, absurd trifles and dull episodes of his life. ~ Joris Karl Huysmans,#NFDB |
852:Speak for yourself,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘I’m held together by intellectual curiosity. So are we all. We were wonderfully specious at Novgorod—Best will remember—about our reasons for staying in Russia. No one gave the correct one. You can hate a man and stay in his company because of his sheer, God-given, irresistible powers to stimulate. We all liked fighting, and we liked talking about fighting. With Lymond you don’t talk about fighting; you discuss the art of warfare, and then its philosophy, and then ten dozen other subjects all through the night, or for as long as he has patience to stay with you. I thought, God help me, that you were all trailing through Europe because you were enamoured of him. It wasn’t that in the least.’
‘We loved his mind,’ said Adam Blacklock, with sudden terrible bitterness. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,#NFDB |
853:She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.”
And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.
~ J Sheridan Le Fanu,#NFDB |
| 854:Iolaus, and Milo too, benefited from my new fame. Many of the other Argonauts had decided that the only possible reason for a woman to volunteer for a perilous voyage was to be with the man she loved. They just couldn’t agree on which of my friends was the irresistible fellow. Some argued that Milo’s youth put him out of the running; others countered that he was old enough, and called attention to his first shadowy growth of whiskers as proof. Some said it must be Iolaus, who wasn’t just a hero in his own right but shared Herakles’ glory for his part in slaying the Hydra. Some played it safe and took both sides. At first the whispers made Iolaus and Milo uncomfortable, but it didn’t last long. When a man stops looking embarrassed and starts wearing a preening little smile, I’d say he’s gotten used to his new reputation. ~ Esther M Friesner, #NFDB |
| 855:I had grazed along the surface of her actions and made deep judgments. Rejecting someone because you couldn't understand their love, that was a new one. The more I thought about it the longer the shadow of doubt stretched over all my conclusions. More often than not, things were as they seemed. But as I stared at her, she wasn't as bad looking as I had once thought. I realized how all this time I had seen her the wrong way, and how one's character affects one's appearance. Although she wasn't my type she was attractive. As I thought about her - the vulnerable intelligence, the violent honesty, and the fact that in the entire city she was the only one who took me in and fed me - she became more and more irresistible. Baited by an obscure beauty, trapped by an intense sorrow - all prior definitions had been overruled: this was love. ~ Arthur Nersesian, #NFDB |
| 856:A beautiful game plan. If indeed we lived a life in imitation of his, our witness would be irresistible. If we dared to live beyond our self-concern; if we refused to shrink from being vulnerable; if we took nothing but a compassionate attitude toward the world; if we were a counterculture to our nation’s lunatic lust for pride of place, power, and possessions; if we preferred to be faithful rather than successful, the walls of indifference to Jesus Christ would crumble. A handful of us could be ignored by society; but hundreds, thousands, millions of such servants would overwhelm the world. Christians filled with the authenticity, commitment, and generosity of Jesus would be the most spectacular sign in the history of the human race. The call of Jesus is revolutionary. If we implemented it, we would change the world in a few months. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB |
| 857:He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished — and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB |
| 858:At all times people had known greed: but at no time before this had greed outgrown a mere eagerness to acquire things and become an obsession that blurred the sight of everything else: an irresistible craving to get, to do, to contrive more and more - more today than yesterday, and more tomorrow than today: a demon riding on the necks of men and whipping their hearts forward toward goals that tauntingly glitter in the distance but dissolve into contemptible nothingness as soon as they are reached, always holding out the promise of new goals ahead - goals still more brilliant, more tempting as long as they lie on the horizon, and bound to wither into further nothingness as soon as they come within grasp: and that hunger, that insatiable hunger for ever new goals gnawing at man's soul: Nay, if you but knew it you would see the hell you are in ... ~ Muhammad Asad, #NFDB |
| 859:Are there any circumstances in which philosophy is not a power game, albeit one that it is conducted according to the most rigid rules, which are intended to direct us toward the truth? Anyone who feels confident enough to answer this question should ponder the words of Xenophanes: ‘No one knows, or will ever know, the truth about the gods and everything; for if one chanced to say the whole truth, nevertheless one would never know it.’ This accords with much twentieth-century philosophy, as it did with certain elements of Greek philosophy, and has done with skeptical philosophy through the centuries between. Yet if we cannot know the truth, the psychological argument becomes all but irresistible – he who musters the best argument wins. Fortunately we now recognise that philosophy is as much about the rules of this argument as it is about who wins. ~ Paul Strathern, #NFDB |
860:Let me go."
Holding her with gentle implacability, he loomed nearer. His answer was a whisper upon her tingling lips. "Oh, no, Sidonie. Never ask me to let you go. Not yet. Not before we've discovered paradise."
"Stop it." Her heart thumped so hard she thought it might burst.
"I would if I could."
She tensed against his grip. "Balderdash. You're just playing with me."
"Most definitely, tesoro. But your dilemma is your own fault. You're so irresistible and I find myself unable to... resist."
"Command your willpower, Mr. Merrick. Defeat this weakness."
"I try, dear lady. I try."
"I'll bite you," she said savagely, although she didn't move.
"I'll bite you too before I'm done." His gaze sharpened upon her lips, making her heart hammer a panicked warning. "Eat you like a ripe peach, all juice and sweetness. And lick my lips afterward. ~ Anna Campbell,#NFDB |
861:since the Depression, we bankers have had the leisure and . . . solitude, you might say, to think about the future. The Civil War left us with a federal government. The Great War made us a creditor nation. As bankers, we must anticipate what changes this war will thrust upon us.”
[…] The old man leaned forward and took a long breath. “I see the rise of this country to a height no country has occupied, ever,” he said quietly. “Not the Romans. Not the Carolingians. Not Genghis Khan or the Tatars or Napoleon’s France. Hah! You’re all looking at me like I’ve one foot in the funny farm. How is that possible? you ask. Because our dominance won’t arise from subjugating peoples. We’ll emerge from this war victorious and unscathed, and become bankers to the world. We’ll export our dreams, our language, our culture, our way of life. And it will prove irresistible. ~ Jennifer Egan,#NFDB |
| 862:MOHAMMED’S BIOGRAPHER He was an evangelical pastor, but not for long. Religious orthodoxy was not for him. An open-minded man, a passionate polemicist, he traded the church for the university. He studied at Princeton, taught in New York. He was a professor of Oriental languages and author of the first biography of Mohammed published in the United States. He wrote that Mohammed was an extraordinary man, a visionary blessed with irresistible magnetism, and also an impostor, a charlatan, a purveyor of illusions. But he thought no better of Christianity, which he considered “disastrous” in the epoch when Islam was founded. That was his first book. Later on, he wrote others. In the field of Middle Eastern affairs, few academics could compare. He lived indoors surrounded by towers of strange books. When he wasn’t writing, he read. He died in New York in 1859. His ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB |
| 863:It is a solemn duty to change lives positively.It is a noble honor to inspire and be there for others.It is an irresistible necessity to have empathy; to understand the situations and the reasons for the actions of others. Real mentoring is less of neither the candid smile nor the amicable friendship that exists between the mentor and the mentee and much more of the impacts. The indelible great footprints the mentor lives on the mind of the mentee in a life changing way. How the mentor changes the mentee from ordinariness to extra-ordinariness; the seed of purposefulness that is planted and nurtured for great fruits; the prayer from afar from the mentor to the mentee; and the great inspirations the mentee takes from the mentor to dare unrelentingly to face the storms regardless of how arduous the errand may be with or without the presence of the mentor ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB |
864:Lila smiles, reaches into the cloth covering whatever goodies are in the basket, and pulls out a concha. The top of the pastry is a swirl of colors- deep purple, inky blue, pink, green, gold. It reminds me of the galaxy, and I stare for a moment, mesmerized, before I take it from her.
My mouth begins to water. "This smells incredible," I say. "What do I owe you?"
"It's on the house," she says, already turning away. "Enjoy."
I want to argue, but the urge to bite into the pastry is nearly irresistible now. I've never had Mexican pastries before. But first... I pick up my phone from the bench and take a picture of the gorgeous creation. Then, putting it back down, I take a big bite and close my eyes. My mouth explodes with flavors and sensations- sweet, yeasty, warm. In another three bites, I've eaten the entire four-inch ball of dough and am licking my fingers. ~ Sandhya Menon,#NFDB |
| 865:We have seen mass protests about military invasions and about injustices of many kinds, but we are now entering a new era of understanding and for the first time we are going to see people protesting in large numbers about the conspiracy itself and not just its individual expressions, like globalisation and wars. It is a time when the irresistible force (the human awakening) is going eye-to-eye with what it thinks is the immovable object (the agenda for global control). Immovable it is not, as we shall see in due course, but it is not going to go quietly. We need to be strong and refuse to acquiesce to these control freaks under any circumstances, no matter what the scale of intimidation and provocation. The Illuminati families may have the money, governments, banks, corporations, police and military, but the humanity that they so mercilessly target has the sheer numbers. ~ David Icke, #NFDB |
| 866:We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them thatexcrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their attitudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body. Yet the very society from which the individual is inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate! Society as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self-contradictory rules. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB |
| 867:I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats - any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death - then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But don't you see, this is just the point - what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example. It has always been assumed that the most important things in the Gospels are the ethical maxims and commandments. But for me the most important thing is that Christ speaks in parables taken from life, that He explains the truth in terms of everyday reality. The idea that underlies this is that communion between mortals is immortal, and that the whole of life is symbolic because it is meaningful. ~ Boris Pasternak, #NFDB |
| 868:The essential task ahead requires formulating an adequate doctrine, upholding principles that have been thoroughly studied, and, beginning from these, giving birth to an Order. This elite, differentiating itself on a plane that is defined in terms of spiritual virility, decisiveness, and impersonality, and where every naturalistic bond loses its power and value, will be the bearer of a new principle of a higher authority and sovereignty; it will be able to denounce subversion and demagogy in whatever form they appear and reverse the downward spiral of the top-level cadres and the irresistible rise to power of the masses. From this elite, as if from a seed, a political organism and an integrated nation will emerge, enjoying the same dignity as the nations created by the great European political tradition. Anything short of this amounts only to a quagmire, dilettantism, irrealism, and obliquity. ~ Julius Evola, #NFDB |
| 869:[Australia] is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. ... If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB |
| 870:And she had had her pick of young men, was irresistible to the easily impressed. If she had married a weak man she would always have retained the upper hand. Not perhaps have known true happiness, but on the other hand never have known doubt. She would have stayed in character, stayed safe. Instead she had lighted on a strong man, and had instantly gone under. The doom, the terrible doom of a woman like that in thrall to the wrong man! Unused to circumspection, she had been revealed as simple, obstinate, and finally without resource, disarmed. This discovery had left her with a kind of hatred, which, as surely as anything else, would militate against any kind of happiness, which concessions might just bring about. But with a man like Jack, she thought, one could not count on happiness anyway. Women would find him attractive, and he would find them convenient. He was not made for conventional alliances. ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB |
871:Deliberately placed triggers for learned behaviours (programmes)
Although all abuse and trauma survivors may be “triggered” into intrusive flashbacks by present-day experiences that remind them of the trauma, the triggers deliberately installed by mind controllers are different, in that they are cues for conditioned behaviours. Some of these are behaviours such as going home, going outside (where someone is waiting), coming to the person who uses the trigger, or switching to a particular insider. Others are psychiatric symptoms such as flashbacks, self-harm, or suicide attempts, which are actually punishments given by insiders for disobedience or disloyalty. For many survivors, every trigger causes a switch to a part programmed to perform a particular behaviour associated with that trigger. For others, the front person remains present in the world but has an irresistible compulsion to perform the behaviour. ~ Alison Miller,#NFDB |
| 872:I felt myself floating between two worlds. There was the ocean, effectively infinite, falling away forever to the horizon. This morning it was placid, its grip on me loose and languorous. But I was lashed to its moods now. The attachment felt limitless, irresistible. I no longer thought of waves being carved in celestial workshops. I was getting more hardheaded. Now I knew they originated in distant storms, which moved, as it were, upon the face of the deep. But my utter absorption in surfing had no rational content. It simply compelled me; there was a deep mine of beauty and wonder in it. Beyond that, I could not have explained why I did it. I knew vaguely that it filled a psychic cavity of some kind—connected, perhaps, with leaving the church, or with, more likely, the slow drift away from my family—and that it had replaced many things that came before it. I was a sunburnt pagan now. I felt privy to mysteries. ~ William Finnegan, #NFDB |
873:Joe hid his grin. "A little grab-ass is not accosting." At the worst of times, Luna could amuse him. And now he finally had her where he wanted her.
...
Her mesmerizing eyes shone with annoyance and disbelief. "I barely knew you, Joe. I brought you a sandwich, and half a minute later you had your hands all over me."
Despite his aches and pains, the memory warmed Joe. Locking onto her gaze, he said in his defense, "You have that kind of bottom, honey. All round and soft."
Her color deepened. "Of all the stupid, sexist--"
"It's irresistible," Joe insisted, and meant it. "It begs for a man's hands. It--" There looked to be an explosion imminent, so Joe wisely let that go for now and instead distracted her. "And for your information, no. I didn't get beat up by a woman." He snorted. "How absurd is that?"
"I dunno." Her body vibrated with tension. "I'm ready to beat you up."
-Joe and Luna ~ Lori Foster,#NFDB |
874:We had always talked easily and well, and as we carried our drinks away, I asked him what he thought there was in us that forced us to tell stories to ourselves about our own lives - to make up stories that had such an arbitrary resemblance to our actual living. Why did we pick certain dots and connect them and not others? Why did we find it so irresistible to make ourselves into tragic figures with tragic flaws which were responsible for our pain? Maybe unfortunate things just happened; maybe there was just bad luck. Why did it seem like our greatest failures were caused by perversions in our souls?
'Perhaps it's evolutionary,' he said. ' If we saw ourselves in realistic proportions - how tiny we are, and how little ability we have to avoid the suffering that's an inevitable part of life - maybe we would be too discouraged to survive.'
'Or maybe,' I said, 'the truth is so diffuse that our minds cannot even hold on to it. ~ Sheila Heti,#NFDB |
875:Ever I am restless
I am athirst for the far.
My time passes by
And in an absent mind
I keep waiting at my window
Hoping and hoping you will come.
O how my entire being
Is eager for your intimate touch!
O you far, O you boundless far
So irresistible is the call of your flute
But I forget I have no wings
I am bound to one place.
I am listless, I am indifferent.
At the sun-tinged lazy midday
Among the rustling of the trees
In the play of light and shade
In the blue of the sky
I get a glimpse of your fugitive form.
O you far, O you boundless far
So irresistible is the call of your flute
But I forget my doors are barred.
Transcreation of perhaps the most romantic song Ami chanchal he, ami sudurer piyasi by Rabindranath Tagore. Transcreation by Kumud Biswas.A recording of this song by Debabrata Biswas is available.
Translated by Kumud Biswas
~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Call Of The Far
,#NFDB |
| 876:But they will build no more barricades, they will break no more soldiers' heads with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has taken care of all that. He is annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead noble boulevards as straight as an arrow—avenues which a cannon ball could traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible than the flesh and bones of men—boulevards whose stately edifices will never afford refuges and plotting places for starving, discontented revolution breeders. Five of these great thoroughfares radiate from one ample centre—a centre which is exceedingly well adapted to the accommodation of heavy artillery. The mobs used to riot there, but they must seek another rallying-place in future. And this ingenious Napoleon paves the streets of his great cities with a smooth, compact composition of asphaltum and sand. No more barricades of flagstones—no more assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB |
877:What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to Reason and Liberty: "Had we," said he, "a place to stand upon, we might raise the world."
The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, - and all it wants, - is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock and man began to contemplate redress. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB |
| 878:For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. 3 There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians. 4 Nay, it is said that she knew the speech of many other peoples also, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language, and some actually gave up their Macedonian dialect. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB |
| 879:This consideration takes us very close to what it is that makes Greek tragedy “tragic.” A play about an unambiguously heroic young woman, someone’s mother or sister or daughter, squaring off against an unambiguously villainous general or king, a man greedy for military renown or for power, would not be morally interesting. What gives Antigone and Agamemnon and other plays their special and unforgettable force is that they present the irresistible spectacle of two worldviews, each with its own force, harrowingly locked in irreducible conflict. And yet while the characters in these plays are unable to countenance, let alone accept, their opponents’ viewpoints, the audience is being invited to do just that—to weigh and compare the principles the characters adhere to, to reflect on the necessity of seeing the whole and on the difficulties of keeping the parts in equilibrium. Or, at least, to appreciate the costs of sacrificing some values for others, when the occasion demands. ~ Daniel Mendelsohn, #NFDB |
880:He stroked me on the head, and I nuzzled into him like a cat. I saw his chest heave, his lungs filling with his accomplishment, our accomplishment. I had never been so attracted to him, or any man, before.
Then he took me by the face and kissed me harder than I've ever been kissed. He kissed me over and over, his lips only loosely aiming for mine. He pulled my lips with the strong pucker of his mouth, then let them snap back. All I could do was give in. That's all I wanted to do.
We made our way to the couch, lips locked. He laid me back so my feet were off the ground and my head hung over the armrest. He massaged my neck hard, digging his fingers alongside my spine. His breathing took on a husky bite, an animal roughness that gave me goose bumps. His hands followed my curves, focusing on my hips and butt. I kicked my leg around and sat on his lap. It wasn't very comfortable, but it'd have to do.
"You are irresistible," he purred, and toyed with the straps of my dress. ~ Jessica Tom,#NFDB |
| 881:Numbers had no rhymes that could cause problems, so it was fine to call out one, two, and three by their proper names. But zero, which was even less likely to create rhyming difficulties, proved to be an irresistible target, and so aviators referred to zeros as “balls.” Wally Schirra, more than most astronauts, could barely contain himself. Throughout the eleven days of the Apollo 7 mission, Wally had taken special pleasure in calling down, “First off, we’ll read off balls,” or “Star difference angle was four balls,” or “Two balls twenty-two, plus four balls six, plus four balls one.” Inevitably, the capcom would follow that lead, since he could hardly say zero when Wally was talking balls. So the voice from the ground would answer the commander: “Okay, all balls minus twenty-six eighty-seven.” Then, finally, a female reporter at a NASA press conference during Apollo 7’s mission raised her hand and said, “I don’t understand about the balls.” All of the male reporters laughed until they cried. ~ Jeffrey Kluger, #NFDB |
| 882:His real gift was as a phrasemaker. “Shakespeare’s language,” says Stanley Wells, “has a quality, difficult to define, of memorability that has caused many phrases to enter the common language.” Among them: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, bag and baggage, play fast and loose, go down the primrose path, be in a pickle, budge an inch, the milk of human kindness, more sinned against than sinning, remembrance of things past, beggar all description, cold comfort, to thine own self be true, more in sorrow than in anger, the wish is father to the thought, salad days, flesh and blood, foul play, tower of strength, be cruel to be kind, blinking idiot, with bated breath, tower of strength, pomp and circumstance, foregone conclusion—and many others so repetitiously irresistible that we have debased them into clichés. He was so prolific that he could (in Hamlet) put two in a single sentence: “Though I am native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.” If ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB |
| 883:All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has been a passing passion: they have early seen its hopelessness and turned to more practical things. But others remain all their lives the devout lovers of reality: though the manner of their love, the vision which they make to themselves of the beloved object varies enormously. Some see Truth as Dante saw Beatrice: an adorable yet intangible figure, found in this world yet revealing the next. To others she seems rather an evil but an irresistible enchantress: enticing, demanding payment and betraying her lover at the last. Some have seen her in a test tube, and some in a poet’s dream: some before the altar, others in the slime. The extreme pragmatists have even sought her in the kitchen; declaring that she may best be recognized by her utility. Last stage of all, the philosophic sceptic has comforted an unsuccessful courtship by assuring himself that his mistress is not really there. ~ Evelyn Underhill, #NFDB |
| 884:The spectacle's instruction and the spectators' ignorance are wrongly seen as antagonistic factors when in fact they give birth to each other. In the same way, the computer's binary language is an irresistible inducement to the continual and unreserved acceptance of what has been programmed according to the wishes of someone else and passes for the timeless source of a superior, impartial and total logic. Such progress, such speed, such breadth of vocabulary! Political? Social? Make your choice. You cannot have both. My own choice is inescapable. They are jeering at us, and we know whom these programs are for. Thus it is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are still unable to read, for reading demands making judgements at every line; and is the only access to the wealth of pre-spectacular human experience. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak. ~ Guy Debord, #NFDB |
885:Communicate like the brilliant and irresistible woman you are. Refrain from pointing fingers or proving your case by listing all the ways he’s done you wrong. Look to see the truth of the situation. Perhaps the disagreement is easily resolvable. Perhaps you can let go of being right about how wrong he is and move on. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s an excellent opportunity to get out of an unsatisfying, dead-end relationship.
When a relationship doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong or deficient in either person. It just means that you’re not a good fit for one another. It’s that simple.
Spiritually, it’s selfish to hold on to something that’s not working. You’re stealing time from him (and yourself) that could be spent in another, more harmonious experience.
The bottom line is this: men don’t want to be changed or improved. Allow the both of you to be who you are. Be honest and straight in your communications, but don’t try to change, improve, or make him into something he’s not. ~ Marie Forleo,#NFDB |
| 886:But the question is irresistible. Where did we come from—what was the spark that lit life’s fire? These days, many scientists are venturing where Darwin could not dare. Let’s join them and go back to the beginning to talk about … the beginning. Asking the big question sounds an awful lot like asking, “Is there a god who runs the show?” There is an essential difference, however. Every other aspect of life that was once attributed to divine intent is now elegantly and completely explained in the context of evolutionary science. For me, there is no reason to think that the origin of life is any different. I am open-minded, and have no problem with most religions, but religious explanations are unsatisfactory. They don’t take me anywhere; you either believe them or you don’t, and that’s that. Scientific theories of the origin of life are open to questions, to tests, to revisions, to replacement with new and more insightful theories. One path leads to a dead halt. The other leads to thrilling, limitless forward motion. ~ Bill Nye, #NFDB |
887:It’s Welsh,” he said.
Helen shook her head with a laugh of wondering disbelief. “You know it?”
“‘A Ei Di’r Deryn Du.’ Every Welshman is born knowing it.”
“What is it about?”
“A lover who asks a blackbird to carry a message to his sweetheart.”
“Why can’t he go to her himself?” Helen realized they were both speaking in hushed tones, as if they were exchanging secrets.
“He can’t find her. He’s too deep in love--it keeps him from seeing clearly.”
“Does the blackbird find her?”
“The song doesn’t say,” he said with a shrug.
“But I must know the ending to the story,” Helen protested.
Winterborne laughed. It was an irresistible sound, rough-soft and sly. When he replied, his accent had thickened. “That’s what comes o’ reading novels, it is. The story needs no ending. That’s not what matters.”
“What matters, then?” she dared to ask.
His dark gaze held hers. “That he loves. That he’s searching. Like the rest of us poor devils, he has no way of knowing if he’ll ever have his heart’s desire. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
| 888:Let’s look at the Spirit’s role in union. Our lives are not moving from sinner to saint. Our lives are now moving from Glory to Glory. There is a massive difference. You are starting on a full tank, and it never runs out. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s Glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing Glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18, NIV). This verse is not an admission of your present lack. You have already been restored to His image. This verse speaks of a greater and greater manifestation of what you already possess. This transformation literally means “metamorphosis” or “transfiguration.”65 You are already a son, and the world is waiting for the sons to fully manifest the Glory they carry in Christ. Manifestation is not a work. It is an effortless byproduct of believing. Shining forth who you are. We reflect Him best by gazing at Him continually. You can’t even hold the gaze on your own – you’re locked into a tractor beam of irresistible grace! ~ John Crowder, #NFDB |
| 889:Although most people never overcome the habit of berating the world for their difficulties, those who are too weak to make a stand against reality have no choice but to obliterate themselves by identifying with it. They are never rationally reconciled to civilization. Instead, they bow to it, secretly accepting the identity of reason and domination, of civilization and the ideal, however much they may shrug their shoulders. Well-informed cynicism is only another mode of conformity. These people willingly embrace or force themselves to accept the rule of the stronger as the eternal norm. Their whole life is a continuous effort to suppress and abase nature, inwardly or outwardly, and to identify themselves with its more powerful surrogates—the race, fatherland, leader, cliques, and tradition. For them, all these words mean the same thing—the irresistible reality that must be honored and obeyed. However, their own natural impulses, those antagonistic to the various demands of civilization, lead a devious undercover life within them. ~ Max Horkheimer, #NFDB |
| 890:You’re telling me that I ate some kind of aphrodisiac? Didn’t just eat it but practically overdosed on it? And you think it’s funny?” “Not at all.” The grin faded from his face and he looked at her intently. “In a very short period of time, none of us is going to think it’s funny.” “What do you mean none of us? How can it affect you two?” “We can feel your emotions, remember?” Deep tapped the side of his head. “Everything you feel, we, feel.” “But it won’t just be us—though we’ll be affected most deeply.” Lock had a grim look on his face. “It’s going to affect every male in your immediate vicinity.” “Okay, I get the emotions thing. But how is it going to affect everyone else?” “Your scent,” Deep answered for his brother. “You already smell like a female in heat whenever you’re around Lock and me. This is only going to make it worse—much worse.” He started to pace as he talked. “You already look irresistible and now you’ll smell irresistible as well. We’re going to have to warn off every other male at the party tonight.” Lock ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB |
| 891:Estella was the inspiration of it, and the heart of it, of course. But, though she had taken such strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so set upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had been all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest her with any attributes save those she possessed. I mention this in this place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the clue by which I am to be followed into my poor labyrinth. According to my experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB |
| 892:It is impossible to behold these waves without feeling a conviction that an island, though built of the hardest rock, let it be porphyry, granite, or quartz, would ultimately yield and be demolished by such an irresistible power. Yet these low, insignificant coral-islets stand and are victorious: for here another power, as an antagonist, takes part in the contest. The organic forces separate the atoms of carbonate of lime, one by one, from the foaming breakers, and unite them into a symmetrical structure. Let the hurricane tear up its thousand huge fragments; yet what will that tell against the accumulated labour of myriads of architects at work night and day, month after month? […] We feel surprise when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals! This is a wonder which does not at first strike the eye of the body, but, after reflection, the eye of reason. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB |
893:Even after three decades of marriage, Evie's heart still skipped a beat at the sight of her husband, formerly Lord St. Vincent, now the Duke of Kingston. Sebastian had matured into a magnificent man with a presence that both intimidated and dazzled. Since ascending to the dukedom ten years ago, he had acquired a veneer of dignity that befitted a man of his considerable power. But no one could look into those remarkable blue eyes, alive with glints of fire and ice, without recalling that he had once been the most wicked rake in England. He still was- Evie could attest to that.
Time had treated Sebastian lovingly, and always would. He was a beautiful man, lean and elegant, his tawny-golden hair now lightly brushed with silver at the temples. A lion in winter, whom no one could cross except at their peril. Maturity had given him a look of cool, incisive authority, the sense of a man who had seen and experienced enough that he could rarely, if ever, be outmaneuvered. But when something amused or touched him, his smile was both incandescent and irresistible. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
894:firstly, what "really" attracted me to Indo-European, as well as to English, Polish, and Russian philology, wasn't the seductive variety of linguistic forms, or the infinitely picturesque accidents that fill the histories of words and dialects, but rather the fact that these obey lays that can be rigorously described, and that these laws, such as Grimm's Law in Germanic philology, or the principles of Slavic palatalization, which lie behind all those wonderful alveolar fricatives in Russia and the Auvergne, promised to submit the irresistible and etrnal movement of languages no longer to mere chance, but to something that closely resembled calculation;
- and that, secondly, and consequently, the noblest aspect of linguistics (and if I had been familiar with Trouetzkoy's phonology and with Jakobson, this conclusion would have been even more obvious) was its power of deduction -- but that there remained something even nobler, which was the terrain of pure deduction, in other words, mathematics. And that it is why I absolutely had to become a mathematician. ~ Jacques Roubaud,#NFDB |
895:She felt as wild and free as a little kid, running up the steps with Shane in hot pursuit, and when he grabbed her around the waist and spun her around into his room and kicked the door shut, she squealed in delight. And wiggled to fit herself against his warm, hard body as she kissed him again, breathless and flying.
He kissed like their lives depended on it. Like it was an Olympic event and he intended to earn a medal. Somewhere in the back of her head she was chattering to herself, warning that this was going to go too far, that she was just making things worse for both of them, but she couldn't help it. Before long they were stretched out together on Shane's bed, and his big, warm hands were teasing under the hem of her shirt, stroking the fluttering skin of her stomach and stealing her breath. She lost it all when he spread his fingers out, pressing his palm flat against her, and she felt an almost irresistible impulse to feel those hands all over. Everywhere. Her heart was hammering hard enough to make her dizzy, and it was all just so ...
Perfect. ~ Rachel Caine,#NFDB |
| 896:Finally, if you ask why this complete picture of the Antichrist is given us in Scripture, my answer is: in order that we might clearly recognize it when it is revealed. And what then must we do when we see it is come? Must we oppose it, must we fight it with the sword? That, of course, is completely impossible. It will come. It must come. And to oppose its coming is entirely vain. Its coming is irresistible. And the battle is not one of, the sword. But as the text has it, he that is for captivity, into captivity he goeth; and if any man shall kill with the sword, with the sword he must be killed. No, we cannot oppose the power of Antichrist by main force. When that world-power comes and reigns supreme, we shall be submissive to the last, as far as God and our conscience permit. But here is the patience and the faith of the saints, that in all these times they remain faithful, and refuse to deny the Christ. They wait for the day of His coming. May God give us grace to be found faithful at all times, and watching and praying, so that no one may take our crown. ~ Herman Hoeksema, #NFDB |
| 897:Tras verme rechazado en un par de tiendas de artículos de deporte («¡Chaval, si hay algo que el mundo no necesita son más zapatillas de atletismo!»), me recorrí todo el Pacífico Noroeste, asistiendo a varias competiciones en pista. Entre carrera y carrera charlaba con entrenadores, corredores y aficionados, y les mostraba mi mercancía. La respuesta siempre era la misma. No daba abasto con tanto pedido. De regreso a Portland, iba dándole vueltas a mi repentino éxito de ventas. Había sido incapaz de vender enciclopedias, y por añadidura era un trabajo que despreciaba. Vendiendo fondos mutuos me había ido un poco mejor, pero me hacía sentirme vacío. Entonces ¿por qué vender zapatillas era tan distinto? Comprendí que era porque no estaba vendiendo nada. Yo creía que correr era bueno. Pensaba que, si la gente corría unas cuantas millas cada día, el mundo sería un lugar mejor, y estaba convencido de que aquellas deportivas eran las mejores para correr. La gente percibía que creía en ello, y quería parte de dicha fe para sí misma. «Es la fe», decidí. «La fe es irresistible.» ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB |
| 898:First time they met was on a cruise, if you think of “cruise” in maybe more of a specialized way. In the wake of her separation, back in what still isn’t quite The Day, from her then husband, Horst Loeffler, after too many hours indoors with the blinds drawn listening on endless repeat to Stevie Nicks singing “Landslide” on a compilation tape she ignored the rest of, drinking horrible Crown Royal Shirley Temples and chasing them with more grenadine directly from the bottle and going through a bushel per day of Kleenex, Maxine finally allowed her friend Heidi to convince her that a Caribbean cruise would somehow upgrade her mental prognosis. One day she went sniffling down the hall from her office and into the In ’n’ Out Travel Agency, where she found undusted surfaces, beat-up furniture, a disheveled model of an ocean liner that shared a number of design elements with RMS Titanic. “You’re in luck. We’ve just had a . . .” Long pause, no eye contact. “Cancellation,” suggested Maxine. “You could say.” The price was irresistible. To anyone in their right mind, too much so. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB |
| 899:There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-- you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB |
900:Does the blackbird find her?”
“The song doesn’t say,” he said with a shrug.
“But I must know the ending to the story,” Helen protested.
Winterborne laughed. It was an irresistible sound, rough-soft and sly. When he replied, his accent had thickened. “That’s what comes o’ reading novels, it is. The story needs no ending. That’s not what matters.”
“What matters, then?” she dared to ask.
His dark gaze held hers. “That he loves. That he’s searching. Like the rest of us poor devils, he has no way of knowing if he’ll ever have his heart’s desire.”
And you? Helen longed to ask. What are you searching for? The question was too personal to ask even of someone she had known for a long time, much less a stranger. Even so, the words hovered on her tongue, begging to be spoken. She looked away and fought to hold them back. When she returned her gaze to Winterborne, his expression had become remote again. Which was a relief, because for a moment she’d had the alarming feeling that she was only a breath away from confiding every private thought and wish that she’d never told anyone. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
901:Four Powers Of The Mother
In talking about the four powers of the Mother, it helps to know that in India, traditionally, the evolutionary principle of creation is approached, and adored, as the great Mother. Sri Aurobindo distinguishes four main powers and personalities through which this evolutionary force manifests.
Maheshwari - One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness.
Mahakali - Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force.
Mahalakshmi - A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace.
Mahasaraswati - The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things.
~ ?, https://www.auroville.com/silver-ring-mother-s-symbol.html,#NFDB |
| 902:Excessive application during four days of the week is frequently the real cause of the idleness of the other three, so much and so loudly complained of. Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together, is in most men naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes, too, of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous, and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, brings on the peculiar infirmity of the trade. If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate than to animate the application of many of their workmen. It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB |
| 903:It may seem marvellous that, with the world before her—kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure—free to return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being—and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her—it may seem marvellous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB |
904:From the fourth century on, the stelae and monuments of the great kings abound in insensate boasts of power and vain threats against those who might ransack their tombs or deface their inscriptions-events that nevertheless repeatedly took place. Like Marduk in the Akkadian version of the Creation Epic, the new Bronze Age kings mounted their chariots "irresistible and terrifying," "versed in ravage, in destruction skilled...wrapped in an armor of terror." With such sick-making sentiments we are still all too familiar: they are mimicked in the nuclear press releases of the Pentagon.
Such constant assertions of power were doubtless efforts to make conquest easy by terrifying the enemy beforehand. But they also testify to an increase of irrationality, almost proportional to the instruments of destruction that were available: something we have seen again in our own time. This paranoia was so methodical that the conqueror, on more than one occasion, would level a city to the ground, only to build it again immediately on the same site, thus demonstrating his ambivalent role as destroyer-creator, or devil-god, in one. ~ Lewis Mumford,#NFDB |
905:If you want to be irresistible and have magical relationships, you’ve got to stop looking at men like they are a different species, out to do you wrong. This attitude is no different from racial or religious discrimination. Start looking at men and women as unique and individual people.
Many women ask, “Where are all the real men?” or complain, “There just aren’t enough single men my age. They all want younger women.” Women who make remarks like these fail to see, unbeknownst to themselves, that they harbor a deep-seated contempt for men. They unconsciously look for ways to prove men do it wrong, think wrong, behave wrong, and are wrong. It’s impossible to attract a loving and satisfying relationship with a man, and have it last, if you are a secret or not-so-secret man hater.
Here are some tendencies to watch out for:
You compete with men professionally to prove women are better.
You look for ways to prove women have it harder.
You make or laugh at male-bashing jokes.
You hold resentments, judgments, or complaints against your father.
You spend more time complaining about men than actually dating them. ~ Marie Forleo,#NFDB |
| 906:God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man's business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world's population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation. ~ John Piper, #NFDB |
907:The formal dinner was a great success. Every time Harry glanced at the other end of the long table, he saw that Poppy was acquitting herself splendidly. She was relaxed and smiling, taking part in conversation, appearing to charm her companions. It was exactly as Harry had expected: the same qualities that were considered faults in an unmarried girl were admired in a married woman. Poppy's acute observations and her enjoyment of lively debate made her far more interesting than a demure society miss with a modest downcast gaze.
She was breathtaking in the violet gown, her slender neck encircled with diamonds, her hair rich with dark fire. Nature had blessed her with abundant beauty. But it was her smile that made her irresistible, a smile so sweet and brilliant that it warmed him from the inside out.
Harry wished she would smile at him like that. She had, in the beginning. There had to be something that would induce her to warm to him, to like him again. Everyone had a weakness.
In the meantime, Harry stole glances of her whenever he could, his lovely and distant wife... and he drank in the smiles she gave to other people. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
| 908:The second brother, Seriosha, had dark curly hair, a turned-up, strongly pronounced nose, very bright red lips (which, never being quite shut, showed a row of white teeth), beautiful dark-blue eyes, and an uncommonly bold expression of face. He never smiled but was either wholly serious or laughing a clear, merry, agreeable laugh. His striking good looks had captivated me from the first, and I felt an irresistible attraction towards him. Only to see him filled me with pleasure, and at one time my whole mental faculties used to be concentrated in the wish that I might do so. If three or four days passed without my seeing him I felt listless and ready to cry. Awake or asleep, I was forever dreaming of him. On going to bed I used to see him in my dreams, and when I had shut my eyes and called up a picture of him I hugged the vision as my choicest delight. So much store did I set upon this feeling for my friend that I never mentioned it to any one. Nevertheless, it must have annoyed him to see my admiring eyes constantly fixed upon him, or else he must have felt no reciprocal attraction, for he always preferred to play and talk with Woloda. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB |
| 909:13. Baby’s waketimes are over-stimulating or too long. Explanation/Recommendation: When searching for the solution to naptime challenges, parents often overlook the quality of the waketime that preceded the nap. Remember, everything is connected. Waketimes affect naps just like naps affect waketimes. Over-tired and over-stimulated babies become hyper-alert, fighting off sleep through crying. If this is a regular problem, shortening your baby’s waketime by 15-minute increments might help. Also, be aware of the types of activities you and your baby are involved in. Are you having too many visitors drop by who have an irresistible urge to entertain your baby? Was your baby being exposed to Dad’s loud friends as they sat watching a sporting event? Might Mom be on the go too much? When Baby is along for the ride, the coming and going, the new sights and sounds, and the absence of predictability all work against good nap behavior. That is because catnaps in a car seat are no substitute for a full nap in the crib. An occasional nap in the car seat will not cause trouble, but it should not be the norm, especially during the first six months of your baby’s life. ~ Gary Ezzo, #NFDB |
| 910:I say, then, that hereditary States, accustomed to the family of their Prince, are maintained with far less difficulty than new States, since all that is required is that the Prince shall not depart from the usages of his ancestors, trusting for the rest to deal with events as they arise. So that if an hereditary Prince be of average address, he will always maintain himself in his Princedom, unless deprived of it by some extraordinary and irresistible force; and even if so deprived will recover it, should any, even the least, mishap overtake the usurper. We have in Italy an example of this in the Duke of Ferrara, who never could have withstood the attacks of the Venetians in 1484, nor those of Pope Julius in 1510, had not his authority in that State been consolidated by time. For since a Prince by birth has fewer occasions and less need to give offence, he ought to be better loved, and will naturally be popular with his subjects unless outrageous vices make him odious. Moreover, the very antiquity and continuance of his rule will efface the memories and causes which lead to innovation. For one change always leaves a dovetail into which another will fit. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB |
911:Rama continued: “I do not know whether there are men born outside humanity, or whether some men are so human as to make others seem unreal. Perhaps a godling lives on earth now and then. Joseph has strength beyond vision of shattering, he has the calm of mountains, and his emotion is as wild and fierce and sharp as the lightning and just as reasonless as far as I can see or know. When you are away from him, try thinking of him and you’ll see what I mean. His figure will grow huge, until it tops the mountains, and his force will be like the irresistible plunging of the wind. Benjy is dead. You cannot think of Joseph dying. He is eternal. His father died, and it was not a death.” Her mouth moved helplessly, searching for words. She cried as though in pain, “I tell you this man is not a man, unless he is all men. The strength, the resistance, the long and stumbling thinking of all men, and all the joy and suffering, too, cancelling each other out and yet remaining in the contents. He is all these, a repository for a little piece of each man’s soul, and more than that, a symbol of the earth’s soul.”
Her eyes dropped and her hand withdrew. “I said a door was open. ~ John Steinbeck,#NFDB |
| 912:They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals, whose existence is only rendered possible through the high organization of civilized crowds. Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities, and their audacities are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence, the emotion and principle, every great and every insignificant thought, belongs not to the individual, but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man brings sudden and profound trouble to the heart. To the sentiment of one's loneliness, to the loneliness of one's thoughts and one's sensations. To the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous. A suggestion of things vague uncontrollable and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB |
| 913:But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
| 914:Due to some dim but irresistible notion of the way things are, it is simply not possible, out of order, not apprpriate to the situation at hand, if, within the circle of those who are experienced and advanced in years, the young person declaims ethical generalities. Young people will again and again find themselves in a situation that is so irritating, astounding, and incomprehensible to them that their word falls on deaf ears, while the word of an older person is heard and has weight even though its content is no different at all. It will be a sign of maturity or immaturity whether this experience leads them to understand that what is at stake here is not the stubborn self-satisfaction of old age, or the anxious effort to keep youth in their place, but the pereservation or violation of an essential ethical law. Ethical discourse needs authorization, which youth are simply not able to bestow upon themselves, even if they speak out of the purest pathos of their ethical conviction. Ethical discourse does not merely depend on the correct content of what is said, but also on the speaker being authorized to say it. Its validity depends not only on what is said, but also on who says it. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB |
| 915:As long as he retains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a few new friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is much the same...And while he thinks that, we do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognised, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn’t been doing very well lately. This dim uneasiness needs careful handling. If it gets too strong it may wake him up...if you suppress it entirely...we lose an element in the situation which can be turned to good account. If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency. It increases the patient’s reluctance to think about the Enemy. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of Him involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance is increased tenfold...In this state your patient will not omit, but he will increasingly dislike, his religious duties...He will want his prayers to be unreal, for he will dread nothing so much as effective contact with the Enemy. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
| 916:God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
| 917:A German admiral, Henning von Holtzendorff, came up with a plan so irresistible it succeeded in bringing agreement between supporters and opponents of unrestricted warfare. By turning Germany’s U-boats loose, and allowing their captains to sink every vessel that entered the “war zone,” Holtzendorff proposed to end the war in six months. Not five, not seven, but six. He calculated that for the plan to succeed, it had to begin on February 1, 1917, not a day later. Whether or not the campaign drew America into the war didn’t matter, he argued, for the war would be over before American forces could be mobilized. The plan, like its territorial equivalent, the Schlieffen plan, was a model of methodical German thinking, though no one seemed to recognize that it too embodied a large measure of self-delusion. Holtzendorff bragged, “I guarantee upon my word as a naval officer that no American will set foot on the Continent!” Germany’s top civilian and military leaders converged on Kaiser Wilhelm’s castle at Pless on January 8, 1917, to consider the plan, and the next evening Wilhelm, in his role as supreme military commander, signed an order to put it into action, a decision that would prove one of the most fateful of the war. ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB |
| 918:Sophia, I’m afraid you’re going to have to face the fact that your sister may not be as strong as you think. There’s no way she can resist Baird indefinitely.” She crossed her arms over her full breasts, a look of stubborn refusal in her lovely eyes. “You Kindred think you’re so hot. He’s an okay looking guy but no man is irresistible.” “He’s not but his mating scent is—at least to your sister.” Sylvan didn’t know why he was telling her this—it would only make her angrier, he was sure. But he wanted to soften the blow for her, help her accept the inevitable—that no matter how much she loved her sister, she was destined to lose Olivia to another who loved and needed her more. “His mating scent? What are you talking about?” Sophia’s green eyes narrowed and she leaned forward. “When the Kindred claim a mate, our body chemistry changes in order to attract them. We start releasing some very strong pheromones that are tailored specifically to their DNA. Those pheromones act as an irresistible enticement to our prospective mates.” Sylvan shrugged. “Very few women in any of the trade worlds we have visited have been able to overcome their influence and resist the temptation to bond with the warrior who has chosen them.” “My ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB |
| 919:A world conqueror had appeared in modern times. Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon—another such as these, appearing in the age of electricity, of rotary presses and radio, when nine men out of ten would have said it was impossible. A world conqueror has to be a man of few ideas, and those fixed; a peculiar combination of exactly the right qualities, both good and bad—iron determination, irresistible energy, and no scruples of any sort. He has to know what he wants, and permit no obstacle to stand in the way of his getting it. He has to understand the minds of other men, both foes and friends, and what greeds, fears, hates, jealousies will move them to action. He must understand the mass mind, the ideals or delusions which sway it; he must be enough of a fanatic to talk their language, though not enough to be controlled by it. He must believe in nothing but his own destiny, the glorified image of himself on the screen of history; whole races of mankind made over in his own image and according to his will. To accomplish that purpose he must be liar, thief, and murderer upon a world-wide scale; he must be ready without hesitation to commit every crime his own interest commands, whether upon individuals or nations. ~ Upton Sinclair, #NFDB |
920:The Linden Avenue
A house of unimagined beauty
Is set in parkland, cool and dark;
Gates with an arch; then meadows, hillocks,
And oats and woods beyond the park.
Here, with their crowns each other hiding,
Enormous linden trees engage
In dusky, quiet celebration
Of their two hundred years of age.
And underneath their vaulted branches,
Across the regularly drawn
Symmetric avenues, grow flowers
In flower-beds upon a lawn.
Beneath the trees, on sandy pathways,
Not one bright spot relieves the dark,
Save-like an opening in a tunnelThe distant entrance of the park.
But now the blossom-time is starting,
The walled-in linden trees reveal
And spread about within their shadow
Their irresistible appeal.
The visitors, in summer clothing,
While walking on the crunchy sand,
Breathe in unfathomable fragrance
Which only bees can understand.
This gripping scent is theme and subject,
Whereas-however well they lookThe flower-beds, the lawn, the garden,
Are but the cover of a book.
The clustered, wax-bespattered flowers
On massive trees, sedate and old,
Lit up by raindrops, burn and sparkle
Above the mansion they enfold.
135
~ Boris Pasternak,#NFDB |
921:The fairy tale is accused of giving children a false impression of the world they live in. But I think no literature that children could read gives them less of a false impression. I think what profess to be realistic stories for children are far more likely to deceive them. I never expected the real world to be like the fairy tales. I think that I did expect school to be like the school stories. The fantasies did not deceive me: the school stories did. All stories in which children have adventures and successes which are possible, in the sense that they do not break the laws of nature, but almost infinitely improbable, are in more danger than the fairy tales of raising false expectations…
This distinction holds for adult reading too. The dangerous fantasy is always superficially realistic. The real victim of wishful reverie does not batten on the Odyssey, The Tempest, or The Worm Ouroboros: he (or she) prefers stories about millionaires, irresistible beauties, posh hotels, palm beaches and bedroom scenes—things that really might happen, that ought to happen, that would have happened if the reader had had a fair chance. For, as I say, there are two kinds of longing. The one is an askesis, a spiritual exercise, and the other is a disease. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB |
922:From my father I had learned that books were to be either adored or exiled. Books that were of God—books written by the Mormon prophets or the Founding Fathers—were not to be studied so much as cherished, like a thing perfect in itself. I had been taught to read the words of men like Madison as a cast into which I ought to pour the plaster of my own mind, to be reshaped according to the contours of their faultless model. I read them to learn what to think, not how to think for myself. Books that were not of God were banished; they were a danger, powerful and irresistible in their cunning.
To write my essay I had to read books differently, without giving myself over to either fear or adoration. Because Burke had defended the British monarchy, Dad would have said he was an agent of tyranny. He wouldn’t have wanted the book in the house. There was a thrill in trusting myself to read the words. I felt a similar thrill in reading Madison, Hamilton and Jay, especially on those occasions when I discarded their conclusions in favor of Burke’s, or when it seemed to me that their ideas were not really different in substance, only in form. There were wonderful suppositions embedded in this method of reading: that books are not tricks, and that I was not feeble. ~ Tara Westover,#NFDB |
923:He is romantic—romantic,” he repeated. “And that is very bad—very bad. . . . Very good, too,” he added. “But is he?” I queried.
‘“Gewiss,” he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum, but without looking at me. “Evident! What is it that by inward pain makes him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes him—exist?”
‘At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim’s existence—starting from a country parsonage, blurred by crowds of men as by clouds of dust, silenced by the clashing claims of life and death in a material world—but his imperishable reality came to me with a convincing, with an irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in our progress through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting gleams of light and the sudden revelations of human figures stealing with flickering flames within unfathomable and pellucid depths, we had approached nearer to absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. “Perhaps he is,” I admitted with a slight laugh, whose unexpectedly loud reverberation made me lower my voice directly; “but I am sure you are.” With his head dropping on his breast and the light held high he began to walk again. “Well—I exist, too,” he said. ~ Joseph Conrad,#NFDB |
924:You hold Mr. Winterborne in esteem, then?"
"I do, my lady. Oh, I know he's called an upstart by his social betters. But to the real London- the hundreds of thousands who work every blessed day and scrape by as best we can- Winterborne is a legend. He's done what most people don't dare dream of. A shop boy, he was, and now everyone from the queen down to any common beggar knows his name. It gives people reason to hope they might rise above their circumstances." Smiling slightly, the housekeeper had added, "And none can deny he's a handsome, well-made chap, for all that he's as brown as a gypsy. Any woman, highborn or low, would be tempted."
Helen couldn't deny that Mr. Winterborne's personal attractions were high on her list of considerations. A man in his prime, radiating that remarkable energy, a kind of animal vitality that she found both frightening and irresistible.
But there was something else about him... a lure more potent than any other. It happened during his rare moments of tenderness with her, when it seemed as if the deep, tightly locked cache of sadness in her heart was about to break open. He was the only person who had ever approached that trapped place, who might someday be able to shatter the loneliness that had always held fast inside her. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
925:Art is the human language of the nervous plane, intended to express and communicate the Divine, who in the domain of sensation manifests as beauty.
The purpose of art is therefore to give those for whom it is meant a freer and more perfect communion with the Supreme Reality. The first contact with this Supreme Reality expresses itself in our consciousness by a flowering of the being in a plenitude of vast and peaceful delight. Each time that art can give the spectator this contact with the infinite, however fleetingly, it fulfils its aim; it has shown itself worthy of its mission. Thus no art which has for many centuries moved and delighted a people can be dismissed, since it has at least partially fulfilled its mission - to be the powerful and more or less perfect utterance of that which is to be expressed. What makes it difficult for the sensibility of a nation to enjoy the delight that another nation finds in one art or another is the habitual limitation of the nervous being which, even more than the mental being, is naturally exclusive in its ability to perceive the Divine and which, when it has entered into relation with Him through certain forms, feels an almost irresistible reluctance to recognise Him through other forms of sensation. ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, 122,#NFDB |
| 926:It was something I simply couldn’t fathom … what type of person would shoot a terrified teenage elephant, and a female at that? For a tawdry fireside trophy? For the pleasure of the kill? And what kind of reserve owner would hawk a vulnerable young animal for such a reason? I have never had a problem with hunting for the pot. Every living thing on this planet hunts for sustenance one way or the other, from the mighty microbe upwards. Survival of the fittest is, like it or not, the way of this world. But hunting for pleasure, killing only for the thrill of it, is to me an anathema. I have met plenty of trophy hunters. They are, of course, all naturalists; they all know and love the bush; and they all justify their action in conservation speak, peppered with all the right buzz words. The truth is, though, that they harbour a hidden impulse to kill, which can only be satisfied by the violent death of another life form by their hand. And they will go to inordinate lengths to satisfy, and above all justify, this apparently irresistible urge. Besides, adding to the absurdity of their claims, there is not an animal alive that is even vaguely a match for today’s weaponry. The modern high-powered hunting rifle with telescopic sights puts paid to any argument about sportsmanship. ~ Lawrence Anthony, #NFDB |
927:I have told you, reader, that I had learned to love Mr. Rochester; I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me—because I might pass hours in his presence and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction—because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady—because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her—because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.
There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances; though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy, if a woman in my position could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous, or very rarely;—the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. ~ Charlotte Bront,#NFDB |
928:I wish I knew your body was this warm before. I would have cuddled up with you every night." She stiffened suddenly, as if realizing what she'd just said. "Um, that didn't quite come out the way I intended it. I just meant..."
"Forget about it," he said softly. "I know what you meant. It's completely understandable that you'd want to cuddle up with me. I'm pretty irresistible."
Danica laughed, relaxing against him again. "Yeah, right. You're just a big, strong guy with a soft, gooey center."
His mouth twitched. "Exactly."
"Then tell me something. If you're so soft and gooey, why is there something hard poking me in the butt?"
It would have been Clayne's turn to stiffen, but he wasn't sure he could get any harder without exploding. But hell, it'd been a long time since he'd been this close to a woman this beautiful and sexy. Check that. He'd never been this close to a woman this beautiful and sexy--ever.
"Um...sorry."
He was so embarrassed he could barely get the word out. He would have backed away some, but Danica still had a firm grip on his arm and didn't seem inclined to let him go.
"Forget about it." She tilted her head to look at him, her dark eyes hidden beneath her lashes. "It's completely understandable that cuddling up with me would do that to you. I'm pretty irresistible. ~ Paige Tyler,#NFDB |
| 929:when it comes to empathy and compassion, rich people tend to suck. This has been explored at length in a series of studies by Dacher Keltner of UC Berkeley. Across the socioeconomic spectrum, on the average, the wealthier people are, the less empathy they report for people in distress and the less compassionately they act. Moreover, wealthier people are less adept at recognizing other people’s emotions and in experimental settings are greedier and more likely to cheat or steal. Two of the findings were picked up by the media as irresistible: (a) wealthier people (as assessed by the cost of the car they were driving) are less likely than poor people to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks; (b) suppose there’s a bowl of candy in the lab; invite test subjects, after they finish doing some task, to grab some candy on the way out, telling them that whatever’s left over will be given to some kids—the wealthier take more candy.25 So do miserable, greedy, unempathic people become wealthy, or does being wealthy increase the odds of a person’s becoming that way? As a cool manipulation, Keltner primed subjects to focus either on their socioeconomic success (by asking them to compare themselves with people less well off than them) or on the opposite. Make people feel wealthy, and they take more candy from children. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB |
930:Nix to Declan:
Begin transcript—
Testing. Hello, hellooo, anybody out there? Check, check, one, two. Soft pee. Puh, puh. Resonance! Sooooooft pee. Alpha bravo disco tango duck.
This is Nïx! I’m the Ever-Knowing One, a goddess incandescent, incomparable, and irresistible. But enough about what you think of me. It’s a beautiful day in New Orleans. The wind is out of the east at a steady five knots and clouds look like rabbits … But enough about what you think of me!
Now, down to business—
Squirrel!
Where was I? [Long pause] Why am I in Regin’s car? Bertil, you crawl right back out of that bong this minute!
Oh, I remember! I am hereby laying down this track for Magister Declan Chase. If you are a mortal of the recorder peon class, know that Dekko and I go waaaaay back, and he’ll go berserk (snicker snicker) if he doesn’t receive this transmittal. …
Chase, riddle me this: what’s beautiful but monstrous, long of tooth but sharp of tooth and soft of mind, and can never ever tell a lie?
That’s right. The Enemy of Old can be very useful to you. So use him already.
P.S. Your middle name’s about to be spelled r-e-g-r-e-t.
And with that, I must bid you adieu. Don’t worry, we’ll catch up very soon. …
[Muffled] Who’s mummy’s wittle echolocator? That’s right—you are!
—End transcript ~ Kresley Cole,#NFDB |
931:Two Lyrics From Kilroy's Carnival: A Masque
I Aria
"--Kiss me there where pride is glittering
Kiss me where I am ripened and round fruit
Kiss me wherever, however, I am supple, bare and flare
(Let the bell be rung as long as I am young:
let ring and fly like a great bronze wing!)
"--I'll kiss you wherever you think you are poor,
Wherever you shudder, feeling striped or barred,
Because you think you are bloodless, skinny or marred:
Until, until
your gaze has been stilled-Until you are shamed again no more!
I'll kiss you until your body and soul
the mind in the body being fulfilled-Suspend their dread and civil war!"
II Song
Under the yellow sea
Who comes and looks with me
For the daughters of music, the fountains of poetry?
Both have soared forth from the unending waters
Where all things still are seeds and far from flowers
And since they remain chained to the sea's powers
May wilt to nonentity or loll and arise to comedy
Or thrown into mere accident through irrelevant incident
Dissipate all identity ceaselessly fragmented by the ocean's
immense and intense, irresistible and insistent
action,
Be scattered like the sand is, purposely and relentlessly,
Living in the summer resorts of the dead endlessly.
~ Delmore Schwartz,#NFDB |
932:If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor... We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications... That sect [Jews] had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust... Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.
[Letter to William Short, 4 August, 1820] ~ Thomas Jefferson,#NFDB |
| 933:Are you by chance a governess?” “That is no concern of yours.” “Because if you are, then one of your charges is most definitely Miss Beatrix Hathaway.” She scowled. “How do you know that?” “My sister is the only person I know of who would bring a garter-stealing ferret to the Rutledge Hotel.” “Your sister?” He smiled into her astonished face. “Lord Ramsay, at your service. And you are Miss Marks, the governess?” “Yes,” she muttered, ignoring the hand he reached down for her. She rose to her feet unassisted. Leo felt an irresistible urge to provoke her. “How gratifying. I’ve always wanted a family governess to harass.” The comment seemed to incense her beyond all expectation. “I am aware of your reputation as a skirt-chaser, my lord. I find no cause for humor in it.” Leo didn’t think she found cause for humor in much of anything. “My reputation has lasted in spite of a two-year absence?” he asked, affecting a tone of pleased surprise. “You’re proud of it?” “Well, of course. It’s easy to have a good reputation—you merely have to do nothing. But earning a bad reputation … well, that takes some effort.” A contemptuous stare burned through the spectacle lenses. “I despise you,” she announced. Turning on her heel, she walked away from him. Leo followed, carrying the ferret. “We’ve only just met. You can’t despise me until you really get to know me. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB |
| 934:But the man who, by dint of long study and sober reflection, has succeeded in training his mind not to detect evil in anything, to consider all human actions with the utmost indifference, to regard them all as the inevitable consequences of a power - however it's defined - which is sometimes good and sometimes perverse but always irresistible, and gives rise to both what men approve and to what they condemn and never allows anything to distract or thwart its operations, such a man, I say, as you will agree, sir, may be as happy behaving as I behave as you are in the career which you follow. Happiness is an abstraction, a product of the imagination. It is one manner of being moved and depends exclusively on our way of seeing and feeling. Apart from the satisfaction of our needs, there is no single thing which makes all men happy. Every day we observe one man made happy by the circumstance which makes his neighbour supremely miserable. There is therefore nothing which guarantees happiness. It can only exist for us in the form given to it by our physical constitution and our philosophical principles. [...] Nothing in the world is real, nothing which merits praise or blame, nothing deserving reward or punishment, nothing which is unlawful here and perfectly legal five hundred leagues away, in other words, there is no unchanging, universal good. ~ Marquis de Sade, #NFDB |
935:Dopey, on my right - as usual, I'd ended up sitting on the hump in the middle of the backseat - muttered, "I don't know what you see in that headcase Meducci anyway."
Doc said, "Oh, that's easy. Females of any species tend to select the male partner who is best able to provide for her and any offspring which might result from their coupling. Michael Meducci, being a good deal more intelligent than most of his classmates, amply fulfills that role, in addition to which he has what is considered, by Western standards of beauty, an outstanding physique - if what I've overheard Gina and Suze saying counts for anything. Since he is likely to pass on these favorable genetic components to his children, he is irresistible to breeding females everywhere - at least, discerning ones like Suze."
There was silence in the car ... the kind of silence that usually followed one of Doc's speeches.
Then Gina said reverently, "They really should move you up a grade, David."
"Oh, they've offered," Doc replied, cheerfully, "but while my intellect might be evolved for a boy my age, my growth is somewhat retarded. I felt it was inadvisable to thrust myself into a population of males much larger than I, who might be threatened by my superior intelligence."
"In other words," Sleepy translated for Gina's benefit, "we didn't want him getting his butt kicked by the bigger kids. ~ Meg Cabot,#NFDB |
936:When Communism fell in 1989, the temptation for Western commentators to gloat triumphantly proved irresistible. This, it was declared, marked the end of History. Henceforth, the world belonged to liberal capitalism – there was no alternative – and we would all march forward in unison towards a future shaped by peace, democracy and free markets. Twenty years on this assertion looks threadbare.
There can be no question that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the domino-like collapse of Communism states from the suburbs of Vienna to the shores of the Pacific marked a very significant transition: one in which millions of men and women were liberated from a dismal and defunct ideology and its authoritarian institutions. But no one could credibly assert that what replaced Communism was an era of idyllic tranquility. There was no peace in post-Communist Yugoslavia, and precious little democracy in any of the successor states of the Soviet Union.
As for free markets, they surely flourished, but it is not clear for whom. The West – Europe and the United States above all – missed a once-in-a-century opportunity to re-shape the world around agreed and improved international institutions and practices. Instead, we sat back and congratulated ourselves upon having won the Cold War: a sure way to lose the peace. The years from 1989 to 2009 were consumed by locusts. ~ Tony Judt,#NFDB |
937:Dear daughter, I won't try to call my feeling for Arty love. Call it focus. My focus on Art was an ailment, noncommunicable, and, even to me all these years later, incomprehensible. Now I despise myself. But even so I remember, in hot floods, the way he slept, still as death, with his face washed flat, stony as a carved tomb and exquisite. His weakness and his ravening bitter needs were terrible, and beautiful, and irresistible as an earthquake. He scalded or smothered anyone he needed, but his needing and the hurt that it caused me were the most life I ever had. Remember what a poor thing I have always been and forgive me.
He saw no use for you and you interfered with his use of me. I sent you away to please him, to prove my dedication to him, and to prevent him from killing you...
My job was to come back [from the convent] directly, with nothing leaking from beneath my dark glasses, to give Arty his rubdown and then paint him for the next show, nodding cheerfully all the while, never showing anything but attentive care for his muscular wonderfulness. Because he could have killed you. He could have cut off the money that schooled and fed you. He could have erased you so entirely that I never would have had those letters and report cards and photos, or your crayon pictures, or the chance to spy on you, and to love you secretly when everything else was gone. ~ Katherine Dunn,#NFDB |
938:You did not do my homework assignment for me,” he said, grabbing the collage again and looking it over.
“I had insomnia,” I said. “I needed a creative activity.” Marlboro Man looked at me, seemingly unsure of whether to kiss me, thank me…or just tickle me some more.
I didn’t give him a chance. Instead I picked up the collage and took Marlboro Man on a tour so he’d be prepared for our appointment.
“Here’s a pack of cigarettes,” I said. “Because I used to smoke in college.”
“Uh-huh,” he answered. “I knew that.”
“And here’s a glass of white wine,” I continued. “Because…I love white wine.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Marlboro Man answered. “But…won’t Father Johnson have a problem with that being on there?”
“Nah…,” I said. “He’s Episcopalian.”
“Got it,” he said.
I continued with my collage orientation, pointing out the swatch of my favorite shade of turquoise…the pug…the ballet shoe…the Hershey’s Kiss. He watched and listened intently, prepping himself for Father Johnson’s upcoming grilling. Gradually the earliness of the morning and the cozy warmth of my bedroom got the better of us, and before we knew it we’d sunk into the irresistible softness of my bed, our arms and legs caught in a tangled maze.
“I think I love you,” his raspy voice whispered, his lips nearly touching my ear. His arms wrapped even more tightly around my body, swallowing me almost completely. ~ Ree Drummond,#NFDB |
| 939:My room had a balcony where I could watch the setting sun flood the desert floor and burnish the golden slopes of the MacDonnell Ranges beyond – or at least I could if I looked past the more immediate sprawl of a K-Mart plaza across the road. In the two million or more square miles that is the Australian outback, I don’t suppose there is a more unfortunate juxtaposition. Allan was evidently held by a similar thought, for a half hour later when we met out front he was staring at the same scene. ‘I can’t believe we’ve just driven a thousand miles to find a K-Mart,’ he said. He looked at me. ‘You Yanks have a lot to answer for, you know.’ I started to protest, in a sputtering sort of way, but what could I say? He was right. We do. We have created a philosophy of retailing that is totally without aesthetics and totally irresistible. And now we box these places up and ship them to the far corners of the world. Visually, almost every arrestingly regrettable thing in Alice Springs was a product of American enterprise, from people who couldn’t know that they had helped to drain the distinctiveness from an outback town and doubtless wouldn’t see it that way anyway. Nor come to that, I dare say, would most of the shoppers of Alice Springs, who were no doubt delighted to get lots of free parking and a crack at Martha Stewart towels and shower curtains. What a sad and curious age we live in. We ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB |
| 940:Amongst democratic nations, as well as elsewhere, the number of official appointments has in the end some limits; but amongst those nations, the number of aspirants is unlimited; it perpetually increases, with a gradual and irresistible rise in proportion as social conditions become more equal, and is only checked by the limits of the population. Thus, when public employments afford the only outlet for ambition, the government necessarily meets with a permanent opposition at last; for it is tasked to satisfy with limited means unlimited desires. It is very certain that of all people in the world the most difficult to restrain and to manage are a people of solicitants. Whatever endeavors are made by rulers, such a people can never be contented; and it is always to be apprehended that they will ultimately overturn the constitution of the country, and change the aspect of the State, for the sole purpose of making a clearance of places. The sovereigns of the present age, who strive to fix upon themselves alone all those novel desires which are aroused by equality, and to satisfy them, will repent in the end, if I am not mistaken, that they ever embarked in this policy: they will one day discover that they have hazarded their own power, by making it so necessary; and that the more safe and honest course would have been to teach their subjects the art of providing for themselves. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB |
| 941:The true type of the Superman is, rather, Olympian: a calm greatness which expresses an irresistible superiority, something which terrifies and at the same time compels veneration, which prevails and disarms without fighting, establishing suddenly the feeling of a transcendent force, completely under control but totally capable of release, the wonderful and frightening sense which antiquity associated which the concept of the numen. Supra-life — that is, spirit, totally realised in its supernatural aspect — which permeates and governs absolutely everything which is ‘life’, is the substance here. But this type, the true Superman, cannot be treated merely as a construction of the thought of today. There is no great tradition of antiquity, whether of the East or of the West, which did not possess it. The tradition of the ‘divine right’ of the legitimate Kings, because they were the virile bearers of a force from above, is its last echo. To conceive the sudden re-emergence of this ancient conception, in a world where every great horizon was dead, where, to serve as immediate ideological substance for its incarnation, there were only the profane and opaque myths of evolutionism and natural selection, and a confused need for force and liberation — to conceive this is also to understand the invisible genesis of the theory of the Nietzschean Superman, its limit, and the path which can lead beyond it. ~ Julius Evola, #NFDB |
942:Oh,” Jace said carelessly, as if he hadn’t been waiting out here for the express purpose of seeing Simon off. He looked up, golden gaze casual, then looked away. “You.”
Being too cool for school was Jace’s thing. Simon supposed he must have understood and been fond of it, once.
“Hey, I figured I wasn’t going to get the chance to ask this again. You and me,” Simon said. “We’re pretty tight, aren’t we?”
Jace looked at him for a moment, face very still, and then bounded to his feet and said: “Absolutely. We’re like this.” He crossed two of his fingers together. “Actually, we’re more like this.” He tried to cross them again. “We had a little bit of initial tension, as you may later recall, but that was all cleared up when you came to me and confessed that you were struggling with your feelings of intense jealousy over my—these were your words—stunning good looks and irresistible charm.”
“Did I,” said Simon.
Jace clapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah, buddy. I remember it clearly.”
“Okay, whatever. The thing is … Alec’s always really quiet around me,” Simon said. “Is he just shy, or did I tick him off and I don’t remember it? I wouldn’t like to go away without trying to make things right.”
Jace’s expression took on that peculiar stillness again. “I’m glad you asked me that,” he said finally. “There is something more going on. The girls didn’t want me to tell you, but the truth is— ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB |
943:As a science fiction writer who began as a fan, I do not use my fiction as a disguised way to criticize the reality of the present. I feel that the greatest appeal of science fiction is the creation of numerous imaginary worlds outside of reality. I’ve always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read.
The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life’s evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. There is also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics … these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction. Through the medium of science fiction, I seek only to create my own worlds using the power of imagination, and to make known the poetry of Nature in those worlds, to tell the romantic legends that have unfolded between Man and Universe. ~ Liu Cixin,#NFDB |
| 944:He shall break them with a rod of iron.” He breaks not the subject nations, nor the inherited heathen, but the kings of the earth who stood up and took counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed. Against these He will lift up His iron rod of stern justice and irresistible power! Over His own inheritance He will sway a silver scepter of love. Over His own possession He shall reign with gentleness and Grace, but as for His adversaries, He will deal with them in severity and display His power in them. How shall they stand out against Him? They have formed their confederacy with great care and skill—as when men prepare clay and make it pliable for the potter’s use, so have they made all things ready—they have set their design upon the wheel and caused it to revolve in their thoughts and with great skill they have fashioned it. Lo, there it stands—finished and fair to look upon! Yet at its very best it is nothing more than a potter’s vessel. It may be of the purest clay and of such exquisite workmanship that it shall enchant every man of taste, but it is nothing more than an earthen vessel and, therefore, woe unto it when the rod of iron falls upon it. Woe to human societies and brotherhoods which are framed to resist the Lord! Mark the conflict and its end! It is brief enough. A stroke! Where is the hope of the Lord’s adversary? Gone, gone, utterly gone! Only a few potsherds remain. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB |
945:As she passed the door to Gray’s study, a familiar, muscled arm shot out into the corridor, catching her by the waist.
Laughing, she stumbled into the room, quickly finding herself caught between cool walnut paneling at her back and the hot, solid wall of man before her. Ever since their wedding-or since the Kestrel storeroom, more likely-Gray seemed to find it an irresistible challenge, to catch her unawares in an unlikely location and pull her into a feverish embrace.
Sophia had no wish to discourage the habit, but this wasn’t the ideal time for a tryst. “Gray,” she chided between kisses, “what are you about? The housekeeper said there was an urgent matter requiring my attention.”
“And so there is. I require your attention. Most urgently.” His hand slid to her bottom, and he lifted her easily, pinning her to the wall with his hips. The beaded ridges of the wainscoting dug into her spine. “Don’t think we’ve used this room yet,” he murmured, nibbling at the curve of her neck.
“I’m entertaining,” she protested.
“Yes, you are,” he said, grinding against her. “Highly entertaining.”
Sophia sighed with pleasurable frustration. “I mean, I have a guest. Lady Kendall’s in the salon, with Bel.” She levered her arm against his chest, carving out some space between them. “And I thought you were at your shipping office.”
“Yes, well…” Mischief gleamed sharp in his eyes. “I decided to go riding instead. ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB |
946:Hamlet' dwarfs 'Hamilton' - it dwarfs pretty much everything - but there's a revealing similarity between them. Shakespeare's longest play leaves its audience in the dark about some basic and seemingly crucial facts. It's not as if the Bard forgot, in the course of all those words, to tell us whether Hamlet was crazy or only pretending: He wanted us to wonder. He forces us to work on a puzzle that has no definite answer. And this mysteriousness is one reason why we find the play irresistible.
'Hamilton' is riddled with question marks. The first act begins with a question, and so does the second. The entire relationship between Hamilton and Burr is based on a mutual and explicit lack of comprehension: 'I will never understand you,' says Hamilton, and Burr wonders, 'What it is like in his shoes?'
Again and again, Lin distinguishes characters by what they wish they knew. 'What'd I miss?' asks Jefferson in the song that introduces him. 'Would that be enough?' asks Eliza in the song that defines her. 'Why do you write like you're running out of time?' asks everybody in a song that marvels at Hamilton's drive, and all but declares that there's no way to explain it. 'Hamilton', like 'Hamlet', gives an audience the chance to watch a bunch of conspicuously intelligent and well-spoken characters fill the stage with 'words, words, words,' only to discover, again and again, the limits to what they can comprehend. ~ Lin Manuel Miranda,#NFDB |
| 947:George, who are you seeing these days?” “Well, let’s see. I’ve been dating around, you might call it. There’s a visiting professor at the college I see when she’s in town. She travels quite a lot. And a neighbor lady and I like to have dinner in the city. She writes an ‘about town’ column for the paper and we enjoy some of the best restaurants, all on her tab, but that’s not the best part about her. There’s a waitress in Tacoma I like, a music teacher out on Bainbridge Island and a professor of veterinary medicine. She’s the most trouble and I think I like her best.” Noah’s eyes were round. He swallowed. “You’re seeing five women?” “Well, on and off. Each one of them is completely irresistible in her own way.” “Don’t any of them want more of you than an occasional date? Like a serious relationship?” George sighed and looked upward. “I’m not opposed to the idea of marrying again, Noah. But, as of this moment, the only woman I’m seeing I would consider is the vet, Sharon. But she’s forty-four. I think that might be a tad risky, don’t you?” Then he grinned. “Although we do jog together on Sunday mornings. She’s keeping up very well.” Noah burst out laughing. This was what he loved about George and always had—he was so unafraid to live life. He held nothing back. “They used to call men like you rogues,” Noah said. “Not men like me,” he protested. “I care very much for these ladies. They are, each one, wonderful women. I treat them with genuine affection and respect.” Noah ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB |
948:Gloomy Madrigal
What's it to me that you are sage?
Be beautiful! and be sad! Tears
Add a charm to the countenance
As a stream does to a landscape;
Storms make the flowers fresh again.
I love you most of all when joy
Flees from your oppressed brow,
When your heart is drowned in horror,
When the frightful cloud of the Past
Is spread out over your Present.
I love you when your large eyes shed
Tears as hot as blood, when
In spite of my hand which lulls you
Your unbearable pain comes through
Like a dying man's death-rattle.
I breathe in, heavenly pleasure!
Profound, delightful hymn!
Every sob from your breast
And I believe your heart lights up
With the pearls that your eyes pour out!
II
I know, your heart, overflowing
With old, uprooted loves,
Still blazes like a forge
And that there smolders in your breast
Something of the pride of the damned;
But my sweet, so long as your dreams
Have not reflected Hell,
While in a nightmare without respite,
Dreaming of poisons and daggers,
Enamored with powder and steel,
Answering the door fearfully,
Seeing misfortune everywhere,
Convulsing when the hour strikes,
You have not felt yourself embraced
By irresistible Disgust;
You cannot, slave and queen
Who love me only with terror,
In the unhealthy night's horror
186
Say to me, your soul full of cries,
'I am your equal, O my King! '
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB |
949:However, I have a stronger hunch that the greatest part of the important biomedical research waiting to be done is in the class of basic science. There is an abundance of interesting fact relating to all our major diseases, and more items of information are coming in steadily from all quarters in biology. The new mass of knowledge is still formless, in complete, lacking the essential threads of connection, displaying misleading signals at every turn, riddled with blind alleys. There are fascinating ideas all over the place, irresistible experiments beyond numbering, all sorts of new ways into the maze of problems. But every next move is unpredictable, every outcome uncertain. It is a puzzling time, but a very good time.
I do not know how you lay out orderly plans for this kind of activity, but I suppose you could find out by looking through the disorderly records of the past hundred years. Somehow, the atmosphere has to be set so that a disquieting sense of being wrong is the normal attitude of the investigators. It has to be taken for granted that the only way in is by riding the unencumbered human imagination, with the special rigor required for recognizing that something can be highly improbable, maybe almost impossible, and at the same time true.
Locally, a good way to tell how the work is going is to listen in the corridors. If you hear the word, "Impossible!" spoken as an expletive, followed by laughter, you will know that someone's orderly research plan is coming along nicely. ~ Lewis Thomas,#NFDB |
950:It is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion—as distinct from a transient fit of appetite—that makes more towering promises than any other emotion. No doubt all our desires makes promises, but not so impressively. To be in love involves the almost irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. Hence all seems to be at stake. If we miss this chance we shall have lived in vain. At the very thought of such a doom we sink into fathomless depths of self-pity.
Unfortunately these promises are found often to be quite untrue. Every experienced adult knows this to be so as regards all erotic passions (except the one he himself is feeling at the moment). We discount the world-without-end pretensions of our friends’ amours easily enough. We know that such things sometimes last—and sometimes don’t. And when they do last, this is not because they promised at the outset to do so. When two people achieve lasting happiness, this is not solely because they are great lovers but because they are also—I must put it crudely—good people; controlled, loyal, fair-minded, mutually adaptable people.
If we establish a “right to (sexual) happiness” which supersedes all the ordinary rules of behavior, we do so not because of what our passion shows itself to be in experience but because of what it professes to be while we are in the grip of it. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB |
951:I flip up my collar and turn my back to him as I pick my way back up toward the cliff base. I don’t think I can watch him disappear into the water. It will break my heart.
Puck’s scrubbing her eyes busily as if she has something in them. George Holly bites his lip. The cliffs tower above me and I try to console myself, I will find another capall uisce, I will ride again, I will move to my father’s home and be free. But there’s no comfort in my thoughts.
Behind me, the ocean says shhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhh.
There’s a thin, long wail. I keep walking, my bare feet slow on the uneven stones.
The wail comes again, low and keening. Puck and Holly are looking past me, so I turn around. Still at the shoreline, Corr has noticed my going, and he stands where I left him, looking back at me. He lifts his head again and keens to me.
The irresistible ocean sucks around his hooves. But still he looks over his withers at me and he wails, again and again. The hair on my arms stands with his call. I know he wants me to go to him, but I can’t go with him where he needs to go.
Corr falls silent when I do not come to him. He looks back out to the endless horizon. I see him lift a hoof and put it back down. He tests his weight again.
Then Corr turns, stepping out of the ocean. His head jerks up when his injured leg touches the ground, but he takes another labored step before keening to me again. Corr takes another step away from the November sea. And another.
He is slow, and the sea sings to us both, but he returns to me. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,#NFDB |
| 952:Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB |
| 953:What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus. This, too, contradicts some of the most ingrained assumptions we hold about ourselves and each other. We like to think of ourselves as autonomous and inner-directed, that who we are and how we act is something permanently set by our genes and our temperament. But if you add up the examples of Salesmen and Connectors, of Paul Revere's ride and Blue's Clues, and the Rule of 150 and the New York subway cleanup and the Fundamental Attribution Error, they amount to a very different conclusion about what it means to be human. We are actually powerfully influenced by our surroundings, our immediate context, and the personalities of those around us. Taking the graffiti off the walls of New York's subways turned New Yorkers into better citizens. Telling seminarians to hurry turned them into bad citizens. The suicide of a charismatic young Micronesian set off an epidemic of suicides that lasted for a decade. Putting a little gold box in the corner of a Columbia Record Club advertisement suddenly made record buying by mail seem irresistible. To look closely at complex behaviors like smoking or suicide or crime is to appreciate how suggestible we are in the face of what we see and hear, and how acutely sensitive we are to even the smallest details of everyday life. That's why social change is so volatile and so often inexplicable, because it is the nature of all of us to be volatile and inexplicable. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB |
| 954:In my opinion the basic cause for the relative failure of the two greatest revolutions in history resides not, to borrow again from Voline, in "historic inevitability," or simply in the subjective "errors" of revolutionary actors. The revolution bears within itself a serious contradiction (a contradiction which fortunately—and we will return to the subject —is not irremediable and is attenuated with time): it can only arise, it can only vanquish if it issues from the depths of the popular masses, from their irresistible spontaneous uprising; but although the class instinct drives the popular masses to break their chains, they are yet lacking in education and consciousness. And since, in their formidable but tumultuous and blind drive towards liberty, they run up against privileged, conscious, educated, organized, and tested social classes, they can only vanquish the resistance they meet if they succeed in obtaining in the heat of the struggle, the consciousness, the science, the organization, and the experience they lack. But the very fact of forging the weapons I have just listed summarily, and which alone can ensure their superiority over the enemy, bears an immense peril within it: that of killing the spontaneity that is the very spirit of the revolution; that of compromising freedom through organization; that of allowing the movement to be confiscated by an elite minority of more educated, more conscious, more experienced militants who, to begin with, offer themselves as guides in order, in the end, to impose themselves as chiefs and to subject the masses to new forms of the oppression of man by man. ~ Daniel Gu rin, #NFDB |
| 955:Explain yourself, Mr. Mulberry.” Suddenly feeling as if he were a mere boy instead of a full-grown man, Everett decided on the spot that charm might just be the way to handle this rather troubling situation. “I was . . . well, you see, I know it was a little improper, kissing Millie and all . . . but she’s completely irresistible to me, and . . . I’m rather afraid I lost my head for a moment.” “Try again.” “Ah . . . hmm . . .” was all he could come up with to say. “I thought so.” Mr. Kenton stopped slapping the bat against his hand and moved forward, a rather intimidating sight, even given that the man was positively ancient. Coming to a stop right in front of Everett, Mr. Kenton sent Millie, who was a lovely shade of pink, a fond look, before his eyes hardened as he directed his attention back to Everett. “I’m going to be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Mulberry. Miss Millie is an orphan, and as such, she has no father to look after her interests. Having said that, I’m telling you right now that you will view me as her fatherly figure at this particular moment in time. You will also explain to me exactly what your intentions are for this fine, fine young lady who deserves better than to be hurt by a scoundrel like you.” Right there, as he was being threatened by an elderly gentleman, one who still retained possession of a rather sturdy-looking bat, Everett knew, without a glimmer of a doubt, that he was truly and irrevocably in love with Miss Millie Longfellow. Whether it was her warmth or natural zest for life, she had a way about her that drew people in, and . . . he could no longer deny his feelings for the woman. Unable ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB |
956:Niels Lyhne was tired. These repeated runnings to a leap that was never leaped had wearied him. Everything seemed to him hollow and worthless, distorted and confused, and, oh, so petty! He preferred to stop his ears and stop his mouth and to immerse himself in studies that had nothing to do with the busy everyday world, but were like an ocean apart, where he could wander peacefully in silent forests of seaweed among curious animals.
He was tired, and the root of his weariness sprang from his baffled hope of love; thence it had spread, quickly and surely, through his whole being, to all his faculties and all his thoughts. Now he was cold and passionless enough, but in the beginning, after the blow had fallen, his love had grown, day by day, with the irresistible power of a malignant fever. There had been moments when his soul was almost bursting with insane passion; it swelled like a wave in its infinite longing and frothing desire; it rose and went on rising and rising, till every fiber in his brain and every cord in his heart were strung tense to the breaking point. Then weariness had come, soothing and healing, making his nerves dull against pain, his blood too cold for enthusiasm, and his pulse too weak for action. And more than that, it had protected him against a relapse by giving him all the prudence and egoism of the convalescent. When his thoughts went back to those days in Fjordby, he had a sense of immunity akin to the feeling of a man who has just passed through a severe illness and knows that now, when he has endured his allotted agony, and the fever has burned itself to ashes within him, he will be free for a long, long time. ~ Jens Peter Jacobsen,#NFDB |
957:Hay naturalezas puramente contemplativas, impropias totalmente para la acción, que, sin embargo, merced a un impulso misterioso y desconocido, actúan en ocasiones con rapidez de que se hubieran creído incapaces.
El que, temeroso de que el portero le dé una noticia triste, se pasa una hora rondando su puerta sin atreverse a volver a casa; el que conserva quince días una carta sin abrirla o no se resigna hasta pasados seis meses a dar un paso necesario desde un año antes, llegan a sentirse alguna vez precipitados bruscamente a la acción por una fuerza irresistible, como la flecha de un arco. El moralista y el médico, que pretenden saberlo todo, no pueden explicarse de dónde les viene a las almas perezosas y voluptuosas tan súbita y loca energía, y cómo, incapaces de llevar a término lo más sencillo y necesario, hallan en determinado momento un valor de lujo para ejecutar los actos más absurdos y aun los más peligrosos.
Un amigo mío, el más inofensivo soñador que haya existido jamás, prendió una vez fuego a un bosque, para ver, según decía, si el fuego se propagaba con tanta facilidad como suele afirmarse. Diez veces seguidas fracasó el experimento; pero a la undécima hubo de salir demasiado bien.
Otro encenderá un cigarro junto a un barril de pólvora, para ver, para saber, para tentar al destino, para forzarse a una prueba de energía, para dárselas de jugador, para conocer los placeres de la ansiedad, por nada, por capricho, por falta de quehacer.
Es una especie de energía que mana del aburrimiento y de la divagación; y aquéllos en quien tan francamente se manifiesta suelen ser, como dije, las criaturas más indolentes, las más soñadoras. ~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB |
958:This is a new idea you might want to write down. Having your own life is authentically irresistible because it keeps you (and him) from losing yourselves in the relationship. If you imagine that people are like rechargeable batteries, having your own life keeps you fully charged. When you focus all your time and attention only on him, there’s no possibility for you to get naturally recharged by life—by other friends, activities, adventures, nature, the universe. Your energy depletes; this is apparent in how you look and feel. You start pulling on him for all of your energy, and he feels exhausted and resentful. The conversations get dull. You begin to nitpick and nag. “What do you want to do?” and “I don’t care—whatever you want to do” is all you ever seem to say to each other.
When you devote all of your time, energy, and attention only to each other, it drains both of you and slowly erodes what could be an otherwise wonderful relationship. Having your own life is a natural way to keep yourself centered so you have more to contribute to your partner and the other important people in and aspects of your life.
Let’s be honest. Success is sexy. When you live an inspired and energized life, men naturally find you irresistible because you are irresistible. Invest in your health, create community, make a difference, learn new skills, have fun, and share yourself with others. This is what will keep him wanting more, more, more.
Men are no different from women in this respect. They want to be with someone who is expressive, engaged, and active in life. They want a woman who can introduce them to new things and is both interested and interesting. ~ Marie Forleo,#NFDB |
959:Mueve la cabeza de arriba abajo y frunce el ceño. - Ese es Matt Fuller. Es un sénior y nuestro Asesor promesa. -Me mira con los ojos entrecerrados y trata de leer mi mente.
- ¿En serio? - Sonrío demasido grande, porque ahora él sabe totalmente que estaba mintiendo acerca de la parte linda.
- ¿Cuándo? Estoy muy segura de que me acordaría de él. -Miro a Phillip con curiosidad.
- No lo recuerdo exactamente, pero creo que me vio cuando llevé en mis hombros a través del campus.- Phillip niega con la cabeza hacia mí-. Realmente no sé por qué dejo que te salgas con la tuya, con las cosas que haces.
- Porque soy irresistible, Phillip. - Sonrió y me encojo de hombros-. Tú no puedes ayudarte a ti mismo. Además, no fuiste por todo el campus, soló fueron unos cincuenta metros antes de que fingieras un ataque al corazón y te apoyarás en mi peso colapsando sobre mí en la hierba.
-Oh, sí. Lo recuerdo. Creo que has ganado algo de peso. - Golpeo su hombro.
Lo ignora y continúa -Ahora que lo pienso, creo que es cuando Matt te vió.
Me da una gran sonrisa. Justo ahora lo recordaba.
-Tu probablemente no te diste cuenta, porque estabas muy ocupada rodando en el césped conmigo.
- Estoy bastante segura de que estaba tratando de quitarte de encima de mí.
- Bueno, Matt no lo vio de esa manera puesto que me preguntó si tú eras mi novia.
-Oh Dios. ¿Qué historia inventaste está vez, Phillip?
Él sonríe. - Oh solo le dije que a pesar de que estas locamente enamorada de mí, no quiero estar atado, por lo que soló somos amigos. Por supuesto, lo que tendría que haber dicho es por favor solo llévatela, ella son muchos problemas de los que no valen la pena. ~ Jillian Dodd,#NFDB |
960:Oscar pushed a strand of her loose raven hair behind her ear, and Camille knew she hadn’t completely failed. The man she loved, and who loved her, was alive when, under all normal circumstance, he shouldn’t be. How could that be seen as failure?
“You know, and I know.” Oscar paused to take a breath. “William would never have approved of us being together.”
He held his eyes level with hers, as if trying to detect any flicker of doubt or apprehension in her.
“We won’t be tying bait bags for a living, will we?” she asked, willing to give up her wealth, her good name, but never her dignity.
Oscar laughed. “No bait bags.”
“Well, of that my father would at least approve. And even if he didn’t,” she said with a sly grin, “I do.”
She rose to the tips of her toes and kissed him.
“Oy, lovebirds!” Ira shouted from the ground. He and Samuel had reached the base and now looked into the sunlight, shielding their eyes with the planes of their hands. “Should I build a campfire and start sending smoke signals? Here we are, beasties! Come have lunch!”
Oscar’s familiar sarcasm slipped back into place. “No smoke signals needed, Ira, the shouting will do just fine.”
He released his arms from around her waist, and Camille reluctantly let him go, too. He descended the first boulder. “I’ll go first, in case you slip.”
Oscar’s eyes came level with Camille’s ratty wool stockings. He looked up at her, his dimples as irresistible as the first time she’d seen them.
“Well, at least it’s an improvement from bare feet,” he said.
Camille wiggled her toes, laughing. She started down the mound of boulders toward the world that lay ahead, her footing sure and steady. ~ Angie Frazier,#NFDB |
961:Her skin was warm beneath his hand, and he could feel the ripe curves beneath the lawn nightdress. The material might be opaque, but it did little to disguise the feel of her.
He was not a man who resisted temptation. Nor was he a man who prided himself on honor, decency, or fair play. He thought of her eyes as she had listened to the opera, and he tilted his head and pressed his mouth against the base of her throat, beneath the ring of bruises.
The pulse leapt beneath his mouth, hammering wildly. In panic or in longing? He didn't care. He turned her in his arms, so that her front pressed up against his. She was a tall woman, taller than those he was used to, and he found she fit him quite nicely, her hips cradling his, her breasts against his chest, her neck within easy reach of his mouth as he traced his way along the abraded flesh. She shivered again, and he liked it. Releasing her face, he slid his hand down between their bodies, into the ripped-open front of her nightdress, and encountered soft female flesh, gently rounded, tantalizing, enchanting, mesmerizing. She was trembling in his arms, with fear, with longing, and the shiver that ran over her warm, scented flesh was irresistible.
He wanted her. Wanted to lose himself in her sweet body, wanted to kiss her mouth, her breasts. He wanted oblivion, hot and dark, but oblivion with her, and the hell with his plans, with waiting. He was going to swing her up in his arms and carry her over to the sofa, he was going to drag her upstairs to his bed and strip off her clothes, slowly, and then make love to her, making it last, over and over again, until they were both wet and shaking, and he wouldn't let her escape for days. ~ Anne Stuart,#NFDB |
| 962:Prior to modern times, the term 'Islamic' (Islami in Arabic) was almost never used to define the provenance, status, or substance of things. There was no such thing as 'Islamic art', 'Islamic economics', or even 'Islamic law.' ... The encounter with the modern West, however, ultimately changed the status of 'Islamic.' Inasmuch as the rise of the West converted the achievements of Darwin, Descartes, and Hegel from mere English, French, or German achievements into explicitly 'Western' ones, it also engendered the need for a parallel convention for demarcating the non-Western 'other.' The Western provenance of the modern neologism 'Islamic' is perhaps best revealed in its tendency to connote geography and ethnicity. 'Islamic', in other words, connotes not simply that which is related to or a product of Islam as a religion but that which relates to a particularly non-European people in a non-European part of the world. In this capacity, it carries both a descriptive and a prescriptive force... For no modern Muslim nor non-Muslim would include the likes of such Arab Christians as Michel Aflaq or San' Allah Ibrahim among the 'thinkers of Islam.' Rather, in Western parlance, the modern 'Islamic' began as an instrument to demarcate the boundary between the west and a particular set of 'others.' In Muslim hands, it would go on to evolve into a full-blown signifier of normative Islam and a tool for delineating the boundary between it and Islam. Its added utility, moreover, as a mechanism for elevating the achievements of Muslims to the level of a civilization rivaling that of Europe rendered it all the more irresistible and gained for it universal acceptance throughout the Muslim world. ~ Sherman A Jackson, #NFDB |
| 963:Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have though much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else -something it never entered your head to conceive- comes crasing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB |
964:There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against--you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew these caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.
It goes on and on, and finally there are only others' recollections of your behavior--your bizarre, frenetic, aimless behaviors--for mania has at least some grace in partially obliterating memories. What then, after the medications, psychiatrist, despair, depression, and overdose? All those incredible feelings to sort through. Who is being to polite to say what? Who knows what? What did I do? Why? And most hauntingly, when will it happen again? Then, too, are the bitter reminders--medicine to take, resent, forget, take, resent, and forget, but always take....And always, when will it happen again? Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? ~ Kay Redfield Jamison,#NFDB |
965:She pushed and elbowed and knocked and strained to catch him, and finally, she did, reaching out for his hand--adoring the fact that neither of them wore gloves, loving the way their skin came together, the way his brought wonderful heat in a lush, irresistible current.
He felt it too.
She knew it because he stopped the instant they touched, turning to face her, grey eyes wild as Devonshire rain. She knew it because he whispered her name, aching and beautiful and soft enough for only her to hear.
And she it because his free hand rose, captured her jaw and titled her face up to him even as he leaned down and stole her lips and breath and thought in a kiss that she would never in her lifetime forget.
The was like food and drink, like sleep, like breath. She needed it with the same elemental desire and she cared not a bit that all of London was watching. Yes, she was masked, but it did not matter. She would have stripped to her chemise for this kiss. To her skin.
Their fingers still intertwined, he wrapped their arms behind her back and pulled her to him, claiming her mouth with lips and tongue and teeth, marking her with one long luscious kiss that went on and on until she thought she might die from the pleasure of it. Her free hand was in his hair then, tangling in the soft locks, loving their silky promise.
She was lost, claimed and fairly consumed by the intensity of the kiss, and for the first time in her life, Pippa gave herself up to emotion, pouring every bit of her desire and her passion and her fear and her need into this moment This caress.
This man.
This man, who was everything she had never allowed herself to dream she would find.
This man, who made her believe in friendship. In partnership..
In love ~ Sarah MacLean,#NFDB |
966:Sara noticed that his white teeth were slightly snaggled, giving his smile the appearance of a friendly snarl. It was then that she understood why so many women had been seduced by him. His grin held a wickedly irresistible appeal. She stared at his chest as he untied the laces and positioned her cap correctly.
"Thank you," she murmured, and tried to take the strings of the cap from his fingers.
But he didn't let go. He held the laces at her chin, his fingers tightening. Glancing up at him in confusion, Sara saw that his smile had vanished. In a decisive motion he pulled the concealing lace from her hair and let it fall. The cap fluttered to a patch of mud and rested there limply.
Sara lifted her hand to the loose braided coil of her hair, which threatened to tumble from its pins. The chestnut locks gleamed with fiery highlights, escaping in delicate wisps around her face and throat. "Mr. Craven," she scolded breathlessly. "I find your behavior untoward a-and offensive, not to mention-oh!" She stammered in astonishment as he reached for her spectacles and plucked them from her face. "Mr. Craven, h-how dare you..." She fumbled to retrieve them. "I... I need those..."
Derek held them out of reach as he stared at her uncovered face. This was what she had kept hidden beneath the old-maid disguise... pale, luminous skin, a mouth shaped with surprising lushness, a pert little nose, marked at the delicate bridge where the edge of her spectacles had pressed. Angel-blue eyes, pure and beguiling, surmounted by dark winged brows. She was beautiful. He could have devoured her in a few bites, like a fragrant red apple. He wanted to touch her, take her somewhere and pull her beneath him, as if he could somehow erase a lifetime of sin and shame within the sweetness of her body. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
967:Sara noticed that his white teeth were slightly snaggled, giving his smile the appearance of a friendly snarl. It was then that she understood why so many women had been seduced by him. His grin held a wickedly irresistible appeal. She stared at his chest as he untied the laces and positioned her cap correctly.
"Thank you," she murmured, and tried to take the strings of the cap from his fingers.
But he didn't let go. He held the laces at her chin, his fingers tightening. Glancing up at him in confusion, Sara saw that his smile had vanished. In a decisive motion he pulled the concealing lace from her hair and let it fall. The cap fluttered to a patch of mud and rested there limply.
Sara lifted her hand to the loose braided coil of her hair, which threatened to tumble from its pins. The chestnut locks gleamed with fiery highlights, escaping in delicate wisps around her face and throat. "Mr. Craven," she scolded breathlessly. "I find your behavior untoward and a-and offensive, not to mention-oh!" She stammered in astonishment as he reached for her spectacles and plucked them from her face. "Mr. Craven, h-how dare you..." She fumbled to retrieve them. "I... I need those..."
Derek held them out of reach as he stared at her uncovered face. This was what she had kept hidden beneath the old-maid disguise... pale, luminous skin, a mouth shaped with surprising lushness, a pert little nose, marked at the delicate bridge where the edge of her spectacles had pressed. Angel-blue eyes, pure and beguiling, surmounted by dark winged brows. She was beautiful. He could have devoured her in a few bites, like a fragrant red apple. He wanted to touch her, take her somewhere and pull her beneath him, as if he could somehow erase a lifetime of sin and shame within the sweetness of her body. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
968:Curran lunged through the window
He was huge, neither a man, nor a lion. Curran’s usual warrior form stood upright. This creature moved on all fours. Enormous, bulging with muscle under a gray pelt striped with whip marks of darker gray, six hundred pounds at least. His head was lion, his eyes were human, and his fangs were monster.
So that’s what the Beast Lord with no brakes looked like.
He landed on the floor of my living room. Muscles twisted and crawled, stretching and snapping. The gray fur melted, fading into human skin, and Curran stood on my carpet, nude and pissed off, his eyes glowing gold.
His voice was a deep snarl. “I know he’s here. I can smell him.”
I felt an irresistible urge to brain him with something heavy. “Did you lose your sense of smell? Saiman’s scent is two hours old.”
Golden eyes burned me. “Where is he?”
“Under my bed.”
The bed went airborne. It flew across the living room and slammed into the wall with a thud.
That was just about enough of that. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Saving you from whatever mess you got yourself into this time.”
Why me? “There is no mess! It’s a professional arrangement.”
“He’s paying you?” Curran snarled.
“No. I’m paying him.”
He roared. His mouth was human, but the blast of sound that shot out of it was like thunder.
“Ran out of words, Your Majesty?”
“Why him?” he growled. “Of all the men you could have, why would you hire him for that?”
“Because he has the best equipment in the city and he knows how to use it!”
As soon as I said it, I realized how he would take it.
The beginnings of another thundering roar died in Curran’s throat. He stared at me, mute.
Oh, this was too good. I threw my hands up. “The lab! I’m talking about his lab, not his dick, you idiot. ~ Ilona Andrews,#NFDB |
969:Happy Christmas,” he murmured, and leaned down to kiss her forehead.
As the pressure of his lips lifted, Kathleen stepped back, trying to create a necessary distance between them. Her heel brushed against some solid, living thing, and a sharply indignant squeal startled her.
“Oh!” Kathleen leaped forward instinctively, colliding with Devon’s front. His arms closed around her automatically, even as a pained grunt escaped him. “Oh--I’m sorry…What in heaven’s name--” She twisted to see behind her and broke off at the sight of Hamlet, who had come to root beneath the Christmas tree for stray sweets that had fallen from paper cones as they’d been removed from the branches. The pig snuffled among the folds of the tree skirt and the scattered presents wrapped in colored paper. Finding a tidbit to consume, he oinked in satisfaction.
Kathleen shook her head and clung to Devon as laughter trembled through both of them. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, her hand resting lightly at the side of his waistcoat.
His smiling lips grazed her temple. “Of course not, you little makeweight.”
They stayed together in that delicious moment of scattered light and fragrant spruce and irresistible attraction. The entrance hall was quiet now; the guests had proceeded en masse to the drawing room.
Devon’s head lowered, and he kissed the side of her throat. “I want you in my bed again,” he whispered. Working his way along her neck, he found a sensitive place that made her shiver and arch, the tip of his tongue stroking a soft pulse. It seemed as if her body had become attuned to his, excitement leaping instantly at his nearness, delight pooling hotly in her stomach. How easy it would be to let him have whatever he wanted of her. To yield to the pleasure he could give her, and think only of the present moment. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
970:The bazaar bore him along. That deep surge which knows none of the ebb
and flow, the hurry, of a crowd along a European pavement, which rolls
on with an irresistible, even motion as time flows on into eternity.
He might not have been in this God-forsaken provincial hole, Antakiya,
but transported to Aleppo or Damascus, so inexhaustibly did the two
opposing streams of the bazaar surge past each other. Turks in European
dress, wearing the fez, with stand-up collars and walking-sticks,
officials or merchants. Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, these too in
European dress, but with different headgear. In and out among them,
Kurds and Circassians in their tribal garb. Most displayed weapons.
For the government, which in the case of Christian peoples viewed every
pocketknife with mistrust, tolerated the latest infantry rifles in the
hands of these restless mountaineers; it even supplied them. Arab peasants,
in from the neighborhood. Also a few bedouins from the south, in long,
many-folded cloaks, desert-hued, in picturesque tarbushes, the silken
fringes of which hung over their shoulders. Women in charshaffes,
the modest attire of female Moslems. But then, too, the unveiled, the
emancipated, in frocks that left free silk-stockinged legs. Here and
there, in this stream of human beings, a donkey, under a heavy load,
the hopeless proletarian among beasts. To Gabriel it seemed always the
same donkey which came stumbling past him in a coma, with the same ragged
fellow tugging his bridle. But this whole world, men, women, Turks, Arabs,
Armenians, Kurds, with trench-brown soldiers in its midst -- its goats,
its donkeys -- was smelted together into an indescribable unity by its
gait -- a long stride, slow and undulating, moving onwards irresistibly,
to a goal not to be determined. ~ Franz Werfel,#NFDB |
971:The frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed, as timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past night's suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race.
They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things — oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp — yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.
The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others, shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them! ~ Herman Melville,#NFDB |
| 972:George Alfred Henty (1832–1902), who began his writing career in the 1860s. Henty – educated at Westminster and Caius, Cambridge, the son of a wealthy stockbroker – had been commissioned in the Purveyor’s Department of the army, and gone to the Crimea during the war. There he had drifted into journalism, sending back reports for the Morning Advertiser and the Morning Post before catching fever and being invalided home. He continued to work in the Purveyor’s Department until the mid-Sixties, when the life of the war correspondent and the writer of boys’ adventure stories seemed overwhelmingly more interesting and better paid. Four generations of British children grew up with Henry’s irresistible stories, beautifully produced, bound and edited, on their shelves. The Henty phenomenon – over seventy titles celebrating imperialistic derring-do – really belongs to the 1880s, but deserves a mention here not only because of his radical and political views, but because of the direction taken by his career as a writer. The Henty story, by the time he had got into his stride, followed the formula that a young English lad in his early teens, freed from the shackles of public school or home upbringing by the convenient accident of orphanhood, finds himself caught up in some thrilling historical episode. The temporal sweep is impressive, ranging from Beric at Agincourt to The Briton: a story of the Roman Invasion; but the huge majority are exercises in British imperialist myth-building: By Conduct and Courage, A Story of the Days of Nelson, By Pike and Dyke, By Sheer Pluck, A Tale of the Ashanti War, Condemned as a Nihilist, The Dash for Khartoum, For Name and Fame: or through the Afghan Passes, Jack Archer, A Tale of the Crimea, Through the Sikh War. A Tale of the Punjaub (sic); The Tiger of Mysore, With Buller in Natal, With Kitchener in the Soudan, and so on. ~ A N Wilson, #NFDB |
| 973:Aren’t our dresses exquisite?” Performing a few happy waltz steps, Corinna turned in a circle. “Um, yes. Pull your sleeves up, Juliana, will you?” She tugged at them, but the dress was designed to be off the shoulder. “They won’t go.” He eyed their dresses’ high waistlines and scooped necklines, designed to accentuate the bust. “You’re all going to cover”—at an apparent loss for words, he patted his own chest—“with one of those scarf things, right?” “A fichu?” Madame sniffed. “I think not. These are evening gowns, my lord.” “They don’t look like the pictures my sisters showed me.” “The pictures were but a starting point, my lord. By the time the fashion plates make it here from France, they’re already beginning to pass out of style.” “We shall not be caught in last month’s fashions,” Juliana added. “These gowns are the thing.” “Not in this house, they aren’t!” “Griffin. Good news. The foundry will have the new part cast by the end of the day.” Tris walked in, scanned the room with a low whistle, and settled on Alexandra. “By George, you ladies will put every other girl to shame.” “My sisters won’t be wearing these dresses,” Griffin said. “Of course they will.” Tris tore his gaze from Alexandra and turned to his friend. “While I take apart the pump, you’ll want to head out to the vineyard and see that work on the new pipeline is resumed.” “Very well.” Griffin turned to leave, then swiveled back. “I’m not paying for those dresses,” he warned. “Not until they’re made decent.” Madame Rodale gave a little French-sounding “hmmph.” Tris laughed. “Listen to yourself, old man. You’ve been on campaign far too long. Don’t you want men to find your sisters appealing? Irresistible? Marriageable?” “Not if they’re men like…” “Like us?” Tris suggested helpfully. Griffin’s “hmmph” put the mantua-maker’s to shame. “I need to get to the vineyard,” he muttered and left. “Madame ~ Lauren Royal, #NFDB |
974:Try not to breathe,” I tell Lira. “It might get stuck halfway out.”
Lira flicks up her hood. “You should try not to talk then,” she retorts. “Nobody wants your words being preserved for eternity.”
“They’re pearls of wisdom, actually.”
I can barely see Lira’s eyes under the mass of dark fur from her coat, but the mirthless curl of her smile is ever-present. It lingers in calculated amusement as she considers what to say next. Readies to ricochet the next blow.
Lira pulls a line of ice from her hair, artfully indifferent. “If that is what pearls are worth these days, I’ll make sure to invest in diamonds.”
“Or gold,” I tell her smugly. “I hear it’s worth its weight.”
Kye shakes the snow from his sword and scoffs. “Anytime you two want to stop making me feel nauseated, go right ahead.”
“Are you jealous because I’m not flirting with you?” Madrid asks him, warming her finger on the trigger mechanism of her gun.
“I don’t need you to flirt with me,” he says. “I already know you find me irresistible.”
Madrid reholsters her gun. “It’s actually quite easy to resist you when you’re dressed like that.”
Kye looks down at the sleek red coat fitted snugly to his lithe frame. The fur collar cuddles against his jaw and obscures the bottoms of his ears, making it seem as though he has no neck at all. He throws Madrid a smile.
“Is it because you think I look sexier wearing nothing?”
Torik lets out a withering sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. I’m not sure whether it’s from the hours we’ve gone without food or his inability to wear cutoffs in the biting cold, but his patience seems to be wearing thin.
“I could swear that I’m on a life-and-death mission with a bunch of lusty kids,” he says. “Next thing I know, the lot of you will be writing love notes in rum bottles.”
“Okay,” Madrid says. “Now I feel nauseated.”
I laugh. ~ Alexandra Christo,#NFDB |
| 975:Heather es una joven soltera que trabaja como asesora personal en la zona de Phoenix. Aunque disfrutaba de su trabajo con jóvenes problemáticos, ya hacía algún tiempo que se sentía insatisfecha de vivir, en la zona. Se quejaba a menudo del crecimiento demográfico, el trafico y el calor opresivo del verano. Se le había ofrecido un puesto de trabajo en una hermosa y pequeña ciudad en las montañas. Había visitado la ciudad en numerosas ocasiones y siempre había soñado en instalarse allí. La oferta habría sido irresistible de no mediar un inconveniente: su clientela sería gente adulta. Llevaba ya varias semanas tratando de decidirse. Intentó hacer una lista de las ventajas e inconvenientes, pero el resultado fue fastidiosamente equilibrado. -Sé que no disfrutaría del trabajo tanto como aquí -me dijo-, pero eso podría quedar más que compensado por el placer de vivir en ese pueblo. Me encanta estar allí, el simple hecho de estar hace que me sienta bien. Por otro lado, estoy muy harta de este calor. Simplemente, no sé qué hacer. La palabra «placer» me recordó las palabras del Dalai Lama y, a modo de tanteo, le pregunté: -¿Cree usted que vivir en ese lugar le proporcionaría mayor felicidad o mayor placer? Ella permaneció un momento en silencio. -No lo sé -contestó finalmente-. Mire, creo que me produciría más placer que felicidad... En realidad, no creo que me sintiera realmente feliz trabajando con esa clientela. Tengo mucha satisfacción al trabajar con adolescentes. El simple hecho de volver a plantear su dilema en términos de felicidad o placer pareció proporcionarle mucha claridad. De repente, le resultó mucho más fácil tomar una decisión. Se quedó en Phoenix. Naturalmente, sigue quejándose del calor del verano. Pero el hecho de haber tomado una decisión sobre la base de consideraciones más precisas contribuyó a hacerla más feliz y a que el calor le resultara más soportable. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB |
976:She felt the electric tickle of Finn behind her. He must have come from the hallway. She turned.
Standing on the first step, she was almost eye level with him. He’d carried the irresistible smell of the morning in with him, caught in his hair and clothes.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he said. Teagan leaned closer.
“What are you doing?” Aiden asked.
Sniffing Finn. How weird would that sound? She changed the sniff into a kiss on the cheek, but Finn turned just before her lips met his face. She felt a shock as their lips touched, the wild inside her exploding like fireworks, rocketing through her to Finn. He swayed, and she managed to get her arms around him before his knees gave way.
“Wa,” he gasped. “Could you steer me toward the couch, girl?”
“Oh, my god,” Abby said from behind her. “The couch? Are you going to let them do that in your living room, Mr. Wylltson?”
“Do what?” Finn flushed red. “Oh. I just meant . . . I need to sit down. The girl’s that good a kisser.”
Thomas and Mr. Wylltson were staring. Aiden’s mouth was hanging open.
“What are you doing, Tea?” Abby asked. “You totally lunged at him.”
“I did not lunge.” I was just sniffing him. That would sound worse than lunging. “I just . . . caught him.”
“Then why don’t you let him go?”
Because he wasn’t steady on his feet yet. Finn’s electronics had gone haywire.
“Well played.” Thomas winked at Finn and grinned at Teagan. “And well caught.”
Finn groped for the banister. “I’m telling you I never meant to kiss her. Not in front of her da, that is—”
“Unhand the young man, Teagan, and step away,” Mr. Wylltson said. “You are befuddling him.”
“By that”—Finn found the banister and Teagan let go and backed up a stair—“I did not mean that I intended to carry on behind your back. This whole thing isn’t what it looks like”—his eyes lifted to Teagan. “Is it? ~ Kersten Hamilton,#NFDB |
977:Your rival has ten weak points, whereas you have ten strong ones. Although his army is large, it is not irresistible.
“Yuan Shao is too caught up in ceremony and show while you, on the other hand, are more practical. He is often antagonistic and tends to force things, whereas you are more conciliatory and try to guide things to their proper courses, giving you the advantage of popular support. His extravagance hinders his administrative ability while your better efficiency is a great contribution to the government, granting you the edge of a well-structured and stable administration. On the outside he is very kind and giving but on the inside he is grudging and suspicious. You are just the opposite, appearing very exacting but actually very understanding of your followers’ strengths and weaknesses. This grants you the benefit of tolerance. He lacks commitment where you are unfaltering in your decisions, promptly acting on your plans with full faith that they will succeed. This shows an advantage in strategy and decisiveness. He believes a man is only as good as his reputation, which contrasts with you, who looks beyond this to see what kind of person they really are. This demonstrates that you are a better judge of moral character. He only pays attention to those followers close to him, while your vision is all-encompassing. This shows your superior supervision. He is easily misled by poor advice, whereas you maintain sound judgment even if beset by evil council. This is a sign of your independence of thought. He does not always know what is right and wrong but you have an unwavering sense of justice. This shows how you excel in discipline. He has a massive army, but the men are poorly trained and not ready for war. Your army, though much smaller, is far superior and well provisioned, giving you the edge in planning and logistics, allowing you to execute effectively. With your ten superiorities you will have no difficulty in subduing Yuan Shao. ~ Luo Guanzhong,#NFDB |
978:What happened?" he asks,voice laced with concern.
"I..."
I merged with a cockroach-caught a ride next to your twin's Calvin Klein underwear label-and after I watched him play with a demon coyote and snack on bloodied bits that could've been either animal or human, he fed glowing, white orbs to the walking dead-then crushed me under the hell of his boot...
"I'm not sure," I say,willing my head to feel better,to stop spinning, and a moment later it does. "I guess I passed out,or something..." I cringe,hating the lie but knowing there's no way I could ever present him the truth.
I start to stand,pretending not to notice when he offers a hand. "I need to call my ride." I fumble for my phone, reluctant to bother Paloma and Chay at this hour,but they're pretty much my only real option.
"Don't be silly.I'll drive you." Dace follows me out of the stall,watching as I call Paloma's number,then Chay's-face scrunching in confusion when they both fail to answer.It doesn't make any sense.
"Daire-why won't you let me help you?" he says.My name on his lips sounding just like ti did in the dream. Our eyes meeting in the mirror,mine astonished, his chagrined,when he adds, "Yeah,I asked around.Uncovered your real name. So shoot me."
And when he smiles,when he smiles and runs a nervous hand through his glossy,dark hair-well,I'm tempted to shake my head and refuse him again.
Maybe he goes by the name of Whitefeather, but technically,he's still a Richter.A good Richter-a kind Richter-still,I need to do what I can to avoid him.To ignore that irresistible stream of kindness and warmth that swarms all around him.
Need to cleanse myself of those dreams once and for all.We are not bound.Nor are we fated.I'm a Seeker-he's the spawn of a Richter-and my only destiny is to stop his brother from...whatever it is that he's doing.
But,more immediately,I need to get home.And there's no denying I could do a lot worse than catching a ride with gorgeous Dace Whitefeather. ~ Alyson Noel,#NFDB |
979:What is it about?”
“A lover who asks a blackbird to carry a message to his sweetheart.”
“Why can’t he go to her himself?” Helen realized they were both speaking in hushed tones, as if they were exchanging secrets.
“He can’t find her. He’s too deep in love--it keeps him from seeing clearly.”
“Does the blackbird find her?”
“The song doesn’t say,” he said with a shrug.
“But I must know the ending to the story,” Helen protested.
Winterborne laughed. It was an irresistible sound, rough-soft and sly. When he replied, his accent had thickened. “That’s what comes o’ reading novels, it is. The story needs no ending. That’s not what matters.”
“What matters, then?” she dared to ask.
His dark gaze held hers. “That he loves. That he’s searching. Like the rest of us poor devils, he has no way of knowing if he’ll ever have his heart’s desire.”
And you? Helen longed to ask. What are you searching for? The question was too personal to ask even of someone she had known for a long time, much less a stranger. Even so, the words hovered on her tongue, begging to be spoken. She looked away and fought to hold them back. When she returned her gaze to Winterborne, his expression had become remote again. Which was a relief, because for a moment she’d had the alarming feeling that she was only a breath away from confiding every private thought and wish that she’d never told anyone.
To Helen’s great relief, Quincy arrived with the dinner tray. The valet’s white brows lifted fractionally as he saw her alone in the room with Winterborne, but he said nothing. As Quincy proceeded to arrange the flatware, glasses, and plate on the table, Helen regained her composure. She stood from the upholstered bench and gave Winterborne a neutral smile. “I will leave you to enjoy your dinner.”
His gaze swept over her, lingering at her face. “You’ll play for me again one evening?”
“Yes, if you like.” She left the parlor gratefully, steeling herself not to break into a run. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
980:You play with great skill,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Is that your favorite piece?”
“It’s my most difficult,” Helen said, “but not my favorite.”
“What do you play when there’s no one to hear?”
The gentle question, spoken in that accent with vowels as broad as his shoulders, caused Helen’s stomach to tighten pleasurably. Perturbed by the sensation, she was slow to reply. “I don’t remember the name of it. A piano tutor taught it to me long ago. For years I’ve tried to find out what it is, but no one has ever recognized the melody.”
“Play it for me.”
Calling it up from memory, she played the sweetly haunting chords, her hands gentle on the keys. The mournful chords never failed to stir her, making her heart ache for things she couldn’t name. At the conclusion, Helen looked up from the keys and found Winterborne staring at her as if transfixed. He masked his expression, but not before she saw a mixture of puzzlement, fascination, and a hint of something hot and unsettling.
“It’s Welsh,” he said.
Helen shook her head with a laugh of wondering disbelief. “You know it?”
“‘A Ei Di’r Deryn Du.’ Every Welshman is born knowing it.”
“What is it about?”
“A lover who asks a blackbird to carry a message to his sweetheart.”
“Why can’t he go to her himself?” Helen realized they were both speaking in hushed tones, as if they were exchanging secrets.
“He can’t find her. He’s too deep in love--it keeps him from seeing clearly.”
“Does the blackbird find her?”
“The song doesn’t say,” he said with a shrug.
“But I must know the ending to the story,” Helen protested.
Winterborne laughed. It was an irresistible sound, rough-soft and sly. When he replied, his accent had thickened. “That’s what comes o’ reading novels, it is. The story needs no ending. That’s not what matters.”
“What matters, then?” she dared to ask.
His dark gaze held hers. “That he loves. That he’s searching. Like the rest of us poor devils, he has no way of knowing if he’ll ever have his heart’s desire. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
981:You play with great skill," he said.
"Thank you."
"Is that your favorite piece?"
"It's my most difficult," Helen said, "but not my favorite."
"What do you play when there's no one to hear?"
The gentle question, spoken in that accent with vowels as broad as his shoulders, caused Helen's stomach to tighten pleasurably. Perturbed by the sensation, she was slow to reply. "I don't remember the name of it. A piano tutor taught it to me long ago. For years I've tried to find out what it is, but no one has ever recognized the melody."
"Play it for me."
Calling it up from memory, she played the sweetly haunting chords, her hands gentle on the keys. The mournful chords never failed to stir her, making her heart ache for things she couldn't name. At the conclusion, Helen looked up from the keys and found Winterborne staring at her as if transfixed. He masked his expression, but not before she saw a mixture of puzzlement, fascination, and a hint of something hot and unsettling.
"It's Welsh," he said.
Helen shook her head with a laugh of wondering disbelief. "You know it?"
"'A Ei Di'r Deryn Do.' Every Welshman is born knowing it."
"What is it about?"
"A lover who asks a blackbird to carry a message to his sweetheart."
"Why can't he go to her himself?" Helen realized they were both speaking in hushed tones, as if they were exchanging secrets.
"He can't find her. He's too deep in love- it keeps him from seeing clearly."
"Does the blackbird find her?"
"The song doesn't say," he said with a shrug.
"But I must know the ending to the story," Helen protested.
Winterborne laughed. It was an irresistible sound, rough-soft and sly. When he replied, his accent had thickened. "That's what comes o' reading novels, it is. The story needs no ending. That's not what matters."
"What matters, then?" she dared to ask.
His dark gaze held hers. "That he loves. That he's searching. Like the rest of us poor devils, he has no way of knowing if he'll ever have his heart's desire. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
| 982:All these months, she’d thought verbalizing her guilty deeds would cause her misery to multiply. She assumed the shame would strangle her, leave her devastated like a discarded waif. But instead, a small bud peeked out its newborn head, finding root in her soul. Hope. She cautiously raised her eyes, and Tilly pulled Rosalie into her time-aged arms. It was hard to believe they’d just met. It was hard to believe she’d confessed all, and still this woman snuggled her close. The tears came, but with each cry she released, it seemed the wind picked the heartbreak up and carried it away like an old crusty leaf. Then, when her past lay before her, naked and stark, with no more accusations and regrets, an irresistible urge to pray captured Rosalie. Vic, Birdie, her family all had spoken the truth of how Jesus took her punishment when He suffered and died on the cross. She’d heard more than one sermon that had proclaimed we simply had to confess our sins, and God would be faithful to forgive them. More than that, He’d also take the punishment too. She didn’t understand a love like that, but it was worth trying out. Take my punishment, Jesus. Rosalie knew she deserved to be condemned for her sins; she’d always known that. But she thought she could somehow serve the sentence herself by doing good things, working hard, acting perfect. For the first time, she understood that her sin was too heavy for her to carry, too weighty for her to pay off. She needed someone else to carry it for her. Her mom had sung of Christ’s “vast, unmeasured, boundless, free” love, but Rosalie had never thought it was for her. She had too much sin, too much darkness, too much pride. But now she knew His forgiveness belonged to her. And she belonged to Jesus. “Jesus, thank You for accepting me when I don’t deserve it,” she whispered. “From this day forward I want to live for You.” She closed her eyes, soaking in the sun, which had returned to warm her. And as she enjoyed the warmth of Tilly’s hug, Rosalie pictured Jesus holding her in the same way. ~ Tricia Goyer, #NFDB |
983:On the third day, I asked if she would like to climb Ben Loyal with me--with anyone else who fancied coming along. None of the guys wanted to join me and I ended up with a group of four girls, including Shara.
We spent two hours crossing the marshy moon grass to reach the foot of the mountain before starting up the steep slope toward the summit ridge. It was fairly sheer, but essentially we were still going the “easy” way.
Within two hundred feet, half of the girls were looking pretty beat.
I figured that having slogged across the marsh for so long, we should definitely do some of the climb. After all, that was the fun bit.
They all agreed and we continued up steadily.
Before the slope eases at the top, though, there is a section where the heather becomes quite exposed. It is only a short, few hundred feet, and I wrongly figured the girls would enjoy a safe, steep scramble that didn’t require any ropes. Plus the views were amazing out to sea.
But things didn’t quite go to plan.
The first panicked whimper seemed to set off a cacophony of cheeps, as, one by one, the girls began to voice their fears. It is funny how quickly everyone can go from being totally fine to totally not-fine, very fast, once one person starts to panic.
Then the tears started.
Nightmare.
I ended up literally having to shadow the three girls who were worst struck by this fear, one by one down the slope. I had to stand behind them, hands on top of their hands, and help them move one step at a time, planting their feet exactly where I did, to shield them from the drop.
The point of this story is that the only girl who was supercool through the whole mission was Shara, who steadily plodded up, and then just as steadily plodded down beside me, as I tried to help the others.
Now I was really smitten.
A cool head under pressure is truly irresistible to me, and if I hadn’t been totally besotted before, then our mountain experience together tipped the balance.
I had a sneaking feeling that I had met the girl of my dreams. ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB |
| 984:The coming of Caesarism breaks the dictature of money and its political weapon, democracy. After a long triumph of world-city economy and its interests over political creative force, the political side of life manifests itself after all as the stronger of the two. The sword is victorious over the money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will. If we call these money-powers 'Capitalism,' then we may designate as Socialism the will to call into life a mighty politico-economic order that transcends all class interests, a system of lofty thoughtfulness and duty-sense that keeps the whole in fine condition for the decisive battle of its history, and this battle is also the battle of money and law. The private powers of the economy want free paths for their acquisition of great resources. No legislation must stand in their way. They want to make the laws themselves, in their interests, and to that end they make use of the tool they have made for themselves, democracy, the subsidized party. Law needs, in order to resist this onslaught, a high tradition and an ambition of strong families that finds its satisfaction not in the heaping-up of riches, but in the tasks of true rulership, above and beyond all money-advantage. A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and no power that can confront money is left but this one. Money is overthrown and abolished only by blood. Life is alpha and omega, the cosmic stream in microcosmic form. It is the fact of facts within the world-as-history. Before the irresistible rhythm of the generation-sequence, everything built up by the waking-consciousness in its intellectual world vanishes at the last. Ever in History it is life and life only race-quality, the triumph of the will-to-power and not the victory of truths, discoveries, or money that signifies. World-history is the world court, and it has ever decided in favour of the stronger, fuller, and more self-assured life decreed to it, namely, the right to exist, regardless of whether its right would hold before a tribunal of waking-consciousness. ~ Oswald Spengler, #NFDB |
| 985:Before she could say more, she looked up to find Cade towering over her. "Do you think they could do one song without us so I might have the pleasure of the next dance?" he asked formally. Lily looked startled and Whitaker frowned, but Anna had just arrived and offered shyly, "I'll play for you, Mrs. Brown. What would you like to hear?" It was settled. Feeling a quiver of excitement, Lily took Cade's hand and rose from the bench. "Do you know 'Molly Cotton-tail'?" It was an easy song, one every child learned, but great fun for dancing. Lily smiled at the child's eager nod. She would finally have a chance to try dancing. Lily's excitement was irresistible. Ignoring the fact that he would most likely get his head blown off for daring to lay a hand to a white woman, Cade led her out to join the dancers. Langton and his wife were there, and they joined the circle beside them. Cade hid his surprise as Maria haughtily joined them, towing one of Lily's farmhands behind her. Maria was a whore at heart, but she hadn't denied him her bed as many another had done before. Cade wouldn't begrudge this offer of friendship now. Unaware that a small cadre of friends and neighbors were forming a protective circle around them, Lily laughed and took Cade's hand as the music began. She had waited for this moment all her life, and she expected to enjoy it to the fullest. She no longer pictured a dream man to sweep her off her feet. She merely wanted to enjoy the music. Cade watched in amazement as Lily spread her wings and flew. She didn't need anyone's protection. The sheer delight on her face as she swung from arm to arm around the circle, her feet scarcely touching the floor, was enough to stop even the hardest heart from treading on her happiness. Cade almost half-believed that life had some meaning beyond mere existence as he watched her. He wouldn't need liquor if he could always feel that kind of joy, even secondhand. Lily collapsed, laughing, into his arms as the music ended. For a moment, Cade was supporting her slenderness against him while she recovered her breath. He had no right being aroused by innocence incarnate, but while Lily laughed, Cade burned. The ~ Patricia Rice, #NFDB |
| 986:Justify my soul, O God, but also from Your fountains fill my will with fire. Shine in my mind, although perhaps this means “be darkness to my experience,” but occupy my heart with Your tremendous Life. Let my eyes see nothing in the world but Your glory, and let my hands touch nothing that is not for Your service. Let my tongue taste no bread that does not strengthen me to praise Your great mercy. I will hear Your voice and I will hear all harmonies You have created, singing Your hymns. Sheep’s wool and cotton from the field shall warm me enough that I may live in Your service; I will give the rest to Your poor. Let me use all things for one sole reason: to find my joy in giving You glory. Therefore keep me, above all things, from sin. Keep me from the death of deadly sin which puts hell in my soul. Keep me from the murder of lust that blinds and poisons my heart. Keep me from the sins that eat a man’s flesh with irresistible fire until he is devoured. Keep me from loving money in which is hatred, from avarice and ambition that suffocate my life. Keep me from the dead works of vanity and the thankless labor in which artists destroy themselves for pride and money and reputation, and saints are smothered under the avalanche of their own importunate zeal. Stanch in me the rank wound of covetousness and the hungers that exhaust my nature with their bleeding. Stamp out the serpent envy that stings love with poison and kills all joy. Untie my hands and deliver my heart from sloth. Set me free from the laziness that goes about disguised as activity when activity is not required of me, and from the cowardice that does what is not demanded, in order to escape sacrifice. But give me the strength that waits upon You in silence and peace. Give me humility in which alone is rest, and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens. And possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love. Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for You alone. For there is only one thing that can satisfy love and reward it, and that is You alone. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB |
987:This is the one thing I managed to keep. I’d rather give it to you privately, since I have nothing for the others.”
Hesitantly she took the object from his open palm.
It was a small, exquisite black cameo rimmed with pearls. A woman on a horse.
“The woman is Athena,” Devon said. “According to myth, she invented the bridle and was the first ever to tame a horse.”
Kathleen looked down at the gift in wonder. First the shawl…now this. Personal, beautiful, thoughtful things. No one had ever understood her taste so acutely.
Damn him.
“It’s lovely,” she said unsteadily. “Thank you.”
Through a glaze of incipient tears, she saw him grin.
Unclasping the little pin, she tried to fasten it to the center of her collar. “Is it straight?”
“Not quite.” The backs of his fingers brushed her throat as he adjusted the cameo and pinned it. “I have yet to actually see you ride,” he said. “West claims that you’re more accomplished than anyone he’s ever seen.”
“An exaggeration.”
“I doubt that.” His fingers left her collar. “Happy Christmas,” he murmured, and leaned down to kiss her forehead.
As the pressure of his lips lifted, Kathleen stepped back, trying to create a necessary distance between them. Her heel brushed against some solid, living thing, and a sharply indignant squeal startled her.
“Oh!” Kathleen leaped forward instinctively, colliding with Devon’s front. His arms closed around her automatically, even as a pained grunt escaped him. “Oh--I’m sorry…What in heaven’s name--” She twisted to see behind her and broke off at the sight of Hamlet, who had come to root beneath the Christmas tree for stray sweets that had fallen from paper cones as they’d been removed from the branches. The pig snuffled among the folds of the tree skirt and the scattered presents wrapped in colored paper. Finding a tidbit to consume, he oinked in satisfaction.
Kathleen shook her head and clung to Devon as laughter trembled through both of them. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, her hand resting lightly at the side of his waistcoat.
His smiling lips grazed her temple. “Of course not, you little makeweight.”
They stayed together in that delicious moment of scattered light and fragrant spruce and irresistible attraction. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
988:Runach didn't consider himself particularly dull, but he had to admit he was baffled. "Then what now?"
"What do you mean, what now?" Weger echoed in disbelief. "Do what is necessary! Bloody hell, man, must I instruct you in every bloody step? Take your mighty magic and heal her!"
Runach blinked. "What in the world are you talking about?"
Weger threw up his hands in frustration. "Heal her, you fool! Use Fadaire or whatever elvish rot comes first to mind."
"I have no magic."
"Of course you have magic--" Weger stopped suddenly. "You what?"
"I have no magic," Runach repeated, through gritted teeth. "My father took it at the well."
Weger looked suddenly as if he needed to sit down. "Bloody hell," he said faintly. He sagged back against the door. "I had no idea"
Weger rubbed his hands over his face and indulged in a selection of very vile curses. "Damn it," he said, finally. He looked at Runach. "What are we to do now?"
"If magic will work here" Runach said, "why don't you use yours?"
Weger folded his arms over his chest. "I haven't used a word of magic in over three hundred years!"
"No time like the present to dust it off then, is there?"
Weger hesitated. Runach suspected it was the first time in those same three centuries the man had done so. He considered, then looked at Runach.
"I could," he said, sounding as if the words had been dragged from him by a thousand irresistible spells, "but I have no elegant magic."
Runach shrugged. "Then use Wexham."
"It will leave a scar."
"I don't think she'll care."
"It will leave a very large, ugly scar," Weger amended.
"Then use Camanae or Fadaire," Runach suggested.
"And have my mouth catch on fire? You ask too much."
Runach looked at him seriously. "I honestly don't care what you use, as long as you save her life. Whilst you still can."
Weger looked as if his fondest wish was to turn and flee. But he apparently wasn't the master of Gobhann because he was a coward. He took a deep breath, cursed fluently, then knelt down. Runach listened to him spit out an eminently useful spell of Croxteth, then follow that bit of healing with a very long string of curses in which Lothar of Wychweald and Runach's own father figured prominently. ~ Lynn Kurland,#NFDB |
989:Con los países pobres ocurre lo mismo que ocurre con los pobres de cada país: los medios masivos de comunicación sólo se dignan echarles una ojeada cuando ofrecen alguna desgracia espectacular que puede tener éxito en el mercado. ¿Cuántas personas deben ser destripadas por guerra o terremoto, o ahogadas por inundación, para que algunos países sean noticia y aparezcan por una vez en el mapa del mundo? ¿Cuántos espantos debe acumular un muerto de hambre para que las cámaras lo enfoquen por una vez en la vida? El mundo tiende a convertirse en el escenario de un gigantesco reality show. Los pobres, los desaparecidos de siempre, sólo aparecen en la tele como objeto de burla de la cámara oculta o como actores de sus propias truculencias. El desconocido necesita ser reconocido, el invisible quiere hacerse visible, busca raíz el desarraigado. Lo que no existe en la televisión, ¿existe en la realidad? Sueña el paria con la gloria de la pantalla chica, donde cualquier espantapájaros se transfigura en galán irresistible. Con tal de entrar en el olimpo donde los teledioses moran, algún infeliz ha sido capaz de pegarse un tiro ante las cámaras de un programa de entretenimientos. Últimamente, la llamada telebasura está teniendo, en unos cuantos países de América latina, tanto o más éxito que las telenovelas: la niña violada llora ante el periodista que la interroga como si la violara otra vez; este monstruo es el nuevo hombre elefante, miren, señoras y señores, no se pierdan este fenómeno increíble: la mujer barbuda busca novio; un señor gordo dice estar embarazado. Hace treinta y poco años, en Brasil, ya los concursos del horror convocaban multitudes de candidatos y ganaban enormes teleaudiencias: ¿Quién es el enano más bajito del país? ¿Quién es el narigón de nariz más larga, que la ducha no le moja los pies? ¿Quién es el desgraciado más desgraciado de todos? En los concursos de desgraciados, desfilaba por los estudios la corte de los milagros: la niña sin orejas, comidas por las ratas; el débil mental que había pasado treinta años encadenado a la pata de una cama; la mujer que era hija, cuñada, suegra y esposa del marido borracho que la había dejado inválida. Y cada desgraciado tenía su hinchada, que desde la platea gritaba, a coro:
-¡Ya ganó! ¡Ya ganó! ~ Eduardo Galeano,#NFDB |
| 990:He put his hands on her waist. “Kiss me,” he said. “No,” she said. “Come on. Haven’t I been perfect? Haven’t I followed all your rules? How can you be so selfish? There’s no one around—they’re busy drinking.” “I think you should go back to your reunion,” she said, but she laughed at him again. Boldly, he picked her up under her arms and lifted her high, holding her above him, slowly lowering her mouth to his. “You’re shameless,” she told him. “Kiss me,” he begged. “Come on. Gimme a little taste.” It was simply irresistible. He was irresistible. She grabbed his head in her hands and met his lips. She opened hers, moving over his mouth. When he did this to her, she thought of nothing but the kiss. It consumed her deliciously. She allowed his tongue, he allowed hers, and she reached that moment when she wanted it to never end. It was so easy to become lost in his tenderness, his strength. And then, inevitably, it had to end. They were standing in the street, after all, though it was almost dark. “Thank you,” he said. He put her on her feet and behind them, a raucous cheer erupted. There, on the porch at Jack’s, stood eight marines and Rick, their tankards raised, shouting, cheering, whistling, cat-calling. “Oh, brother,” she said. “I’m going to kill them.” “Is this some kind of marine tradition?” she asked him. “I’m going to kill them,” he said again, but he kept his arm around her shoulders. “You realize what this means,” she said. “These little kisses are no longer our little secret.” He looked down into her eyes. The shouts had subsided into a low rumble of laughter. “Mel, they are not little. And since it’s leaked,” he said, grabbing her up in his arms, lifting her up to him again, her feet clear of the ground, and planted another one on her, to the excited shouts of the old 192nd. Even with that riot in the background, she found herself responding. She was growing addicted to the perfect flavor of his mouth. When it was done she said, “I knew it was a mistake to let you get to first base.” “Ha, I haven’t even thrown out the first pitch yet. You’re invited to go fishing with us, if you like.” “Thanks, but I have things to do. I’ll see you tomorrow night for a beer. And I’ll get myself to my car. I’m not going to make out in front of them for the next week.” * ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB |
991:Interlude: The Casement
Once, when the sun-burst flew
its banner above broad seas and eastern hills,
my casement knew
that morning in her wondrous isle of youth distils
perpetual balm, and tidings trumpeted
of Eden air
winsome and quick, round many a wilding grace, unwed,
clad only in glad hair,
bade fancy soar
far and aloft along that limitless ecstasy
of crystal, towards some shore
where life were crown'd amidst a halcyon sea.
Now — desolate, despairful (lamentable retreat!
wreck'd wheels and spars!),
streaming from irresistible defeat
the broken field of stars:
and all our hope they bore, the appointed word
and that unbroken song
that should resolve our suffering dark in peace, deferr'd
— how long?
The window is wide and lo! beyond its bars
dim fields of fading stars
and cavern tracts, whence the great store of tears
that Beauty all the years
hath wept in wanderings of the eyeless dark,
remembering the long cark
whereunder we, her care, are silent bow'd,
invades with numbing shroud
this dwindling realm of listless avatars.
Dim fields of fading stars,
and shall yet ye with amaranth rapture burn
and maiden grace return
sprung soft and sudden on the fainting night,
rose passioning to white;
or must our task remain and hopeless art
that sickeneth the heart
from yon dull embers to evoke the ghost
of the first garden lost,
38
sad necromancers we? Then let the blast,
that waked you ancient, cast
into the deeps your useless lagging dearth,
O blazon'd shame of Earth,
who then might hail the last oblivion,
knowing you doomward blown
before the advance of night's relentless cars,
dim fields of fading stars!
40-'O white wind, numbing the world'
O WHITE wind, numbing the world
to a mask of suffering hate!
and thy goblin pipes have skirl’d
all night, at my broken gate.
O heart, be hidden and kept
in a half-light colour’d and warm,
and call on thy dreams that have slept
to charm thee from hate and harm.
They are gone, for I might not keep;
my sense is beaten and dinn’d;
there is no peace but a grey sleep
in the pause of the wind.
~ Christopher John Brennan,#NFDB |
992:You wouldn’t be happy with him,” Marcus said, disregarding her struggles as easily as if she were a writhing cat he had caught by the scruff of the neck. The coat he had placed around her shoulders fell to the floor.
“What makes you think I would be any better off with you?”
He clamped his hands around her wrists, and twisted her arms behind her back, giving a grunt of surprise as she stomped hard on his instep. “Because you need me,” he said, drawing in his breath as she squirmed against him. “Just as I need you.” He crushed his mouth on hers. “I’ve needed you for years.” Another kiss, this one deep and drugging, his tongue searching her intimately.
She might have continued to grapple with him had he not done something that surprised her. He released her wrists and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close in a warm, tender embrace. Caught off-guard, she went still, her heart thumping madly.
“It wasn’t a meaningless act for me either,” Marcus said, his raspy whisper tickling her ear. “Yesterday I finally realized that all the things I thought were wrong about you were actually the things I enjoyed most. I don’t give a damn what you do, so long as it pleases you. Run barefoot on the front lawn. Eat pudding with your fingers. Tell me to go to hell as often as you like. I want you just as you are. After all, you’re the only woman aside from my sisters who has ever dared to tell me to my face that I’m an arrogant ass. How could I resist you?” His mouth moved to the soft cushion of her cheek. “My dearest Lillian,” he whispered, easing her head back to kiss her eyelids. “If I had the gift of poetry, I would shower you with sonnets. But words have always been difficult for me when my feelings are strongest. And there is one word in particular that I can’t bring myself to say to you…‘ goodbye.’ I couldn’t bear the sight of you walking away from me. If you won’t marry me for the sake of your own honor, then do it for the sake of everyone who would have to tolerate me otherwise. Marry me because I need someone who will help me to laugh at myself. Because someone has to teach me how to whistle. Marry me, Lillian… because I have the most irresistible fascination for your ears.”
“My ears?” Bewildered, Lillian felt him duck his head to nip at the pink tip of her earlobe.
“Mmmm. The most perfect ears I’ve ever seen. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB |
993:I will not mention the name (and what bits of it I happen to give here appear in decorous disguise) of that man, that Franco-Hungarian writer... I would rather not dwell upon him at all, but I cannot help it— he is surging up from under my pen. Today one does not hear much about him; and this is good, for it proves that I was right in resisting his evil spell, right in experiencing a creepy chill down my spine whenever this or that new book of his touched my hand. The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates. Lean and arrogant, with some poisonous pun ever ready to fork out and quiver at you, and with a strange look of expectancy in his dull brown veiled eyes, this false wag had, I daresay, an irresistible effect on small rodents. Having mastered the art of verbal invention to perfection, he particularly prided himself on being a weaver of words, a title he valued higher than that of a writer; personally, I never could understand what was the good of thinking up books, of penning things that had not really happened in some way or other; and I remember once saying to him as I braved the mockery of his encouraging nods that, were I a writer, I should allow only my heart to have imagination, and for the rest rely upon memory, that long-drawn sunset shadow of one’s personal truth.
I had known his books before I knew him; a faint disgust was already replacing the aesthetic pleasure which I had suffered his first novel to give me. At the beginning of his career, it had been possible perhaps to distinguish some human landscape, some old garden, some dream- familiar disposition of trees through the stained glass of his prodigious prose... but with every new book the tints grew still more dense, the gules and purpure still more ominous; and today one can no longer see anything at all through that blazoned, ghastly rich glass, and it seems that were one to break it, nothing but a perfectly black void would face one’s shivering soul. But how dangerous he was in his prime, what venom he squirted, with what whips he lashed when provoked! The tornado of his passing satire left a barren waste where felled oaks lay in a row, and the dust still twisted, and the unfortunate author of some adverse review, howling with pain, spun like a top in the dust. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,#NFDB |
994:Go away,” she said voicelessly.
Aureliano, smiled, picked her up by the waist with both hands like a pot of begonias, and dropped her on her back on the bed. With a brutal tug he pulled off her bathrobe before she had time to resist and he loomed over an abyss of newly washed nudity whose skin color, lines of fuzz, and hidden moles had all been imagined in the shadows of the other rooms. Amaranta Úrsula defended herself sincerely with the astuteness of a wise woman, weaseling her slippery, flexible, and fragrant weasel’s body as she tried to knee him in the kidneys and scorpion his face with her nails, but without either of them giving a gasp that might not have been taken for that”“breathing of a person watching the meager
April sunset through the open window. It was a fierce fight, a battle to the death, but it seemed to be without violence because it consisted of distorted attacks and ghostly evasions, slow, cautious, solemn, so that during it all there was time for the petunias to bloom and for Gaston to forget about his aviator’s dream in the next room, as if they were
two enemy lovers seeking reconciliation at the bottom of an aquarium. In the heat of that savage and ceremonious struggle, Amaranta Úrsula understood that her meticulous silence was so irrational that it could awaken the suspicions of her nearby husband much
more than the sound of warfare that they were trying to avoid. Then she began to laugh with her lips tight together, without giving up the fight, but defending herself with false bites and deweaseling her body little by little until they both were conscious of being adversaries and accomplices at the same time and the affray degenerated into a
conventional gambol and the attacks became”“caresses. Suddenly, almost playfully, like one more bit of mischief, Amaranta Úrsula dropped her defense, and when she tried to recover, frightened by what she herself had made possible, it was too late. A great commotion immobilized her in her center of gravity, planted her in her place, and her defensive will was demolished by the irresistible anxiety to discover what the orange whistles and the invisible globes on the other side of death were like. She barely had time to reach out her hand and grope for the towel to put a gag between her teeth so that she would not let out the cat howls that were already tearing at her insides. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,#NFDB |
995:When I woke, I was nestled on top of Ren’s chest. His arms were wrapped around me, and my legs were entwined with his. I was surprised I could breathe all night since my nose was smashed against his muscular torso. It had gotten cold, but my quilt covered both of us and his body, which maintained a warmer-than-average temperature, had kept me toasty all night.
Ren was still asleep, so I took the rare opportunity to study him. His powerful frame was relaxed and his face was softened by sleep. His lips were full, smooth, and utterly kissable, and for the first time, I noticed how long his sooty lashes were. His glossy dark hair fell softly over his brow and was mussed in a way that made him look even more irresistible.
So this is the real Ren. He doesn’t seem real. He looked like an archangel who fell to the earth. I’d been with Ren night and day for the past four weeks, but the time he was a man was such a small fraction of each day that he seemed almost like a dream guy, a real life Prince Charming.
I traced a black eyebrow, following its arch with my finger, and lightly brushed the silky dark hair away from his face. Hoping not to disturb him, I sighed, shifted slowly, and tried to move away, but his arms tensed, restraining me.
He sleepily mumbled, “Don’t even think about moving” and pulled me back to snuggle me close again. I rested my cheek against his chest, felt his heartbeat, and contented myself with listening to its rhythm.
After a few minutes, he stretched and rolled to his side, pulling me with him. He kissed my forehead, blinked open his eyes, and smiled at me. It was like watching the sun come up. The handsome, sleeping man was potent enough, but when he turned his dazzling white smile on me and blinked open his cobalt blue eyes, I was dumbstruck.
I bit my lip. Alarm bells started going off in my head.
Ren’s eyes fluttered open, and he tucked some loose hair behind my ear. “Good morning, rajkumari. Sleep well?”
I stammered, “I…you…I…slept just fine, thank you.”
I closed my eyes, rolled away from him, and stood up. I could deal with him a lot better if I didn’t think about him much, or look at him, or talk to him, or hear him.
He wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I felt his smile as he pressed his lips to the soft spot behind my ear. “Best night of sleep I’ve had in about three hundred and fifty years. ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB |
| 996:It is hard to overestimate the importance of the Catholic church’s value for European culture and for the whole world. It Christianized and civilized barbaric peoples and for a long time was the only guardian of science and art. Here the church’s cloisters were preeminent. The Catholic church developed a spiritual power unequaled anywhere, and today we still admire the way it combined the principle of catholicism with the principle of one sanctifying church, as well as tolerance with intolerance. It is a world in itself. Infinite diversity flows together, and this colorful picture gives it its irresistible charm (Complexio oppositorum). A country has seldom produced so many different kinds of people as has the Catholic church. With admirable power, it has understood how to maintain unity in diversity, to gain the love and respect of the masses, and to foster a strong sense of community. . . . But it is exactly because of this greatness that we have serious reservations. Has this world [of the Catholic church] really remained the church of Christ? Has it not perhaps become an obstruction blocking the path to God instead of a road sign on the path to God? Has it not blocked the only path to salvation? Yet no one can ever obstruct the way to God. The church still has the Bible, and as long as she has it we can still believe in the holy Christian church. God’s word will never be denied (Isa. 55:11), whether it be preached by us or by our sister church. We adhere to the same confession of faith, we pray the same Lord’s Prayer, and we share some of the same ancient rites. This binds us together, and as far as we are concerned we would like to live in peace with our disparate sister. We do not, however, want to deny anything that we have recognized as God’s word. The designation Catholic or Protestant is unimportant. The important thing is God’s word. Conversely, we will never violate anyone else’s faith. God does not desire reluctant service, and God has given everyone a conscience. We can and should desire that our sister church search its soul and concentrate on nothing but the word [1 Cor. 2:12– 13]. Until that time, we must have patience. We will have to endure it when, in false darkness, the “only holy church” pronounces upon our church the “anathema” (condemnation). She doesn’t know any better, and she doesn’t hate the heretic, only the heresy. As long as we let the word be our only armor we can look confidently into the future. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB |
997:How do you do? I’m Henry.”
So he was Henry Jenkins.
“I’m still Jane,” she said. Or, squeaked, rather.
He was trying to fasten his seat belt and his look of confusion was so adorable, she wanted to reach over and help, but that wouldn’t be in keeping with the…wait, they were on a plane. There were no more Rules. There was no more game. She felt her hopes rise so that she thought she’d float away before the plane took off, so she pushed her feet flat against the floor. She reminded herself that she was the predator now. Tallyho.
“This is a bit far to go, even for Mrs. Wattlesbrook.”
“She didn’t send me,” said Nobley-Henry. “Not before, not now. I sent myself, or rather I came because I…I had to try it. Look, I know this is crazy, but the ticket was nonrefundable. Could I at least accompany you home?”
“This is hardly a stroll through the park.”
“I’m tired of parks.”
She noticed that his tone was more casual now. He lost the stilted Regency air, his words relaxed enough to allow contractions--but besides that, so far Henry didn’t seem much different from Mr. Nobley.
He leaned back, as if trying to calm down. “It was a good gig, but the pay wasn’t astronomical, so you can imagine my relief to find you weren’t flying first class. Though I’d prefer a cargo ship, frankly. I hate planes.”
“Mr. Nob--uh, Henry, it’s not too late to get off the plane. I’m not writing an article for the magazine.”
“What magazine?”
“Oh. And I’m not rich.”
“I know. Mrs. Wattlesbrook outlines every guest’s financials along with their profiles.”
“Why would you come after me if you knew I wasn’t…”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re irresistible.”
“I am not.”
“I’m not happy about it. You really are the most irritating person I’ve ever met. I’d managed to avoid any women of any temptation whatsoever for four years--a very easy task in Pembrook Park. Things were going splendidly, I was right on track to die alone and unnoticed. And then…”
“You don’t know me! You know Miss Erstwhile, but--”
“Come now, ever since I witnessed your abominable performance in the theatrical, it’s been clear that you can’t act to save your life. All three weeks, that was you.” He smiled. “And I wanted to keep knowing you. Well, I didn’t at first. I wanted you to go away and leave me in peace. I’ve made a career out of avoiding any possibility of a real relationship. And then to find you in that circus…it didn’t make sense. But what ever does?”
“Nothing,” said Jane with conviction. “Nothing makes sense. ~ Shannon Hale,#NFDB |
998:The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research “childhood.”
There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises “adolescence.” The feeling haunts people all their lives.
Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do with the pieces? Some people hunker down atop the local pile of ruins and make do, Bedouin tending their goats in the shade of shattered giants. Others set about breaking what remains of the world into bits ever smaller and more jagged, kicking through the rubble like kids running through piles of leaves. And some people, passing among the scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle, start to pick up a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back together again.
Two difficulties with this latter scheme at once present themselves. First of all, we have only ever glimpsed, as if through half-closed lids, the picture on the lid of the jigsaw puzzle box. Second, no matter how diligent we have been about picking up pieces along the way, we will never have anywhere near enough of them to finish the job. The most we can hope to accomplish with our handful of salvaged bits—the bittersweet harvest of observation and experience—is to build a little world of our own. A scale model of that mysterious original, unbroken, half—remembered. Of course the worlds we build out of our store of fragments can be only approximations, partial and inaccurate. As representations of the vanished whole that haunts us, they must be accounted failures. And yet in that very failure, in their gaps and inaccuracies, they may yet be faithful maps, accurate scale models, of this beautiful and broken world. We call these scale models “works of art. ~ Michael Chabon,#NFDB |
999:After the Grand Perhaps”
After vespers, after the first snow
has fallen to its squalls, after New Wave,
after the anorexics have curled
into their geometric forms,
after the man with the apparition
in his one bad eye has done red things
behind the curtain of the lid & sleeps,
after the fallout shelter in the elementary school
has been packed with tins & other tangibles,
after the barn boys have woken, startled
by foxes & fire, warm in their hay, every part
of them blithe & smooth & touchable,
after the little vandals have tilted
toward the impossible seduction
to smash glass in the dark, getting away
with the most lethal pieces, leaving
the shards which travel most easily
through flesh as message
on the bathroom floor, the parking lots,
the irresistible debris of the neighbor’s yard
where he’s been constructing all winter long.
After the pain has become an old known
friend, repeating itself, you can hold on to it.
The power of fright, I think, is as much
as magnetic heat or gravity.
After what is boundless: wind chimes,
fertile patches of the land,
the ochre symmetry of fields in fall,
the end of breath, the beginning
of shadow, the shadow of heat as it moves
the way the night heads west,
I take this road to arrive at its end
where the toll taker passes the night, reading.
I feel the cupped heat
of his left hand as he inherits
change; on the road that is not his road
anymore I belong to whatever it is
which will happen to me.
When I left this city I gave back
the metallic waking in the night, the signals
of barges moving coal up a slow river north,
the movement of trains, each whistle
like a woodwind song of another age
passing, each ambulance would split a night
in two, lying in bed as a little girl,
a fear of being taken with the sirens
as they lit the neighborhood in neon, quick
as the fire as it takes fire
& our house goes up in night.
After what is arbitrary: the hand grazing
something too sharp or fine, the word spoken
out of sleep, the buckling of the knees to cold,
the melting of the parts to want,
the design of the moon to cast
unfriendly light, the dazed shadow
of the self as it follows the self,
the toll taker’s sorrow
that we couldn’t have been more intimate.
Which leads me back to the land,
the old wolves which used to roam on it,
the one light left on the small far hill
where someone must be living still.
After life there must be life. ~ Lucie Brock Broido,#NFDB |
| 1000:There’s something else too and it’s really important. What do you know about something called a mating scent?” “Mating scent?” Sophie could almost see her sister shrug. “Uh, I may have heard the term. I know the Kindred place a lot of importance on smells.” “That’s because they use them to seduce their brides. When a Kindred warrior claims a woman as his own, his body immediately begins making a pheromone that’s specifically tailored to her DNA,” Sophie said rapidly, quoting as well as she could remember from what Sylvan had told her. “Well, Baird does smell really good. But…so?” “So? So, it’s irresistible. I mean, it makes him irresistible to you. Remember how we were wondering why nobody ever turned the Kindred down and came back to Earth? This is why, Liv—they can’t help themselves. His mating scent is like a drug and you’re being subjected to it every minute you’re with him!” Sophie was panting she was so upset but on the other end of whatever strange connection they had there was a lengthy silence. It went on for so long that she began to wonder if her twin had hung up on her. “Liv?” she asked at last, looking up in the air as though she could see her floating there. “Liv, are you still there?” “I’m here.” Liv’s voice was flat. “Are you sure about this? I mean, how did you get this information?” “Sylvan told me. You know, Baird’s brother?” “Yes, I know.” There was another lengthy silence and then Liv muttered, “Son of a bitch.” “Liv, are you okay?” “Yeah, I’m okay. You’re absolutely certain this is right?” “Positive. He didn’t try to hide it or anything. He said that even if you knew, you wouldn’t be able to fight it—it’s that strong. Your body will react to his mating scent—” “Whether I want it to or not,” Liv said, finishing her sentence in the familiar way they had. “Exactly.” Sophie sighed. “Didn’t Baird tell you any of this?” “He talked about smells being important and said I would find that I wanted him more and more but no. He never told me he was using biological warfare on me.” Now Liv sounded really upset and Sophie felt her heart twist. “Look, Liv, I’m sorry, really I am. I feel horrible now—were you beginning to like him?” “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been fighting what I felt so hard but I didn’t even know what I was fighting—just that I couldn’t, uh, help myself when I was close to him. And all this time he was lying to me. God…it’s Mitch all over again.” “Oh honey, no.” Sophie wished that her sister was there in person so she could give her a hug. “It’s not like you caught him with another woman.” “No—it’s worse. At least Mitch didn’t drug me to force me to stay with him. ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB |
| 1001:Consider, for example, a cichlid fish known as Haplochromis burtoni that comes from the lakes of East Africa.9 In this species, only a small number of males secure a breeding territory, and they are not discreet about their privileged social status. In contrast to their drably beige nonterritorial counterparts, territorial males sport bold splashes of red and orange, and intimidating black eye stripes. The typical day for a territorial male involves a busy schedule of unreconstructed masculinity: fighting off intruders, risking predation in order to woo a female into his territory, then, having inseminated her by ejaculating into her mouth, immediately setting off in pursuit of a new female. Add to this the fact that territorial males boast significantly larger testes and have higher circulating levels of testosterone than submissive nonterritorial males, and a T-Rex view of the situation seems almost irresistible. These high-T fish are kings indeed, presumably thanks to the effects of all that testosterone on their bodies, brain, and behavior. With a large dose of artistic license, we might even imagine the reaction were a group of feminist cichlid fish to start agitating for greater territorial equality between the sexes. It’s not discrimination, the feminist fish would be told, in tones of regret almost thick enough to hide the condescension, but testosterone. But even in the cichlid fish, testosterone isn’t the omnipotent player it at first seems to be. If it were, then castrating a territorial fish would be a guaranteed method of bringing about his social downfall. Yet it isn’t. When a castrated territorial fish is put in a tank with an intact nonterritorial male of a similar size, the castrated male continues to dominate (although less aggressively). Despite his flatlined T levels, the status quo persists.10 If you want to bring down a territorial male, no radical surgical operations are required. Instead, simply put him in a tank with a larger territorial male fish. Within a few days, the smaller male will lose his bold colors, neurons in a region of the brain involved in gonadal activity will reduce in size, and his testes will also correspondingly shrink. Exactly the opposite happens when a previously submissive, nonterritorial male is experimentally maneuvered into envied territorial status (by moving him into a new community with only females and smaller males): the neurons that direct gonadal growth expand, and his testes—the primary source of testosterone production—enlarge.11 In other words, the T-Rex scenario places the chain of events precisely the wrong way around. As Francis and his colleagues, who carried out these studies, conclude: “Social events regulate gonadal events.”12 ~ Cordelia Fine, #NFDB |
1002:
Sweet Mother, is there a spiritual being in everybody?
That depends on what we call "being". If for "being" we substitute "presence", yes, there is a spiritual presence in everyone. If we call "being" an organised entity, fully conscious of itself, independent, and having the power of asserting itself and ruling the rest of the nature - no! The possibility of this independent and all-powerful being is in everybody, but the realisation is the result of long efforts which sometimes extend over many lives.
In everyone, even at the very beginning, this spiritual presence, this inner light is there.... In fact, it is everywhere. I have seen it many a time in certain animals. It is like a shining point which is the basis of a certain control and protection, something which, even in half-consciousness, makes possible a certain harmony with the rest of creation so that irreparable catastrophes may not be constant and general. Without this presence the disorder created by the violences and passions of the vital would be so great that at any moment they could bring about a general catastrophe, a sort of total destruction which would prevent the progress of Nature. That presence, that spiritual light - which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness - is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows Nature's work to be accomplished.
And this presence becomes quite obvious in the human being, even the most rudimentary. Even in the most monstrous human being, in one who gives the impression of being an incarnation of a devil or a monster, there is something within exercising a sort of irresistible control - even in the worst, some things are impossible. And without this presence, if the being were controlled exclusively by the adverse forces, the forces of the vital, this impossibility would not exist.
Each time a wave of these monstrous adverse forces sweeps over the earth, one feels that nothing can ever stop the disorder and horror from spreading, and always, at a certain time, unexpectedly and inexplicably a control intervenes, and the wave is arrested, the catastrophe is not total. And this is because of the Presence, the supreme Presence, in matter.
But only in a few exceptional beings and after a long, very long work of preparation extending over many, many lives does this Presence change into a conscious, independent, fully organised being, all-powerful master of his dwelling-place, conscious enough, powerful enough, to be able to control not only this dwelling but what surrounds it and in a field of radiation and action that is more and more extensive... and effective.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, 339-340,#NFDB |
| 1003:could have sworn that she saw the tip of Douglas’s tail wag. She left Bomber to his odious sister and tripped downstairs into the bright afternoon sunshine. The last thing she heard as she closed the door behind her was from Portia, in an altogether changed, but still unpleasant, wheedling tone: ‘Now, darling, when are you going to publish my book?’ At the corner of Great Russell Street she stopped for a moment, remembering the man she had smiled at. She hoped that the person he was meeting hadn’t left him waiting for too long. Just then, in amongst the dust and dirt at her feet, the glint of gold and glass caught her eye. She stooped down, rescued the small, round object from the gutter and slipped it safely into her pocket. Chapter 4 It was always the same. Looking down and never turning his face to the sky, he searched the pavements and gutters. His back burned and his eyes watered, full of grit and tears. And then he fell; back through the black into the damp and twisted sheets of his own bed. The dream was always the same. Endlessly searching and never finding the one thing that would finally bring him peace. The house was filled with the deep, soft darkness of a summer night. Anthony swung his weary legs out of bed and sat shrugging the stubborn scraps of dream from his head. He would have to get up. Sleep would not return tonight. He padded down the stairs, their creaking wood echoing his aching bones. No light was needed until he reached the kitchen. He made a pot of tea, finding more comfort in the making than the drinking, and took it through to the study. Pale moonlight skimmed across the edges of the shelves and pooled in the centre of the mahogany table. High on a shelf in the corner, the gold lid of the biscuit tin winked at him as he crossed the room. He took it down carefully and set it in the shimmering circle of light on the table. Of all the things that he had ever found, this troubled him the most. Because it was not a ‘something’ but a ‘someone’; of that he was unreasonably sure. Once again, he removed the lid and inspected the contents, as he had done every day for the past week since bringing it home. He had already repositioned the tin in the study several times, placing it higher up or hidden from sight, but its draw remained irresistible. He couldn’t leave it alone. He dipped his hand into the tin and gently rolled the coarse, grey grains across his fingertips. The memory swept through him, snatching his breath and winding him as surely as any punch to the gut. Once again, he was holding death in his hands. The life they could have had together was a self-harming fantasy in which Anthony rarely indulged. They might have been grandparents by now. Therese had never spoken about wanting children, but then they had both assumed that they had ~ Ruth Hogan, #NFDB |
1004:There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied. As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane -- as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout -- there may be no more potent force than religion. When the subject of religiously inspired bloodshed comes up, many Americans immediately think of Islamic fundamentalism, which is to be expected in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions. Muhammad is not the only prophet whose words have been used to sanction barbarism; history has not lacked for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists who have been motivated by scripture to butcher innocents. Plenty of these religious extremists have been homegrown, corn-fed Americans.
Faith-based violence was present long before Osama bin Laden, and it ill be with us long after his demise. Religious zealots like bin Laden, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara, and Dan Lafferty are common to every age, just as zealots of other stripes are. In any human endeavor, some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will consume them utterly. One has to look no further than individuals who feel compelled to devote their lives to becoming concert pianists, say, or climbing Mount Everest. For some, the province of the extreme holds an allure that's irresistible. And a certain percentage of such fanatics will inevitably fixate on the matters of the spirit.
The zealot may be outwardly motivated by the anticipation of a great reward at the other end -- wealth, fame, eternal salvation -- but the real recompense is probably the obsession itself. This is no less true for the religious fanatic than for the fanatical pianist or fanatical mountain climber. As a result of his (or her) infatuation, existence overflows with purpose. Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic's worldview; a narcissistic sense of self-assurance displaces all doubt. A delicious rage quickens his pulse, fueled by the sins and shortcomings of lesser mortals, who are soiling the world wherever he looks. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture.
Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for the voice of God... ~ Jon Krakauer,#NFDB |
| 1005:Sitting closest to the captain was a man who was clearly Alpha Dog of the group. He was about thirty-five and wore what looked like a very expensive suit, and Matthews had inclined his head toward the man in a way that went beyond deferential and nearly approached reverence. The man looked up at me as I entered, scanned me as if he was memorizing a row of numbers, and then turned impatiently back to Matthews. Sitting next to this charming individual was a woman so startlingly beautiful that for a half moment I forgot I was walking, and I paused in midstep, my right foot dangling in the air, as I gaped at her like a twelve-year-old boy. I simply stared, and I could not have said why. The woman’s hair was the color of old gold, and her features were pleasant and regular, true enough. And her eyes were a startling violet, a color so unlikely and yet so compelling that I felt an urgent need to move near and study her eyes at close range. But there was something beyond the mere arrangement of her features, something unseen and only felt, that made her seem far more attractive than she actually was—a Bright Passenger? Whatever it was, it grabbed my attention and held me helpless. The woman watched me goggle at her with distant amusement, raising an eyebrow and giving me a small smile that said, Of course, but so what? And then she turned back to face the captain, leaving me free to finish my interrupted step and stumble toward the table once more. In a morning of surprises, my reaction to mere Female Pulchritude was a rather large one. I could not remember ever behaving in such an absurdly human way: Dexter does not Drool, not at mere womanly beauty. My tastes are somewhat more refined, generally involving a carefully chosen playmate and a roll of duct tape. But something about this woman had absolutely frozen me, and I could not stop myself from continuing to stare as I lurched into a chair next to my sister. Debs greeted me with a sharp elbow to the ribs and a whisper: “You’re drooling,” she hissed. I wasn’t, of course, but I straightened myself anyway and summoned the shards of my shattered dignity, looking around me with an attempt at regaining my usual composure. There was one last person at the table whom I had not registered yet. He had put a vacant seat between himself and the Irresistible Siren, and he leaned away from her as if afraid he might catch something from her, his head propped up on one elbow, which was planted casually on the table. He wore aviator sunglasses, which did not disguise the fact that he was a ruggedly handsome man of about forty-five, with a perfectly trimmed mustache and a spectacular haircut. It wasn’t possible to be sure with the sunglasses clamped to his face, but it certainly seemed like he hadn’t even glanced at me as I’d come clown-footing into the room and into my chair. Somehow I managed to conceal my crushing disappointment at his negligence, and I turned my steely gaze to the head of the table, where Captain Matthews was once again clearing his throat. ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB |
1006:Closing the door, she turned back to him, taking in the long, muscled length of him on the bed, staring at her.
Waiting for her.
Perfection.
He was perfect, and she was bare before him, bathed in candlelight. She was instantly embarrassed- somehow more embarrassed than she had been that night in his office, when she'd touched herself under his careful guidance. At least then she'd been wearing a corset. Stockings.
Tonight, she wore nothing. She was all flaws, each one highlighted by his perfection. He watched her for a long moment before extending one muscled arm, palm up, an irresistible invitation.
She went to him without hesitation, and he rolled to his back, pulling her over his lovely, lean chest, staring up at her intently.
She covered her breasts in a wave of nerves and trepidation. "When you look at me like that... it's too much."
He did not look away. "How do I look at you?"
"I don't know what it is... but I feel as though you can see into me. As though, if you could, you would consume me."
"It's want, love. Desire like nothing I've never experienced. I'm fairly shaking with it. Come here." The demand was impossible to resist, carrying with it the promise of pleasure beyond her dreams. She went.
When she was close enough to touch, he lifted one hand, stroking his fingers along hers where they hid her breasts from view. "I tremble with need for you, Pippa. Please, love, let me see you."
The request was raw and wretched, and she couldn't deny him, slowly moving her hands to settle them on his chest, fingers splayed wide across the crisp auburn hair that dusted his skin. She was distracted by that hair, the play of it over muscle- the way it narrowed to a lovely dark line across his flat stomach.
He lay still as she touched him, his muscles firm and perfect. "You're so beautiful," she whispered, fingers stroking down his arms to his wrists.
His gaze narrowed on her. "I am happy you approve, my lady."
She smiled. "Oh I do, my lord. You are a remarkable specimen." White teeth flashed again as she gained her courage, retracing her touch, over his forearms, marveling in the feel of him, reciting from memory, "flexor digitorium superficialis, flexor capri radialis..." along his upper arms, "biceps brachii, tricipitis brachii..." over his shoulders, loving the way his muscles tensed and flexed beneath her touch, "deltoideus..." and down his chest, "subscapularis... pectoralis major..."
She stilled, brushing her fingers over the curve of that muscle, the landscape of him... the valleys of his body. He sucked in a breath as her fingers ran over the flat discs of his nipples, arching up to her touch, and she stilled, reveling in her power. He enjoyed her touch. He wanted it. She repeated the stroke, this time with her thumbs.
He hissed his pleasure, one wide hand falling to the inside of her knee, sending a river of heat through her. "Don't stop now, love. This is the most effective seduction I've ever experienced. ~ Sarah MacLean,#NFDB |
1007:How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires—is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman’s part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him, is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman’s finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman down more quickly than complete surrender. A woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap.
To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without firs traveling the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage… ~ Henry Miller,#NFDB |
1008:To be loved by a pure young girl, to be the first to reveal to her the strange mystery of love, is indeed a great happiness, but it is the simplest thing in the world. To take captive a heart which has had no experience of attack, is to enter an unfortified and ungarrisoned city. Education, family feeling, the sense of duty, the family, are strong sentinels, but there are no sentinels so vigilant as not to be deceived by a girl of sixteen to whom nature, by the voice of the man she loves, gives the first counsels of love, all the more ardent because they seem so pure.
The more a girl believes in goodness, the more easily will she give way, if not to her lover, at least to love, for being without mistrust she is without force, and to win her love is a triumph that can be gained by any young man of five-and-twenty. See how young girls are watched and guarded! The walls of convents are not high enough, mothers have no locks strong enough, religion has no duties constant enough, to shut these charming birds in their cages, cages not even strewn with flowers. Then how surely must they desire the world which is hidden from them, how surely must they find it tempting, how surely must they listen to the first voice which comes to tell its secrets through their bars, and bless the hand which is the first to raise a corner of the mysterious veil!
But to be really loved by a courtesan: that is a victory of infinitely greater difficulty. With them the body has worn out the soul, the senses have burned up the heart, dissipation has blunted the feelings. They have long known the words that we say to them, the means we use; they have sold the love that they inspire. They love by profession, and not by instinct. They are guarded better by their calculations than a virgin by her mother and her convent; and they have invented the word caprice for that unbartered love which they allow themselves from time to time, for a rest, for an excuse, for a consolation, like usurers, who cheat a thousand, and think they have bought their own redemption by once lending a sovereign to a poor devil who is dying of hunger without asking for interest or a receipt.
Then, when God allows love to a courtesan, that love, which at first seems like a pardon, becomes for her almost without penitence. When a creature who has all her past to reproach herself with is taken all at once by a profound, sincere, irresistible love, of which she had never felt herself capable; when she has confessed her love, how absolutely the man whom she loves dominates her! How strong he feels with his cruel right to say: You do no more for love than you have done for money. They know not what proof to give. A child, says the fable, having often amused himself by crying "Help! a wolf!" in order to disturb the labourers in the field, was one day devoured by a Wolf, because those whom he had so often deceived no longer believed in his cries for help. It is the same with these unhappy women when they love seriously. They have lied so often that no one will believe them, and in the midst of their remorse they are devoured by their love. ~ Alexandre Dumas,#NFDB |
| 1009:Melinda, what are you doing?” he asked, unzipping his jeans to take them off and take a shower of his own. “Nothing,” she said, averting her eyes. He frowned and stepped toward her. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “Were you covering up? In front of me?” he asked, astonished. “Jack, I’m going to pot,” she said, cinching the towel tighter. “What?” he asked, laughter in his voice. “What are you talking about?” She took a deep breath. “My boobs are drooping, my butt fell into my thighs, I have a potbelly, and if that’s not bad enough, I’m so covered with stretch marks, I look like a deflated balloon.” She put a hand against his rock-hard chest. “You’re eight years older than I am and you’re in perfect shape.” He started to laugh. “I thought you were trying to cover a tattoo or something. Mel, I didn’t have two children, a year apart. Emma’s only a few months old. Give yourself a little time, huh?” “I can’t help it. I miss my old body.” “Oh-oh,” he said, putting his arms around her. “If you’re thinking like that, I’m not doing my job.” “But it’s true,” she said, laying her head against the soft mat of hair on his chest. “Mel, you are more beautiful every day. I love your body.” “It’s not what it was…” “Hmm. But it’s better,” he said. He tugged at the towel and she hung on. “Come on,” he said. She let go and he pulled it away. “Ah,” he said, smiling down at her. “This body is amazing to me—incredible. More lush and irresistible every day.” “You can’t mean that,” she said. “But I do.” He leaned down and touched her lips with his, one hand on her breast, the other moving smoothly down her back and over her bottom. “This body has given me so much—I worship this body.” He lifted her breast slightly. “Look,” he said. “I can’t bear it,” she complained. “Look, Mel. Look in the mirror. Sometimes when I see you like this, uncovered, I can’t breathe. Every small change just makes you better, more delicious to me. You can’t think I’d have anything but complete admiration for the body that gave me my children. You give me so much pleasure, sometimes I think I might be losing my mind. Baby, you’re perfect.” “I’m twenty pounds heavier than when you met me,” she said. He laughed at her. “What are you now? A size four?” “You don’t know anything. It’s much more than a four. We’re headed for double digits…” “God above,” he said. “Twenty more pounds for me to gobble up.” “What if I just keep getting fatter and fatter?” “Will you still be in there? Because it’s you I love. I love your body, Mel, because it’s you. You understand that, right?” “But…” “If I had an accident that blew my legs off, would you stop loving me, wanting me?” “Of course not! That’s not the same thing!” “We’re not our bodies. We’ve been lucky with our bodies, but we’re more than that.” “It was my butt in a pair of jeans that got your attention….” “My love for you is a lot deeper than that, and you know it. However—” he grinned “—you still knock me out in those jeans. If you’ve gained twenty pounds, it went to all the right places.” “I’m thinking—tummy tuck,” she said. “What nonsense,” he said, leaning down to cover her mouth in a bold and serious kiss. ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB |
1010:The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos.
Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange harsh light which pervades Homer's landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue? Our shared language is a language of the intricate, the peculiar, the home of pumpkins and ragamuffins and bodkins and beer, the tongue of Ahab and Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp; and while I find it entirely suitable for reflections such as these, it fails me utterly when I attempt to describe in it what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end.
In a certain sense, this was why I felt so close to the other in the Greek class. They, too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape, centuries dead; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home. It was why I admired Julian, and Henry in particular. Their reason, their very eyes and ears were fixed irrevocably in the confines of those stern and ancient rhythms – the world, in fact, was not their home, at least the world as I knew it – and far from being occasional visitors to this land which I myself knew only as an admiring tourist, they were pretty much its permanent residents, as permanent as I suppose it was possible for them to be. Ancient Greek is a difficult language, a very difficult language indeed, and it is eminently possible to study it all one's life and never be able to speak a word; but it makes me smile, even today, to think of Henry's calculated, formal English, the English of a well-educated foreigner, as compared with the marvelous fluency and self-assurance of his Greek – quick, eloquent, remarkably witty. It was always a wonder to me when I happened to hear him and Julian conversing in Greek, arguing and joking, as I never once heard either of them do in English; many times, I've seen Henry pick up the telephone with an irritable, cautious 'Hello,' and may I never forget the harsh and irresistible delight of his 'Khairei!' when Julian happened to be at the other end. ~ Donna Tartt,#NFDB |
| 1011:I guess there’s nothing else to say.” “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, crooking a finger. “Come here.” Her throat went dry, and her heart gave a thud. On instinct, she shook her head. His expression turned ruthlessly intent. “Maddie, I’ve been thinking about that mouth of yours for almost twenty-four hours straight. You don’t think I’m going to let you go without touching you, do you?” Had it only been one day? How was that even possible? It seemed as though a lifetime had passed since she’d run out on her wedding. “Um . . .” She swallowed hard and squeaked out, “Yes?” A long pause filled with sexual awareness so thick it practically coated the air. How did he do it, flip the mood? Only moments ago, she’d felt bereft, but with one wicked glance she’d forgotten everything dogging her. “I’ll tell you what.” He smiled, and it was so filled with cunning that the fine hairs on her neck rose in anticipation. “Tell me you won’t regret it and we can end things right here with a friendly pat on the back.” “I-I d-don’t know what you mean,” she lied, loving and hating the direction the conversation had taken. “Do I need to spell it out?” “No?” The word was a question instead of the statement she’d intended. “You want to take care of yourself, right?” She nodded, sensing a trap but unable to stop playing into his hands. He leaned close, placing his elbow on the console, taking up every spare inch of breathing room. “You’re ready to ditch the good Catholic girl and start doing what you want?” The strange mixture of lust and irritation he evoked pulled in her stomach. “Well, when you put it that way.” The curve of his lips held a distinct sexual tilt. “If you get out of this car untouched, tell me you won’t lie in bed late at night and regret it. Tell me you won’t wonder and wish you’d done things differently.” Her pulse hammered and her throat dried up, leaving her unable to breathe, let alone speak. He stroked a path over the line of her jaw, and Maddie forced her eyes to stay open instead of fluttering closed from sheer desire. Why did it feel like an eternity since he’d touched her? Even more troubling, why did his hands feel so right? The slightly rough pads of his fingers trailed down the curve of her neck, leaving an explosion of tingles coursing through her. “And remember, Princess,” he said, in a deep rumble of a voice that vibrated through her as though he were her own personal tuning fork. “Lying is a sin.” She gasped, sucking in the last available bit of air left in the car. “That’s a low blow.” He gave a seductive laugh, filled with heat and promise and the kind of raw passion she’d always dreamed about. “I’m not above playing dirty.” A sly smirk as he rubbed a lazy circle over skin she hadn’t known was sensitive. “In fact, I think you prefer it that way.” “I do not!” Her heart beating far too fast, she clutched at the credit card hard enough to snap it in two. “Liar.” He slipped under the collar of her T-shirt to wrap a possessive hand around the nape of her neck. “I’m waiting.” She gritted her teeth to keep from moaning. How did one man feel so good? Hot and sinful. Irresistible. She whispered, “For what?” “My answer,” he said, inching closer. Their mouths mere inches away. She swallowed hard. The truth sat on the tip of her tongue, and for once in her life, she decided to speak it instead of stuffing it back down. “I’d regret it.” “Exactly,” he said, the word a soft breath against her skin. The pad of his thumb brushed over her bottom lip, sliding over the dampness until it felt swollen. Needy. “I can’t live with myself unless I’ve tasted this mouth.” This ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB |
| 1012:few years later, Demeter took a vacation to the beach. She was walking along, enjoying the solitude and the fresh sea air, when Poseidon happened to spot her. Being a sea god, he tended to notice pretty ladies walking along the beach. He appeared out of the waves in his best green robes, with his trident in his hand and a crown of seashells on his head. (He was sure that the crown made him look irresistible.) “Hey, girl,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “You must be the riptide, ’cause you sweep me off my feet.” He’d been practicing that pickup line for years. He was glad he finally got to use it. Demeter was not impressed. “Go away, Poseidon.” “Sometimes the sea goes away,” Poseidon agreed, “but it always comes back. What do you say you and me have a romantic dinner at my undersea palace?” Demeter made a mental note not to park her chariot so far away. She really could’ve used her two dragons for backup. She decided to change form and get away, but she knew better than to turn into a snake this time. I need something faster, she thought. Then she glanced down the beach and saw a herd of wild horses galloping through the surf. That’s perfect! Demeter thought. A horse! Instantly she became a white mare and raced down the beach. She joined the herd and blended in with the other horses. Her plan had serious flaws. First, Poseidon could also turn into a horse, and he did—a strong white stallion. He raced after her. Second, Poseidon had created horses. He knew all about them and could control them. Why would a sea god create a land animal like the horse? We’ll get to that later. Anyway, Poseidon reached the herd and started pushing his way through, looking for Demeter—or rather sniffing for her sweet, distinctive perfume. She was easy to find. Demeter’s seemingly perfect camouflage in the herd turned out to be a perfect trap. The other horses made way for Poseidon, but they hemmed in Demeter and wouldn’t let her move. She got so panicky, afraid of getting trampled, that she couldn’t even change shape into something else. Poseidon sidled up to her and whinnied something like Hey, beautiful. Galloping my way? Much to Demeter’s horror, Poseidon got a lot cuddlier than she wanted. These days, Poseidon would be arrested for that kind of behavior. I mean…assuming he wasn’t in horse form. I don’t think you can arrest a horse. Anyway, back in those days, the world was a rougher, ruder place. Demeter couldn’t exactly report Poseidon to King Zeus, because Zeus was just as bad. Months later, a very embarrassed and angry Demeter gave birth to twins. The weirdest thing? One of the babies was a goddess; the other one was a stallion. I’m not going to even try to figure that out. The baby girl was named Despoine, but you don’t hear much about her in the myths. When she grew up, her job was looking after Demeter’s temple, like the high priestess of corn magic or something. Her baby brother, the stallion, was named Arion. He grew up to be a super-fast immortal steed who helped out Hercules and some other heroes, too. He was a pretty awesome horse, though I’m not sure that Demeter was real proud of having a son who needed new horseshoes every few months and was constantly nuzzling her for apples. At this point, you’d think Demeter would have sworn off those gross, disgusting men forever and joined Hestia in the Permanently Single Club. Strangely, a couple of months later, she fell in love with a human prince named Iasion (pronounced EYE-son, I think). Just shows you how far humans had come since Prometheus gave them fire. Now they could speak and write. They could brush their teeth and comb their hair. They wore clothes and occasionally took baths. Some of them were even handsome enough to flirt with goddesses. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB |
1013:A VECES LA MAÑANA AYUDA
Hace tiempo que ando escribiendo una crónica que llevaría el título "No siempre la mañana ayuda". Y hasta tenía el comienzo apuntado en un papel por ahí, a toda prisa, sobre la mesa del despacho. Empieza así: "Al salir de la casa y tropezar con el rostro del sol(antiguamente lo representábamos así, con una amplia sonrisa y los ojos alegres, con una cabellera de rayos resplandecientes), deberíamos caer de rodillas, ofrecer cualquier cosa al culto pagano de la luz y sentir después el mundo conquistado. Pero todos tenemos otra cosa que hacer". Y saldría uno por ahí fuera a ahuyentar la melancolía, a justificar el título, en definitiva.
Algo me ha impedido continuar. Y sé que hoy no voy a concluir una prosa que me enfrentaría al lector. Y es que, sin esperarlo, se despertó en mi memoria un caso acontecido entre dos hombres, un caso que viene a demostrar que, a veces, la mañana ayuda, sí señor. Vamos, pues, con la historia.
Imagine el lector un vagón de tren. Lleno. El día no es ni feo ni bonito: tiene algo de sol, unas nubes que lo cubren, y hay una brisa cortante allá afuera. Los viajeros van callados, hacen todos unos gestos involuntarios al albur del traqueteo. Unos leen periódicos, otros se ausentan hacia un país silencioso y sólo habitado por pensamientos ocultos e indefinidos. Hay una gran indiferencia en la atmósfera, y el sol, al descubrirse, ilumina un escenario de rostros apagados.
Entonces, el hombre más(pero muy lejos deser un adolescente), que está sentado junto a la ventanilla, empieza a tararear en sordina una vaga canción. Quizá no tenga motivos especiales de contento, pero, en aquella hora, la necesidad de cantar es irresistible. Todo cuanto acude a su memoria sirve. Y va tan absorto en su pura y gratuita alegría que ni siquiera repara en que el vecino de asiento se muestra ofendido y esboza esos movimientos elocuentes que sustituyen a las palabras cuando no hay valor para pronunciarlas.
Frente al hombre que canta, hay un viejo. Éste desde que salió anda rumiando problemas que lo atormentan. Es muy viejo, y está enfermo. Ha dormido mal. Sabe que va a tener un día difícil. Y detrás de él una voz deshilacha canciones, badabádabá, notas de música, de un modo impreciso pero obstinadamente vivo y afirmativo.
El sol sique jugando al escondite. Y el mar, que súbitamente aparece se puebla de islas de sombra entre grandes lagos de plata fundida. A lo lejos, la ciudad se diluye en humo y niebla seca. Silenciosa, a aquella distancia, tiene un aire de fatalidad y resignación, como un cuerpo que ha renunciado a vivir y se extingue lentamente. Es grande el peligro de que la melancolía triunfe definitivamente.
Pero el hombre insiste. Ya no es posible identificar al que canta. Ahora sale de su boca un flujo de armonía, un lenguaje que ha desistido de la articulación coherente para penetrarse mejor de la sustancia de la música. Esto acabrá sin duda con un grito irreprimible de alegría, con indignación y escandalo de los viajeros.
Ocurrió, sin embargo, que la ciudad llegó de repente. Se abrieron las puertas, la gente se precipitó, empujándose, olvidándose unos de otros. El hombre se levanta, murmurando aún algo. Sigue a lo largo del andén, va a lo suyo, con su música. Y, de pronto, alguien lo coge del brazo. El viejo está a su lado, se juraría que tiene los ojos húmedos, y dice: "Gracias. Yo venía preocupado y triste. Cuando lo oí cantar sentí una gran paz, y durante todo el camino vine pidiéndole a Dios que siguiera usted cantando. Muchas gracias".
El hombre de las canciones sonrió, primero con embarazo, luego como si fuera el amo del mundo. Se separaron. Y fue cada uno a su trabajo, con la música que era de los dos. ~ Jos Saramago,#NFDB |
1014:It was the first time that I entered the house on the lake. I had often begged the “trap-door lover,” as we used to call Erik in my country, to open its mysterious doors to me. He always refused. I made very many attempts, but in vain, to obtain admittance. Watch him as I might, after I first learned that he had taken up his permanent abode at the Opera, the darkness was always too thick to enable me to see how he worked the door in the wall on the lake. One day, when I thought myself alone, I stepped into the boat and rowed toward that part of the wall through which I had seen Erik disappear. It was then that I came into contact with the siren who guarded the approach and whose charm was very nearly fatal to me.
I had no sooner put off from the bank than the silence amid which I floated on the water was disturbed by a sort of whispered singing that hovered all around me. It was half breath, half music; it rose softly from the waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it through I knew not what artifice. It followed me, moved with me and was so soft that it did not alarm me. On the contrary, in my longing to approach the source of that sweet and enticing harmony, I leaned out of my little boat over the water, for there was no doubt in my mind that the singing came from the water itself. By this time, I was alone in the boat in the middle of the lake; the voice—for it was now distinctly a voice—was beside me, on the water. I leaned over, leaned still farther. The lake was perfectly calm, and a moonbeam that passed through the air hole in the Rue Scribe showed me absolutely nothing on its surface, which was smooth and black as ink. I shook my ears to get rid of a possible humming; but I soon had to accept the fact that there was no humming in the ears so harmonious as the singing whisper that followed and now attracted me.
Had I been inclined to superstition, I should have certainly thought that I had to do with some siren whose business it was to confound the traveler who should venture on the waters of the house on the lake. Fortunately, I come from a country where we are too fond of fantastic things not to know them through and through; and I had no doubt but that I was face to face with some new invention of Erik’s. But this invention was so perfect that, as I leaned out of the boat, I was impelled less by a desire to discover its trick than to enjoy its charm; and I leaned out, leaned out until I almost overturned the boat.
Suddenly, two monstrous arms issued from the bosom of the waters and seized me by the neck, dragging me down to the depths with irresistible force. I should certainly have been lost, if I had not had time to give a cry by which Erik knew me. For it was he; and, instead of drowning me, as was certainly his first intention, he swam with me and laid me gently on the bank:
“How imprudent you are!” he said, as he stood before me, dripping with water. “Why try to enter my house? I never invited you! I don’t want you there, nor anybody! Did you save my life only to make it unbearable to me? However great the service you rendered him, Erik may end by forgetting it; and you know that nothing can restrain Erik, not even Erik himself.”
He spoke, but I had now no other wish than to know what I already called the trick of the siren. He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik, who is a real monster—I have seen him at work in Persia, alas—is also, in certain respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited, and there is nothing he loves so much, after astonishing people, as to prove all the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind.
He laughed and showed me a long reed.
“It’s the silliest trick you ever saw,” he said, “but it’s very useful for breathing and singing in the water. I learned it from the Tonkin pirates, who are able to remain hidden for hours in the beds of the rivers. ~ Gaston Leroux,#NFDB |
1015:The crowd as silent,holding their breaths.Hot wind rustled in the trees as the ax gleamed in the sun.Luce could feel that the end was coming,but why? Why had her soul dragged her here? What insight abouther past,or the curse, could she possibly gain from having her head cut off?
Then Daniel dropped the ax to the ground.
"What are you doing?" Luce asked.
Daniel didn't answer.He rolled back his shoulders, turned his face toward the sky, and flung out her arms. Zotz stepped forward to interfere,but when he touched Daniel's shoulder,he screamed and recoiled as if he'd been burned.
And then-
Daniel's white wings unfurled from his shoulders.As they extended fully from his sides,huge and shockingly bright against the parched brown landscape, they sent twenty Mayans hurtling backward.
Shouts rang out around the cenote:
"What is he?"
"The boy is winged!"
"He is a god! Sent to us by Chaat!"
Luce thrashed against the ropes binding her wrists and her ankles.She needed to run to Daniel.She tried to move toward him,until-
Until she couldn't move anymore.
Daniel's wings were so bright they were almost unbearable. Only, now it wasn't just Daniel's wings that were glowing. It was...all of him. His entire body shone.As if he'd swallowed the sun.
Music filled the air.No,not music, but a single harmonious chord.Deafening and unending,glorious and frightening.
Luce had heard it before...somewhere. In the cemetery at Sword&Cross, the last night she'd been there,the night Daniel had fought Cam,and Luce hadn't been allowed to watch.The night Miss Sophia had dragged her away and Penn had died and nothing had ever been the same.It had begun with that very same chord,and it was coming out of Daniel.He was lit up so brightly,his body actually hummed.
She swayed where she stood,unable to take her eyes away.An intense wave of heat stroked her skin.
Behind Luce,someone cried out.The cry was followed by another,and then another,and then a whole chorus of voices crying out.
Something was burning.It was acrid and choking and turned her stomach instantly. Then,in the corner of her vision,there was an explosion of flame, right where Zotz had been standing a moment before. The boom knocked her backward,and she turned away from the burning brightness of Daniel,coughing on the black ash and bitter smoke.
Hanhau was gone,the ground where she'd stood scorched black.The gap-toothed man was hiding his face,trying hard not to look at Daniel's radiance.But it was irresistible.Luce watched as the man peeked between his fingers and burst into a pillar of flame.
All around the cenote,the Mayans stared at Daniel.And one by one,his brilliance set them ablaze.Soon a bright ring of fire lit up the jungle,lit up everyone but Luce.
"Ix Cuat!" Daniel reached for her.
His glow made Luce scream out in pain,but even as she felt as if she were on the verge of asphyxiation, the words tumbled from her mouth. "You're glorious."
"Don't look at me," he pleaded. "When a mortal sees an angel's true essence, then-you can see what happened to the others.I can't let you leave me again so soon.Always so soon-"
"I'm still here," Luce insisted.
"You're still-" He was crying. "Can you see me? The true me?"
"I can see you."
And for just a fraction of a second,she could.Her vision cleared.His glow was still radiant but not so blinding.She could see his soul. It was white-hot and immaculate,and it looked-there was no other way to say it-like Daniel. And it felt like coming home.A rush of unparalleled joy spread through Luce.Somewhere in the back of her mind,a bell of recognition chimed. She'd seen him like this before.
Hadn't she?
As her mind strained to draw upon the past she couldn't quite touch,the light of him began to overwhelm her.
"No!" she cried,feeling the fire sear her heart and her body shake free of something. ~ Lauren Kate,#NFDB |
| 1016:As the battle began Ivo Taillefer, the minstrel knight who had claimed the right to make the first attack, advanced up the hill on horseback, throwing his lance and sword into the air and catching them before the English army. He then charged deep into the English ranks, and was slain. The cavalry charges of William’s mail-clad knights, cumbersome in manœuvre, beat in vain upon the dense, ordered masses of the English. Neither the arrow hail nor the assaults of the horsemen could prevail against them. William’s left wing of cavalry was thrown into disorder, and retreated rapidly down the hill. On this the troops on Harold’s right, who were mainly the local “fyrd”, broke their ranks in eager pursuit. William, in the centre, turned his disciplined squadrons upon them and cut them to pieces. The Normans then re-formed their ranks and began a second series of charges upon the English masses, subjecting them in the intervals to severe archery. It has often been remarked that this part of the action resembles the afternoon at Waterloo, when Ney’s cavalry exhausted themselves upon the British squares, torn by artillery in the intervals. In both cases the tortured infantry stood unbroken. Never, it was said, had the Norman knights met foot-soldiers of this stubbornness. They were utterly unable to break through the shield-walls, and they suffered serious losses from deft blows of the axe-men, or from javelins, or clubs hurled from the ranks behind. But the arrow showers took a cruel toll. So closely, it was said, were the English wedged that the wounded could not be removed, and the dead scarcely found room in which to sink upon the ground. The autumn afternoon was far spent before any result had been achieved, and it was then that William adopted the time-honoured ruse of a feigned retreat. He had seen how readily Harold’s right had quitted their positions in pursuit after the first repulse of the Normans. He now organised a sham retreat in apparent disorder, while keeping a powerful force in his own hands. The house-carls around Harold preserved their discipline and kept their ranks, but the sense of relief to the less trained forces after these hours of combat was such that seeing their enemy in flight proved irresistible. They surged forward on the impulse of victory, and when half-way down the hill were savagely slaughtered by William’s horsemen. There remained, as the dusk grew, only the valiant bodyguard who fought round the King and his standard. His brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine, had already been killed. William now directed his archers to shoot high into the air, so that the arrows would fall behind the shield-wall, and one of these pierced Harold in the right eye, inflicting a mortal wound. He fell at the foot of the royal standard, unconquerable except by death, which does not count in honour. The hard-fought battle was now decided. The last formed body of troops was broken, though by no means overwhelmed. They withdrew into the woods behind, and William, who had fought in the foremost ranks and had three horses killed under him, could claim the victory. Nevertheless the pursuit was heavily checked. There is a sudden deep ditch on the reverse slope of the hill of Hastings, into which large numbers of Norman horsemen fell, and in which they were butchered by the infuriated English lurking in the wood. The dead king’s naked body, wrapped only in a robe of purple, was hidden among the rocks of the bay. His mother in vain offered the weight of the body in gold for permission to bury him in holy ground. The Norman Duke’s answer was that Harold would be more fittingly laid upon the Saxon shore which he had given his life to defend. The body was later transferred to Waltham Abbey, which he had founded. Although here the English once again accepted conquest and bowed in a new destiny, yet ever must the name of Harold be honoured in the Island for which he and his famous house-carls fought indomitably to the end. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB |
1017:"Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguish'd in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And all is wonder to unpractis'd sense:
But, active, steadfast and eternal, still
Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly
Rolls round the eternal universe and shakes
Its undecaying battlement, presides,
Apportioning with irresistible law
The place each spring of its machine shall fill;
So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap
Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven
Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords,
Whilst, to the eye of shipwreck'd mariner,
Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,
All seems unlink'd contingency and chance,
No atom of this turbulence fulfils
A vague and unnecessitated task,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act.
Even the minutest molecule of light,
That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow
Fulfils its destin'd, though invisible work,
The universal Spirit guides; nor less,
When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,
Has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield,
That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves,
And call the sad work glory, does it rule
All passions: not a thought, a will, an act,
No working of the tyrant's moody mind,
Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast
Their servitude to hide the shame they feel,
Nor the events enchaining every will,
That from the depths of unrecorded time
Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass
Unrecogniz'd or unforeseen by thee,
Soul of the Universe! eternal spring
Of life and death, of happiness and woe,
Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene
That floats before our eyes in wavering light,
Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,
Whose chains and massy walls
We feel, but cannot see.
"Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
Unlike the God of human error, thou
Requir'st no prayers or praises; the caprice
Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,
Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride
His being in the sight of happiness
That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,
Beneath whose shade all life is wither'd up,
And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
A temple where the vows of happy love
Are register'd, are equal in thy sight:
No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
And favouritism, and worst desire of fame
Thou know'st not: all that the wide world contains
Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,
Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,
Because thou hast not human sense,
Because thou art not human mind.
"Yes! when the sweeping storm of time
Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruin'd fanes
And broken altars of the almighty Fiend
Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood
Through centuries clotted there has floated down
The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live
Unchangeable! A shrine is rais'd to thee,
Which, nor the tempest-breath of time,
Nor the interminable flood
Over earth's slight pageant rolling,
Availeth to destroy--
The sensitive extension of the world.
That wondrous and eternal fane,
Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
To do the will of strong necessity,
And life, in multitudinous shapes,
Still pressing forward where no term can be,
Like hungry and unresting flame
Curls round the eternal columns of its strength."
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab - Part Vi (Excerpts)
,#NFDB |
1018:
What is the exact way of feeling that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us?
You must not feel with your head (because you may think so, but that's something vague); you must feel with your sense-feeling. Naturally one begins by wanting it with the mind, because that is the first thing that understands. And then one has an aspiration here (pointing to the heart), with a flame which pushes you to realise it. But if you want it to be truly the thing, well, you must feel it.
You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weight-lifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force infinitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know. That does happen.
It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is infinitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insignificant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.
Yes, at no cost must the experience be disturbed. If suddenly you say: "Oh, look, how strange it is!"...
How can we reach that state?
Aspire for it, want it. Try to be less and less selfish, but not in the sense of becoming nice to other people or forgetting yourself, not that: have less and less the feeling that you are a person, a separate entity, something existing in itself, isolated from the rest.
And then, above all, above all, it is that inner flame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind of - how to put it? - luminous enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.
At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.
But that moment should be absolutely sincere and as integral as possible; and all this must occur not only in the head, not only here, but must take place everywhere, in all the cells of the body. The consciousness integrally must have this irresistible need.... The thing lasts for some time, then diminishes, gets extinguished. You cannot keep these things for very long. But then it so happens that a moment later or the next day or some time later, suddenly you have the opposite experience. Instead of feeling this ascent, and all that, this is no longer there and you have the feeling of the Descent, the Answer. And nothing but the Answer exists. Nothing but the divine thought, the divine will, the divine energy, the divine action exists any longer. And you too, you are no longer there.
That is to say, it is the answer to our aspiration. It may happen immediately afterwards - that is very rare but may happen. If you have both simultaneously, then the state is perfect; usually they alternate; they alternate more and more closely until the moment there is a total fusion. Then there is no more distinction. I heard a Sufi mystic, who was besides a great musician, an Indian, saying that for the Sufis there was a state higher than that of adoration and surrender to the Divine, than that of devotion, that this was not the last stage; the last stage of the progress is when there is no longer any distinction; you have no longer this kind of adoration or surrender or consecration; it is a very simple state in which one makes no distinction between the Divine and oneself. They know this. It is even written in their books. It is a commonly known condition in which everything becomes quite simple. There is no longer any difference. There is no longer that kind of ecstatic surrender to "Something" which is beyond you in every way, which you do not understand, which is merely the result of your aspiration, your devotion. There is no difference any longer. When the union is perfect, there is no longer any difference.
Is this the end of self-progress?
There is never any end to progress - never any end, you can never put a full stop there. ~ The Mother,#NFDB |
1019:At Liberty
1.
No sight to me like sight of ships.
No wine to me like salt- spray thrown
By morning breezes on my lips;
No music sweeter than the moan
Of solemn surges landward blown.
O world unconquered! O great sea,
Tamed by celestial winds alone!
My spirit is at home with thee,
Panting with thy wild waves for space and liberty.
2.
The land is captive, sold, and bought;
The streets are filled with traffic base;
And I am choked with narrow thought —
The dusty customs that disgrace
Mart, chamber, church, and judgment- place.
But when, upon this lonely shore,
I hear thy voice and see thy face,
I seem to pass a prison door,
And breathe, a free- born man, my native air once more.
3.
The urgent tyrannies of life
Relax their grasp when I am here;
I rise above the fretful strife,
The timid doubt, the trembling fear,
The petty woes that crowd so near;
And, with brain cleansed and pulses stilled,
Stand in the spacious atmosphere,
My inmost being rapt and thrilled,
With unimagined peace and wordless worship filled.
61
4.
O mystery that no thought can reach!
O language that no tongue can tell!
The whispering surf upon the beach —
The murmuring of the mid- sea swell —
The long boom, like a tolling bell,
That shakes the earth beneath my feet —
The solitude ineffable!
O what new strength, divine and sweet,
Breathes in the mighty gales that round these headlands beat!
5.
Thou, friend, in those wild arms caressed,
My comrade, that hast house and home
On that illimitable breast,
Thy spirit in the wind and foam
Meets mine beneath this starlit dome.
I have no compass and no chart;
I know not where thy bark may roam;
I know not, brother, where thou art;
But I can feel thy courage lifting up my heart.
6.
The shadow of the splendid night
Blots out sea- blue and sunset red.
The glimmering canvas, wide and white,
By sweeping rush of trade- wind spread,
Like sea- birds wings above thy head —
Tall mast, slim spar and cobweb shroud,
And slant deck echoing to thy tread —
The great ship, stately, strong, and proud,
Fades on the darkening deep like some dispersing cloud.
62
7.
But thou art there, amid the stars
That watch me with those steadfast eyes.
Thy soul, escaped from bolts and bars,
Conventioned fetters and disguise,
As open as these arching skies,
Untrammelled as this boundless sea,
Calm in the awful darkness lies,
Like babe upon its mother's knee,
Humble, but unafraid, as honest soul should be.
8.
Thinking of thee — so small a speck
Amid these myriad worlds around,
But king upon thy quarter- deck —
More king than monarch throned and crowned
That e'er on subject smiled or frowned —
Of what depends upon thy skill,
And thee, by conscience only bound —
I think how nobly we may fill
Our part that looks so hard and hopeless, if we will.
9.
Poor, puny mortals that we are,
Clinging to reeds, and ropes of sand,
'Twere better done, 'twere braver far,
Unsheltered and upright to stand,
The free soul at its own command;
In Him- whate'er He be — to trust
Who holds us in His mighty hand,
And guides each star and grain of dust —
Or to renounce all hope and comfort, if we must.
63
10.
When mercury sinks and winds are foul,
When mists are thick and skies are black,
And hurricanes that shriek and howl,
And wild seas, leaping like a pack
Of hungry wolves upon thy track,
Smother the deck with spume and spray —
Thou, quiet in the dreadful wrack,
Keeping thy watch, dost stand at bay,
Unshaken by one thought of danger or dismay.
11.
Then why, in life's disastrous hours,
Shall we not face the storm and stress
Of those dark destinies and powers,
Those strong fates, that so hardly press
Upon our lonely littleness?
With timbers sound and thou to guide,
Thy ship will live through her distress.
Shall we not also safely ride,
If hearts be stout and true, whatever may betide?
12.
Or if, indeed, we have to meet
The worst that e'er stout heart befell —
If we must suffer sore defeat,
O'erwhelming, irresistible —
Shall we not bear that test as well?
Shall we not die without disgrace?
No force of anguish can compel
Brave men to turn to mean and base,
And all that fate can bring brave men should dare to face.
64
13.
If, suddenly, some dire mischance —
Collision, cyclone, fire — should mock
Thy keen and sleepless vigilance;
If there should come, unwarned, the shock
Of shattering hull on sunken rock —
If death, in fog, or flood, or flame,
Upon thy cabin door should knock —
Thy native righteousness would shame
The men who boast most loudly of the Christian name.
14.
“The women first!” thy voice would cry
Above the roar of wind and wave;
And thou, the last, would'st calmly die,
Intrepid, resolute, and brave,
All them that trusted thee to save.
If thou could'st see rewards in store —
A martyr's crown beyond the grave —
If all heaven beckoned thee before,
Or fear of hell-fire drove thee — thou could'st do no more.
15.
Art thou, in thy lone- handed fight,
That fails to serve thee, but succeeds
In victory for the true and right,
Beneath the soul that only heeds
The cry of its own lower needs? —
That shelters, trembling, from the fray
In privilege of pleasant creeds,
That are but systems of a day,
From age to age new- made, outworn, and cast away?
65
16.
Are we not strong enough to take
The course by conscience marked so plain? —
Faithful till death, for manhood's sake,
Unspurred by coward fear of pain,
Unbribed by hope of selfish gain.
Must soaring progress sink and fall?
And is all history writ in vain?
Is life a thing so poor and small?
And is the great design a muddle after all?
17.
Standing in this tremendous space
Of starlit sky and whispering sea,
With my great Maker face to face,
His countless worlds surrounding me,
Eternity — Infinity —
Humble, but confident, I dare
To let these bitter questions be.
We, too, are creatures of His care.
The voice that called us forth forbids us to despair.
~ Ada Cambridge,#NFDB |
1020:Spring Day
Bath
The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus
in the air.
The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water
in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water
into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.
Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance,
and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger
sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light
in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water,
the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost
too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day.
I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots.
The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is
a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.
Breakfast Table
In the fresh-washed sunlight, the breakfast table is decked and white.
It offers itself in flat surrender, tendering tastes, and smells,
and colours, and metals, and grains, and the white cloth falls over its side,
draped and wide. Wheels of white glitter in the silver coffee-pot,
hot and spinning like catherine-wheels, they whirl, and twirl - and my eyes
begin to smart, the little white, dazzling wheels prick them like darts.
Placid and peaceful, the rolls of bread spread themselves in the sun to bask.
A stack of butter-pats, pyramidal, shout orange through the white, scream,
flutter, call: 'Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!' Coffee steam rises in a stream,
clouds the silver tea-service with mist, and twists up into the sunlight,
revolved, involuted, suspiring higher and higher, fluting in a thin spiral
up the high blue sky. A crow flies by and croaks at the coffee steam.
The day is new and fair with good smells in the air.
Walk
212
Over the street the white clouds meet, and sheer away without touching.
On the sidewalks, boys are playing marbles. Glass marbles,
with amber and blue hearts, roll together and part with a sweet
clashing noise. The boys strike them with black and red striped agates.
The glass marbles spit crimson when they are hit, and slip into the gutters
under rushing brown water. I smell tulips and narcissus in the air,
but there are no flowers anywhere, only white dust whipping up the street,
and a girl with a gay Spring hat and blowing skirts. The dust and the wind
flirt at her ankles and her neat, high-heeled patent leather shoes. Tap, tap,
the little heels pat the pavement, and the wind rustles among the flowers
on her hat.
A water-cart crawls slowly on the other side of the way. It is green and gay
with new paint, and rumbles contentedly, sprinkling clear water over
the white dust. Clear zigzagging water, which smells of tulips and narcissus.
The thickening branches make a pink `grisaille' against the blue sky.
Whoop! The clouds go dashing at each other and sheer away just in time.
Whoop! And a man's hat careers down the street in front of the white dust,
leaps into the branches of a tree, veers away and trundles ahead of the wind,
jarring the sunlight into spokes of rose-colour and green.
A motor-car cuts a swathe through the bright air, sharp-beaked, irresistible,
shouting to the wind to make way. A glare of dust and sunshine
tosses together behind it, and settles down. The sky is quiet and high,
and the morning is fair with fresh-washed air.
Midday and Afternoon
Swirl of crowded streets. Shock and recoil of traffic. The stock-still
brick facade of an old church, against which the waves of people
lurch and withdraw. Flare of sunshine down side-streets. Eddies of light
in the windows of chemists' shops, with their blue, gold, purple jars,
darting colours far into the crowd. Loud bangs and tremors,
murmurings out of high windows, whirring of machine belts,
blurring of horses and motors. A quick spin and shudder of brakes
on an electric car, and the jar of a church-bell knocking against
the metal blue of the sky. I am a piece of the town, a bit of blown dust,
213
thrust along with the crowd. Proud to feel the pavement under me,
reeling with feet. Feet tripping, skipping, lagging, dragging,
plodding doggedly, or springing up and advancing on firm elastic insteps.
A boy is selling papers, I smell them clean and new from the press.
They are fresh like the air, and pungent as tulips and narcissus.
The blue sky pales to lemon, and great tongues of gold blind the shop-windows,
putting out their contents in a flood of flame.
Night and Sleep
The day takes her ease in slippered yellow. Electric signs gleam out
along the shop fronts, following each other. They grow, and grow,
and blow into patterns of fire-flowers as the sky fades. Trades scream
in spots of light at the unruffled night. Twinkle, jab, snap, that means
a new play; and over the way: plop, drop, quiver, is the sidelong
sliver of a watchmaker's sign with its length on another street.
A gigantic mug of beer effervesces to the atmosphere over a tall building,
but the sky is high and has her own stars, why should she heed ours?
I leave the city with speed. Wheels whirl to take me back to my trees
and my quietness. The breeze which blows with me is fresh-washed and clean,
it has come but recently from the high sky. There are no flowers
in bloom yet, but the earth of my garden smells of tulips and narcissus.
My room is tranquil and friendly. Out of the window I can see
the distant city, a band of twinkling gems, little flower-heads with no stems.
I cannot see the beer-glass, nor the letters of the restaurants and shops
I passed, now the signs blur and all together make the city,
glowing on a night of fine weather, like a garden stirring and blowing
for the Spring.
The night is fresh-washed and fair and there is a whiff of flowers in the air.
Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour your blue and purple dreams
into my ears. The breeze whispers at the shutters and mutters
queer tales of old days, and cobbled streets, and youths leaping their horses
down marble stairways. Pale blue lavender, you are the colour of the sky
when it is fresh-washed and fair . . . I smell the stars . . . they are like
tulips and narcissus . . . I smell them in the air.
214
~ Amy Lowell,#NFDB |
1021:Réversibilité (Reversability)
Ange plein de gaieté, connaissez-vous l'angoisse,
La honte, les remords, les sanglots, les ennuis,
Et les vagues terreurs de ces affreuses nuits
Qui compriment le coeur comme un papier qu'on froisse?
Ange plein de gaieté, connaissez-vous l'angoisse?
Ange plein de bonté, connaissez-vous la haine,
Les poings crispés dans l'ombre et les larmes de fiel,
Quand la Vengeance bat son infernal rappel,
Et de nos facultés se fait le capitaine?
Ange plein de bonté connaissez-vous la haine?
Ange plein de santé, connaissez-vous les Fièvres,
Qui, le long des grands murs de l'hospice blafard,
Comme des exilés, s'en vont d'un pied traînard,
Cherchant le soleil rare et remuant les lèvres?
Ange plein de santé, connaissez-vous les Fièvres?
Ange plein de beauté, connaissez-vous les rides,
Et la peur de vieillir, et ce hideux tourment
De lire la secrète horreur du dévouement
Dans des yeux où longtemps burent nos yeux avide!
Ange plein de beauté, connaissez-vous les rides?
Ange plein de bonheur, de joie et de lumières,
David mourant aurait demandé la santé
Aux émanations de ton corps enchanté;
Mais de toi je n'implore, ange, que tes prières,
Ange plein de bonheur, de joie et de lumières!
Reversibility
Angel full of gaiety, do you know anguish,
Shame, remorse, sobs, vexations,
And the vague terrors of those frightful nights
That compress the heart like a paper one crumples?
Angel full of gaiety, do you know anguish?
Angel full of kindness, do you know hatred,
408
The clenched fists in the darkness and the tears of gall,
When Vengeance beats out his hellish call to arms,
And makes himself the captain of our faculties?
Angel full of kindness, do you know hatred?
Angel full of health, do you know Fever,
Walking like an exile, moving with dragging steps,
Along the high, wan walls of the charity ward,
And with muttering lips seeking the rare sunlight?
Angel full of health, do you know Fever?
Angel full of beauty, do you know wrinkles,
The fear of growing old, and the hideous torment
Of reading in the eyes of her he once adored
Horror at seeing love turning to devotion?
Angel full of beauty, do you know wrinkles?
Angel full of happiness, of joy and of light,
David on his death-bed would have appealed for health
To the emanations of your enchanted flesh;
But of you, angel, I beg only prayers,
Angel full of happiness, of joy and of light!
— Translated by William Aggeler
Reversibility
Angel of gaiety, have you known anguish,
Shame and remorse, tears, boredom, and dismay,
Vague horrors of the nights in which we languish,
Which crumple hearts like papers thrown away?
Angel of gaiety, have you known anguish?
Angel of kindness, have you met with hate?
Fists clenched in gloom, eyes running tears of gall,
When Vengeance beats his drum to subjugate
Our faculties, the captain of them all?
Angel of kindness, have you met with hate?
Angel of health, have you beheld the Fevers?
Across pale walls of wards they limp and stumble,
409
Like exiles wan, with agues, chills, and shivers,
Seeking the scanty sun with lips that mumble.
Angel of health, have you beheld the Fevers?
Angel of beauty, do you know Old Age,
The fear of wrinkles, and the dire emotion,
In eyes we've pierced too long, as on a page,
To read the secret horror of devotion?
Angel of beauty do you know Old Age?
Angel of goodness, radiance, and delight,
The dying David would have begged to share
The emanations of your body bright.
But all I wish to ask of you is prayer,
Angel of goodness, radiance, and delight.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
The Angelic One
Spirit of happiness, hast thou heard tell of woe?
Hast thou heard tell of anguish, and remorse, and care —
Of those long nights when in the black fist of Despair
The heart is crumpled up like paper? Dost thou know,
Spirit of happiness? Hast thou heard tell of woe?
Spirit of kindliness, hast thou heard tell of hate,
The clenched hands in the darkness, the silent bitter tears,
With Vengeance beating in the arteries of our ears
Its dogged tom-tom, irresistible as fate?
Spirit of kindliness, hast thou heard tell of hate?
Spirit of health, hast thou heard whisper of Disease,
Whose pallid children, in the courtyard gray with soot
Of the bleak hospital, go dragging a slow foot
To find a patch of sunlight? Host thou heard of these?
Spirit of health, hast thou heard whisper of Disease?
Spirit of beauty, hast thou heard of ugliness,
Of the long secret torment of growing old — above
All else, the pain of reading in the eyes we love
410
A wordless horror, even while the lips say 'yes?'
Spirit of beauty, hast thou heard of ugliness?
Spirit of joy, spirit of beauty, spirit of light,
David, grown old, would have thought nothing to implore
Thy healing touch, thy warm young presence in the night;
But, spirit, I only ask of thee thy prayers, no more —
Spirit of joy, spirit of beauty, spirit of light!
— Translated by George Dillon
Reversibility
Angel, teeming with gaiety, do you know grief,
Anguish, remorse and shame, their ravages and blights,
And the vague terrors of those panic-stricken nights
Which squeeze the heartstrings dry as a sere crumpled leaf?
Angel, teeming with gaiety, do you know grief?
Angel, teeming with kindliness, do you know hate,
Fists tight-clenched in the shadows, scalding tears of gall,
When Vengeance roars with his infernal battle-call,
Making himself the captain of our acts and fate?
Angel, teeming with kindliness, do you know hate?
Angel, teeming with healthfulness, do you know Fever
Who like an exile lopes with dragging step towards
The wan stark walls of hospitals and public wards,
Mumbling, seeking rare sunlight for a brace or lever?
Angel, teeming with healthfulness, do you know Fever?
Angel, teeming with loveliness, do you know wrinkles,
The fear of growing old, and, like a poisoned potion,
The dread of seeing love turn into fond devotion
In eyes adored, once blue and pure as periwinkles?
Angel, teeming with loveliness, do you know wrinkles?
Angel, teeming with happy, blithe, luminous airs,
David upon his deathbed would have craved for power
From the suave emanations of your body's flower,
411
But I, angel, beseech of you only your prayers,
Angel, teeming with happy, blithe, luminous airs!
— Translated by Jacques LeClercq
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB |
1022:Paris
First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .
Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays
Than, having beauty and your twenty years,
You have the means to conquer and the ways,
And coming where the crossroads separate
And down each vista glories and wonders wait,
Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair
You know not which to choose, and hesitate --
Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom
Of some old quarter take a little room
That looks off over Paris and its towers
From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, --
So high that you can hear a mating dove
Croon down the chimney from the roof above,
See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is
To wake between Our Lady and our love.
And have a little balcony to bring
Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming,
That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands,
And swallows circle over in the Spring.
There of an evening you shall sit at ease
In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees,
There with your little darling in your arms,
53
Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise.
And looking out over the domes and towers
That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours,
While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them
Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers,
You cannot fail to think, as I have done,
Some of life's ends attained, so you be one
Who measures life's attainment by the hours
That Joy has rescued from oblivion.
II
Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west.
The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats.
The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves:
Come out under the lights and leaves
to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . .
Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant.
Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport."
Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay,
The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat.
And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine
On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . .
But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along
And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel.
54
Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic:
Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport;
Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads,
and courtezans like powdered moths,
And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths
bright-hued and stitched with golden threads;
And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes
In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties;
And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press,
And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you:
All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what
Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young.
"Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!"
Friends greet and banter as they pass.
'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere,
A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood
Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . .
The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer,
And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme.
And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls,
And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war.
But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet,
Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights.
55
Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhere
So many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place.
Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls,
Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street.
From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there
Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall,
That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue
The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . .
Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance,
And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen.
Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim,
Docked, in the model's present whim, `frise' and banged above the brows.
Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays,
In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness,
As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating them
In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal.
Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete,
Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes,
And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist,
She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . .
But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins
56
As first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start.
Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yield
The scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round,
Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneath
To all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest.
Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to see
The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling.
Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem
To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise,
Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued,
In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight.
And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance
They waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . .
Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair,
And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball.
Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhile
In the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse:
The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees,
Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their `brune' and `blonde'. . . .
Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris -- not as many do,
Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show --
57
But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every day
Can lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland.
And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise -That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife --
Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key,
And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands.
And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory,
Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed:
When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood,
And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice,
At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled,
The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand.
III
Choral Song
Have ye gazed on its grandeur
Or stood where it stands
With opal and amber
Adorning the lands,
And orcharded domes
Of the hue of all flowers?
Sweet melody roams
Through its blossoming bowers,
Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour.
A city resplendent,
58
Fulfilled of good things,
On its ramparts are pendent
The bucklers of kings.
Broad banners unfurled
Are afloat in its air.
The lords of the world
Look for harborage there.
None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair.
'Tis the city of Lovers,
There many paths meet.
Blessed he above others,
With faltering feet,
Who past its proud spires
Intends not nor hears
The noise of its lyres
Grow faint in his ears!
Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears.
It was thither, ambitious,
We came for Youth's right,
When our lips yearned for kisses
As moths for the light,
When our souls cried for Love
As for life-giving rain
Wan leaves of the grove,
Withered grass of the plain,
And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain.
Under arbor and trellis,
Full of flutes, full of flowers,
What mad fortunes befell us,
What glad orgies were ours!
In the days of our youth,
In our festal attire,
When the sweet flesh was smooth,
When the swift blood was fire,
And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire!
59
~ Alan Seeger,#NFDB |
1023:All touch, all eye, all ear,
The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech.
O'er the thin texture of its frame
The varying periods painted changing glows,
As on a summer even,
When soul-enfolding music floats around,
The stainless mirror of the lake
Re-images the eastern gloom,
Mingling convulsively its purple hues
With sunset's burnished gold.
Then thus the Spirit spoke:
'It is a wild and miserable world!
Thorny, and full of care,
Which every fiend can make his prey at will!
O Fairy! in the lapse of years,
Is there no hope in store?
Will yon vast suns roll on
Interminably, still illuming
The night of so many wretched souls,
And see no hope for them?
Will not the universal Spirit e'er
Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?'
The Fairy calmly smiled
In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope
Suffused the Spirit's lineaments.
'Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts
Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul
That sees the chains which bind it to its doom.
Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth,
Falsehood, mistake and lust;
But the eternal world
Contains at once the evil and the cure.
Some eminent in virtue shall start up,
Even in perversest time;
The truths of their pure lips, that never die,
Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath
Of ever-living flame,
Until the monster sting itself to death.
'How sweet a scene will earth become!
Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place,
Symphonious with the planetary spheres;
When man, with changeless Nature coalescing,
Will undertake regeneration's work,
When its ungenial poles no longer point
To the red and baleful sun
That faintly twinkles there!
'Spirit, on yonder earth,
Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power
Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth!
Madness and misery are there!
The happiest is most wretched! Yet confide
Until pure health-drops from the cup of joy
Fall like a dew of balm upon the world.
Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn,
And read the blood-stained charter of all woe,
Which Nature soon with recreating hand
Will blot in mercy from the book of earth.
How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing,
How swift the step of reason's firmer tread,
How calm and sweet the victories of life,
How terrorless the triumph of the grave!
How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm,
Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown!
How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar!
The weight of his exterminating curse
How light! and his affected charity,
To suit the pressure of the changing times,
What palpable deceit!but for thy aid,
Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,
Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,
And heaven with slaves!
'Thou taintest all thou lookest upon!the stars,
Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,
Were gods to the distempered playfulness
Of thy untutored infancy; the trees,
The grass, the clouds, the mountains and the sea,
All living things that walk, swim, creep or fly,
Were gods; the sun had homage, and the moon
Her worshipper. Then thou becamest, a boy,
More daring in thy frenzies; every shape,
Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,
Which from sensation's relics fancy culls;
The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,
The genii of the elements, the powers
That give a shape to Nature's varied works,
Had life and place in the corrupt belief
Of thy blind heart; yet still thy youthful hands
Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave
Its strength and ardor to thy frenzied brain;
Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene,
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride;
Their everlasting and unchanging laws
Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stood'st
Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up
The elements of all that thou didst know;
The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign,
The budding of the heaven-breathing trees,
The eternal orbs that beautify the night,
The sunrise, and the setting of the moon,
Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease,
And all their causes, to an abstract point
Converging thou didst bend, and called it God!
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,
The merciful, and the avenging God!
Who, prototype of human misrule, sits
High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne,
Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work,
Hell, gapes forever for the unhappy slaves
Of fate, whom he created in his sport
To triumph in their torments when they fell!
Earth heard the name; earth trembled as the smoke
Of his revenge ascended up to heaven,
Blotting the constellations; and the cries
Of millions butchered in sweet confidence
And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds
Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths
Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land;
Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,
And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek
Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel
Felt cold in her torn entrails!
'Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime;
But age crept on; one God would not suffice
For senile puerility; thou framedst
A tale to suit thy dotage and to glut
Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend
Thy wickedness had pictured might afford
A plea for sating the unnatural thirst
For murder, rapine, violence and crime,
That still consumed thy being, even when
Thou heard'st the step of fate; that flames might light
Thy funeral scene; and the shrill horrent shrieks
Of parents dying on the pile that burned
To light their children to thy paths, the roar
Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries
Of thine apostles loud commingling there,
Might sate thine hungry ear
Even on the bed of death!
'But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;
Thou art descending to the darksome grave,
Unhonored and unpitied but by those
Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,
Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun
Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night
That long has lowered above the ruined world.
'Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguished in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And all is wonder to unpractised sense;
But, active, steadfast and eternal, still
Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly
Rolls round the eternal universe and shakes
Its undecaying battlement, presides,
Apportioning with irresistible law
The place each spring of its machine shall fill;
So that, when waves on waves tumultuous heap
Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven
Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords
Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner,
Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,
All seems unlinked contingency and chance
No atom of this turbulence fulfils
A vague and unnecessitated task
Or acts but as it must and ought to act.
Even the minutest molecule of light,
That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow
Fulfils its destined though invisible work,
The universal Spirit guides; nor less
When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,
Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field,
That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves
And call the sad work glory, does it rule
All passions; not a thought, a will, an act,
No working of the tyrant's moody mind,
Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast
Their servitude to hide the shame they feel,
Nor the events enchaining every will,
That from the depths of unrecorded time
Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass
Unrecognized or unforeseen by thee,
Soul of the Universe! eternal spring
Of life and death, of happiness and woe,
Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene
That floats before our eyes in wavering light,
Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison
Whose chains and massy walls
We feel but cannot see.
'Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
Unlike the God of human error, thou
Requirest no prayers or praises; the caprice
Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony; the slave,
Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride
His being in the sight of happiness
That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,
Beneath whose shade all life is withered up,
And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
A temple where the vows of happy love
Are registered, are equal in thy sight;
No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
And favoritism, and worst desire of fame
Thou knowest not; all that the wide world contains
Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,
Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,
Because thou hast not human sense,
Because thou art not human mind.
'Yes! when the sweeping storm of time
Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes
And broken altars of the almighty fiend,
Whose name usurps thy honors, and the blood
Through centuries clotted there has floated down
The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live
Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee,
Which nor the tempest breath of time,
Nor the interminable flood
Over earth's slight pageant rolling,
Availeth to destroy,
The sensitive extension of the world;
That wondrous and eternal fane,
Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
To do the will of strong necessity,
And life, in multitudinous shapes,
Still pressing forward where no term can be,
Like hungry and unresting flame
Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.'
198.
Necessity! thou mother of the world! Shelley annotates this line (in part)
as follows: "He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other place than it does act. The idea of necessity is obtained by our experience of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the operations of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and the consequent inference of one from the other. Mankind are therefore agreed in the admission of necessity, if they admit that these two circumstances take place in voluntary action. Motive is to voluntary action in the human mind what cause is to effect in the material universe. The word liberty, as applied to mind, is analogous to the word chance as applied to matter: they spring from an ignorance of the certainty of the conjunction of antecedents and consequents. ... Religion is the perception of the relation in which we stand to the principle of the universe. But if the principle of the universe be not an organic being, the model and prototype of man, the relation between it and human beings is absolutely none. Without some insight into its will respecting our actions religion is nugatory and vain. But will is only a mode of animal mind; moral qualities are also such as only a human being can possess; to attribute them to the principle of the universe is to annex to it properties incompatible with any possible definition of its nature. It is probable
that the word God was originally only an expression denoting the unknown
cause of the known events which men perceived in the universe. By the vulgar
mistake of a metaphor for a real being, of a word for a thing, it became a man, endowed with human qualities and governing the universe as an earthly
monarch governs his kingdom. Their addresses to this imaginary being, indeed,
are much in the same style as those of subjects to a king. They acknowledge
his benevolence, deprecate his anger and supplicate his favour."
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab - Part VI.
,#NFDB |
1024:Sacred And Profane Love
In the dark shadow of the windless pines
Whose gloomy glory lines the obsequies
Of the gaunt Claudian Aqueduct along
The lone Campagna to sepulchral Rome,
A Northern youth, companionless, reclined,
Pondering on records of the Roman Past,
Kingdom, Republic, Empire, longwhile gone.
Hard-by, through marble tomb revivified,
Rippled and bubbled water crystalline,
Inwelling from the far-off Sabine hills.
When lo! upon the tomb's deep-dinted rim
Slowly there broadened on his gaze two shapes,
Material embodiment of those
The great Venetian in resplendent hues
Upon the canvas lastingly portrayed,
Christened by fame Profane and Sacred Love.
One was in rich habiliments arrayed,
With dimpling folds about her rounded limbs,
And heaving corset of embossed brocade,
Compressing beaker for her brimming breasts.
Jewels were in her hair, jewels entwined
Themselves round her columnar throat, and thus
On him she gazed unshrinkingly, and seemed
Sensuous seduction irresistible.
The other in nude innocency clad,
All save veined vineleaf cincture round her waist,
Sate with her gaze averted, and beheld
Only her image trembling in the wave.
Her had he fain accosted, but the dread
Of violating her aloofness checked
The movement of his mind, and held him mute.
So to the One resplendently enrobed,
Familiarly fearless as herself,
He turned, albeit his thought was otherwhere,
As elsewhere his desire, and boldly said:
``If with your earthly seeming be conjoined
Gift and capacity of earthly speech,
Speak to me, earthly, an you will, and break
The all too spacious silence with your voice.''
383
Her curving lips, whose fulness seemed to pledge
Intoxicating kisses, drooped apart,
And to her orbs upsurged volcanic fire,
As she with prompt unhesitating voice,
Commanding more than musical, rejoined.
Whereat that Other ever and anon
Would for a moment turn to him her face,
To note the interpretation of his heart
And wavering of his will, and then once more
Her look averted to the Sabine hills,
And cloudless vault of overarching Heaven.
Profane Love speaks
``I am the Goddess mortals call Profane,
Yet worship me as though I were divine;
Over their lives, unrecognised, I reign,
For all their thoughts are mine.
``I was coeval with the peopled Earth,
And, while it lasts, I likewise shall endure,
For Destiny endowed me at my birth
With every mundane lure.
``Men rear no marble temple to my name,
No statues mould in Minster or in mart,
Yet in their longings silently proclaim
My throne is on their heart.
``Unto the phantom Deities of air
They pay lip homage, carven altars raise,
To these bow down with ceremonial prayer,
And sycophantic praise.
``With them I kneel, but neither praise nor pray,
While tapers burn, hymns float, and organ rolls,
Because I know that there too can I sway
And stupefy their souls.
``Their pompous flatteries are not for me,
My panegyric is the secret sigh:
Wherefore should mortals monuments decree
To Me who cannot die?
384
``I am the fountain of wealth, titles, power,
'Tis I ordain the pedestal and bust,
When there doth toll the inevitable hour,
The hour of death and dust.
``Ruby, and pearl, and diamond, and the ore
Torn from the entrails of the Earth, are mine;
Mine are the cargoes shipped from shore to shore,
Spices, and silks, and wine:
``Wherewith men buy what crafty barter brings,Greater the gain, more hazardous the risks,Toil from the many, coronets from Kings,
And lust from odalisques.
``If such content not, since your hopes aspire
On heights of popularity to tower,
I can conduct you on yet swifter tire
To winning-peak of Power.
``Then without scruple, pity, or restraint,
Cleave you your conquering way; for there is nought,
Of all that worldlings crave and hirelings paint,
But can be seized or bought.
``Myriads from mine and furrow, quay and loom,
Shall congregate to hear you pledge and prate,
Hailing you heaven-sent warder-off of gloom,
And Saviour of the State.
``And lissom sirens, temptingly attired,
With heartless hearts, self-seeking as your own,
By your sonorous phrases will be fired,
And gather round your throne.
``Platform and Senate, Cabinet and Court,
You shall cajole, convert, or overawe;
Whithersoe'er you speciously disport,
Your wordy Will be law.
``But many and many a worshipper have I,
385
So cannot grant monopoly of power:
Others there be who fain would climb as high
As you, and have their hour.
``Then their ambition with your own will shock,
And they awhile on foremost seat may reign:
Men's favour is a quicksand, not a rock,
And veers like gust and vane.
``Then must you with invectives fume and rage
All through the land, denouncing evil times,
With histrionic passion; 'tis a stage
For mountebanks and mimes``Slandering the foes who slander you, and so,
If thousands hate, thousands will hail, your name,
Till you in notoriety shall grow,
The herd confound with Fame.
``Them that o'erwhelm, vindictiveness o'erwhelms,
So nought shall you from Fortune's wheel entice,
Gambling for Self's predominance with Realms
And Empires for your dice.
``If with the years male energy should wane,
Orders and honours on you shall be shed:
Thus will you still in man's remembrance reign,
A halo round your head.
``And when at length the End of all life's ends
Doth with the little lay the mighty down,
And domination finally descends
Graveward without its Crown,
``Processions populous, bedizened hearse,
And mourners ermined shall your dust convey
To pompous tomb, and vying prose and verse
Protract your little day.
``What though your name grow faint, as time recedes,
Like scarce-heard wave upon a far-off shore,
And wax the record of your words and deeds
386
A voice and nothing more,
``You will have drained all that the world can give,
All boons and blandishments of Love Profane,
Success and homage, for which sane men live,
And all the rest is vain.''
She ceased; and, as she ceased, then Sacred Love,
That ever and anon meanwhile had bent
On him her look, and smilingly surmised,
From his vague gaze and inattentive ears,
That he was only waiting for Her voice,
Like to the moon fleeting through fleecy clouds,
Her undissembled beauty on him bared,
And with a voice like sylvan rivulet
That haunts the woodlands, muffled half by leaves,
Serene and slow with silvery clearness spake.
``In the unseen first-fostering of breath
Whose secret is by Science vainly sought,
Uncertain borderland 'twixt Life and Death,
I share the silence of the Mother's thought.
``Her love is not more anxious than is mine,
Together we await the human cry,
For even then I, Sacred Love, divine
If it will grow to voice that may not die.
``And I its foster-mother am, and feed
Its suckling dreams, and watch it waxing strong,
Giving it for its plaything moorland reed,
That it may grow and ripen into Song.
``For Love Profane doth sleeplessly await
Its coming, to mislead it on its way,
Whispering, `Become what Greatness deemeth great,
Till mighty Rulers recognise your sway.'
``I listened tremblingly while Love Profane
Strove to entice you to the worldling's throne,
Along the worldling's way, but strove in vain.
Now hath She gone, and we are here alone.''
387
His gaze that had on Her who thuswise spake
Fastened, since indivisibly intent
Upon the cadence of her voice, quick turned
At these last words, to look for Love Profane.
But lo! its effigy from marble rim
Had vanished, like the face of Roman sway,
Kingship, Republic, Empire; and the flow
Of water welling through the rifled tomb
Was the sole sound he heard, until her voice
Melodiously measured, spake once more.
``Rise and come near to me, and take my hand,
And lay your cheek against my cheek, for sign
That you henceforth will know and understand
That all the children of the Muse are mine.
``Your parent am I, though I seem so young,
It is my birthright never to grow old;
Young shall I keep so long as songs are sung,
By such fresh offspring gladdened and consoled.
``I was beside the font when you were brought
Into the granite-pillared House of Prayer;
Smiled at your loneliness when first you sought
To sing away your load of childish care.
``Rapture maternal fluttered in my heart
When you yourself disdainfully denied
What worldlings prize, and chose the better part,
Wending where now I find you at my side.
``I know your present sorrow, since you fear
I have forsaken you and left you lone,
And Rome has silenced what you held so dear.
Wait! from the unseen seed the flower is grown.
``Rome is the tomb of Heroes, and of Kings,
Consuls, and conquerors, and world-wide sway:
What wonder, should it silence him that sings
Before he learns what he must sing and say?
388
``But you may live and die, a Voice unheard:
I promise not what I can not fulfil:
Only,-in the Beginning was the Word,
It was with God, and it is godlike still.
``But unto you, as unto all my line,
Or strong or weak, resounding or obscure,
I pledge the gifts inalienably mine,
Gifts that content and pleasures that endure:
``Companionship of woodlands, hills, and streams,
And gentle womenkind, to whom you owe
Youth in your heart, and shaping of your dreams,
And these will teach what more you need to know.
``Nature's still fresh society will keep
Your feelings young, as you each April follow
Coy maiden Spring, when she awakes from sleep
In windflower dell and primrose pillowed hollow:
``Watch Autumn wax in splendour day by day,
Then, slowly yielding unto Time's assault,
Her moribund magnificence decay,
To sleep entombed in Winter's icy vault;
``And when the boughs stretch bare and fallows hoar,
And plovers wheel about the moorland wide,
Hear the pinched wind wailing through chink and door,
With piteous prayer to share the warm fireside.
``Nature's capriciousness leaves just the same
Her inmost self; she does nor change nor veer;
Just as the seasons lend, with varying name,
Their contrast to the oneness of the year.
``The Poet's love no base-bred difference knows
Of high and low, the peasant and the peer,
Save that his tenderness more heed bestows
On humble sorrow than luxurious tear.
``Childhood's keen questioning, Youth's gropings blind,
Manhood's ambition, Age's graver part,
389
Alike can move his understanding mind,
And rouse his promptly sympathising heart.
``Here, 'mid the ruins that you now behold,
You will imbibe the meaning of the Past,
Learning to weigh the new by what is old,
The things that perish, and the things that last.
``Instructed thus, keep severed in your mind
The Passing from the Permanent, and prize
Only the precious heirlooms of Mankind,
Thought that ennobles, Art that vivifies.
``Vex not your mind with riddles that beguile
The unwise to wrangle over things unknown.
'Tis not for Song to enrage, but reconcile,
So to the Tower of Babel add no stone.
``But while from futile feuds you dwell apart,
Never forget to render what is due,
In hour of need, from manly hand and heart,
To the male Land whose soil engendered you.
``Should opulence, and ease, and base desire
Deaden effeminate ears to just alarms,
Sound all the clanging octaves of the lyre,
And rouse a nation's manhood unto arms,
``Save only then, no clamorous crowds must mar
The musing silence of secluded days,
Whose course should journey quiet as a star,
That moves alone along Heaven's trackless ways.
``Then will you 'mid deserted Abbey walls
Hear both the matin and the vesper bell,
The girdled Brothers chanting in their stalls,
And see the Prior praying in his cell.
``The Present and the Past shall seem but one,
Kingdoms, and Creeds, and Sceptres, passed away,
Stand out, in retrospection's noonday sun,
As Kingdoms, Creeds, and Sceptres, of to-day.
390
``In the fair hospitable Tuscan Land,
Where Raphael and Donatello wrought,
Sojourn, and ponder till you understand
The masculine restraint themselves were taught``Taught by the disentombed Minervan mind
That, in the days still governing if gone,
Within the rugged Parian block divined
Majestic calmness of the Parthenon.
``And when, departing hence, you wandering wend
Where the brief Attic splendour dawned and shone,
Pray to Athene she to you will lend
The golden curb she lent Bellerophon.
``Nor be the Hill Hellenic sculptors trod
Your one sole haunt, but, let who will condemn,
Kneel at all altars `To the Unknown God,'
Alike at Athens or Jerusalem.
``Siren and seraph, athlete, anchorite,
Saints of the cloister, satyrs of the grove,
In one and all seek meaning and delight,
Reigning Jehovah, abdicated Jove.
``Deem not the Oracles to-day are dumb;
They from their graves the World's course still forecast,
From things long gone expound the things to come,
And prophesy the Future from the Past.
``And not from Gothic shrine and classic urn,
From dome, or spire, or portico alone,
Study the mystery of Art, but learn
From each in turn to apprehend your own.
``Not least from its loved twin, melodious sound,
The universal unseen soul of things,
Whose utterance men invoke when words are found
Powerless to frame their vague imaginings.
``And, when the riper Youth that men call Age
391
Welcomes the closing dispensation, death,
Song that soothes sorrow and makes suffering sage,
Shall linger with you till your farewell breath.
``Not crowded aisle and ceremonial nave
Claim those that have from me life's lesson learned.
Who best have loved them bear them to their grave,
Where they near home lie `quietly inurned.'''
Then, like the cadence of a closing song,
Her soft voice sank to silence, and he felt
Her arms fold round him, and so widened his,
Eager to share in privileged embrace:
When, lo! the vision vanished with the voice,
And all he saw were the calm Sabine hills,
And all he heard, the lisping of the wave
Clear-welling through the rifled marble tomb.
But all She had said sank deep into his heart,
And what She said is truly written here.
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB |
1025:The Tower Of The Dream
Part I
HOW wonderful are dreams! If they but be
As some have said, the thin disjoining shades
Of thoughts or feelings, long foregone or late,
All interweaving, set in ghostly act
And strange procession, fair, grotesque, or grim,
By mimic fancy; wonderful no less
Are they though this be true and wondrous more
Is she, who in the dark, and stript of sense,
Can wield such sovereignty—the Queen of Art!
For what a cunning painter is she then,
Who hurriedly embodying, from the waste
Of things memorial littering life’s dim floor,
The forms and features, manifold and quaint,
That crowd the timeless vistas of a dream,
Fails in no stroke, but breathes Pygmalion-like
A soul of motion into all her work;
And doth full oft in magic mood inspire
Her phantom creatures with more eloquent tones
Than ever broke upon a waking ear.
But are they more? True glimpses oft, though vague,
Over that far unnavigable sea
Of mystic being, where the impatient soul
Is sometimes wont to stray and roam at large?
No answer comes. Yet are they wonderful
However we may rank them in our lore,
And worthy some fond record are these dreams
That with so capable a wand can bring
Back to the faded heart the rosy flush
And sweetness of a long-fled love, or touch
The eyes of an old enmity with tears
Of a yet older friendship; or restore
A world-lost mate, or reunite in joy
The living and the dead!—can, when so wills
Their wand’s weird wielder, whatsoe’er it be,
Lift up the fallen—fallen however low!
Give youth unto the worn, enrich the poor;
Build in the future higher than the hope
200
Of power, when boldest, ever dared to soar;
Annul the bars of space, the dens of time,
Giving the rigid and cold-clanking chain
Which force, that grey iniquity, hath clenched
About its captive, to relent,—yea, stretch
Forth into fairy-land, or melt like wax
In that fierce life whose spirit lightens wide
Round freedom, seated on her mountain throne.
But not thus always are our dreams benign;
Oft are they miscreations—gloomier worlds,
Crowded tempestuously with wrongs and fears,
More ghastly than the actual ever knew,
And rent with racking noises, such as should
Go thundering only through the wastes of hell.
Yes, wonderful are dreams: and I have known
Many most wild and strange. And once, long since,
As in the death-like mystery of sleep
My body lay impalled, my soul arose
And journeyed outward in a wondrous dream.
In the mid-hour of a dark night, methought
I roamed the margin of a waveless lake,
That in the knotted forehead of the land
Deep sunken, like a huge Cyclopean eye,
Lidless and void of speculation, stared
Glassily up—for ever sleepless—up
At the wide vault of heaven; and vaguely came
Into my mind a mystic consciousness
That over against me, on the farther shore
Which yet I might not see, there stood a tower.
The darkness darkened, until overhead
Solidly black the starless heaven domed,
And earth was one wide blot;—when, as I looked,
A light swung blazing from the tower (as yet
Prophesied only in my inner thought),
And brought at once its rounded structure forth
Massive and tall out of the mighty gloom.
On the broad lake that streaming radiance fell,
Through the lit fluid like a shaft of fire,
Burning its sullen depths with one red blaze.
201
Long at that wild light was I gazing held
In speechless wonder, till I thence could feel
A strange and thrillingly attractive power;
My bodily weight seemed witched away, aloft
I mounted, poised within the passive air,
Then felt I through my veins a branching warmth,
The herald of some yet unseen content,
The nearness of some yet inaudible joy,
As if some spell of golden destiny
Lifted me onwards to the fateful tower.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part II
High up the tower, a circling balcony
Emporched a brazen door. The silver roof
Rested on shafts of jet, and ivory work
Made a light fence against the deep abyss.
Before that portal huge a lady stood
In radiant loveliness, serene and bright,
Yet as it seemed expectant; for as still
She witched me towards her, soft she beckon’d me
With tiny hand more splendid than a star;
And then she smiled, not as a mortal smiles
With visible throes, to the mere face confined,
But with her whole bright influence all at once
In gracious act, as the Immortals might,
God-happy, or as smiles the morning, when
Its subtle lips in rosy beauty part
Under a pearly cloud, and breathe the while
A golden prevalence of power abroad,
That taketh all the orient heaven and earth
Into the glory of its own delight.
Then in a voice, keen, sweet, and silvery clear,
And intimately tender as the first
Fine feeling of a love-born bliss, she spoke,
“Where hast thou stayed so long? Oh, tell me where?”
202
With thrilling ears and heart I heard, but felt
Pass from me forth a cry of sudden fear,
As swooning through the wildness of my joy,
Methought I drifted,—whither? All was now
One wide cold blank; the lady and the tower,
The gleaming lake, with all around it, one
Wide dreary blank;—the drearier for that still
A dizzy, clinging, ghostly consciousness
Kept flickering from mine inmost pulse of life,
Like a far meteor in some dismal marsh;
How long I knew not, but the thrilling warmth
That, like the new birth of a passionate bliss,
Erewhile had searched me to the quick, again
Shuddered within me, more and more, until
Mine eyes had opened under two that made
All else like darkness; and upon my cheek
A breath that seemed the final spirit of health
And floral sweetness, harbingered once more
The silver accents of that wondrous voice,
Which to have heard was never to forget;
And with her tones came, warbled as it seemed,
In mystical respondence to her voice,
Still music, such as Eolus gives forth,
But purer, deeper;—warbled as from some
Unsearchable recess of soul supreme,
Some depth of the Eternal! echoing thence
Through the sweet meanings of its spirit speech.
I answered not, but followed in mute love
The beamy glances of her eyes; methought
Close at her side I lay upon a couch
Of purple, blazoned all with stars of gold
Tremblingly rayed with spiculated gems;
Thus sat we, looking forth; nor seemed it strange
That the broad lake, with its green shelving shores,
And all the hills and woods and winding vales,
Were basking in the beauty of a day
So goldenly serene, that never yet
The perfect power of life-essential light
Had so enrobed, since paradise was lost,
The common world inhabited by man.
203
I saw this rare surpassing beauty;—yea,
But saw it all through her superior life,
Orbing mine own in love; I felt her life,
The source of holiest and truth-loving thoughts,
Breathing abroad like odours from a flower,
Enriched with rosy passion, and pure joy
And earnest tenderness. Nor ever might
The glassy lake below more quickly give
Nimble impressions of the coming wind’s
Invisible footsteps, dimpling swift along,
Than instant tokens of communion sweet
With outward beauty’s subtle spirit, passed
Forth from her eyes, and thence in lambent waves
Suffused and lightened o’er her visage bright.
But as upon the wonder of her face
My soul now feasted, even till it seemed
Instinct with kindred lustre, lo! her eyes
Suddenly saddened; then abstractedly
Outfixing them as on some far wild thought
That darkened up like a portentous cloud
Over the morning of our peace, she flung
Her silver voice into a mystic song
Of many measures, which, as forth they went,
Slid all into a sweet abundant flood
Of metric melody! And to her voice
As still she sung, invisible singers joined
A choral burden that prolonged the strain’s
Rich concords, till the echoes of the hills
Came forth in tidal flow, and backward then
Subsiding like a refluent wave, died down
In one rich harmony. It strangely seemed
As though the song were ware that I but slept,
And that its utterer was but a dream;
’Tis traced upon the tablet of my soul
In shining lines that intonate themselves—
Not sounding to the ear but to the thought—
Out of the vague vast of the wonderful,
And might, when hardened into mortal speech,
And narrowed from its wide and various sweep
Into such flows as make our waking rhymes
Most wildly musical, be written thus:—
204
The Song
Wide apart, wide apart,
In old Time’s dim heart
One terrible Fiend doth his stern watch keep
Over the mystery
Lovely and deep,
Locked in thy history,
Beautiful Sleep!
Could we disarm him,
Could we but charm him,
The soul of the sleeper might happily leap,
Through the dark of the dim waste so deathly and deep
That shroudeth the triple divinity,
The three of thy mystical Trinity:
Gratitude, Liberty,
Joy from all trammels free,
Beautiful Spirit of Sleep!
Beautiful Spirit!
Could we confound him
Who darkens thy throne,
Could we surround him
With spells like thine own
For the divinity
Then of thy Trinity,
Oh, what a blesseder reign were begun!
For then it were evermore one,
With all that soul, freed from the body’s strait scheme,
Inherits of seer-light and mystical dream.
And to sleep were to die
Into life in the Infinite,
Holy and high,
Spotless and bright,
Calmly, peacefully deep
Ah then! that dread gulf should be crossed by a mortal,
Ah then! to what life were thy bright arch the portal,
Beautiful Spirit of Sleep.
205
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Part III
She ceased, and a deep tingling silence fell
Instantly round,—silence complete, and yet
Instinct as with a breathing sweetness, left
By the rare spirit of her voice foregone;
Even as the fragrance of a flower were felt
Pervading the mute air through which erewhile,
It had been borne by the delighted hand
Of some sweet-thoughted maiden. Turning then
Her bright face towards me, as I stood entranced,
Yet with keen wonder stung, she said, “I love thee
As first love loveth—utterly! But ah
This love itself—this purple-wingéd love—
This life-enriching spirit of delight
Is but a honey-bee of paradise,
That only in the morning glory dares
To range abroad, only in vagrant mood,
Adventures out into the common world
Of man and woman, thither lured by sight
Of some sweet human soul that blooms apart,
Untainted by a rank soil’s weedy growths
Lured thither thus, yet being even then
A wilful wanderer from its birthplace pure,
Whereto it sadly must return again,
Or forfeit else its natal passport, ere
The dread night cometh. Yet of how great worth
Is love within the world! By the fair spring
Of even the lowliest love, how many rich
And gracious things that could not else have been,
Grow up like flowers, and breathe a perfume forth
That never leaves again the quickened sense
It once hath hit, as with a fairy’s wand!”
She spoke in mournful accents wild and sweet,
And lustrous tears brimmed over from the eyes
That met my own now melancholy gaze.
206
But not all comfortless is grief that sees
Itself reflected in another’s eyes,
And love again grew glad: alas, not long
For with a short low gasp of sudden fear
She started back, and hark! within the tower
A sound of strenuous steps approaching fast
Rang upwards, as it seemed, from the hard slabs
Of a steep winding stair; and soon the huge
And brazen portal, that behind us shut,
Burst open with a clang of loosened bolts—
A clang like thunder, that went rattling out
Against the echoes of the distant hills.
With deafened ears and looks aghast I turned
Towards the harsh noise, there to behold, between
The mighty jambs in the strong wall from which
The door swung inward, a tremendous form!
A horrid gloomy form that shapeless seemed,
And yet, in all its monstrous bulk, to man
A hideous likeness bare! Still more and more
Deformed it grew, as forth it swelled, and then
Its outlines melted in a grizzly haze,
That hung about them, even as grey clouds
Beskirt a coming tempest’s denser mass,
That thickens still internally, and shows
The murkiest in the midst—yea, murkiest there,
Where big with fate, and hid in solid gloom,
The yet still spirit of the thunder broods,
And menaces the world.
Beholding that dread form, the lady of light
Had rushed to my extended arms, and hid
Her beamy face, fright-harrowed, in my breast!
And thus we stood, made one in fear; while still
That terrible vision out upon us glared
With horny eyeballs—horrible the more
For that no evidence of conscious will,
No touch of passion, vitalized their fixed
Eumenidèan, stone-cold stare, as towards
Some surely destined task they seemed to guide
Its shapeless bulk and awful ruthless strength.
207
Then with a motion as of one dark stride
Shadowing forward, and outstretching straight
One vague-seen arm, from my reluctant grasp
It tore the radiant lady, saying “This
Is love forbidden!” in a voice whose tones
Were like low guttural thunders heard afar,
Outgrowling from the clouded gorges wild
Of steep-cragged mountains, when a sultry storm
Is pondering in its dark pavilions there.
Me then he seized, and threw me strongly back
Within the brazen door; its massive beam
Dropped with a wall-quake, and the bolts were shot
Into their sockets with a shattering jar.
I may not paint the horrible despair
That froze me now; more horrible than aught
In actual destiny, in waking life,
Could give the self -possession of my soul.
Within, without,—all silent, stirless, cold
Whither was she, my lady of delight
Reft terribly away? Time—every drip of which
Was as an age—kept trickling on and on,
Brought no release, no hope; brought not a breath
That spake of fellowship, or even of life
Out of myself. Utterly blank I stood
In marble-cold astonishment of heart!
And when at length I cast despairing eyes—
Eyes so despairing that the common gift
Of vision stung me like a deadly curse—
The dungeon round, pure pity of myself
So warmed and loosened from my brain, the pent
And icy anguish, that its load at once
Came like an Alp-thaw streaming through my eyes;
Till resignation, that balm-fragrant flower
Of meek pale grief that hath its root in tears,
Grew out of mine, and dewed my soul with peace.
My dungeon was a half-round lofty cell,
Massively set within the crossing wall
That seemed to cut the tower’s whole round in twain;
A door with iron studs and brazen clamps
Shut off the inner stairway of the tower;
And by this door a strange and mystic thing,
208
A bat-winged steed on scaly dragon claws,
Stood mute and rigid in the darkening cell.
The night came on; I saw the bat-winged steed
Fade, melt and die into the gathering gloom,
Then in the blackness hour by hour I paced,
And heard my step—the only sound to me
In all the wide world—throb with a dull blow
Down through the hollow tower that seemed to yawn.
A monstrous well beneath, with wide waste mouth
Bridged only by the quaking strip of floor
On which I darkling strode. Then hour on hour
Paused as if clotting at the heart of time,
And yet no other sound had being there
And still that strange, mute, mystic, bat-winged steed
Stood waiting near me by the inner door.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part IV
At last, all suddenly, in the air aloft
Over the tower a wild wailful song
Woke, flying many-voiced, then sweeping off
Far o’er the echoing hills, so passed away
In dying murmurs through the hollow dark.
Song
In vain was the charm sought
In vain was our spell wrought
Which that dread watcher’s eyes drowsy might keep;
In vain was the dragon-steed
There at the hour of need
Out with his double freight blissward to sweep.
Lost—lost—lost—lost!
In vain were our spells of an infinite cost
Lost—lost—lost—lost!
Yon gulf by a mortal may never be crossed
209
Never, ah never!
The doom holds for ever
For ever! for ever!
Away, come away!
For see, wide uprolling, the white front of day!
Away to the mystic mid-regions of sleep,
Of the beautiful Spirit of sleep.
Lost—lost—lost—lost!
The gulf we are crossing may never be crossed
By a mortal, ah, never!
The doom holds for ever!
For ever! for ever!
So passed that song (of which the drift alone
Is here reached after in such leaden speech
As uncharmed mortals use). And when its tones
Out towards the mountains in the dark afar
Had wasted, light began to pierce the gloom,
Marbling the dusk with grey; and then the steed,
With his strange dragon-claws and half-spread wings,
Grew slowly back into the day again.
The sunrise! Oh, it was a desolate pass
Immured in that relentless keep, to feel
How o’er the purple hills came the bright sun,
Rejoicing in his strength; and then to know
That he was wheeling up the heaven, and o’er
My prison roof, tracking his midway course
With step of fire, loud rolling through the world
The thunder of its universal life!
Thus seven times wore weary day and night
Wearily on, and still I could not sleep.
And still through this drear time the wintry tooth
Of hunger never gnawed my corporal frame;
No thirst inflamed me; while by the grim door
That strange, unmoving, dragon-footed steed
Stood as at first. Mere wonder at my doom
Relieved the else-fixed darkness of despair!
But on the seventh night at midnight—hark!
210
What might I hear? A step?—a small light step,
That by the stair ascending, swiftly came
Straight to the inner door—then stopped. Alas!
The black leaf opened not; and yet, the while,
A rainbow radiance through its solid breadth
Came flushing bright, in subtle wave on wave,
As sunset glow in swift rich curves wells forth
Through some dense cloud upon the verge of heaven:
So came it, filling all the cell at length
With rosy lights; and then the mystic steed
Moved, and spread wide his glimmering bat-like wings.
When hark! deep down in the mysterious tower
Another step! Yea, the same strenuous tramp
That once before I heard, big beating up—
A cry, a struggle, and retreating steps!
And that fair light had faded from the air.
Again the hateful tramp came booming up;
The great door opened, and the monster-fiend
Filled all the space between the mighty jambs.
My heart glowed hot with rage and hate at once;
Fiercely I charged him, but his horrible glooms
Enwrapped me closer, in yet denser coils
Every dread moment! But my anguish now,
My pain, and hate, and loathing, all had grown
Into so vast a horror that methought
I burst with irresistible strength away—
Rushed through the door and down the stairway—down
An endless depth—till a portcullis, hinged
In the tower’s basement, opened to my flight
It fell behind me, and my passage lay
By the long ripples of the rock-edged lake.
Then, breathless, pausing in my giddy flight,
I saw the lustrous lady upward pass
Through the lit air, with steadfast downward look
Of parting recognition—full of love,
But painless, passionless. Above the tower
And o’er the clouds her radiance passed away,
And melted into heaven’s marble dome!
Then fell there on my soul a sense of loss
So bleak, so desolate, that with a wild
211
Sleep-startling outcry, sudden I awoke
Awoke to find it but a wondrous dream;
Yet ever since to feel as if some pure
And guardian soul, out of the day and night,
Had passed for ever from the reach of love!
~ Charles Harpur,#NFDB |
1026: The Descent of Ahana
I
AHANA
Strayed from the roads of Time, far-couched on the void I have slumbered;
Centuries passed me unnoticed, millenniums perished unnumbered.
I, Ahana, slept. In the stream of thy sevenfold Ocean,
Being, how hast thou laboured without me? Whence was thy motion?
Not without me can thy nature be satisfied. But I came fleeing; -
Vexed was my soul with the joys of sound and weary of seeing;
Into the deeps of my nature I lapsed, I escaped into slumber.
Out of the silence who call me back to the clamour and cumber?
Why should I go with you? What hast thou done in return for my labour,
World? what wage had my soul when its strength was thy neighbour,
Though I have loved all, working and suffering, giving them pleasure?
I have escaped from it all; I have fled from the pitiless pressure.
Silence vast and pure, again to thy wideness receive me;
For unto thee I turn back from those who would use me and grieve me.
VOICES
Nay, thou art thrilled, O goddess; thy calm thou shalt not recover,
But must come down to this world of pain and the need of thy lover.
Joy as thou canst, endure as thou must, but bend to our uses.
Vainly thy heart repines, - thou wast made for this, - vainly refuses.
AHANA
Voices of joy, from the roseate arbour of sense and the places
Thrilled with the song and the scent and peopled with beautiful faces,
Long in your closes of springtime, lured to joyaunce unsated
Tarried my heart, and I walked in your meadows, your chaplets I plaited,
Played in your gardens of ease and, careless of blasts in the distance,
Paced, pursued by the winds, your orchard of autumn's persistence,
Saw on the dance of a ripple your lotus that slumbers and quivers,
Heard your nightingales warbling in covert by moon-gilded rivers.
496
Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
But I relinquished your streams and I turned from your moonbeams and flowers;
Now I have done with space and my soul is released from the hours.
Saved is my heart from the need of joy, the attraction to sorrow,
Who have escaped from my past and forgotten today and tomorrow;
I have grown vacant and mighty, naked and wide as the azure.
Will you now plant in this blast, on this snow your roses of pleasure?
Once was a dwelling here that was made for the dance of the Graces,
But I have hewn down its gardens and ravaged its delicate places,
Driven the revellers out from their pleasaunce to wander unfriended,
Flung down the walls and over the debris written 'tis ended.
Now, and I know not yet wherefore, the Mighty One suffers you near Him,
But in their coming the great Gods hesitate seeming to fear Him.
Thought returns to my soul like a stranger. Sweetness and feature
Draw back appalled to their kind from the frozen vasts of my nature.
Turn back you also, angels of yearning, vessels of sweetness.
Have I not wandered from Time, left ecstasy, outstripped completeness?
VOICES
Goddess, we moaned upon earth and we wandered exiled from heaven.
Joy from us fled; our hearts to the worm and the arrow were given.
Old delights we remembered, natures of ecstasy keeping,
Hastened from rose to rose, but were turned back wounded and weeping:
Snatches of pleasure we seized; they were haunted and challenged by sorrow.
Marred was our joy of the day by a cloud and the dread of the morrow.
Star of infinity, we have beheld thee bright and unmoving
Seated above us, in tracts unattained by us, throned beyond loving.
Lonely thou sittest above in the fruitless vasts of the Spirit.
Waitest thou, goddess, then for a fairer world to inherit?
Wilt thou not perfect this rather that sprang too from Wisdom and Power?
Taking the earthly rose canst thou image not Heaven in a flower?
Nay, if thou save not this, will another rise from the spaces?
Is not the past fulfilled that gives room for the future faces?
Winging like bees to thy limbs we made haste like flames through the azure;
O we were ploughed with delight, we were pierced as with arrows of pleasure.
The Descent of Ahana
497
Rapture yearned and the Uswins cried to us; Indra arising
Gazed from the heights of his mental realms and the moonbeams surprising
Flowed on him out of the regions immortal; their nectar slowly
Mixed with the scattered roses of dawn and mastered us wholly.
Come, come down to us, Woman divine, whom the world unforgetting
Yearns for still, - we will draw thee, O star, from thy colourless setting.
Goddess, we understand thee not; Woman, we know not thy nature;
This yet we know, we have need of thee here in our world of misfeature.
Therefore we call to thee and would compel if our hands could but reach thee.
O, we have means to compel; we have many a sweetness to teach thee
Charming thee back to thy task mid our fields and our sunbeams and flowers,
Weaving a net for thy feet with the snare of the moonlit hours.
AHANA
Spirits of helpless rapture, spirits of sweetness and playtime,
Thrilled with my honey of night and drunk with my wine of the daytime,
If there were strengths that could seize on the world for their passion and rapture,
If there were souls that could hunt after God as a prey for their capture,
Such might aspire to possess me. I am Ahana the mighty,
I am Ashtaroth, I am the goddess, divine Aphrodite.
You have a thirst full sweet, but earth's vineyards quickly assuage it:
There must be thoughts that outmeasure existence, strengths that besiege it,
Natures fit for my vastness! Return to your haunts, O ye shadows
Beautiful. Not of my will I descend to the bee-haunted meadows,
Rivulets stealing through flowers. Let those who are mighty aspire,
Gods if there are of such greatness, to seize on the world's Desire.
VOICES
Good, it is spoken. We wait thee, Ahana, where fugitive traces
Came of the hunted prey of the Titans in desert places
Trod by thee once, when the world was mighty and violent. Risen,
Hark, they ascend; they are freed by thy call from the seals of their prison.
498
Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
AHANA
Rush I can hear as of wings in the void and the march of a nation.
Shapes of old mightiness visit me; movements of ancient elation
Stride and return in my soul, and it turns like an antelope fleeing.
What was the cry that thou drewst from my bosom, Lord of my being?
Lo, their souls are cast on my soul like forms on a mirror!
Hark, they arise, they aspire, they are near, and I shudder with terror,
Quake with delight and attraction. Lord of the worlds, dost Thou leave me
Bare for their seizing? of peace and of strength in a moment bereave me?
Long hast Thou kept me safe in Thy soul, but I lose my defences.
Thought streams fast on me; joy is awake and the strife of the senses.
Ah, their clutch on my feet! my thighs are seized by them! Legions
Mighty around me they stride; I feel them filling the regions.
Seest Thou their hands on my locks? Wilt Thou suffer it, Master of Nature?
I am Thy force and Thy strength; wilt Thou hand me enslaved to Thy creature?
Headlong they drag me down to their dreadful worlds far below me.
What will you do with me there, O you mighty Ones? Speak to me, show me
One of your faces, teach me one of your names while you ravish,
Dragging my arms and my knees while you hurry me. Tell me what lavish
Ecstasy, show me what torture immense you seize me for. Quittance
When shall I have from my labour? What term has your tyranny, Titans?
Masters fierce of your worlds who would conquer the higher creation,
What is your will with me, giants of violence, lords of elation?
VOICES
In the beginning of things when nought was abroad but the waters,
Ocean stirred with longing his mighty and deep-bosomed daughters.
Out of that longing we rose from the voiceless heart of the Ocean;
Candid, unwarmed, O Ahana, the spaces empty of motion
Stretched, enormous, silent, void of the breath of thy greatness,
Hushed to thy sweetnesses, fixed in the calm of their ancient sedateness.
We are the gods who have mapped out Time and measured its spaces,
Raised there our mansions of pride and planted our amorous places.
Trembling like flowers appeared in the void the immense constellations;
Gods grew possessed of their heavens, earth rose with her joy-haunted nations.
The Descent of Ahana
499
Calm were we, mighty, magnificent, hunting and seizing
Whatso we willed through the world in a rapture that thought not of ceasing.
But thou hast turned from us, favouring gods who are slighter and fairer,
Swift-footed, subtle of mind; but the sword was too great for the bearer,
Heavy the sceptre weighed upon hands not created to bear it.
Cruel and jealous the gods of thy choice were, cunning of spirit,
Suave were their eyes of beauty that mastered thy heart, O woman!
They who to govern our world, made it tarnished, sorrowful, common.
Mystic and vast our world, but they hoped in their smallness to sum it
Schooled and coerced in themselves and they sank an ignorant plummet
Into infinity, shaping a limited beauty and power,
Confident, figuring Space in an inch and Time in an hour.
Therefore pleasure was troubled and beauty tarnished, madness
Mated with knowledge, the heart of purity sullied with sadness.
Strife began twixt the Infinite deathless within and the measure
Falsely imposed from without on its thought and its force and its pleasure.
We who could help were condemned in their sunless Hells to languish,
Shaking the world with the heave of our limbs, for our breath was an anguish.
There were we cast down, met and repulsed by the speed of their thunder,
Earth piled on us, our Mother; her heart of fire burned under.
Now we escape, we are free; our triumph and bliss are before us,
Earth is our prey and the heavens our hunting ground; stars in their chorus
Chant, wide-wheeling, our paean; the world is awake and rejoices:
Hast thou not heard its trampling of strengths and its rapturous voices?
Is not our might around thee yet? does not our thunder-winged fleetness
Drag thee down yet to the haunts of our strength and the cups of our sweetness?
There thou shalt suffer couched on our mountains, over them stretching
All thy defenceless bliss, thy pangs to eternity reaching.
Thou shalt be taken and whelmed in our trampling and bottomless Oceans,
Chained to the rocks of the world and condemned to our giant emotions.
Violent joy thou shalt have of us, raptures and ruthless revulsions
Racking and tearing thee, and each thrill of thy honeyed convulsions,
We, as it shakes the mountains, we as thou spurnst up the waters,
Laughing shall turn to a joy for Delight and her pitiless daughters.
500
Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
They shall be changed to a strength for the gods and for death-besieged natures.
When we have conquered, when thou hast yielded to earth and her creatures,
Boundless, thy strength, O Ahana, delivered, thy sorrowless joyaunce,
Hope, if thou canst, release from the meed of thy pride and defiance.
AHANA
Gods irresistible, blasts of His violence, fighters eternal,
Churners of Ocean, stormers of Heaven! but limits diurnal
Chafe you and bonds of the Night. I know in my soul I am given,
Racked, to your joys as a sacrifice, writhing, to raise you to heaven.
Therefore you seize on me, vanquish and carry me swift to my falling.
Fain would I linger, fain resist, to Infinity calling;
But you possess all my limbs, you compel me, giants of evil.
Am I then doomed to your darkness and violence, moonlight and revel?
Hast thou no pity, O Earth, my soul from this death to deliver?
Who are you, luminous movements? around me you glimmer and quiver,
Visible, not to the eyes, and not audible, circling you call me,
Teaching my soul with sound, O you joys that shall seize and befall me.
What are you, lords of the brightness vague that aspires, but fulfils not?
For you possess and retire, but your yearning quenches not, stills not.
Yet is your touch a pleasure that thrills all my soul with its sweetness;
I am in love with your whispers and snared by your bright incompleteness.
Speak to me, comfort me falling. Bearing eternity follow
Down to the hills of my pain and into the Ocean's hollow.
VOICES
We are the Ancients of knowledge, Ahana, the Sons of the Morning.
Why dost thou cry to us, Daughter of Bliss, who left us with scorning?
We too dwelt in delight when these were supreme in their spaces;
We too were riven with pain when they fell down prone from their places.
Hast thou forgotten the world as it was ere thou fledst from our nations?
Dost thou remember at all the joy of the ancient creations?
Thrilled were its streams with our intimate bliss and our happy contriving;
Sound was a song and movement the dance of our rhythmical living.
Out of our devious delight came the senses and all their deceptions;
The Descent of Ahana
501
Earth was our ring of bliss and the map of our mighty conceptions.
For we sustained the inert sitting secret in clod and in petal,
And we awoke to a twilight of life in the leaf and the metal.
Active we dreamed in the mind and we ordered our dreams to a measure,
Making an image of pain and shaping an idol of pleasure.
Good we have made by our thoughts and sin by our fear and recoiling;
It was our weakness invented grief, O delight! reconciling
Always the touch that was borne with strength that went out for possessing,
Somewhere, somehow we failed; there was discord, a pang, a regressing.
Goddess, His whispers bewildered us; over us vainly aspirant
Galloped the throng of His strengths like the steeds of a pitiless tyrant.
Since in the woods of the world we have wandered, thrust from sereneness,
Erring mid pleasures that fled and dangers that coiled in the greenness,
Someone surrounds and possesses our lives whom we cannot discover,
Someone our heart in its hunger pursues with the moans of a lover.
Knowledge faints in its toil, amasses but loses its guerdon;
Strength is a worker blinded and maimed who is chained to his burden,
Love a seeker astray; he finds in a seeming, then misses;
Weariness hampers his feet. Desire with unsatisfied kisses
Clings to each object she lights upon, loving, forsaking, returning:
Earth is filled with her sobs and the cry of her fruitlessly burning.
All things we sounded here. Everything leaves us or fails in the spending;
Strength has its weakness, knowledge its night and joy has its ending.
Is it not thou who shalt rescue us, freeing the Titans, the Graces?
Hast thou not hidden thyself with the mask of a million faces?
Nay, from thyself thou art hidden; thy secret intention thou shunnest
And from the joy thou hast willed like an antelope fleest and runnest.
Thou shalt be forced, O Ahana, to bear enjoyment and knowing
Termlessly. Come, O come from thy whiteness and distance, thou glowing,
Mighty and hundred-ecstasied Woman! Daughter of Heaven,
Usha, descend to thy pastimes below and thy haunts that are given.
She-wolf avid of cruelty, lioness eager for battle,
Tigress that prowlst in the night and leapest out dire on the cattle,
Sarama, dog of the heavens, thou image of grosser enjoying,
Hungry slave of the worlds, incessantly pawing and toying,
Snake of delight and of poison, gambolling beast of the meadows,
Come to thy pastures, Ahana, sport in the sunbeams and shadows.
502
Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
Naiad swimming through streams and Dryad fleeing through forest
Wild from the clutch of the Satyr! Ahana who breakst and restorest!
Oread, mountain Echo, cry to the rocks in thy running!
Nymph in recess and in haunt the pursuit and the melody shunning!
Giantess, cruel and false and grand! Gandharvi that singest
Heavenward! bird exultant through storm and through sapphire who wingest!
Centauress galloping wild through the woods of Himaloy high-crested!
Yakshini brooding o'er treasure down in earth's bowels arrested!
Demoness gnashing thy teeth in the burial-ground! Titaness striding
Restless through worlds for thy rest, the brain and the bosom not ridding
Even one hour of the ferment-waste and the load beyond bearing,
Recklessly slaying the peoples in anger, recklessly sparing,
Spending the strength that is thine to inherit the doom of another!
Goddess of pity who yearnst and who helpest, Durga, our Mother!
Brooder in Delphi's caverns, Voice in the groves of Dodona!
Goddess serene of an ancient progeny, Dian, Latona!
Virgin! ascetic frank or remote, Athene the mighty!
Harlot supine to the worlds, insatiate white Aphrodite!
Hundred-named art thou, goddess, a hundred-formed, and thy bosom
Thrills all the world with its breasts. O starlight, O mountain, O blossom!
Rain that descendest kissing our lips and lightning that slayest!
Thou who destroyest to save, to delight who hurtst and dismayest!
Thou art our mother and sister and bride. O girdled with splendour,
Cruel and bright as the sun, O moonlike, mystic and tender!
Thou art the perfect peopling of Space, O Ahana; thou only
Fillest Time with thy forms. Leave then thy eternity lonely,
Come! from thy summits descending arrive to us, Daughter of Heaven,
Usha, Dawn of the world, for our ways to thy footsteps are given.
Strength thou hast built for the floor of the world and delight for its rafter.
Calm are thy depths, O Ahana; above is thy hundred-mouthed laughter.
Rapture can fail not in thee though he rend like a lion preying
Body and soul with his ecstasies vast. Thou for ever delaying,
Feigning to end, shalt renew thyself, never exhausting his blisses,
Joy shall be in thy bosom satisfied never with kisses;
Strength from thy breasts drawing force of the Titans shall unrelaxing
Stride through the worlds at his work. One shall drive him ruthlessly taxing
The Descent of Ahana
503
Sinew and nerve, though our slave, yet seized, driven, helpless to tire,
Borne by unstumbling speed to the goal of a God's desire.
What shall thy roof be, crown of thy building? Knowledge, sublimely,
High on her vaulted arches where thought, half-lost, wings dimly,
Luring the flaming heart above and the soul to its shadows,
Winging wide like a bird through the night and the moonlit meadows.
Vast, uncompelled we shall range released and at peace with our nature,
Reconciled, knowing ourselves. To her pain and the longings that reach her
Come from thy summits, Ahana; come! our desire unrelenting
Hales thee down from God and He smiles at thee sweetly consenting.
Lo, she is hurried down and the regions live in her tresses.
Worlds, she descends to you! Peoples, she nears with her mighty caresses.
Man in his sojourn, Gods in their going, Titans exultant
Thrill with thy fall, O Ahana, and wait for the godhead resultant.
AHANA
Calm like a goddess, alarmed like a bride is my spirit descending,
Falling, O Gods, to your arms. I know my beginning and ending;
All I have known and I am not astonished; alarmed and attracted
Therefore my soul descends foreknowing the rapture exacted,
Gulf of the joys you would doom me to, torment of infinite striving,
Travail of knowledge. Was I not made for your mightier living?
Gods, I am falling, I am descending, cast down as for ever,
Thrown as a slave at your feet and a tool for your ruthless endeavour.
Yet while I fall, I will threaten you. Hope shall be yours, so it trembles.
I have a bliss that destroys and the death in me wooes and dissembles.
Will you not suffer then my return to my peace beyond telling?
You have accepted death for your pastime, Titans rebelling!
Hope then from pain delight and from death an immortal stature!
Slaves of her instruments, rise to be equals and tyrants of Nature!
Lay not your hands so fiercely upon me! compel me not, falling!
Gods, you shall rue it who heed not the cry of my prayer and my calling.
'Tis not a merciful One that you seize. I fall and, arisen,
Earth strides towards me. Gods, my possessors, kingdoms, my prison,
So shall you prosper or die as you use or misuse and deceive me.
Vast, I descend from God. O world and its masters, receive me!
504
Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
II
AHANA
Lo, on the hills I have paused, on the peaks of the world I have halted
Here in the middle realms of Varuna the world-wide-exalted.
Gods, who have drawn me down to the labour and sobs of creation,
First I would speak with the troubled hearts and the twilit nation,
Speak then, I bend my ear to the far terrestrial calling,
Speak, O thou toiling race of humanity, welcome me falling,
Space for whose use in a boundless thought was unrolled and extended;
Time in its cycles waited for man. Though his kingdom is ended,
Here in a speck mid the suns and his life is a throb in the aeons,
Yet, O you Titans and Gods, O Rudras, O strong Aditeians,
Man is the centre and knot; he is first, though the last in the ages.
I would remember your cycles, recover your vanished pages;
I have the vials divine, I rain down the honey and manna;
Speak, O thou soul of humanity, knowing me. I am Ahana.
A VOICE
Vision bright, that walkest crowned on the hills far above me,
Vision of bliss, stoop down from thy calm and thy silence to love me.
Only is calm so sweet? Is our end tranquillity only?
Chill are your rivers of peace and their banks are leafless and lonely.
Art thou not sated with sunlight only, cold in its lustre?
Art thou not weary of only the stars in their solemn muster?
Always the hills and the high-hung plateaus, - solitude's voices
Making the silence lonelier! Only the eagle rejoices
In the inhuman height of his nesting, - austerely striving,
Deaf with the cry of the waterfall, only the pine there is thriving.
We have the voice of the cuckoo, the nightingale sings in the branches,
Human laughter leads and the cattle low in the ranches.
Come to our tangled sunbeams, dawn on our twilights and shadows,
Taste with us, scent with us fruits of our trees and flowers of our meadows.
Art thou an angel of God in His heavens that they vaunt of, His sages?
Skies of monotonous calm and His stillness filling the ages?
Is He thy master, Rudra the mighty, Shiva ascetic?
The Descent of Ahana
505
Has He denied thee his worlds? In His dance that they tell of, ecstatic,
Slaying, creating, calm in the midst of His movement and madness,
Was there no place for an earthly joy, for a human sadness?
Did He not make us and thee? O Woman, joy's delicate blossom
Sleeps in thy lids of delight! All Nature laughs in thy bosom
Hiding her children unborn and the food of her love and her laughter.
Is He then first? Was there none before Him? shall none come after?
We too have gods, - the Tritons rise in the leap of the billows,
Emerald locks of the Nereids stream on their foam-crested pillows,
Dryads sway out from the branches, Naiads glance up through the waters;
Heaven has dances of joy and the gods are ensnared by her daughters.
Artemis calls as she flees through the glades and the breezes pursue her,
Cypris laughs in her isles where the Ocean-winds linger to woo her.
Thou shalt behold in glades forgotten the dance of the Graces,
Night shall be haunted for ever with strange and delicate faces.
Lo, all these peoples and who was it fashioned them? Who is unwilling
Still to have done with it? laughs beyond pain and saves in the killing?
Nature, you say; but is God then her enemy? Was she created,
He unknowing or sleeping? Did someone transgress the fated
Limits He set, outwitting God? Nay, we know it was fashioned
By the Almighty One, million-ecstasied, thousand-passioned.
But He created a discord within it, fashioned a limit?
Fashioned or feigned? for He set completeness beyond. To disclaim it,
To be content with our measure, they say, is the law of our living.
Rather to follow always and, baffled, still to go striving.
Yes, it is true that we dash ourselves stark on a barrier appearing,
Fall and are wounded. But He insists who is in us, the fearing
Conquers, the grief. We resist; His temptations leap down compelling;
Virtue cheats us with noble names to a lofty rebelling.
Fiercely His wrath and His jealousy strike down the rebel aspiring,
Thick and persistent His night confronts our eager inquiring;
Yet 'tis His strengths descend crying always, "Rebel; aspire!"
Still through the night He sends rays, to our bosoms a quenchless fire.
Most to our joys He sets limits, most with His pangs He perplexes;
Yet when we faint it is He that spurs. Temptation vexes;
Honied a thousand whispers come, in the birds, in the breezes,
Moonlight, the voice of the streams; from hundreds of beautiful faces
506
Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
Always He cries to us, "Love me!", always He lures us to pleasure,
Then escapes and leaves anguish behind for our only treasure.
Shall we not say then that joy is greatest, rapture His meaning?
That which He most denies, is His purpose. The hedges, the screening,
Are they not all His play? In our end we have rapture for ever
Careless of Time, with no fear of the end, with no need for endeavour.
What was the garden He built when the stars were first set in their places,
Man and woman together mid streams and in cloudless spaces,
Naked and innocent? Someone offered a fruit of derision,
Knowledge of good and of evil, cleaving in God a division,
Though He who made all, said, "It is good; I have fashioned perfection."
"Nay, there is evil," someone whispered, "'tis screened from detection."
Wisest he of the beasts of the field, one cunning and creeping.
"See it," he said, "be wise. You shall be as the gods are, unsleeping,
They who know all," and they ate. The roots of our being were shaken;
Hatred and weeping and death at once trampled a world overtaken,
Terror and fleeing and wrath and shame and desire unsated;
Cruelty stalked like a lion; Revenge and her brood were created.
Out to the desert He drove the rebellious. Flaming behind them
Streamed out the sword of His wrath; it followed, eager to find them,
Stabbing at random. The pure and the evil, the strong and the tempted,
All are confounded in punishment. Justly is no one exempted.
Virtuous? Yes, there are many; but who is there innocent? Toiling,
Therefore, we seek, but find not that Eden. Planting and spoiling,
"This is the garden," we say, "lo, the trees! and this is the river."
Vainly! Redeemers come, but none yet availed to deliver.
Is it not all His play? Is He Rudra only, the mighty?
Whose are the whispers of sweetness? Whence are the murmurs of pity?
Why are we terrified then, cry out and draw back from the smiting?
Blows of a lover, perhaps, intended for fiercer inciting!
Yes, but the cruelty, yes, but the empty pain we go ruing!
Edges of sweetness, it may be, call to a swifter pursuing.
Was it not He in Brindavun? O woods divine to our yearning,
Memorable always! O flowers, O delight on the treetops burning!
Grasses His kine have grazed and crushed by His feet in the dancing!
Yamuna flowing with sound, through the greenness always advancing!
You unforgotten remind! For His flute with its sweetness ensnaring
The Descent of Ahana
507
Sounds in our ears in the night and our souls of their teguments baring
Hales them out naked and absolute, out to His woodlands eternal,
Out to His moonlit dances, His dalliance sweet and supernal,
And we go stumbling, maddened and thrilled, to His dreadful embraces,
Slaves of His rapture to Brindavun crowded with amorous faces,
Luminous kine in the green glades seated soft-eyed grazing,
Flowers from the branches distressing us, moonbeams unearthly amazing,
Yamuna flowing before us, laughing low with her voices,
Brindavun arching o'er us where Shyama sports and rejoices.
What though 'tis true that the river of Life through the Valley of Peril
Flows! But the diamond shines on the cliffside, jacinth and beryl
Gleam in the crannies, sapphire, smaragdus the roadway bejewel,
Down in the jaws of the savage mountains granite and cruel.
Who has not fathomed once all the voiceless threat of those mountains?
Always the wide-pacing river of Life from its far-off fountains
Flows down mighty and broad, like a warhorse brought from its manger
Arching its neck as it paces grand to the gorges of danger.
Sometimes we hesitate, often start and would turn from the trial,
Vainly: a fierce Inhabitant drives and brooks no denial.
Headlong, o'ercome with a stridulant horror the river descending
Shudders below into sunless depths among chasms unending, -
Angry, afraid, white, foaming. A stony and monstrous resistance
Meets it, piling up stubborn limits, an iron insistence.
Yet in the midst of our labour and weeping not utterly lonely
Wander our steps, nor are terror and grief our portion only.
Do we not hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us?
Are there not beckoning hands of the gods that insist and implore us?
Plains are beyond; there are hamlets and fields where the river rejoices
Pacing once more with a quiet step and amical voices.
There in a woodl and red with berries and cool with the breezes, -
Green are the leaves, all night long the heart of the nightingale eases
Sweetly its burden of pity and sorrow, fragrant the flowers, -
There in an arbour delightful I know we shall sport with the Hours,
Lying on beds of lilies, hearing the bells of our cattle
Tinkle, and drink red wine of our life and go forth to the battle
And unwounded return to our beautiful home by the waters,
Pledge of our joys, rear tall strong sons and radiant daughters.
508
Pondicherry, c. 1910 - 1920
Shall God know? Will His spies come down to our beautiful valley?
They shall grow drunk with its grapes and wander in woodl and and alley.
There will His anger follow us, there will His lightnings immortal
Wander around with their red eye of cruelty stabbing the portal?
Yes, I shall fear then His play! I will sport with my dove from His highlands,
Pleased with her laughter of bliss like a god in my Grecian islands.
Daughter of Heaven, break through to me, moonlike, mystic and gleaming.
Come through the margins of twilight, over the borders of dreaming.
Vision bright that walkest crowned on the hills far above me,
Vision of bliss, stoop down! Encircle me, madden me, love me.
AHANA
Voice of the sensuous mortal! heart of eternal longing!
Thou who hast lived as in walls, thy soul with thy senses wronging!
But I descend to thee. Fickle and terrible, sweet and deceiving,
Poison and nectar One has dispensed to thee, luring thee, leaving.
We two together shall capture the flute and the player relentless.
Son of man, thou hast crowned thy life with flowers that are scentless,
Chased the delights that wound. But I come and the darkness shall sunder.
Lo, I come and behind me knowledge descends and with thunder
Filling the spaces Strength the Angel bears on his bosom
Joy to thy arms. Thou shalt look on her face like a child's or a blossom,
Innocent, free as in Eden of old, not afraid of her playing.
Pain was not meant for ever, hearts were not made but for slaying.
Thou shalt not suffer always nor cry to me, lured and forsaken.
I have a snare for His footsteps, I have a chain for Him taken.
Come then to Brindavun, soul of the joyous; faster and faster
Follow the dance I shall teach thee with Shyama for slave and for master, -
Follow the notes of the flute with a soul aware and exulting,
Trample Delight that submits and crouch to a sweetness insulting.
Thou shalt know what the dance meant, fathom the song and the singer,
Hear behind thunder its rhymes, touched by lightning thrill to His finger,
Brindavun's rustle shalt understand and Yamuna's laughter,
Take thy place in the Ras and thy share of the ecstasy after.
~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Descent of Ahana
,#NFDB |
1027:Earth, Ocean, Air, belovd brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;
If Autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,
And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns
Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs;
If Spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes
Her first sweet kisses,have been dear to me;
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast
I consciously have injured, but still loved
And cherished these my kindred; then forgive
This boast, belovd brethren, and withdraw
No portion of your wonted favor now!
Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favor my solemn song, for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,
Thy messenger, to render up the tale
Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,
When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
Like an inspired and desperate alchemist
Staking his very life on some dark hope,
Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
With my most innocent love, until strange tears,
Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
Such magic as compels the charmd night
To render up thy charge; and, though ne'er yet
Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,
Enough from incommunicable dream,
And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought,
Has shone within me, that serenely now
And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre
Suspended in the solitary dome
Of some mysterious and deserted fane,
I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain
May modulate with murmurs of the air,
And motions of the forests and the sea,
And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.
There was a Poet whose untimely tomb
No human hands with pious reverence reared,
But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds
Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid
Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:
A lovely youth,no mourning maiden decked
With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,
The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:
Gentle, and brave, and generous,no lorn bard
Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh:
He lived, he died, he sung in solitude.
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,
And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined
And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.
The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,
And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.
By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
The fountains of divine philosophy
Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,
Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past
In truth or fable consecrates, he felt
And knew. When early youth had passed, he left
His cold fireside and alienated home
To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.
Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness
Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought
With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps
He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
The red volcano overcanopies
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes
On black bare pointed islets ever beat
With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,
Rugged and dark, winding among the springs
Of fire and poison, inaccessible
To avarice or pride, their starry domes
Of diamond and of gold expand above
Numberless and immeasurable halls,
Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines
Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.
Nor had that scene of ampler majesty
Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven
And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims
To love and wonder; he would linger long
In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,
Until the doves and squirrels would partake
From his innocuous band his bloodless food,
Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,
And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er
The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend
Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form
More graceful than her own.
His wandering step,
Obedient to high thoughts, has visited
The awful ruins of the days of old:
Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange,
Sculptured on alabaster obelisk
Or jasper tomb or mutilated sphinx,
Dark thiopia in her desert hills
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,
Stupendous columns, and wild images
Of more than man, where marble daemons watch
The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,
He lingered, poring on memorials
Of the world's youth: through the long burning day
Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon
Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades
Suspended he that task, but ever gazed
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.
Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,
Her daily portion, from her father's tent,
And spread her matting for his couch, and stole
From duties and repose to tend his steps,
Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe
To speak her love, and watched his nightly sleep,
Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips
Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath
Of innocent dreams arose; then, when red morn
Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home
Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.
The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie,
And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,
And o'er the arial mountains which pour down
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,
In joy and exultation held his way;
Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within
Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine
Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,
Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched
His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep
There came, a dream of hopes that never yet
Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veild maid
Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
His inmost sense suspended in its web
Of many-colored woof and shifting hues.
Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood
Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
A permeating fire; wild numbers then
She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
The beating of her heart was heard to fill
The pauses of her music, and her breath
Tumultuously accorded with those fits
Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
As if her heart impatiently endured
Its bursting burden; at the sound he turned,
And saw by the warm light of their own life
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips
Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess
Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled
His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet
Her panting bosom:she drew back awhile,
Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
Like a dark flood suspended in its course,
Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
Roused by the shock, he started from his trance
The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
The distinct valley and the vacant woods,
Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled
The hues of heaven that canopied his bower
Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,
The mystery and the majesty of Earth,
The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes
Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
The spirit of sweet human love has sent
A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues
Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas!
Were limbs and breath and being intertwined
Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, forever lost
In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,
That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds
And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake
Lead only to a black and watery depth,
While death's blue vault with loathliest vapors hung,
Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?
This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart;
The insatiate hope which it awakened stung
His brain even like despair.
While daylight held
The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
With his still soul. At night the passion came,
Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,
And shook him from his rest, and led him forth
Into the darkness. As an eagle, grasped
In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast
Burn with the poison, and precipitates
Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,
Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight
O'er the wide ary wilderness: thus driven
By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,
Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,
Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,
Startling with careless step the moon-light snake,
He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,
Shedding the mockery of its vital hues
Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on
Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep
Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud;
Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs
Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind
Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,
Day after day, a weary waste of hours,
Bearing within his life the brooding care
That ever fed on its decaying flame.
And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair,
Sered by the autumn of strange suffering,
Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand
Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;
Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone,
As in a furnace burning secretly,
From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,
Who ministered with human charity
His human wants, beheld with wondering awe
Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,
Encountering on some dizzy precipice
That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of Wind,
With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet
Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused
In its career; the infant would conceal
His troubled visage in his mother's robe
In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,
To remember their strange light in many a dream
Of after times; but youthful maidens, taught
By nature, would interpret half the woe
That wasted him, would call him with false names
Brother and friend, would press his pallid hand
At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path
Of his departure from their father's door.
At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged
His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,
Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.
It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings
Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course
High over the immeasurable main.
His eyes pursued its flight:'Thou hast a home,
Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home,
Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck
With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes
Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.
And what am I that I should linger here,
With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,
Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned
To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers
In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
That echoes not my thoughts?' A gloomy smile
Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.
For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,
Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,
With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.
Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around.
There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight
Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.
A little shallop floating near the shore
Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.
It had been long abandoned, for its sides
Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints
Swayed with the undulations of the tide.
A restless impulse urged him to embark
And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;
For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves
The slimy caverns of the populous deep.
The day was fair and sunny; sea and sky
Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind
Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.
Following his eager soul, the wanderer
Leaped in the boat; he spread his cloak aloft
On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,
And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea
Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.
As one that in a silver vision floats
Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds
Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly
Along the dark and ruffled waters fled
The straining boat. A whirlwind swept it on,
With fierce gusts and precipitating force,
Through the white ridges of the chafd sea.
The waves arose. Higher and higher still
Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge
Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp.
Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war
Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast
Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven
With dark obliterating course, he sate:
As if their genii were the ministers
Appointed to conduct him to the light
Of those belovd eyes, the Poet sate,
Holding the steady helm. Evening came on;
The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues
High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray
That canopied his path o'er the waste deep;
Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of Day;
Night followed, clad with stars. On every side
More horribly the multitudinous streams
Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war
Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock
The calm and spangled sky. The little boat
Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam
Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;
Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;
Now leaving far behind the bursting mass
That fell, convulsing ocean; safely fled
As if that frail and wasted human form
Had been an elemental god.
At midnight
The moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffs
Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone
Among the stars like sunlight, and around
Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves
Bursting and eddying irresistibly
Rage and resound forever.Who shall save?
The boat fled on,the boiling torrent drove,
The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,
The shattered mountain overhung the sea,
And faster still, beyond all human speed,
Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,
The little boat was driven. A cavern there
Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths
Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on
With unrelaxing speed.'Vision and Love!'
The Poet cried aloud, 'I have beheld
The path of thy departure. Sleep and death
Shall not divide us long.'
The boat pursued
The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone
At length upon that gloomy river's flow;
Now, where the fiercest war among the waves
Is calm, on the unfathomable stream
The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,
Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,
Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell
Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound
That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass
Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm;
Stair above stair the eddying waters rose,
Circling immeasurably fast, and laved
With alternating dash the gnarld roots
Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms
In darkness over it. I' the midst was left,
Reflecting yet distorting every cloud,
A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.
Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
With dizzy swiftness, round and round and round,
Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,
Till on the verge of the extremest curve,
Where through an opening of the rocky bank
The waters overflow, and a smooth spot
Of glassy quiet 'mid those battling tides
Is left, the boat paused shuddering.Shall it sink
Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress
Of that resistless gulf embosom it?
Now shall it fall?A wandering stream of wind
Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,
And, lo! with gentle motion between banks
Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,
Beneath a woven grove, it sails, and, hark!
The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar
With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.
Where the embowering trees recede, and leave
A little space of green expanse, the cove
Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers
Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes,
Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave
Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task,
Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,
Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay
Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed
To deck with their bright hues his withered hair,
But on his heart its solitude returned,
And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid
In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame,
Had yet performed its ministry; it hung
Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud
Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods
Of night close over it.
The noonday sun
Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass
Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence
A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,
Scooped in the dark base of their ary rocks,
Mocking its moans, respond and roar forever.
The meeting boughs and implicated leaves
Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as, led
By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,
He sought in Nature's dearest haunt some bank,
Her cradle and his sepulchre. More dark
And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,
Expanding its immense and knotty arms,
Embraces the light beech. The pyramids
Of the tall cedar overarching frame
Most solemn domes within, and far below,
Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
The ash and the acacia floating hang
Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
The gray trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes,
With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,
Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,
These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs,
Uniting their close union; the woven leaves
Make network of the dark blue light of day
And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns
Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms
Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen
Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine
A soul-dissolving odor to invite
To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell
Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,
Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well,
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
Images all the woven boughs above,
And each depending leaf, and every speck
Of azure sky darting between their chasms;
Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star,
Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,
Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,
Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings
Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.
Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld
Their own wan light through the reflected lines
Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth
Of that still fountain; as the human heart,
Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,
Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard
The motion of the leavesthe grass that sprung
Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel
An unaccustomed presenceand the sound
Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs
Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed
To stand beside himclothed in no bright robes
Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,
Borrowed from aught the visible world affords
Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;
But undulating woods, and silent well,
And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom
Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,
Held commune with him, as if he and it
Were all that was; onlywhen his regard
Was raised by intense pensivenesstwo eyes,
Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,
And seemed with their serene and azure smiles
To beckon him.
Obedient to the light
That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing
The windings of the dell. The rivulet,
Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine
Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell
Among the moss with hollow harmony
Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones
It danced, like childhood laughing as it went;
Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,
Reflecting every herb and drooping bud
That overhung its quietness.'O stream!
Whose source is inaccessibly profound,
Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?
Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,
Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,
Thy searchless fountain and invisible course,
Have each their type in me; and the wide sky
And measureless ocean may declare as soon
What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud
Contains thy waters, as the universe
Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched
Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste
I' the passing wind!'
Beside the grassy shore
Of the small stream he went; he did impress
On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught
Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one
Roused by some joyous madness from the couch
Of fever, he did move; yet not like him
Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame
Of his frail exultation shall be spent,
He must descend. With rapid steps he went
Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow
Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now
The forest's solemn canopies were changed
For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.
Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed
The struggling brook; tall spires of windlestrae
Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
And nought but gnarld roots of ancient pines
Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots
The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here
Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,
The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin
And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes
Had shone, gleam stony orbs:so from his steps
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
And musical motions. Calm he still pursued
The stream, that with a larger volume now
Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there
Fretted a path through its descending curves
With its wintry speed. On every side now rose
Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles
In the light of evening, and its precipice
Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,
'Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,
Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues
To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
And seems with its accumulated crags
To overhang the world; for wide expand
Beneath the wan stars and descending moon
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
Of leaden-colored even, and fiery hills
Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
Of the remote horizon. The near scene,
In naked and severe simplicity,
Made contrast with the universe. A pine,
Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
Yielding one only response at each pause
In most familiar cadence, with the howl,
The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams
Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river
Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path,
Fell into that immeasurable void,
Scattering its waters to the passing winds.
Yet the gray precipice and solemn pine
And torrent were not all;one silent nook
Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,
Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,
It overlooked in its serenity
The dark earth and the bending vault of stars.
It was a tranquil spot that seemed to smile
Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped
The fissured stones with its entwining arms,
And did embower with leaves forever green
And berries dark the smooth and even space
Of its inviolated floor; and here
The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore
In wanton sport those bright leaves whose decay,
Red, yellow, or ethereally pale,
Rivals the pride of summer. 'T is the haunt
Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach
The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
One human step alone, has ever broken
The stillness of its solitude; one voice
Alone inspired its echoes;even that voice
Which hither came, floating among the winds,
And led the loveliest among human forms
To make their wild haunts the depository
Of all the grace and beauty that endued
Its motions, render up its majesty,
Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,
Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,
Commit the colors of that varying cheek,
That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.
The dim and hornd moon hung low, and poured
A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge
That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist
Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank
Wan moonlight even to fulness; not a star
Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,
Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice
Slept, clasped in his embrace.O storm of death,
Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night!
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
Guiding its irresistible career
In thy devastating omnipotence,
Art king of this frail world! from the red field
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
A mighty voice invokes thee! Ruin calls
His brother Death! A rare and regal prey
He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.
When on the threshold of the green recess
The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death
Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
Did he resign his high and holy soul
To images of the majestic past,
That paused within his passive being now,
Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe
Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place
His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine; upon an ivied stone
Reclined his languid head; his limbs did rest,
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm;and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses
The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair,
The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear
Marred his repose; the influxes of sense
And his own being, unalloyed by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight
Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
It rests; and still as the divided frame
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy
With Nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still;
And when two lessening points of light alone
Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night:till the minutest ray
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
It pausedit fluttered. But when heaven remained
Utterly black, the murky shades involved
An image silent, cold, and motionless,
As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapor fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame
No sense, no motion, no divinity
A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
The breath of heaven did wandera bright stream
Once fed with many-voicd wavesa dream
Of youth, which night and time have quenched forever
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
Oh, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,
Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh, that God,
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
Which but one living man has drained, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders forever,
Lone as incarnate death! Oh, that the dream
Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible
For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled,
Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,
Lifts still its solemn voice:but thou art fled
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not! Upon those pallid lips
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shednot even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe "too deep for tears," when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.
Composed at Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Park, 1815 (autumn).
Note by Mrs. Shelley: 'Alastor is written in a very different tone from Queen Mab. In the latter, Shelley poured out all the cherished speculations of his youth -- all the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, censure, and hope, to which the present suffering, and what he considers the proper destiny, of his fellow-creatures, gave birth. Alastor, on the contrary, contains an individual interest only. A very few years, with their attendant events, had checked the ardour of Shelley's hopes, though he still thought them well grounded, and that to advance their fulfilment was the noblest task man could achieve.
This is neither the time nor the place to speak of the misfortunes that chequered his life. It will be sufficient to say that, in all he did, he at the time of doing it believed himself justified to his own conscience; while the various ills of poverty and loss of friends brought home to him the sad realities of life. Physical suffering had also considerable influence in causing him to turn his eyes inward; inclining him rather to brood over the thoughts and emotions of his own soul than to glance abroad, and to make, as in Queen Mab, the whole universe the object and subject of his song. In the Spring of 1815 an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a consumption; abscesses were formed on his lungs, and he suffered acute spasms. suddenly a complete change took place; and, though through life he was a martyr to pain and debility, every symptom of pulmonary disease vanished. His nerves, which nature had formed sensitive to an unexampled degree, were rendered still more susceptible by the state of his health.
As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the Continent, he went abroad. He visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and returned to England from Lucerne, by the Reuss and the Rhine. The river-navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem of Thalaba, his imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage. In the summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopgate Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several months of comparative health and tranquil happiness. The later summer months were warm and dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the source of the Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Winsdor to Crickdale. His beautiful stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade were written on that occasion. Alastor was composed on his return. He spent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forest-scenery we find in the poem.
None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, the broodings of a poet's heart in solitude -- the mingling of the exulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe inspires with the sad and struggling pangs which human passion imparts -- give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had often contemplated during the last months as certain and near he here represented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic than narrative: it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by the recent anticipation of death.'
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor - or, the Spirit of Solitude
,#NFDB |
1028:Scene. Wrzburg; a garden in the environs. 1512.
Festus, Paracelsus, Michal.
Paracelsus.
Come close to me, dear friends; still closer; thus!
Close to the heart which, though long time roll by
Ere it again beat quicker, pressed to yours,
As now it beatsperchance a long, long time
At least henceforth your memories shall make
Quiet and fragrant as befits their home.
Nor shall my memory want a home in yours
Alas, that it requires too well such free
Forgiving love as shall embalm it there!
For if you would remember me aright,
As I was born to be, you must forget
All fitful strange and moody waywardness
Which e'er confused my better spirit, to dwell
Only on moments such as these, dear friends!
My heart no truer, but my words and ways
More true to it: as Michal, some months hence,
Will say, "this autumn was a pleasant time,"
For some few sunny days; and overlook
Its bleak wind, hankering after pining leaves.
Autumn would fain be sunny; I would look
Liker my nature's truth: and both are frail,
And both beloved, for all our frailty.
Michal.
Aureole!
Paracelsus.
Drop by drop! she is weeping like a child!
Not so! I am contentmore than content;
Nay, autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay:
Look up, sweet Michal, nor esteem the less
Your stained and drooping vines their grapes bow down,
Nor blame those creaking trees bent with their fruit,
That apple-tree with a rare after-birth
Of peeping blooms sprinkled its wealth among!
Then for the windswhat wind that ever raved
Shall vex that ash which overlooks you both,
So proud it wears its berries? Ah, at length,
The old smile meet for her, the lady of this
Sequestered nest!this kingdom, limited
Alone by one old populous green wall
Tenanted by the ever-busy flies,
Grey crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders,
Each family of the silver-threaded moss
Which, look through near, this way, and it appears
A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh
Of bulrush whitening in the sun: laugh now!
Fancy the crickets, each one in his house,
Looking out, wondering at the worldor best,
Yon painted snail with his gay shell of dew,
Travelling to see the glossy balls high up
Hung by the caterpillar, like gold lamps.
Michal.
In truth we have lived carelessly and well.
Paracelsus.
And shall, my perfect pair!each, trust me, born
For the other; nay, your very hair, when mixed,
Is of one hue. For where save in this nook
Shall you two walk, when I am far away,
And wish me prosperous fortune? Stay: that plant
Shall never wave its tangles lightly and softly,
As a queen's languid and imperial arm
Which scatters crowns among her lovers, but you
Shall be reminded to predict to me
Some great success! Ah see, the sun sinks broad
Behind Saint Saviour's: wholly gone, at last!
Festus.
Now, Aureole, stay those wandering eyes awhile!
You are ours to-night, at least; and while you spoke
Of Michal and her tears, I thought that none
Could willing leave what he so seemed to love:
But that last look destroys my dreamthat look
As if, where'er you gazed, there stood a star!
How far was Wrzburg with its church and spire
And garden-walls and all things they contain,
From that look's far alighting?
Paracelsus.
I but spoke
And looked alike from simple joy to see
The beings I love best, shut in so well
From all rude chances like to be my lot,
That, when afar, my weary spirit,disposed
To lose awhile its care in soothing thoughts
Of them, their pleasant features, looks and words,
Needs never hesitate, nor apprehend
Encroaching trouble may have reached them too,
Nor have recourse to fancy's busy aid
And fashion even a wish in their behalf
Beyond what they possess already here;
But, unobstructed, may at once forget
Itself in them, assured how well they fare.
Beside, this Festus knows he holds me one
Whom quiet and its charms arrest in vain,
One scarce aware of all the joys I quit,
Too filled with airy hopes to make account
Of soft delights his own heart garners up:
Whereas behold how much our sense of all
That's beauteous proves alike! When Festus learns
That every common pleasure of the world
Affects me as himself; that I have just
As varied appetite for joy derived
From common things; a stake in life, in short,
Like his; a stake which rash pursuit of aims
That life affords not, would as soon destroy;
He may convince himself that, this in view,
I shall act well advised. And last, because,
Though heaven and earth and all things were at stake,
Sweet Michal must not weep, our parting eve.
Festus.
True: and the eve is deepening, and we sit
As little anxious to begin our talk
As though to-morrow I could hint of it
As we paced arm-in-arm the cheerful town
At sun-dawn; or could whisper it by fits
(Trithemius busied with his class the while)
In that dim chamber where the noon-streaks peer
Half-frightened by the awful tomes around;
Or in some grassy lane unbosom all
From even-blush to midnight: but, to-morrow!
Have I full leave to tell my inmost mind?
We have been brothers, and henceforth the world
Will rise between us:all my freest mind?
'T is the last night, dear Aureole!
Paracelsus.
Oh, say on!
Devise some test of love, some arduous feat
To be performed for you: say on! If night
Be spent the while, the better! Recall how oft
My wondrous plans and dreams and hopes and fears
Havenever wearied you, oh no!as I
Recall, and never vividly as now,
Your true affection, born when Einsiedeln
And its green hills were all the world to us;
And still increasing to this night which ends
My further stay at Wrzburg. Oh, one day
You shall be very proud! Say on, dear friends!
Festus.
In truth? 'T is for my proper peace, indeed,
Rather than yours; for vain all projects seem
To stay your course: I said my latest hope
Is fading even now. A story tells
Of some far embassy despatched to win
The favour of an eastern king, and how
The gifts they offered proved but dazzling dust
Shed from the ore-beds native to his clime.
Just so, the value of repose and love,
I meant should tempt you, better far than I
You seem to comprehend; and yet desist
No whit from projects where repose nor love
Has part.
Paracelsus.
Once more? Alas! As I foretold.
Festus.
A solitary briar the bank puts forth
To save our swan's nest floating out to sea.
Paracelsus.
Dear Festus, hear me. What is it you wish?
That I should lay aside my heart's pursuit,
Abandon the sole ends for which I live,
Reject God's great commission, and so die!
You bid me listen for your true love's sake:
Yet how has grown that love? Even in a long
And patient cherishing of the self-same spirit
It now would quell; as though a mother hoped
To stay the lusty manhood of the child
Once weak upon her knees. I was not born
Informed and fearless from the first, but shrank
From aught which marked me out apart from men:
I would have lived their life, and died their death,
Lost in their ranks, eluding destiny:
But you first guided me through doubt and fear,
Taught me to know mankind and know myself;
And now that I am strong and full of hope,
That, from my soul, I can reject all aims
Save those your earnest words made plain to me,
Now that I touch the brink of my design,
When I would have a triumph in their eyes,
A glad cheer in their voicesMichal weeps,
And Festus ponders gravely!
Festus.
When you deign
To hear my purpose . . .
Paracelsus.
Hear it? I can say
Beforehand all this evening's conference!
'T is this way, Michal, that he uses: first,
Or he declares, or I, the leading points
Of our best scheme of life, what is man's end
And what God's will; no two faiths e'er agreed
As his with mine. Next, each of us allows
Faith should be acted on as best we may;
Accordingly, I venture to submit
My plan, in lack of better, for pursuing
The path which God's will seems to authorize.
Well, he discerns much good in it, avows
This motive worthy, that hope plausible,
A danger here to be avoided, there
An oversight to be repaired: in fine
Our two minds go togetherall the good
Approved by him, I gladly recognize,
All he counts bad, I thankfully discard,
And nought forbids my looking up at last
For some stray comfort in his cautious brow.
When, lo! I learn that, spite of all, there lurks
Some innate and inexplicable germ
Of failure in my scheme; so that at last
It all amounts to thisthe sovereign proof
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen
In living just as though no God there were;
A life which, prompted by the sad and blind
Folly of man, Festus abhors the most;
But which these tenets sanctify at once,
Though to less subtle wits it seems the same,
Consider it how they may.
Michal.
Is it so, Festus
He speaks so calmly and kindly: is it so?
Paracelsus.
Reject those glorious visions of God's love
And man's design; laugh loud that God should send
Vast longings to direct us; say how soon
Power satiates these, or lust, or gold; I know
The world's cry well, and how to answer it.
But this ambiguous warfare . . .
Festus.
. . . Wearies so
That you will grant no last leave to your friend
To urge it?for his sake, not yours? I wish
To send my soul in good hopes after you;
Never to sorrow that uncertain words
Erringly apprehended, a new creed
Ill understood, begot rash trust in you,
Had share in your undoing.
Paracelsus.
Choose your side,
Hold or renounce: but meanwhile blame me not
Because I dare to act on your own views,
Nor shrink when they point onward, nor espy
A peril where they most ensure success.
Festus.
Prove that to mebut that! Prove you abide
Within their warrant, nor presumptuous boast
God's labour laid on you; prove, all you covet
A mortal may expect; and, most of all,
Prove the strange course you now affect, will lead
To its attainmentand I bid you speed,
Nay, count the minutes till you venture forth!
You smile; but I had gathered from slow thought
Much musing on the fortunes of my friend
Matter I deemed could not be urged in vain;
But it all leaves me at my need: in shreds
And fragments I must venture what remains.
Michal.
Ask at once, Festus, wherefore he should scorn . . .
Festus.
Stay, Michal: Aureole, I speak guardedly
And gravely, knowing well, whate'er your error,
This is no ill-considered choice of yours,
No sudden fancy of an ardent boy.
Not from your own confiding words alone
Am I aware your passionate heart long since
Gave birth to, nourished and at length matures
This scheme. I will not speak of Einsiedeln,
Where I was born your elder by some years
Only to watch you fully from the first:
In all beside, our mutual tasks were fixed
Even then't was mine to have you in my view
As you had your own soul and those intents
Which filled it when, to crown your dearest wish,
With a tumultuous heart, you left with me
Our childhood's home to join the favoured few
Whom, here, Trithemius condescends to teach
A portion of his lore: and not one youth
Of those so favoured, whom you now despise,
Came earnest as you came, resolved, like you,
To grasp all, and retain all, and deserve
By patient toil a wide renown like his.
Now, this new ardour which supplants the old
I watched, too; 't was significant and strange,
In one matched to his soul's content at length
With rivals in the search for wisdom's prize,
To see the sudden pause, the total change;
From contest, the transition to repose
From pressing onward as his fellows pressed,
To a blank idleness, yet most unlike
The dull stagnation of a soul, content,
Once foiled, to leave betimes a thriveless quest.
That careless bearing, free from all pretence
Even of contempt for what it ceased to seek
Smiling humility, praising much, yet waiving
What it professed to praisethough not so well
Maintained but that rare outbreaks, fierce and brief,
Revealed the hidden scorn, as quickly curbed.
That ostentatious show of past defeat,
That ready acquiescence in contempt,
I deemed no other than the letting go
His shivered sword, of one about to spring
Upon his foe's throat; but it was not thus:
Not that way looked your brooding purpose then.
For after-signs disclosed, what you confirmed,
That you prepared to task to the uttermost
Your strength, in furtherance of a certain aim
Whichwhile it bore the name your rivals gave
Their own most puny effortswas so vast
In scope that it included their best flights,
Combined them, and desired to gain one prize
In place of many,the secret of the world,
Of man, and man's true purpose, path and fate.
That you, not nursing as a mere vague dream
This purpose, with the sages of the past,
Have struck upon a way to this, if all
You trust be true, which following, heart and soul,
You, if a man may, dare aspire to know:
And that this aim shall differ from a host
Of aims alike in character and kind,
Mostly in this,that in itself alone
Shall its reward be, not an alien end
Blending therewith; no hope nor fear nor joy
Nor woe, to elsewhere move you, but this pure
Devotion to sustain you or betray:
Thus you aspire.
Paracelsus.
You shall not state it thus:
I should not differ from the dreamy crew
You speak of. I profess no other share
In the selection of my lot, than this
My ready answer to the will of God
Who summons me to be his organ. All
Whose innate strength supports them shall succeed
No better than the sages.
Festus.
Such the aim, then,
God sets before you; and't is doubtless need
That he appoint no less the way of praise
Than the desire to praise; for, though I hold
With you, the setting forth such praise to be
The natural end and service of a man,
And hold such praise is best attained when man
Attains the general welfare of his kind
Yet this, the end, is not the instrument.
Presume not to serve God apart from such
Appointed channel as he wills shall gather
Imperfect tributes, for that sole obedience
Valued perchance! He seeks not that his altars
Blaze, careless how, so that they do but blaze.
Suppose this, then; that God selected you
To know (heed well your answers, for my faith
Shall meet implicitly what they affirm)
I cannot think you dare annex to such
Selection aught beyond a steadfast will,
An intense hope; nor let your gifts create
Scorn or neglect of ordinary means
Conducive to success, make destiny
Dispense with man's endeavour. Now, dare you search
Your inmost heart, and candidly avow
Whether you have not rather wild desire
For this distinction than security
Of its existence? whether you discern
The path to the fulfilment of your purpose
Clear as that purposeand again, that purpose
Clear as your yearning to be singled out
For its pursuer. Dare you answer this?
Paracelsus
[after a pause].
No, I have nought to fear! Who will may know
The secret'st workings of my soul. What though
It be so?if indeed the strong desire
Eclipse the aim in me?if splendour break
Upon the outset of my path alone,
And duskest shade succeed? What fairer seal
Shall I require to my authentic mission
Than this fierce energy?this instinct striving
Because its nature is to strive?enticed
By the security of no broad course,
Without success forever in its eyes!
How know I else such glorious fate my own,
But in the restless irresistible force
That works within me? Is it for human will
To institute such impulses?still less,
To disregard their promptings! What should I
Do, kept among you all; your loves, your cares,
Your lifeall to be mine? Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart!
Ask the geier-eagle why she stoops at once
Into the vast and unexplored abyss,
What full-grown power informs her from the first,
Why she not marvels, strenuously beating
The silent boundless regions of the sky!
Be sure they sleep not whom God needs! Nor fear
Their holding light his charge, when every hour
That finds that charge delayed, is a new death.
This for the faith in which I trust; and hence
I can abjure so well the idle arts
These pedants strive to learn and teach; Black Arts,
Great Works, the Secret and Sublime, forsooth
Let others prize: too intimate a tie
Connects me with our God! A sullen fiend
To do my bidding, fallen and hateful sprites
To help mewhat are these, at best, beside
God helping, God directing everywhere,
So that the earth shall yield her secrets up,
And every object there be charged to strike,
Teach, gratify her master God appoints?
And I am young, my Festus, happy and free!
I can devote myself; I have a life
To give; I, singled out for this, the One!
Think, think! the wide East, where all Wisdom sprung;
The bright South, where she dwelt; the hopeful North,
All are passed o'erit lights on me! 'T is time
New hopes should animate the world, new light
Should dawn from new revealings to a race
Weighed down so long, forgotten so long; thus shall
The heaven reserved for us at last receive
Creatures whom no unwonted splendours blind,
But ardent to confront the unclouded blaze.
Whose beams not seldom blessed their pilgrimage,
Not seldom glorified their life below.
Festus.
My words have their old fate and make faint stand
Against your glowing periods. Call this, truth
Why not pursue it in a fast retreat,
Some one of Learning's many palaces,
After approved example?seeking there
Calm converse with the great dead, soul to soul,
Who laid up treasure with the like intent
So lift yourself into their airy place,
And fill out full their unfulfilled careers,
Unravelling the knots their baffled skill
Pronounced inextricable, true!but left
Far less confused. A fresh eye, a fresh hand,
Might do much at their vigour's waning-point;
Succeeding with new-breathed new-hearted force,
As at old games the runner snatched the torch
From runner still: this way success might be.
But you have coupled with your enterprise,
An arbitrary self-repugnant scheme
Of seeking it in strange and untried paths.
What books are in the desert? Writes the sea
The secret of her yearning in vast caves
Where yours will fall the first of human feet?
Has wisdom sat there and recorded aught
You press to read? Why turn aside from her
To visit, where her vesture never glanced,
Nowsolitudes consigned to barrenness
By God's decree, which who shall dare impugn?
Nowruins where she paused but would not stay,
Old ravaged cities that, renouncing her,
She called an endless curse on, so it came:
Or worst of all, nowmen you visit, men,
Ignoblest troops who never heard her voice
Or hate it, men without one gift from Rome
Or Athens,these shall Aureole's teachers be!
Rejecting past example, practice, precept,
Aidless'mid these he thinks to stand alone:
Thick like a glory round the Stagirite
Your rivals throng, the sages: here stand you!
Whatever you may protest, knowledge is not
Paramount in your love; or for her sake
You would collect all help from every source
Rival, assistant, friend, foe, all would merge
In the broad class of those who showed her haunts,
And those who showed them not.
Paracelsus.
What shall I say?
Festus, from childhood I have been possessed
By a fireby a true fire, or faint or fierce,
As from without some master, so it seemed,
Repressed or urged its current: this but ill
Expresses what would I convey: but rather
I will believe an angel ruled me thus,
Than that my soul's own workings, own high nature,
So became manifest. I knew not then
What whispered in the evening, and spoke out
At midnight. If some mortal, born too soon,
Were laid away in some great trancethe ages
Coming and going all the whiletill dawned
His true time's advent; and could then record
The words they spoke who kept watch by his bed,
Then I might tell more of the breath so light
Upon my eyelids, and the fingers light
Among my hair. Youth is confused; yet never
So dull was I but, when that spirit passed,
I turned to him, scarce consciously, as turns
A water-snake when fairies cross his sleep.
And having this within me and about me
While Einsiedeln, its mountains, lakes and woods
Confined mewhat oppressive joy was mine
When life grew plain, and I first viewed the thronged,
The everlasting concourse of mankind!
Believe that ere I joined them, ere I knew
The purpose of the pageant, or the place
Consigned me in its rankswhile, just awake,
Wonder was freshest and delight most pure
'T was then that least supportable appeared
A station with the brightest of the crowd,
A portion with the proudest of them all.
And from the tumult in my breast, this only
Could I collect, that I must thenceforth die
Or elevate myself far, far above
The gorgeous spectacle. I seemed to long
At once to trample on, yet save mankind,
To make some unexampled sacrifice
In their behalf, to wring some wondrous good
From heaven or earth for them, to perish, winning
Eternal weal in the act: as who should dare
Pluck out the angry thunder from its cloud,
That, all its gathered flame discharged on him,
No storm might threaten summer's azure sleep:
Yet never to be mixed with men so much
As to have part even in my own work, share
In my own largess. Once the feat achieved,
I would withdraw from their officious praise,
Would gently put aside their profuse thanks.
Like some knight traversing a wilderness,
Who, on his way, may chance to free a tribe
Of desert-people from their dragon-foe;
When all the swarthy race press round to kiss
His feet, and choose him for their king, and yield
Their poor tents, pitched among the sand-hills, for
His realm: and he points, smiling, to his scarf
Heavy with riveled gold, his burgonet
Gay set with twinkling stonesand to the East,
Where these must be displayed!
Festus.
Good: let us hear
No more about your nature, "which first shrank
"From all that marked you out apart from men!"
Paracelsus.
I touch on that; these words but analyse
The first mad impulse: 't was as brief as fond,
For as I gazed again upon the show,
I soon distinguished here and there a shape
Palm-wreathed and radiant, forehead and full eye.
Well pleased was I their state should thus at once
Interpret my own thoughts:"Behold the clue
"To all," I rashly said, "and what I pine
"To do, these have accomplished: we are peers.
"They know and therefore rule: I, too, will know!"
You were beside me, Festus, as you say;
You saw me plunge in their pursuits whom fame
Is lavish to attest the lords of mind,
Not pausing to make sure the prize in view
Would satiate my cravings when obtained,
But since they strove I strove. Then came a slow
And strangling failure. We aspired alike,
Yet not the meanest plodder, Tritheim counts
A marvel, but was all-sufficient, strong,
Or staggered only at his own vast wits;
While I was restless, nothing satisfied,
Distrustful, most perplexed. I would slur over
That struggle; suffice it, that I loathed myself
As weak compared with them, yet felt somehow
A mighty power was brooding, taking shape
Within me; and this lasted till one night
When, as I sat revolving it and more,
A still voice from without said"Seest thou not,
"Desponding child, whence spring defeat and loss?
"Even from thy strength. Consider: hast thou gazed
"Presumptuously on wisdom's countenance,
"No veil between; and can thy faltering hands,
"Unguided by the brain the sight absorbs,
"Pursue their task as earnest blinkers do
"Whom radiance ne'er distracted? Live their life
"If thou wouldst share their fortune, choose their eyes
"Unfed by splendour. Let each task present
"Its petty good to thee. Waste not thy gifts
"In profitless waiting for the gods' descent,
"But have some idol of thine own to dress
"With their array. Know, not for knowing's sake,
"But to become a star to men for ever;
"Know, for the gain it gets, the praise it brings,
"The wonder it inspires, the love it breeds:
"Look one step onward, and secure that step!"
And I smiled as one never smiles but once,
Then first discovering my own aim's extent,
Which sought to comprehend the works of God,
And God himself, and all God's intercourse
With the human mind; I understood, no less,
My fellows' studies, whose true worth I saw,
But smiled not, well aware who stood by me.
And softer came the voice"There is a way:
"'T is hard for flesh to tread therein, imbued
"With frailtyhopeless, if indulgence first
"Have ripened inborn germs of sin to strength:
"Wilt thou adventure for my sake and man's,
"Apart from all reward?" And last it breathed
"Be happy, my good soldier; I am by thee,
"Be sure, even to the end!"I answered not,
Knowing him. As he spoke, I was endued
With comprehension and a steadfast will;
And when he ceased, my brow was sealed his own.
If there took place no special change in me,
How comes it all things wore a different hue
Thenceforward?pregnant with vast consequence,
Teeming with grand result, loaded with fate?
So that when, quailing at the mighty range
Of secret truths which yearn for birth, I haste
To contemplate undazzled some one truth,
Its bearings and effects aloneat once
What was a speck expands into a star,
Asking a life to pass exploring thus,
Till I near craze. I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time!
Michal.
Vex him no further, Festus; it is so!
Festus.
Just thus you help me ever. This would hold
Were it the trackless air, and not a path
Inviting you, distinct with footprints yet
Of many a mighty marcher gone that way.
You may have purer views than theirs, perhaps,
But they were famous in their daythe proofs
Remain. At least accept the light they lend.
Paracelsus.
Their light! the sum of all is briefly this:
They laboured and grew famous, and the fruits
Are best seen in a dark and groaning earth
Given over to a blind and endless strife
With evils, what of all their lore abates?
No; I reject and spurn them utterly
And all they teach. Shall I still sit beside
Their dry wells, with a white lip and filmed eye,
While in the distance heaven is blue above
Mountains where sleep the unsunned tarns?
Festus.
And yet
As strong delusions have prevailed ere now.
Men have set out as gallantly to seek
Their ruin. I have heard of such: yourself
Avow all hitherto have failed and fallen.
Michal.
Nay, Festus, when but as the pilgrims faint
Through the drear way, do you expect to see
Their city dawn amid the clouds afar?
Paracelsus.
Ay, sounds it not like some old well-known tale?
For me, I estimate their works and them
So rightly, that at times I almost dream
I too have spent a life the sages' way,
And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance
I perished in an arrogant self-reliance
Ages ago; and in that act, a prayer
For one more chance went up so earnest, so
Instinct with better light let in by death,
That life was blotted outnot so completely
But scattered wrecks enough of it remain,
Dim memories, as now, when once more seems
The goal in sight again. All which, indeed,
Is foolish, and only meansthe flesh I wear,
The earth I tread, are not more clear to me
Than my belief, explained to you or no.
Festus.
And who am I, to challenge and dispute
That clear belief? I will divest all fear.
Michal.
Then Aureole is God's commissary! he shall
Be great and grandand all for us!
Paracelsus.
No, sweet!
Not great and grand. If I can serve mankind
'T is well; but there our intercourse must end:
I never will be served by those I serve.
Festus.
Look well to this; here is a plague-spot, here,
Disguise it how you may! 'T is true, you utter
This scorn while by our side and loving us;
'T is but a spot as yet: but it will break
Into a hideous blotch if overlooked.
How can that course be safe which from the first
Produces carelessness to human love?
It seems you have abjured the helps which men
Who overpass their kind, as you would do,
Have humbly sought; I dare not thoroughly probe
This matter, lest I learn too much. Let be
That popular praise would little instigate
Your efforts, nor particular approval
Reward you; put reward aside; alone
You shall go forth upon your arduous task,
None shall assist you, none partake your toil,
None share your triumph: still you must retain
Some one to cast your glory on, to share
Your rapture with. Were I elect like you,
I would encircle me with love, and raise
A rampart of my fellows; it should seem
Impossible for me to fail, so watched
By gentle friends who made my cause their own.
They should ward off fate's envythe great gift,
Extravagant when claimed by me alone,
Being so a gift to them as well as me.
If danger daunted me or ease seduced,
How calmly their sad eyes should gaze reproach!
Michal.
O Aureole, can I sing when all alone,
Without first calling, in my fancy, both
To listen by my sideeven I! And you?
Do you not feel this? Say that you feel this!
Paracelsus.
I feel't is pleasant that my aims, at length
Allowed their weight, should be supposed to need
A further strengthening in these goodly helps!
My course allures for its own sake, its sole
Intrinsic worth; and ne'er shall boat of mine
Adventure forth for gold and apes at once.
Your sages say, "if human, therefore weak:"
If weak, more need to give myself entire
To my pursuit; and by its side, all else . . .
No matter! I deny myself but little
In waiving all assistance save its own.
Would there were some real sacrifice to make!
Your friends the sages threw their joys away,
While I must be content with keeping mine.
Festus.
But do not cut yourself from human weal!
You cannot thrivea man that dares affect
To spend his life in service to his kind
For no reward of theirs, unbound to them
By any tie; nor do so, Aureole! No
There are strange punishments for such. Give up
(Although no visible good flow thence) some part
Of the glory to another; hiding thus,
Even from yourself, that all is for yourself.
Say, say almost to God"I have done all
"For her, not for myself!"
Paracelsus.
And who but lately
Was to rejoice in my success like you?
Whom should I love but both of you?
Festus.
I know not:
But know this, you, that't is no will of mine
You should abjure the lofty claims you make;
And this the causeI can no longer seek
To overlook the truth, that there would be
A monstrous spectacle upon the earth,
Beneath the pleasant sun, among the trees:
A being knowing not what love is. Hear me!
You are endowed with faculties which bear
Annexed to them as't were a dispensation
To summon meaner spirits to do their will
And gather round them at their need; inspiring
Such with a love themselves can never feel,
Passionless'mid their passionate votaries.
I know not if you joy in this or no,
Or ever dream that common men can live
On objects you prize lightly, but which make
Their heart's sole treasure: the affections seem
Beauteous at most to you, which we must taste
Or die: and this strange quality accords,
I know not how, with you; sits well upon
That luminous brow, though in another it scowls
An eating brand, a shame. I dare not judge you.
The rules of right and wrong thus set aside,
There's no alternativeI own you one
Of higher order, under other laws
Than bind us; therefore, curb not one bold glance!
'T is best aspire. Once mingled with us all . . .
Michal.
Stay with us, Aureole! cast those hopes away,
And stay with us! An angel warns me, too,
Man should be humble; you are very proud:
And God, dethroned, has doleful plagues for such!
Warns me to have in dread no quick repulse,
No slow defeat, but a complete success:
You will find all you seek, and perish so!
Paracelsus
[after a pause].
Are these the barren firstfruits of my quest?
Is love like this the natural lot of all?
How many years of pain might one such hour
O'erbalance? Dearest Michal, dearest Festus,
What shall I say, if not that I desire
To justify your love; and will, dear friends,
In swerving nothing from my first resolves.
See, the great moon! and ere the mottled owls
Were wide awake, I was to go. It seems
You acquiesce at last in all save this
If I am like to compass what I seek
By the untried career I choose; and then,
If that career, making but small account
Of much of life's delight, will yet retain
Sufficient to sustain my soul: for thus
I understand these fond fears just expressed.
And first; the lore you praise and I neglect,
The labours and the precepts of old time,
I have not lightly disesteemed. But, friends,
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perceptionwhich is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and to know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly
The demonstration of a truth, its birth,
And you trace back the effluence to its spring
And source within us; where broods radiance vast,
To be elicited ray by ray, as chance
Shall favour: chancefor hitherto, your sage
Even as he knows not how those beams are born,
As little knows he what unlocks their fount:
And men have oft grown old among their books
To die case-hardened in their ignorance,
Whose careless youth had promised what long years
Of unremitted labour ne'er performed:
While, contrary, it has chanced some idle day,
To autumn loiterers just as fancy-free
As the midges in the sun, gives birth at last
To truthproduced mysteriously as cape
Of cloud grown out of the invisible air.
Hence, may not truth be lodged alike in all,
The lowest as the highest? some slight film
The interposing bar which binds a soul
And makes the idiot, just as makes the sage
Some film removed, the happy outlet whence
Truth issues proudly? See this soul of ours!
How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed
In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled
By age and waste, set free at last by death:
Why is it, flesh enthrals it or enthrones?
What is this flesh we have to penetrate?
Oh, not alone when life flows still, do truth
And power emerge, but also when strange chance
Ruffles its current; in unused conjuncture,
When sickness breaks the bodyhunger, watching,
Excess or languoroftenest death's approach,
Peril, deep joy or woe. One man shall crawl
Through life surrounded with all stirring things,
Unmoved; and he goes mad: and from the wreck
Of what he was, by his wild talk alone,
You first collect how great a spirit he hid.
Therefore, set free the soul alike in all,
Discovering the true laws by which the flesh
Accloys the spirit! We may not be doomed
To cope with seraphs, but at least the rest
Shall cope with us. Make no more giants, God,
But elevate the race at once! We ask
To put forth just our strength, our human strength,
All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted
See if we cannot beat thine angels yet!
Such is my task. I go to gather this
The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed
About the world, long lost or never found.
And why should I be sad or lorn of hope?
Why ever make man's good distinct from God's,
Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust?
Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me?
Mine is no mad attempt to build a world
Apart from his, like those who set themselves
To find the nature of the spirit they bore,
And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous dreams
Were only born to vanish in this life,
Refused to fit them to its narrow sphere,
But chose to figure forth another world
And other frames meet for their vast desires,
And all a dream! Thus was life scorned; but life
Shall yet be crowned: twine amaranth! I am priest!
And all for yielding with a lively spirit
A poor existence, parting with a youth
Like those who squander every energy
Convertible to good, on painted toys,
Breath-bubbles, gilded dust! And though I spurn
All adventitious aims, from empty praise
To love's award, yet whoso deems such helps
Important, and concerns himself for me,
May know even these will follow with the rest
As in the steady rolling Mayne, asleep
Yonder, is mixed its mass of schistous ore.
My own affections laid to rest awhile,
Will waken purified, subdued alone
By all I have achieved. Till thentill then . . .
Ah, the time-wiling loitering of a page
Through bower and over lawn, till eve shall bring
The stately lady's presence whom he loves
The broken sleep of the fisher whose rough coat
Enwraps the queenly pearlthese are faint types!
See, see, they look on me: I triumph now!
But one thing, Festus, Michal! I have told
All I shall e'er disclose to mortal: say
Do you believe I shall accomplish this?
Festus.
I do believe!
Michal.
I ever did believe!
Paracelsus.
Those words shall never fade from out my brain!
This earnest of the end shall never fade!
Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal,
Two points in the adventure of the diver,
Onewhen, a beggar, he prepares to plunge,
Onewhen, a prince, he rises with his pearl?
Festus, I plunge!
Festus.
We wait you when you rise!
~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus - Part I - Paracelsus Aspires
,#NFDB |
1029:The Witch Of Hebron
A Rabbinical Legend
Part I.
From morn until the setting of the sun
The rabbi Joseph on his knees had prayed,
And, as he rose with spirit meek and strong,
An Indian page his presence sought, and bowed
Before him, saying that a lady lay
Sick unto death, tormented grievously,
Who begged the comfort of his holy prayers.
The rabbi, ever to the call of grief
Open as day, arose; and girding straight
His robe about him, with the page went forth;
Who swiftly led him deep into the woods
That hung, heap over heap, like broken clouds
On Hebron’s southern terraces; when lo!
Across a glade a stately pile he saw,
With gleaming front, and many-pillared porch
Fretted with sculptured vinage, flowers and fruit,
And carven figures wrought with wondrous art
As by some Phidian hand.
But interposed
For a wide space in front, and belting all
The splendid structure with a finer grace,
A glowing garden smiled; its breezes bore
Airs as from paradise, so rich the scent
That breathed from shrubs and flowers; and fair the growths
Of higher verdure, gemm’d with silver blooms,
Which glassed themselves in fountains gleaming light
Each like a shield of pearl.
Within the halls
Strange splendour met the rabbi’s careless eyes,
Halls wonderful in their magnificance,
With pictured walls, and columns gleaming white
Like Carmel’s snow, or blue-veined as with life;
222
Through corridors he passed with tissues hung
Inwrought with threaded gold by Sidon’s art,
Or rich as sunset clouds with Tyrian dye;
Past lofty chambers, where the gorgeous gleam
Of jewels, and the stainèd radiance
Of golden lamps, showed many a treasure rare
Of Indian and Armenian workmanship
Which might have seemed a wonder of the world:
And trains of servitors of every clime,
Greeks, Persians, Indians, Ethiopians,
In richest raiment thronged the spacious halls.
The page led on, the rabbi following close,
And reached a still and distant chamber, where
In more than orient pomp, and dazzling all
The else-unrivalled splendour of the rest,
A queenly woman lay; so beautiful,
That though upon her moon-bright visage, pain
And langour like eclipsing shadows gloomed,
The rabbi’s aged heart with tremor thrilled;
Then o’er her face a hectic colour passed,
Only to leave that pallor which portends
The nearness of the tomb.
From youth to age
The rabbi Joseph still had sought in herbs
And minerals the virtues they possess,
And now of his medicaments he chose
What seemed most needful in her sore estate;
“Alas, not these,” the dying woman said,
“A malady like mine thou canst not cure,
’Tis fatal as the funeral march of Time!
But that I might at length discharge my mind
Of a dread secret, that hath been to me
An ever-haunting and most ghostly fear,
Darkening my whole life like an ominous cloud
And which must end it ere the morning come,
Therefore did I entreat thy presence here.”
The rabbi answered, “If indeed it stand
Within my power to serve thee, speak at once
223
All that thy heart would say. But if ’tis vain,
If this thy sin hath any mortal taint,
Forbear, O woman, to acquaint my soul
With aught that could thenceforth with horror chase
The memory of a man of Israel.”
“I am,” she said “the daughter of thy friend
Rabbi Ben Bachai—be his memory blest!
Once at thy side a laughing child I played;
I married with an Arab Prince, a man
Of lofty lineage, one of Ishmael’s race;
Not great in gear. Behold’st thou this abode?
Did ever yet the tent-born Arab build
Thus for his pride or pleasure? See’st thou
These riches? An no! Such were ne’er amassed
By the grey desert’s wild and wandering son;
Deadly the game by which I won them all!
And with a burning bitterness at best
Have I enjoyed them! And how gladly now
Would I, too late, forego them all, to mend
My broken peace with a repentant heed
In abject poverty!”
She ceased, and lay
Calm in her loveliness, with dreamy looks
Roaming, perhaps, in thought the fateful past;
Then suddenly her beauteous countenance grew
Bedimm’d and drear, then dark with mortal pangs,
While fierce convulsions shook her tortured frame,
And from her foaming lips such words o’erran,
That rabbi Joseph sank upon his knees,
And bowed his head a space in horror down
While ardent, pitying prayers for her great woe
Rose from his soul; when, lo! The woman’s face
Was cloudless as a summer heaven! The late
Dark brow was bright, the late pale cheek suffused
With roseate bloom; and, wondrous more than all,
Here weary eyes were changed to splendours now
That shot electric influence, and her lips
Were full and crimson, curled with stormy pride.
The doubting rabbi stood in wild amaze
To see the dying woman bold and fierce
224
In bright audacity of passion’s power.
“These are the common changes,” then she said,
“Of the fell ailment, that with torments strange,
Which search my deepest life, is tearing up
The dark foundations of my mortal state,
And sinking all its structures, hour by hour,
Into the dust of death. For nothing now
Is left me but to meet my nearing doom
As best I may in silent suffering.”
Then as he heard her words and saw her face,
The rabbi in his wisdom knew some strong
Indwelling evil spirit troubled her,
And straighway for an unction sent, wherewith
The famous ancestor whose name he bore,
Herod the Great’s chief hakim, had expelled
The daemon haunter of the dying king.
With this he touched her forehead and her eyes
And all her finger-tips. Forthwith he made
Within a consecrated crucible
A fire of citron-wood and cinnamon;
Then splashed the flames with incense, mingling all
With the strong influence of fervent prayer;
And, as the smoke arose, he bowed her head
Into its coils, that so she might inhale
Its salutary odour—till the fiend
That dwelt within her should be exorcised.
Her face once more grew pale with pain; she writhed
In burning torment, uttering many words
Of most unhallowed meaning! Yet her eyes
Were fixed the while, and motionless her lips!
Whereby the rabbi certainly perceived
’Twas not the woman of herself that spake,
But the dread spirit that possessed her soul,
And thus it cried aloud.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
225
Part II.
“WHY am I here, in this my last resort,
Perturbed with incense and anointings? Why
Compelled to listen to the sound of prayers
That smite me through as with the fire of God?
O pain, pain, pain! Is not this chamber full
Of the implacable stern punishers?
Full of avenging angels, holding each
A scourge of thunder in his potent hand,
Ready to lighten forth! And then, thus armed,
For ever chase and wound us as we fly!
Nor end with this—but, in each wound they make,
Pour venom sweltered from that tree As-gard,
Whose deadly shadow in its blackness falls
Over the lake of everlasting doom!
“Five hundred years ago, I, who thus speak,
Was an Egyptian of the splendid court
Of Ptolemy Philadelphus. To the top
Of mountainous power, though roughened with unrest,
And girt with dangers as with thunder-clouds,
Had I resolved by all resorts to climb;
By truth and falsehood, right and wrong alike;
And I did climb! Then firmly built in power
Second alone to my imperial lord’s,
I crowned with its impunity my lust
Of beauty, sowing broadcast everywhere
Such sensual baits wide round me, as should lure
Through pleasure, or through interest entrap,
The fairest daughters of the land, and lo!
Their lustrous eyes surcharged with passionate light
The chambers of my harem! But at length
Wearied of these, though sweet, I set my heart
On riches, heaped to such a fabulous sum
As never one man’s hoard in all the world
Might match; and to acquire them, steeped my life
In every public, every private wrong,
In lies, frauds, secret murders; till at last
A favoured minion I had trusted most,
And highest raised, unveiled before the king
The dark abysmal badness of my life;
But dearly did he rue it; nor till then
Guessed I how deadly grateful was revenge!
226
I stole into his chamber as he slept,
And with a sword, whose double edge for hours
I had whetted for the purpose of the deed,
There staked him through the midriff to his bed.
I fled; but first I sent, as oft before,
A present to the household of the man
Who had in secret my betrayer bribed.
Twas scented wine, and rich Damascus cakes;
On these he feasted, and fell sudden down,
Rolling and panting in his dying pangs,
A poisoned desert dog!
“But I had fled.
A swift ship bore me, which my forecast long
Had kept prepared against such need as this.
Over the waves three days she proudly rode;
Then came a mighty storm, and trampled all
Her masted bravery flat, and still drove on
The wave-swept ruin towards a reefy shore!
Meanwhile amongst the terror-stricken crew
An ominous murmur went from mouth to mouth;
They grouped themselves in councils, and, ere long,
Grew loud and furious with surmises wild,
And maniac menaces, all aimed at me!
My fugitive head it was at which so loud
The thunder bellowed! The wild-shrieking winds
And roaring waters held in vengeful chase
Me only! Me! Whose signal crimes alone
Had brought on us this anger of the gods!
And thus reproaching me with glaring eyes,
They would have seized and slain me, but I sprang
Back from amongst them, and, outstriking, stabbed
With sudden blow their leader to the heart;
Then, with my poniard scaring off the rest,
Leaped from the deck, and swimming reached the shore,
From which, in savage triumph, I beheld
The battered ship, with all her howling crew,
Heel, and go down, amid the whelming waves.
“Inland my course now lay for many days,
O’er barren hills and glens, whose herbless scopes
Never grew luminous with a water gleam,
227
Or heard the pleasant bubble of a brook,
For vast around the Afric desert stretched.
Starving and sun-scorched and afire with thirst,
I wandered ever on, until I came
To where, amid the dun and level waste,
In frightful loneliness, a mouldered group
Of ancient tombs stood ghostly. Here at last,
Utterly spent, in my despair I lay
Down on the burning sand, to gasp and die!
When from among the stones a withered man,
Old-seeming as the desert where he lived,
Came and stood by me, saying ‘get thee up!
Not much have I to give, but these at least
I offer to thy need, water and bread.’
“Then I arose and followed to his cell,—
A dismal cell, that seemed itself a tomb,
So lightless was it, and so foul with damp,
And at its entrance there were skulls and bones.
Long and deep drank I of the hermit’s draught,
And munched full greedily the hermit’s bread;
But with the strength which thence my frame derived,
Fierce rage devoured me, and I cursed my fate!
Whereat the withered creature laughed in scorn,
And mocked me with the malice of his eyes,
That sometimes, like a snake’s, shrank small, and then
Enlarging blazed as with infernal fire!
Then, on a sudden, with an oath that seemed
To wake a stir in the grey musty tombs,
As if their silence shuddered, he averred
That he could life me once more to the height
Of all my wishes—nay, even higher, but
On one condition only. Dared I swear,
By the dread angel of the second death,
I would be wholly his, both body and soul,
After a hundred years?
“Why should I not?
I answered, quivering with a stormy haste,
A rampart unreluctance! For so great
Was still my fury against all mankind,
And my desire of pomp and riches yet
228
So monstrous, that I felt I could have drunk
Blood, fire, or worse, to wear again the power
That fortune, working through my enemies’ hands,
Had stript away from me. So, word by word,
I swore the oath as he repeated it;
Nor much it moved me, in my eagerness,
To feel a damp and earthy odour break
Out of each tomb, from which there darkling rose
At every word a hissing as of snakes;
And yet the fell of hair upon my scalp
Rose bristling under a cold creeping thrill:
But I failed not, I swore the dread oath through,
And then the tombs grew silent as their dead.
But through my veins a feeling of strong youth
Coursed bold along, and summered in my heart,
Till there before him in my pride I stood
In stately strength, and swift as is the wind,
Magnificant as a desert-nurtured steed
Of princeliest pedigree, with nostrils wide
Dilated, and with eyes effusing flame.
‘Begone,’ he said, ’and live thy hundred years
Of splendour, power, pleasure, ease.’ His voice
Sighed off into the distance. He was gone:
Only a single raven, far aloft,
Was beating outwards with its sable wings;
The tombs had vanished, and the desert grey
Merged its whole circle with the bending sky.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part III.
“OUT of these wilds to Egypt I returned:
Men thought that I had perished with the ship,
And no one knew me now, because my face
And form were greatly changed,—from passing fair
To fairer yet; from manly, to a pile
So nobly built, that in all eyes I seemed
Beauteous as Thammuz! And my heart was changed;
Ambition wilder than a leopard’s thirst
229
For blood of roe, or flying hart, possessed
My spirit, like the madness of a god!
But this I yet even in its fiercest strain
Could curb and guide with sovereign strength of will.
From small beginnings onward still I worked,
Stepping as up a stair from rival head
To rival head,—from high to higher still,
Unto the loftiest post that might be held
Under the Ptolemies; and meantime paid
Each old unsettled score, defeating those
Who erst had worked against me, sweeping them
Out of all posts, all places; for though time
And change had wide dispersed them through the land,
The sleuth-hounds of my vengeance found them out!
Which things not being in a corner done,
What wonder was it that all Egypt now,
From end to end, even like a shaken hive,
Buzzed as disturbed with my portentous fame?
“And what to me were secret enemies?
Had I not also spies, who could pin down
A whisper in the dark and keep it there?
Could dash a covert frown by the same means
An open charge had challenged? Hence my name
Became a sound that struck through every heart
Ineffable dismay! And yet behold
There more I trampled on mankind, the more
Did fawning flatterers praise me as I swept
Like a magnificant meteor through the land!
The more I hurled the mighty from their seats,
And triumphed o’er them prostrate in the dust,
The human hounds that licked my master hand
But multiplied the more! And still I strode
From bad to worse, corrupting as I went,
Making the lowly ones more abject yet;
Awing as with a thunder-bearing hand
The high and affluent; while I bound the strong
To basest service, even with chains of gold.
All hated, cursed and feared me, for in vain
Daggers were levelled at my brazen heart—
They glanced, and slew some minion at my side
Poison was harmless as a heifer’s milk
When I had sipped it with my lips of scorn;
230
All that paraded pomp and smiling power
Could draw against me from the envious hearts
Of men in will as wicked as myself
I challenged, I encountered, and o’erthrew!
“But, after many years, exhaustion sere
Spread through the branches of my tree of life;
My forces flagged, my senses more and more
Were blunted, and incapable of joy;
The splendours of my rank availed me not;
A poverty as naked as a slave’s
Peered from them mockingly. The pride of power
That glowed so strong within me in my youth
Was now like something dying at my heart.
To cheat or stimulate my jaded taste,
Feasts, choice or sumptuous, were devised in vain;
there was disfavour, there was fraud within,
Like that which filled the fair-appearing rind
Of those delusive apples that of old
Grew on the Dead Sea shore.
“And yet, though thus
All that gave pleasure to my younger life
Was withering from my path like summer grass,
I still had one intense sensation, which
Grew ever keener as my years increased—
A hatred of mankind; to pamper which
I gloated, with a burning in my soul,
Over their degradation; and like one
Merry with wine, I revelled day by day
In scattering baits that should corrupt them more:
The covetous I sharpened into thieves,
Urged the vindictive, hardened the malign,
Whetted the ruffian with self-interest,
And flung him then, a burning brand, abroad.
And the decadence of the state in which
My fortunes had recast me, served me well.
Excess reeled shameless in the court itself,
Or, staggering thence, was rivalled by the wild
Mad looseness of the crowd. Down to its death
The old Greek dynasty was sinking fast;
Waste and pale want, extortion, meanness, fraud—
231
These, welling outwards from the throne itself,
Spread through the land.
“But now there seized my soul
A new ambition—from his feeble throne
To hurl the king, and mount thereon myself!
To this end still I lured him into ill,
And daily wove around him cunning snares,
That reached and trammelled too his fawning court;
And all went well, the end at last was near,
But in my triumph one thing I forgot—
My name was measured. At a banquet held
In the king’s chamber, lo! A guest appeared,
Chief of a Bactrian tribe, who tendered gold
To pay for some great wrong his desert horde
Had done our caravans; his age, men said,
Was wonderful; his craft more wondrous still;
For this his fame had spread through many lands,
And the dark seekers of forbidden lore
Knew his decrepit wretch to be their lord.
“The first glance that I met of his weird eye
Had sent into my soul a fearful doubt
That I had seen that cramp-shrunk withered form
And strange bright eye in some forgotten past.
But at the dry croak of his raven voice
Remembrance wok; I knew that I beheld
The old man of the tombs: I saw, and fell
Into the outer darkness of despair.
The day that was to close my dread account
Was come at last. The long triumphant feast
Of life had ended in a funeral treat.
I was to die—to suffer with the damned
The hideous torments of the second death!
The days, weeks, months of a whole hundred years
Seemed crushed into a thought, and burning out
In that brief period which was left me now.
“Stung with fierce horror, shame, and hate I fled;
I seized my sword, to plunge its ready point
Into my maddened heart, but on my arm
I felt a strong forbidding grasp! I turned;
232
The withered visage of the Bactrian met
My loathing eyes; I struggled to be free
From the shrunk wretch in vain; his spidery hands
Were strong as fetters of Ephesian brass,
And all my strength, though now with madness strung,
Was as a child’s to his. He calmly smiled:
‘Forbear, thou fool! Am I not Sammael?
Whom to resist is vain, and from whom yet
Has never mercy flowed; for what to me
Are feelings which thou knowest even in men
Are found the most in fools. But wide around
A prince of lies I reign. ’Tis I that fill
the Persian palaces with lust and wrong,
Till like the darkling heads of sewers they flow
With a corruption that in fretting thence
Taints all the region round with rankest ill;
’Tis I that clot the Bactrian sand with blood;
And now I come to fling the brands of war
Through all this people, this most ill-mixed mob,
Where Afric’s savage hordes meet treacherous Greeks,
And swarming Asia’s luxury-wasted sons.
This land throughout shall be a deluge soon
Of blood and fire, till ruin stalk alone,
A grisly spectre, in its grass-grown marts.’
The fiery eyes within his withered face
Glowed like live coals, as he triumphant spake,
And his strange voice, erewhile so thin and dry,
Came as if bellowed from the vaults of doom.
Prone fell I, powerless to move or speak;
And now he was about to plunge me down
Ten thousand times ten thousand fathoms deep
Through the earth’s crust, and through the slimy beds
Of nether ocean—down! Still down, below
The darkling roots of all this upper world
Into the regions of the courts of hell!
“To stamp me downward to the convict dead
His heel was raised, when suddenly I heard
Him heave a groan of superhuman pain,
So deep twas drawn! And as he groaned, I saw
A mighty downburst of celestial light
233
Enwrap his shrivelled form from head to foot,
As with a robe within whose venomous folds
He writhed in torment. Then above him stood
A shining shape, unspeakably sublime,
And gazed upon him! One of the high sons
Of Paradise, who still keep watch and ward
O’er Israel’s progeny, where’er dispersed;
And now they fought for me with arms that filled
The air wide round with flashes and swift gleams
Of dazzling light; full soon the Evil One
Fell conquered. Then forth sprang he from the ground
And with dark curses wrapped him in a cloud
That moved aloft, low thundering as it went.
“And then the shining son of paradise
Came where I lay and spoke, his glorious face
Severe with wrath, and yet divinely fair—
‘O Child of Guilt! Should vengeance not be wrought
On thee as well? On Sammael’s willing slave?’
I clasped his radiant knees—I wept—I groaned—
I beat my bosom in my wild distress.
At last the sacred Presence, who had held
The blow suspended still, spoke thus: ‘Thou’rt spared;
From no weak pity, but because thou art
Descended from the line of Israel:
For that cause spared;—yet must thou at my hand
Find some meet punishment.’ And as he spake,
He laid his hand with a life-crushing weight
Upon my forehead—and I fell, as dead!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part IV.
“AWAKING as from sleep, I bounded up,
Stung with a feeling of enormous strength,
Though yet half wild with horror. Onward then
Ramping I went, out through the palace gates,
Down the long streets, and into the highways,
Forth to the wilds, amazed at my own speed!
234
And now afar, in long-drawn line appeared
A caravan upon its outward way
Over the desert of Pentapolis.
And strange the instinct seemed that urged me then
to rush amongst them—and devour: for I
Was fierce with hunger, and inflamed with thirst.
“Amidst a laggard company I leaped
That rested yet beside a cooling spring;
One of those clear springs that, like giant pearls,
Inlay the burning borders of the grey
Enormous desert. All at once they rose!
Some fled, some threw themselves amongst the brakes,
Some seized their swords and lances; this to see
Filled me at once with a mysterious rage
And savage joy! The sternness of their looks,
Their fearful cries, the gleaming of their spears
Seemed to insult me, and I rushed on them.
Then sudden spasms of pain searched deep my side,
Wherein a fell lance quivered. On I rushed;
I roared a roar that startled e’en myself,
So loud and hoarse and terrible its tone,
Then bounding, irresistible it seemed
As some huge fragment from a crag dislodged,
Against the puny wretch that sent the lance,
Instantly tore him, as he were a kid,
All into gory shreds! The others fled
At sight of this, nor would I chase them then,
All wearied by my flight. Besides, the well
Was gleaming in its coolness by me there.
“And as I stooped to quench my parching thirst,
Behold, reversed within the water clear,
The semblance of a monstrous lion stood!
I saw his shaggy mane, I saw his red
And glaring eyeballs rolling in amaze,
His rough and grinning lips, his long sharp fangs
All foul with gore and hung with strings of flesh!
I shrank away in horrible dismay.
But as the sun each moment fiercer grew,
I soon returned to stoop and slake my thirst.
Again was that tremendous presence there
Standing reversed, as erewhile, in the clear
235
And gleaming mirror of the smiling well!
The horrid truth smote like a rush of fire
Upon my brain! The dreadful thing I saw
Was my own shadow! I was a wild beast.”
“They did not fable, then, who held that oft
The guilty dead are punished in the shapes
Of beasts, if brutal were their lives as men.”
“Long lapped I the cool lymph, while still my tongue
Made drip for drip against the monstrous one,
Which, as in ugly mockery, from below
Seemed to lap up against it. But though thirst
Was quenched at length, what was there might appease
The baffled misery of my fated soul?
The thought that I no more was human, ran
Like scorpion venom through my mighty frame;
Fiercely I bounded, tearing up the sands,
That, like a drab mist, coursed me as I went
Out on my homeless track. I made my fangs
Meet in my flesh, trusting to find in pain
Some respite from the anguish of regret.
From morn to night, from night to morn, I fled,
Chased by the memory of my lost estate;
Then, worn and bleeding, in the burning sands
I lay down, as to die. In vain!—in vain!
The savage vigour of my lion-life
Might yield alone to the long tract of time.
“From hill to valley rushing after prey,
With whirlwind speed, was now my daily wont,
For all things fled before me—all things shrank
In mortal terror at my shaggy front.
Sometimes I sought those close-fenced villages,
Wherein the desert-dwellers hide their swart
And naked bodies from the scorching heats,
Hoping that I might perish by their shafts.
And often was I wounded—often bore
Their poisoned arrows in my burning flesh—
But still I lived.
“The tenor of my life
236
Was always this—the solitary state
Of a wild beast of prey, that hunted down
The antelope, the boar, the goat, the gorged
Their quivering flesh, and lapped their steaming blood;
Then slept till hunger, or the hunter’s cry,
Roused him again to battle or to slay,
To flight, pursuit, blood, stratagem, and wounds.
And to make this rude life more hideous yet,
I still retained a consciousness of all
The nobler habits of my eariler time,
And had a keen sense of what most had moved
My nature as a man, and knew besides
That this my punishment was fixed by One
Too mighty to be questioned, and too just
One tittle of its measure to remit.
“How long this haggard course of life went on
I might not even guess, for I had lost
The human faculty that measures time.
But still from night to night I found myself
Roaming the desert, howling at the moon,
Whose cold light always, as she poured it down,
Awoke a drear distemper in my brain:
But much I shunned the sunblaze, which at once
Inflamed me, and revealed my dread approach.
“Homelessly roaming thus for evermore,
The tempests beat on my unsheltered bulk,
In those bleak seasons when the drenching rains
Drove into covert all those gentler beasts
That were my natural prey. I swinkt beneath
The furnace heats of the midsummer sun,
When even the palm of the oasis stood
All withered, like a weed: and for how long,
Yet knew not.
“Thus the sun and moon arose
Through an interminable tract of time,
And yet though sense was dim, the view of all
My human life was ever at my beck,
Nay, opened out before me of itself
Plain as the pictures in a wizard’s glass!
237
I saw again the trains that round my car
Streamed countless, saw its pageants and its pomps,
Its faces fair and passionate, and felt
Lie’s eager pleasures, even its noble pangs!
Then in the anguish of my goaded heart
Would I roll howling in the burning sand.
“At length this life of horror seemed to near
Its fated bourn. The slow but sure approach
Of old decay was felt in every limb
And every function of my lion frame.
My massive strength seemed spent, my speed was gone,
The antelope escaped me! Wearily
I sought a mountain cavern, shut from day
By savage draperies of tangled briers,
And only dragged my tardy bulk abroad
When hunger urged. It chanced on such a day
I sprange amid a herd of buffaloes
And tore their leader down, who bellowing fell.
When, lo! The chief of those that drove them came
Against me, and I turned my rage on him:
But though the long lapse of so many years
Of ever-grinding wretchedness had dulled
My memory, I felt that I had seen
His withered visage twice before; and straight
A shuddering awe subdued me, and I crouched
Beneath him in the dust. My lust of blood,
My ruthless joy at sight of mortal pain,
Within me died, and if in human speech
I might have told the wild desire that filled
My being, I had prayed him once for all
To crush me out of life, and to consign
My misery to the pit of final death!
But when, all hopeless, I again looked up,
The tawney presence of the desert chief
Was gone, and I beheld the shining son
Of paradise, from whose majestic brow
There flashed the lightings of a wrath divine.
Yea, twas the angel that with Sammael
Had fought for me in Egypt; and once more
He laid his crushing had upon my front;
And earth and sky, and all that in them is,
238
Became to me a darkness, swimming blank
In the Eternal, round that point where now
My body lay, stretched dead upon the sand.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part V.
“AGAIN I lived—again I felt. But now
The winds of heaven seemed under me, and I
Was sweeping, like the spirit of a storm
That bellowed round me, in its murky glooms,
All heaving with a motion wide and swift
That seemed yet mightier than the darkling swells
Of ocean, wrestling with a midnight gale!
The wild winds tossed me; I was drenched throughout
With heavy moisture, and at intervals
Amid the ragged gaps of moving cloud,
Methought I caught dim glimpses of the sun
Hanging aloft, as if in drear eclipse;
But as my senses cleared, I saw my limbs
Were clothed with plumage; and long-taloned claws
Were closing eagerly with fierce desire
And sudden hunger after blood and prey!
An impulse to pursue and to destroy
Both on the earth and in the air, ran quick
Out from my heart and shivered in my wings;
And as a thing more central yet, I felt
Pregnant within me, throned o’er all, a lone
And sullen, yet majestic, glow of pride.
“’Twas plain that I, who had aforetime been
Crushed out of human being into that
Of a wild beast, had thence again passed on
Into the nature of some mighty thing
That now swept sailing on wide van-like wings,
Amid the whirls of an aërial gloom,
That out extending in one mighty cope
Hung heaving, like a black tent-roof, o’er all
The floor of Africa.
239
“Still on I swept,
And still as far as my keen vision went,
That now was gifted with a power that seemed
To pierce all space, I saw the vapours roll
In dreadful continuous of black
And shapeless masses, by the winds convulsed;
But soon in the remotest distance came
A change: the clouds were touched with sunny light,
And, as I nearer drew, I saw them dash,
Like the wild surges of an uproused sea
Of molten gold, against the marble sides
Of lofty mountains, which, though far below
My flight, yet pierced up through them all, and stood
With splintered cones and monster-snouted crags,
Immovable as fate. Beneath me, lo!
The grandeur of the kingdom of the air
Was circling in its magnitude! It was
A dread magnificence of which before
I might not even dream. I saw its quick
And subtle interchange of forms and hues,
Saw its black reservoirs of densest rain,
Its awful forges of the thunderstorm.
“At last, as onward still I swept, above
A milky mass of vapour far outspread,
Behold, reflected in its quiet gleam,
I saw an image that swept on with me,
Reversed as was the lion’s in the well,
With van-like wings, with eyeballs seething fire,
With taloned claws, and cruel down-bent beak,—
The mightiest eagle that had ever sailed
The seas of space since Adam named the first!
“My fated soul had passed into the form
Of that huge eagle which swept shadowed there.
Cold horror thrilled me! I was once again
Imprisoned in the being of a brute,
In the base being of a nature yet
Inferior by what infinite descent
To that poor remnant of intelligence
Which still kept with me,—like a put-back soul
Burningly conscious of its powers foregone,
240
Its inborn sovreignty of kind, and yet
So latent, self-less; once again to live
A life of carnage, and to sail abroad
A terror to all birds and gentle beasts
That heard the stormy rushings of my wings!
A royal bird indeed, who lived alone
In the great stillness of the mighty hills,
Or in the highest heavens.
“But in truth
Not much for many seasons had I need
To search for prey, for countless hosts of men,
Forth mustering over all the face of earth,
Cast the quick gleam of arms o’er trampled leagues
Of golden corn, and as they onward marched
They left behind them seas of raging fire,
In whose red surges cities thronged with men
And happy hamlets, homes of health and peace,
That rang erewhile with rural thankfulness,
Were whelmed in one wide doom; or in their strength
Confronted upon some set field of fight,
Their sullen masses charged with dreadful roar
That far out-yelled the fiercest yells of beasts,
And with brute madness rushed on wounds and death;
Or else about fenced cities they would pitch
Their crowded camps, and leaguer them for years,
Sowing the fields about them with a slime
Of carnage, till their growths were plagues alone.
What is the ravage made by brutes on brutes
To that man makes on man?
“With mingled pain
And joy I saw the wondrous ways of men,
(For ever when I hungered, close at hand,
Some fresh slain man lay smoking in his gore)
And though the instincts of the eagle’s life
Were fierce within me, yet I felt myself
Cast in a lot more capable of joy;
Safe from pursuit, from famine, and from wounds.
Some solaces, though few and far between,
Were added to me; and I argued thence,
In the dark musings of my eagle heart,
241
That not for ever was my soul condemned
To suffer in the body of a brute;
For though remembrance of the towering crimes
And matchless lusts, that filled my whole career
Of human life, worked in me evermore,
No longer did they shed about my life
So venomous a blight. Nay, I could think
How often I had looked with longing eyes
Up at the clear Egyptian heavens, and watched
The wings that cleft them, envying every bird
That, soaring in the sunshine, seemed to be
Exempt from all the grovelling cares of men.
I thought how once, when with my hunting train
I pierced that region round the cataracts,
I watched an eagle as it rose aloft
Into the lovely blue, and wished to change
My being with it as it floated on,
So inaccessible to hate or hurt,
So peaceful, at a height in heaven so safe;
And then it passed away through gorgeous clouds
Against the sunset, through the feathered flags
Of royal purple edged with burning gold.
“These fields of space were my dominion now;
Motion alone within a world so rich
Was something noble: but to move at will,
Upward or forward, or in circles vast,
Through boundless spaces with a rushing speed
No living thing might rival, and to see
The glory of the everlasting hills
Beneath me, and the myriad-peopled plains,
Broad rivers, and the towery towns that sate
Beside their spacious mouths, with out beyond
The lonely strength of the resounding seas—
This liberty began to move my sense
As something godlike; and in moving made
A sure impression that kept graining still
Into the texture of my brute estate—
Yea, graining in through all its fleshy lusts
And savage wonts.
“Hence ever more and more
242
The temper of a better spirit grew
Within me, as from inkling roots, and moved
E’en like an embryon in its moist recess:
A sensibility to beauteous things
As now I saw them in the heavens displayed,
And in the bright luxuriance of the earth;
Some power of just comparison, some sense
Of how a man would rank them, could he see
Those earthly grandeurs from the sovreign height
Whence I beheld them. And with this a wish
To commune even with the human race,
And pour the loftier wonders of my life
Into their ears, through a rich-worded song
Whose golden periods in mellow flow
Should witch all ears that heard them—ev’n old men s,
Ev’n jaded monarchs; not to speak of theirs,
Those spirit-lovely ones—yea, moons of love,
That rise at first in the Circassian hills—
And they should tingle all like tiny shells
Of roseate whiteness to its perfect chords.
“One day amid the mountains of the moon,
Behold a sudden storm had gatherd up
Out of my view, hid by a neighbouring height,
But which, thence wheeling with terrific force,
Wide tossed me with its gusts—aloft, and then
Downward as far; then whirlingly about,
Ev’n like a withered leaf. My strength of wing
Availed me nought, so mightily it raged;
Then suddenly, in the dim distance, lo!
I saw, as from the storm’s Plutonian heart,
A mass of white-hot light come writing forth,
And then the figure of a withered man
Seemed dropping headlong through the lurid clouds;
While full within the radiant light, again
The conquering son of paradise appeared,
Upon whose brow divine I yet might trace
Some sing of wrath. Onward the vision rushed,
Orbed in white light. I felt a stifling heat,
One cruel blasting pang, and headlong then
Fell earthward—dead; a plumb descending mass.
243
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part VI.
“WITHIN a rustic chamber, dark and low,
Thronged with wild-looking men and women strange,
I seemed to waken. Inwardly I felt
No briskness of existence, but a sense
Of languor rather, or revival slow:
And evermore the men and women came
And gazed upon me, shouting in amaze,
Then would they whirl about the room in dance,
Abandoned to their barbarous delight.
“I turned mine eyes about the low-roofed room,
Half fearing and half hoping I might see
The mighty angel that now ruled my life;
They thought I needed air, and I was borne
to a low casement. Like a picture lay
The world without. On all sides wide around
Nothing but mountains, feathered to their tops
With a dense growth of pines, and valleys filled
With a cold darkness that was lit alone
By the broad flashes of the furious streams
That leaped in thunder our of marble gaps!
Dull vapours, like a canopy of smoke,
Did so obscure the sun, that I had thought
The scene that now I saw was not of earth,
But for a golden flush that now and then
Would touch the highest ranges. What I was
I knew not, but I felt my former wants,
And oft I made vain efforts to expand
The wings I had no longer, and sail off,
And through those sullen vapours—up, and up—
Into the mighty silence of the blue.
“The day was fading, and a blare of horns,
With many voices and much trampling noise,
Heard from without, aroused me; and, ere long,
Women rushed in, each bearing some rich robe
Or some gay bauble, wherewithal they next
244
Arrayed me to their taste; and then they held
A mirror up before me, and I saw
My soul had this time passed into the form
Of a fair damsel. She, whose form I now
Re-animated, was—so learned I soon—
The only child of a Circassian chief,
Who had been long regarded by her house
As its chief treasure, for her beauty rare;
Reserved for him, no matter whence he came,
Whose hand could dip into the longest purse.
But envy lurks in the Circassian hills
As elsewhere, and a dose of opium,
Administered by one who had been long
The rival beauty of a neighbouring tribe,
Had served to quash a bargain quite complete
Save in the final payment of the gold,
Which had been even offered and told down,
And only not accepted, through some old
Delaying ceremony of the tribe;
And in this luckless circumstances, twas plain
That both my admirable parents saw
The unkindest turn of all.
“On all hands forth
Had scouts been sent to summon the whole tribe
To attend my obsequies, and then forthwith
Exterminate our ancient enemies
Through all their tents—such was the fierce resolve.
But while these things were pending, lo! The light
Had broken like a new morn from the eyes
Of the dead beauty; on her cheeks had dawned
A roseate colour; from her moistening lips
Low murmurs, too, had broken; whereupon
My parents in exulting hope transformed
The funeral to a general tribal feast,
And loaded me with all the ancient gauds
And ornaments they held. The Persian, too,
Had been invited to renew his suit,
And carry me at once beyond the reach
Of future opium doses.
“Soon he came
245
Galloping back to bear me to the arms
Of his long-bearded lord. He paid the price;
My worthy parents took a fond farewell
Of me, with tears declaring me to be
The life-light of their eyes, their rose of joy,—
Then stretched their palms out for the stranger’s gold,
And hurried off to count it o’er again—
The dear recovered treasure they so late
Had mourned as lost for ever. On that night
I was packed neatly on a camel’s back
Beside a precious case of porcelain pipes,
And carried Persia-ward, by stages safe,
From the Circassian mountains.
“At the court
I soon became the favourite of the king;
Lived sumptuously, but in perpetual fear:
For all my luxury and gold and gems,
I envied the poor slaves who swept the floors.
I was the favourite of my Persian lord
For one whole month, perhaps a little more,
And then I learned my place was to be filled;
And though I loathed him, as we loathe some cold
And reptile creature, yet I could not bear
To see a newer rival take my place,
For I was beautiful, and therefore vain:
So, that I might regain his favour past,
I now arrayed myself in airy robes,
While scarfs of purple like an orient queen’s
Barred them with brilliant tints, and gold and pearls
Confined the wavelets of my sunny hair.
“The harem all applauded, and there seemed
Even in his own dull eyes almost a flash
As of extorted joy, but this became
At the next moment a malignant scowl,
Which had its dark cause in such thoughts as these:
‘What! Did so soft and ignorant a thing
Hope to enchant again a man so wise
As he was—he! The paragon of kings!
By floating in before him like a swan,
A little better feathered than before?’
246
And then he waved the harem ladies forth,
And with him kept only a Nubian girl,
Whom he thought dull, and altogether his:
A conclave of those strange demoniac dwarfs
Who from their secret dens and crypts would come
On given signals forth, was summoned in:
Wizard-like beings, with enormous heads,
Splay-feet, and monstrous spider-fingered hands.
Nor was the council long; I on that night
Was to be poisoned with a pomegranate.
Then stole the Nubian girl away, and brought
Me word of all; yet her news moved me not,
So sure I felt that this was not my doom;
Or moved me only to prepare for flight
With the poor Nubian girl. Unseen I came
To my own chamber, where I packed my goods;
And whence, unseen by all, we swiftly fled.
’Twas plain and patent to my inmost self
That in this last change I had always been
Regenerating more and more; for though
I had a love of mischief in my head,
At heart I was not bad, and they who knew
Me closely, or at least the woman sort,
Loved me,—nay, served me, as the Nubian did.
And now, as no one else might sell me,—lo!
I sold myself, and found myself installed
Queen of a rude baboon-like Afric king.
“Then I was captive to a Bedouin sheik,
Was sold in the slave-mart of Astrachan,
And carried thence to India, to be crowned
A rajahpoot’s sultana; from which state
Flying at length, I fell into a worse,
Being pounced on by a Turkoman horse-stealer.
At Alexandra I became the slave
Of a harsh Roman matron, who was wont
To flog and famish me to make me good,
And when I owned myself converted, then
She flogged and famished me the more, to make
My goodness lasting; and I finally
Fell stabbed in Cairo—slaughtered by a slave.
247
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part VII.
“AFTER some short and intermediate terms
Of transmigration, all in female forms,
In which, through kindly offices performed,
It seemed the temper of my spirit much
Had humanized, and in the last of which
Twas mine to die for once a natural death,
Again I had some deep-down hold on being,
Dim as an oyster’s in its ocean-bed;
Then came a sense of light and air, of space,
Of hunger, comfort, warmth, of sight and sound
I caught at length the drift of speech, and knew
That all who came to see me and admire
Called me Ben Bachai’s daughter.
“Dark indeed,
But lovely as a starry night I grew,
A maid, the glory of her father’s house,
Her mother’s dovelet, filling all her wonts
With tenderness and joy. Still as I grew,
By strange degrees the memory of all
That I had been came back upon my mind
To fill it with wild sorrow and dismay;
To know I was a cheat, nor wholly what
I seemed to my fond parents—that I was
But half their daughter, and the rest a fiend,
With a fiend’s destiny,—ah! This, I say,
Would smite me even in dreams with icy pangs
Or wordless woe, yea, even while I slept
So innocently as it seemed, and so
Securely happy in the arms of love!”
As this was said, the Rabbi looked, and saw
That now again the woman seemed to speak
As of herself, and not as heretofore
With moveless lips, and prisoned voice, that came
As from some dark duality within.
248
Her looks had changed, too, with the voice, and now
Again she lay, a queen-like creature, racked
With mortal sufferings, who, when these grew less,
Or for a time remitted, even thus
Took up her tale again.
“At length upgrown
To womanhood, by some mysterious pact
Existing twixt my father’s house and that
Of an Arabian prince time out of mind,
I was now wedded ere I wished, and he,
My husband, finally had come to claim
And bear me from my home, that happiest home
Which I should know no more: a man most fair
To look upon, but void of force, in truth
The weakling of a worn-out line, who yet
(What merit in a prince!) Was not depraved,
Not wicked, not the mendicant of lust,
But mild, and even affectionate and just.
My dowry was immense, and flushed with this
The prince had summoned from his vassal tribe
Five hundred horse, all spearmen, to escort
And guard us desert-ward. And as we went
These ever and anon, at signal given,
Would whirl around us like a thunder-cloud
Wind-torn, and shooting instant shafts of fire!
And thus we roamed about the Arabian wastes,
Pitching our camp amid the fairest spots.
Beneath an awning oft I lay, and gazed
Out at the cloudless ether, where it wrapt
The silent hills, like to a conscious power
Big with the soul of an eternal past.
“But long this life might last not, for the prince
Sickened and died;—died poor, his wealth and mine
Having been squandered on the hungry horde
That wont to prance about us; who ere long,
Divining my extremity, grew loud
And urgent for rewards, till on a day,
By concert as it seemed, the tribe entire
Came fiercely round me, all demanding gifts,
Gifts that I had not; as they nearer pressed,
249
Wearing his way among them, lo! I saw
The old man of the tombs! The Bactrian sage!
With signs of awe they made him room to pass;
He fixed me with his shrunk and serpent eyes,
Waved off the abject Arabs, and then asked
‘Why art thou poor? With needs so great upon thee?
I offer thee long life and wealth and power.’
“I turned to him and said: ‘Should I not know,
By all the past, the nature of thy gifts?
Shows and delusions, evil, sin-stained all,
And terminating in eternal loss.’
‘Well, take it as thou wilt,’ he said; ‘my gifts
Are not so weighed by all.’ And saying this
He went his way, while I retired within
My lonely tent to weep.
“Next day the tribes
Again assembled, and with threats and cries,
And insults loud, they raised a passion in me.
My blood arose: I chid them angrily,
Called them all things but men, till they, alarmed,
Fell back in sullen silence for a while,
Crouching like tigers ready for a spring.
Humbled, perplexed, and frightened, I returned
Into my tent, and there within its folds
Stood the weird Bactrian with his snaky eyes,
And wiry voice that questioned as before:
‘Why art thou poor? Why dost thou suffer wrong,
With all this petty baseness brattling round?
Am I not here to help thee? I, thy one
Sole friend—not empty, but with ample means.
Behold the secrets of the inner earth!
There, down among the rock-roots of the hills,
What seest thou there? Look, as I point, even those
Strange miscreations, as they seem to thee,
Are demoniac moilers that obey
Such arts as I possess; the gnomish brood
Of Demogorgon. See them how they moil
Amid those diamonds shafts and reefs of gold
Embedded in the oldest drifts of time,
And in the mire that was the first crude floor
250
And blind extension of the infant earth:
Why art thou poor, then, when such slaves as they
Might work for thee, and glut thy need with all
The matchless values which are there enwombed,
Serving thee always as they now serve me?
Nor these alone: turn thou thy looks aloft,
And watch the stars as they go swimming past.
Behold their vastness, each a world,’ he said;
‘The secrets of all these, too, thou shalt know,
The spirits of all these shall be thy slaves,
If thou wilt swear as erst amid the tombs.’
“The woe of desolation wrapped me round,
The joy to know all mysteries tempted me,
And with a shudder that shook me to the soul
I swore, as erst I swore amid the tombs.
“As on my hand he placed a signet-ring,
Suddenly loud the desert winds arose,
And blew with mighty stress among the tents;
And instantly aloft the thunder ran,
A mighty issue of miraculous light
Burst shaft-like forward, smiting him in twain,
Or so it seemed, down through the solid earth.
In vain I shrunk into a dim recess;
Before me stood the son of paradise.
Then leapt the soul to life within my heart—
Leapt into life with fear, and pain, and woe—
Anger and sadness both were on his brow.
“‘Could’st thou no trial bear—all but redeemed;
Could’st thou not rest content? A rabbi’s child!
Enjoy as best thou may this ill-won power
Over the darker agencies of time,
And bide the end, which end is punishment
But the more terrible, the more delayed;
Yet know this also, thou shalt thus no more
Be punished in a body built of clay.’
He vanished, leaving me to sharp remorse,
And harrowed with the thought of his grieved look.
‘And yet no power in heaven or hell,’ I said,
‘May now annul my deed.’
251
“And not one day
Of joy has brought to me my ‘ill-won power.’
I built vast palaces in quiet view
Of ancient cities, or by famous streams;
I filled my halls with men and women fair,
And with these pages of a beauty rare
Like striplings kidnapped from some skirt of heaven;
Yet sorrowful of countenance withal,
As knowing that their mortal doom is joined
With mine irrevocably, that with me
’Tis theirs to own these shows of time, with me
To live—with me to die. And as, ’tis said,
A hunted roe will evermore beat round
Towards whence he started first, I felt at length
An ardent longing for my native place;
That spot in all the earth where only I,
In tasting of it, had divined the worth
And Sabbath quality of household peace.
Then coming hither, thus constrained, I pitched
My dwelling here, even this thou seest; built fair,
And filled with splendours such as never yet
Under one roof-tree on this earth were stored.
See yon surpassing lustres! Could this orb
Show such? From Mars came that; from Venus this;
And yonder mass of sun-bright glory, that
From Mercury came, whence came these viols, too,
Instinct with fervent music such as ne’er
From earthly instruments might thrill abroad.”
Then seizing one of them, even as she spake,
Over its chords she moved her ivory hand,
And instantly the palace domes throughout
Rang resonant, as every hall and crypt
Were pulsing music from a thousand shells
That still ran confluent with a mellow slide
And intercourse of cadence: sweet, and yet
Most mournful and most weird, and oft intoned
With a wild wilfulness of power that worked
For madness more than joy. “Even such, ” she said
“Are the delights with which I most converse
In the dark loneness of my fated soul,
252
For all is show, not substance. All I hold
But darkens more the certainty I have
Of wrath to come, from which no change of place,
No earthly power, no power of heaven nor hell,
May shield me now. I see it shadowing forth
Even like a coming night, in whose dark folds
My soul would ask to hide itself in vain.
And now I go to meet the angel’s face;
I will not claim my hundred years of pride,
I trample underneath my feet the gift
For which I sold my soul; I will not touch
The ring of Sammael, nor use his power
To stay the torments that devour my life;
Misery, shame, remorse, and dread are mine;
Yet shall the angel see repentent eyes,
And know at last I could one trial bear;
Too late, too late.”
As thus the woman spake,
Her brow grew dark, and suddenly she shrieked
In her great agony. “Oh pray for me!
Pray, rabbi! For the daughter of thy friend!
The hour is coming, nay, the hour is come!”
There was a rustle as of wings aloft,
A sudden flicker in the lights below,
And she, who until now seemed speaking, sank
Back on her pillow and in silence lay
Beautiful in the marble calm of death.
The rabbi gazed on her, and thought the while
Of those far times, when, as a child, her grace
Had filled with pleasantness her father’s house.
Then to her servants gave in charge the corpse,
And forth he paced, much musing as he went.
At length he turned to gaze once more upon
The silent house of death. Can such things be?
All had evanished like a morning mist!
Only the woods that hung like clouds about
The steeps of Hebron, in the whitening dawn
Lay dark against the sky! Only a pool
Gleamed flat before him, where it seemed erewhile
The splendid palace had adorned the view!
253
Perplexed in mind, the rabbi turned again
And hurried homeward, muttering as he went:
Was it a vision? Can such marvels be?
But what in truth are all things, even those
That seem most solid—dust and air at last
~ Charles Harpur,#NFDB |
1030:Tannhauser
The Landgrave Hermann held a gathering
Of minstrels, minnesingers, troubadours,
At Wartburg in his palace, and the knight,
Sir Tannhauser of France, the greatest bard,
Inspired with heavenly visions, and endowed
With apprehension and rare utterance
Of noble music, fared in thoughtful wise
Across the Horsel meadows. Full of light,
And large repose, the peaceful valley lay,
In the late splendor of the afternoon,
And level sunbeams lit the serious face
Of the young knight, who journeyed to the west,
Towards the precipitous and rugged cliffs,
Scarred, grim, and torn with savage rifts and chasms,
That in the distance loomed as soft and fair
And purple as their shadows on the grass.
The tinkling chimes ran out athwart the air,
Proclaiming sunset, ushering evening in,
Although the sky yet glowed with yellow light.
The ploughboy, ere he led his cattle home,
In the near meadow, reverently knelt,
And doffed his cap, and duly crossed his breast,
Whispering his 'Ave Mary,' as he heard
The pealing vesper-bell. But still the knight,
Unmindful of the sacred hour announced,
Disdainful or unconscious, held his course.
'Would that I also, like yon stupid wight,
Could kneel and hail the Virgin and believe!'
He murmured bitterly beneath his breath.
'Were I a pagan, riding to contend
For the Olympic wreath, O with what zeal,
What fire of inspiration, would I sing
The praises of the gods! How may my lyre
Glorify these whose very life I doubt?
The world is governed by one cruel God,
Who brings a sword, not peace. A pallid Christ,
Unnatural, perfect, and a virgin cold,
They give us for a heaven of living gods,
Beautiful, loving, whose mere names were song;
207
A creed of suffering and despair, walled in
On every side by brazen boundaries,
That limit the soul's vision and her hope
To a red hell or and unpeopled heaven.
Yea, I am lost already,-even now
Am doomed to flaming torture for my thoughts.
O gods! O gods! where shall my soul find peace?'
He raised his wan face to the faded skies,
Now shadowing into twilight; no response
Came from their sunless heights; no miracle,
As in the ancient days of answering gods.
With a long, shuddering sigh he glanced to earth,
Finding himself among the Horsel cliffs.
Gray, sullen, gaunt, they towered on either side;
Scant shrubs sucked meagre life between the rifts
Of their huge crags, and made small darker spots
Upon their wrinkled sides; the jaded horse
Stumbled upon loose, rattling, fallen stones,
Amidst the gathering dusk, and blindly fared
Through the weird, perilous pass. As darkness waxed,
And an oppressive mystery enwrapped
The roadstead and the rocks, Sir Tannhauser
Fancied he saw upon the mountain-side
The fluttering of white raiment. With a sense
Of wild joy and horror, he gave pause,
For his sagacious horse that reeked of sweat,
Trembling in every limb, confirmed his thought,
That nothing human scaled that haunted cliff.
The white thing seemed descending,-now a cloud
It looked, and now a rag of drifted mist,
Torn in the jagged gorge precipitous,
And now an apparition clad in white,
Shapely and real,-then he lost it quite,
Gazing on nothing with blank, foolish face.
As with wide eyes he stood, he was aware
Of a strange splendor at his very side,
A presence and a majesty so great,
That ere he saw, he felt it was divine.
He turned, and, leaping from his horse, fell prone,
In speechless adoration, on the earth,
Before the matchless goddess, who appeared
With no less freshness of immortal youth
208
Than when first risen from foam of Paphian seas.
He heard delicious strains of melody,
Such as his highest muse had ne'er attained,
Float in the air, while in the distance rang,
Harsh and discordant, jarring with those tones,
The gallop of his frightened horse's hoofs,
Clattering in sudden freedom down the pass.
A voice that made all music dissonance
Then thrilled through heart and flesh of that prone knight,
Triumphantly: 'The gods need but appear,
And their usurped thrones are theirs again!'
Then tenderly: 'Sweet knight, I pray thee, rise;
Worship me not, for I desire thy love.
Look on me, follow me, for I am fain
Of thy fair, human face.' He rose and looked,
Stirred by that heavenly flattery to the soul.
Her hair, unbraided and unfilleted,
Rained in a glittering shower to the ground,
And cast forth lustre. Round her zone was clasped
The scintillant cestus, stiff with flaming gold,
Thicker with restless gems than heaven with stars.
She might have flung the enchanted wonder forth;
Her eyes, her slightest gesture would suffice
To bind all men in blissful slavery.
She sprang upon the mountain's dangerous side,
With feet that left their print in flowers divine,Flushed amaryllis and blue hyacinth,
Impurpled amaranth and asphodel,
Dewy with nectar, and exhaling scents
Richer than all the roses of mid-June.
The knight sped after her, with wild eyes fixed
Upon her brightness, as she lightly leapt
From crag to crag, with flying auburn hair,
Like a gold cloud, that lured him ever on,
Higher and higher up the haunted cliff.
At last amidst a grove of pines she paused,
Until he reached her, breathing hard with haste,
Delight, and wonder. Then upon his hand
She placed her own, and all his blood at once
Tingled and hotly rushed to brow and cheek,
At the supreme caress; but the mere touch
Infused fresh life, and when she looked at him
209
With gracious tenderness, he felt himself
Strong suddenly to bear the blinding light
Of those great eyes. 'Dear knight,' she murmured low,
'For love of me, wilt thou accord this boon,To grace my weary home in banishment?'
His hungry eyes gave answer ere he spoke,
In tones abrupt that startled his own ears
With their strange harshness; but with thanks profuse
She guided him, still holding his cold hand
In her warm, dainty palm, unto a cave,
Whence a rare glory issued, and a smell
Of spice and roses, frankincense and balm.
They entering stood within a marble hall,
With straight, slim pillars, at whose farther end
The goddess led him to a spiral flight
Of stairs, descending always 'midst black gloom
Into the very bowels of the earth.
Down these, with fearful swiftness, they made way,
The knight's feet touching not the solid stair,
But sliding down as in a vexing dream,
Blind, feeling but that hand divine that still
Empowered him to walk on empty air.
Then he was dazzled by a sudden blaze,
In vast palace filled with reveling folk.
Cunningly pictured on the ivory walls
Were rolling hills, cool lakes, and boscage green,
And all the summer landscape's various pomp.
The precious canopy aloft was carved
In semblance of the pleached forest trees,
Enameled with the liveliest green, wherethrough
A light pierced, more resplendent than the day.
O'er the pale, polished jasper of the floor
Of burnished metal, fretted and embossed
With all the marvelous story of her birth
Painted in prodigal splendor of rich tincts,
And carved by heavenly artists,-crystal seas,
And long-haired Nereids in their pearly shells,
And all the wonder of her lucent limbs
Sphered in a vermeil mist. Upon the throne
She took her seat, the knight beside her still,
Singing on couches of fresh asphodel,
And the dance ceased, and the flushed revelers came
210
In glittering phalanx to adore their queen.
Beautiful girls, with shining delicate heads,
Crested with living jewels, fanned the air
With flickering wings from naked shoulders soft.
Then with preluding low, a thousand harps,
And citherns, and strange nameless instruments,
Sent through the fragrant air sweet symphonies,
And the winged dancers waved in mazy rounds,
With changing lustres like a summer sea.
Fair boys, with charming yellow hair crisp-curled,
And frail, effeminate beauty, the knight saw,
But of strong, stalwart men like him were none.
He gazed thereon bewitched, until the hand
Of Venus, erst withdrawn, now fell again
Upon his own, and roused him from his trance.
He looked on her, and as he looked, a cloud
Auroral, flaming as at sunrising,
Arose from nothing, floating over them
In luminous folds, like that vermilion mist
Penciled upon the throne, and as it waxed
In density and brightness, all the throng
Of festal dancers, less and less distinct,
Grew like pale spirits in a vague, dim dream,
And vanished altogether; and these twain,
Shut from the world in that ambrosial cloud,
Now with a glory inconceivable,
Vivid and conflagrant, looked each on each.
All hours came laden with their own delights
In that enchanted place, wherein Time
Knew no divisions harsh of night and day,
But light was always, and desire of sleep
Was satisfied at once with slumber soft,
Desire of food with magical repast,
By unseen hands on golden tables spread.
But these the knight accepted like a god,
All less was lost in that excess of joy,
The crowning marvel of her love for him,
Assuring him of his divinity.
Meanwhile remembrance of the earth appeared
Like the vague trouble of a transient dream,The doubt, the scruples, the remorse for thoughts
211
Beyond his own control, the constant thirst
For something fairer than his life, more real
Than airy revelations of his Muse.
Here was his soul's desire satisfied.
All nobler passions died; his lyre he flung
Recklessly forth, with vows to dedicate
His being to herself. She knew and seized
The moment of her mastery, and conveyed
The lyre beyond his sight and memory.
With blandishment divine she changed for him,
Each hour, her mood; a very woman now,
Fantastic, voluble, affectionate,
And jealous of the vague, unbodied air,
Exacting, penitent, and pacified,
All in a breath. And often she appeared
Majestic with celestial wrath, with eyes
That shot forth fire, and a heavy brow,
Portentous as the lowering front of heaven,
When the reverberant, sullen thunder rolls
Among the echoing clouds. Thus she denounced
Her ancient, fickle worshippers, who left
Her altars desecrate, her fires unfed,
Her name forgotten. 'But I reign, I reign!'
She would shrill forth, triumphant; 'yea, I reign.
Men name me not, but worship me unnamed,
Beauty and Love within their heart of hearts;
Not with bent knees and empty breath of words,
But with devoted sacrifice of lives.'
Then melting in a moment, she would weep
Ambrosial tears, pathetic, full of guile,
Accusing her own base ingratitude,
In craving worship, when she had his heart,
Her priceless knight, her peerless paladin,
Her Tannhauser; then, with an artful glance
Of lovely helplessness, entreated him
Not to desert her, like the faithless world,
For these unbeautiful and barbarous gods,
Or she would never cease her prayers to Jove,
Until he took from her the heavy curse
Of immortality. With closer vows,
The knight then sealed his worship and forswore
All other aims and deeds to serve her cause.
212
Thus passed unnoted seven barren years
Of reckless passion and voluptuous sloth,
Undignified by any lofty thought
In his degraded mind, that sometime was
Endowed with noble capability.
From revelry to revelry he passed,
Craving more pungent pleasure momently,
And new intoxications, and each hour
The siren goddess answered his desires.
Once when she left him with a weary sense
Of utter lassitude, he sat alone,
And, raising listless eyes, he saw himself
In a great burnished mirror, wrought about
With cunning imagery of twisted vines.
He scarcely knew those sunken, red-rimmed eyes,
For his who in the flush of manhood rode
Among the cliffs, and followed up the crags
The flying temptress; and there fell on him
A horror of her beauty, a disgust
For his degenerate and corrupted life,
With irresistible, intense desire,
To feel the breath of heaven on his face.
Then as Fate willed, who rules above the gods,
He saw, within the glass, behind him glide
The form of Venus. Certain of her power,
She had laid by, in fond security,
The enchanted cestus, and Sir Tannhauser,
With surfeited regard, beheld her now,
No fairer than the women of the earth,
Whom with serenity and health he left,
Duped by a lovely witch. Before he moved,
She knew her destiny; and when he turned,
He seemed to drop a mask, disclosing thus
An alien face, and eyes with vision true,
That for long time with glamour had been blind.
Hiding the hideous rage within her breast,
With girlish simpleness of folded hands,
Auroral blushes, and sweet, shamefast mien,
She spoke: 'Behold, my love, I have cast forth
All magic, blandishments and sorcery,
For I have dreamed a dream so terrible,
That I awoke to find my pillow stained
213
With tears as of real woe. I thought my belt,
By Vulcan wrought with matchless skill and power,
Was the sole bond between us; this being doffed,
I seemed to thee an old, unlovely crone,
Wrinkled by every year that I have seen.
Thou turnedst from me with a brutal sneer,
So that I woke with weeping. Then I rose,
And drew the glittering girdle from my zone,
Jealous thereof, yet full of fears, and said,
'If it be this he loves, then let him go!
I have no solace as a mortal hath,
No hope of change or death to comfort me
Through all eternity; yet he is free,
Though I could hold him fast with heavy chains,
Bound in perpetual imprisonment.'
Tell me my vision was a baseless dream;
See, I am kneeling, and kiss thy hands,In pity, look on me, before thy word
Condemns me to immortal misery!'
As she looked down, the infernal influence
Worked on his soul again; for she was fair
Beyond imagination, and her brow
Seemed luminous with high self-sacrifice.
He bent and kissed her head, warm, shining, soft,
With its close-curling gold, and love revived.
But ere he spoke, he heard the distant sound
Of one sweet, smitten lyre, and a gleam
Of violent anger flashed across the face
Upraised to his in feigned simplicity
And singleness of purpose. Then he sprang,
Well-nigh a god himself, with sudden strength
to vanquish and resist, beyond her reach,
Crying, 'My old Muse calls me, and I hear!
Thy fateful vision is no baseless dream;
I will be gone from this accursed hall!'
Then she, too, rose, dilating over him,
And sullen clouds veiled all her rosy limbs,
Unto her girdle, and her head appeared
Refulgent, and her voice rang wrathfully:
'Have I cajoled and flattered thee till now,
To lose thee thus! How wilt thou make escape?
214
ONCE BEING MINE THOU ART FOREVER MINE:
Yea, not my love, but my poor slave and fool.'
But he, with both hands pressed upon his eyes,
Against that blinding lustre, heeded not
Her thundered words, and cried in sharp despair,
'Help me, O Virgin Mary! and thereat,
The very bases of the hall gave way,
The roof was rived, the goddess disappeared,
And Tannhauser stood free upon the cliff,
Amidst the morning sunshine and fresh air.
Around him were the tumbled blocks and crags,
Huge ridges and sharp juts of flinty peaks,
Black caves, and masses of the grim, bald rock.
The ethereal, unfathomable sky,
Hung over him, the valley lay beneath,
Dotted with yellow hayricks, that exhaled
Sweet, healthy odors to the mountain-top.
He breathed intoxicate the infinite air,
And plucked the heather blossoms where they blew,
Reckless with light and dew, in crannies green,
And scarcely saw their darling bells for tears.
No sounds of labor reached him from the farms
And hamlets trim, nor from the furrowed glebe;
But a serene and sabbath stillness reigned,
Till broken by the faint, melodious chimes
Of the small village church that called to prayer.
He hurried down the rugged, scarped cliff,
And swung himself from shelving granite slopes
To narrow foot-holds, near wide-throated chasms,
Tearing against the sharp stones his bleeding hands,
With long hair flying from his dripping brow,
Uncovered head, and white, exalted face.
No memory had he of his smooth ascent,
No thought of fear upon those dreadful hills;
He only heard the bell, inviting him
To satisfy the craving of his heart,
For worship 'midst his fellow men. He reached
The beaten, dusty road, and passed thereon
The pious peasants faring towards the church,
And scarce refrained from greeting them like friends
Dearly beloved, after long absence met.
215
How more than fair the sunburnt wenches looked,
In their rough, homespun gowns and coifs demure,
After the beauty of bare, rosy limbs,
And odorous, loose hair! He noted not
Suspicious glances on his garb uncouth,
His air extravagant and face distraught,
With bursts of laughter from the red-cheeked boys,
And prudent crossings of the women's breasts.
He passed the flowering close about the church,
And trod the well worn-path, with throbbing heart,
The little heather-bell between his lips,
And his eyes fastened on the good green grass.
Thus entered he the sanctuary, lit
With frequent tapers, and with sunbeams stained
Through painted glass. How pure and innocent
The waiting congregation seemed to him,
Kneeling, or seated with calm brows upraised!
With faltering strength, he cowered down alone,
And held sincere communion with the Lord,
For one brief moment, in a sudden gush
Of blessed tears. The minister of God
Rose to invoke a blessing on his flock,
And then began the service,-not in words
To raise the lowly, and to heal the sick,
But an alien tongue, with phrases formed,
And meaningless observances. The knight,
Unmoved, yet thirsting for the simple word
That might have moved him, held his bitter thoughts,
But when in his own speech a new priest spake,
Looked up with hope revived, and heard the text:
'Go, preach the Gospel unto all the world.
He that believes and is baptized, is saved.
He that believeth not, is damned in hell!'
He sat with neck thrust forth and staring eyes;
The crowded congregation disappeared;
He felt alone in some black sea of hell,
While a great light smote one exalted face,
Vivid already with prophetic fire,
Whose fatal mouth now thundered forth his doom.
He longed in that void circle to cry out,
With one clear shriek, but sense and voice seemed bound,
And his parched tongue clave useless to his mouth.
216
As the last words resounded through the church,
And once again the pastor blessed his flock,
Who, serious and subdued, passed slowly down
The arrow aisle, none noted, near the wall,
A fallen man with face upon his knees,
A heap of huddled garments and loose hair,
Unconscious 'mid the rustling, murmurous stir,
'Midst light and rural smell of grass and flowers,
Let in athwart the doorway. One lone priest,
Darkening the altar lights, moved noiselessly,
Now with the yellow glow upon his face,
Now a black shadow gliding farther on,
Amidst the smooth, slim pillars of hewn ash.
But from the vacant aisles he heard at once
A hollow sigh, heaved from a depth profound.
Upholding his last light above his head,
And peering eagerly amidst the stalls,
He cried, 'Be blest who cometh in God's name.'
Then the gaunt form of Tannhauser arose.
'Father, I am a sinner, and I seek
Forgiveness and help, by whatso means
I can regain the joy of peace with God.'
'The Lord hath mercy on the penitent.
'Although thy sins be scarlet,' He hath said,
'Will I not make them white as wool?' Confess,
And I will shrive you.' Thus the good priest moved
Towards the remorseful knight and pressed his hand.
But shrinking down, he drew his fingers back
From the kind palm, and kissed the friar's feet.
'Thy pure hand is anointed, and can heal.
The cool, calm pressure brings back sanity,
And what serene, past joys! yet touch me not,
My contact is pollution,-hear, O hear,
While I disburden my charged soul.' He lay,
Casting about for words and strength to speak.
'O father, is there help for such a one,'
In tones of deep abasement he began,
'Who hath rebelled against the laws of God,
With pride no less presumptuous than his
Who lost thereby his rank in heaven?' 'My son,
There is atonement for all sins,-or slight
Or difficult, proportioned to the crime.
217
Though this may be the staining of thy hands
With blood of kinsmen or of fellow-men.'
'My hands are white,-my crime hath found no name,
This side of hell; yet though my heart-strings snap
To live it over, let me make the attempt.
I was a knight and bard, with such a gift
Of revelation that no hour of life
Lacked beauty and adornment, in myself
The seat and centre of all happiness.
What inspiration could my lofty Muse
Draw from those common and familiar themes,
Painted upon the windows and the walls
Of every church,-the mother and her child,
The miracle and mystery of the birth,
The death, the resurrection? Fool and blind!
That saw not symbols of eternal truth
In that grand tragedy and victory,
Significant and infinite as life.
What tortures did my skeptic soul endure,
At war against herself and all mankind!
The restless nights of feverish sleeplessness,
With balancing of reasons nicely weighed;
The dawn that brought no hope nor energy,
The blasphemous arraignment of the Lord,
Taxing His glorious divinity
With all the grief and folly of the world.
Then came relapses into abject fear,
And hollow prayer and praise from craven heart.
Before a sculptured Venus I would kneel,
Crown her with flowers, worship her, and cry,
'O large and noble type of our ideal,
At least my heart and prayer return to thee,
Amidst a faithless world of proselytes.
Madonna Mary, with her virgin lips,
And eyes that look perpetual reproach,
Insults and is a blasphemy on youth.
Is she to claim the worship of a man
Hot with the first rich flush of ripened life?'
Realities, like phantoms, glided by,
Unnoted 'midst the torment and delights
Of my conflicting spirit, and I doffed
the modest Christian weeds of charity
218
And fit humility, and steeled myself
In pagan panoply of stoicism
And self-sufficing pride. Yet constantly
I gained men's charmed attention and applause,
With the wild strains I smote from out my lyre,
To me the native language of my soul,
To them attractive and miraculous,
As all things whose solution and whose source
Remain a mystery. Then came suddenly
The summons to attend the gathering
Of minstrels at the Landgrave Hermann's court.
Resolved to publish there my pagan creed
In harmonies so high and beautiful
That all the world would share my zeal and faith,
I journeyed towards the haunted Horsel cliffs.
O God! how may I tell you how SHE came,
The temptress of a hundred centuries,
Yet fresh as April? She bewitched my sense,
Poisoned my judgment with sweet flatteries,
And for I may not guess how many years
Held me a captive in degrading bonds.
There is no sin of lust so lewd and foul,
Which I learned not in that alluring hell,
Until this morn, I snapped the ignoble tie,
By calling on the Mother of our Lord.
O for the power to stand again erect,
And look men in the eyes! What penitence,
What scourging of the flesh, what rigid fasts,
What terrible privations may suffice
To cleanse me in the sight of God and man?'
Ill-omened silence followed his appeal.
Patient and motionless he lay awhile,
Then sprang unto his feet with sudden force,
Confronting in his breathless vehemence,
With palpitating heart, the timid priest.
'Answer me, as you hope for a response,
One day, at the great judgment seat yourself.'
'I cannot answer,' said the timid priest,
'I have not understood.' 'Just God! is this
The curse Thou layest upon me? I outstrip
The sympathy and brotherhood of men,
So far removed is my experience
219
From their clean innocence. Inspire me,
Prompt me to words that bring me near to them!
Father,' in gentler accents he resumed,
'Thank Heaven at your every orison
That sin like mine you cannot apprehend.
More than the truth perchance I have confessed,
But I have sinned, and darkly,-this is true;
And I have suffered, and am suffering now.
Is there no help in your great Christian creed
Of liberal charity, for such a one?'
'My son,' the priest replied, 'your speech distraught
Hath quite bewildered me. I fain would hope
That Christ's large charity can reach your sin,
But I know naught. I cannot but believe
That the enchantress who first tempted you
Must be the Evil one,-your early doubt
Was the possession of your soul by him.
Travel across the mountain to the town,
The first cathedral town upon the road
That leads to Rome,-a sage and reverend priest,
The Bishop Adrian, bides there. Say you have come
From his leal servant, Friar Lodovick;
He hath vast lore and great authority,
And may absolve you freely of your sin.'
Over the rolling hills, through summer fields,
By noisy villages and lonely lanes,
Through glowing days, when all the landscape stretched
Shimmering in the heat, a pilgrim fared
Towards the cathedral town. Sir Tannhauser
Had donned the mournful sackcloth, girt his loins
With a coarse rope that ate into his flesh,
Muffled a cowl about his shaven head,
Hung a great leaden cross around his neck;
And bearing in his hands a knotty staff,
With swollen, sandaled feet he held his course.
He snatched scant rest at twilight or at dawn,
When his forced travel was least difficult.
But most he journeyed when the sky, o'ercast,
Uprolled its threatening clouds of dusky blue,
And angry thunder grumbled through the hills,
And earth grew dark at noonday, till the flash
220
Of the thin lightning through the wide sky leapt.
And tumbling showers scoured along the plain.
Then folk who saw the pilgrim penitent,
Drenched, weird, and hastening as as to some strange doom,
Swore that the wandering Jew had crossed their land,
And the Lord Christ had sent the deadly bolt
Harmless upon his cursed, immortal head.
At length the hill-side city's spires and roofs,
With all its western windows smitten red
By a rich sunset, and with massive towers
Of its cathedral overtopping all,
greeted his sight. Some weary paces more,
And as the twilight deepened in the streets,
He stood within the minster. How serene,
In sculptured calm of centuries, it seemed!
How cool and spacious all the dim-lit aisles,
Still hazy with fumes of frankincense!
The vesper had been said, yet here and there
A wrinkled beldam, or mourner veiled,
Or burly burgher on the cold floor knelt,
And still the organist, with wandering hands,
Drew from the keys mysterious melodies,
And filled the church with flying waifs of song,
That with ethereal beauty moved the soul
To a more tender prayer and gentler faith
Than choral anthems and the solemn mass.
A thousand memories, sweet to bitterness,
Rushed on the knight and filled his eyes with tears;
Youth's blamelessness and faith forever lost,
The love of his neglected lyre, his art,
Revived by these aerial harmonies.
He was unworthy now to touch the strings,
Too base to stir men's soul to ecstasy
And high resolves, as in the days agone;
And yet, with all his spirit's earnestness,
He yearned to feel the lyre between his hands,
To utter all the trouble of his life
Unto the Muse who understands and helps.
Outworn with travel, soothed to drowsiness
By dying music and sweet-scented air,
His limbs relaxed, and sleep possessed his frame.
Auroral light the eastern oriels touched,
221
When with delicious sense of rest he woke,
Amidst the cast and silent empty aisles.
'God's peace hath fallen upon me in this place;
This is my Bethel; here I feel again
A holy calm, if not of innocence,
Yet purest after that, the calm serene
Of expiation and forgiveness.'
He spake, and passed with staff and wallet forth
Through the tall portal to the open square,
And turning, paused to look upon the pile.
The northern front against the crystal sky
Loomed dark and heavy, full of sombre shade,
With each projecting buttress, carven cross,
Gable and mullion, tipped with laughing light
By the slant sunbeams of the risen morn.
The noisy swallows wheeled above their nests,
Builded in hidden nooks about the porch.
No human life was stirring in the square,
Save now and then a rumbling market-team,
Fresh from the fields and farms without the town.
He knelt upon the broad cathedral steps,
And kissed the moistened stone, while overhead
The circling swallows sang, and all around
The mighty city lay asleep and still.
To stranger's ears must yet again be made
The terrible confession; yet again
A deathly chill, with something worse than fear,
Seized the knight's heart, who knew his every word
Widened the gulf between his kind and him.
The Bishop sat with pomp of mitred head,
In pride of proven virtue, hearkening to all
With cold, official apathy, nor made
A sign of pity nor encouragement.
The friar understood the pilgrim's grief,
The language of his eyes; his speech alone
Was alien to these kind, untutored ears.
But this was truly to be misconstrued,
To tear each palpitating word alive
From out the depths of his remorseful soul,
And have it weighed with the precision cool
And the nice logic of a reasoning mind.
222
This spiritual Father judged his crime
As the mad mischief of a reckless boy,
That call for strict, immediate punishment.
But Tannhauser, who felt himself a man,
Though base, yet fallen through passions and rare gifts
Of an exuberant nature rankly rich,
And knew his weary head was growing gray
With a life's terrible experience,
Found his old sense of proper worth revive;
But modestly he ended: 'Yet I felt,
O holy Father, in the church, this morn,
A strange security, a peace serene,
As though e'en yet the Lord regarded me
With merciful compassion; yea, as though
Even so vile a worm as I might work
Mine own salvation, through repentant prayers.'
'Presumptuous man, it is no easy task
To expiate such sin; a space of prayer
That deprecates the anger of the Lord,
A pilgrimage through pleasant summer lands,
May not atone for years of impious lust;
Thy heart hath lied to thee in offering hope.'
'Is there no hope on earth?' the pilgrim sighed.
'None through thy penance,' said the saintly man.
'Yet there may be through mediation, help.
There is a man who by a blameless life
Hath won the right to intercede with God.
No sins of his own flesh hath he to purge,The Cardinal Filippo,-he abides,
Within the Holy City. Seek him out;
This is my only counsel,-through thyself
Can be no help and no forgiveness.'
How different from the buoyant joy of morn
Was this discouraged sense of lassitude,
The Bishop's words were ringing in his ears,
Measured and pitiless, and blent with these,
The memory of the goddess' last wild cry,'ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE.'
Was it the truth, despite his penitence,
And the dedication of his thought to God,
That still some portion of himself was hers,
223
Some lust survived, some criminal regret,
For her corrupted love? He searched his heart:
All was remorse, religious and sincere,
And yet her dreadful curse still haunted him;
For all men shunned him, and denied him help,
Knowing at once in looking on his face,
Ploughed with deep lines and prematurely old,
That he had struggled with some deadly fiend,
And that he was no longer kin to them.
Just past the outskirts of the town, he stopped,
To strengthen will and courage to proceed.
The storm had broken o'er the sultry streets,
But now the lessening clouds were flying east,
And though the gentle shower still wet his face,
The west was cloudless while the sun went down,
And the bright seven-colored arch stood forth,
Against the opposite dull gray. There was
A beauty in the mingled storm and peace,
Beyond clear sunshine, as the vast, green fields
Basked in soft light, though glistening yet with rain.
The roar of all the town was now a buzz
Less than the insects' drowsy murmuring
That whirred their gauzy wings around his head.
The breeze that follows on the sunsetting
Was blowing whiffs of bruised and dripping grass
Into the heated city. But he stood,
Disconsolate with thoughts of fate and sin,
Still wrestling with his soul to win it back
From her who claimed it to eternity.
Then on the delicate air there came to him
The intonation of the minster bells,
Chiming the vespers, musical and faint.
He knew not what of dear and beautiful
There was in those familiar peals, that spake
Of his first boyhood and his innocence,
Leading him back, with gracious influence,
To pleasant thoughts and tender memories,
And last, recalling the fair hour of hope
He passed that morning in the church. Again,
The glad assurance of God's boundless love
Filled all his being, and he rose serene,
And journeyed forward with a calm content.
224
Southward he wended, and the landscape took
A warmer tone, the sky a richer light.
The gardens of the graceful, festooned with hops,
With their slight tendrils binding pole to pole,
Gave place to orchards and the trellised grape,
The hedges were enwreathed with trailing vines,
With clustering, shapely bunches, 'midst the growth
Of tangled greenery. The elm and ash
Less frequent grew than cactus, cypresses,
And golden-fruited or large-blossomed trees.
The far hills took the hue of the dove's breast,
Veiled in gray mist of olive groves. No more
He passed dark, moated strongholds of grim knights,
But terraces with marble-paven steps,
With fountains leaping in the sunny air,
And hanging gardens full of sumptuous bloom.
Then cloisters guarded by their dead gray walls,
Where now and then a golden globe of fruit
Or full-flushed flower peered out upon the road,
Nodding against the stone, and where he heard
Sometimes the voices of the chanting monks,
Sometimes the laugh of children at their play,
Amidst the quaint, old gardens. But these sights
Were in the suburbs of the wealthy towns.
For many a day through wildernesses rank,
Or marshy, feverous meadow-lands he fared,
The fierce sun smiting his close-muffled head;
Or 'midst the Alpine gorges faced the storm,
That drave adown the gullies melted snow
And clattering boulders from the mountain-tops.
At times, between the mountains and the sea
Fair prospects opened, with the boundless stretch
Of restless, tideless water by his side,
And their long wash upon the yellow sand.
Beneath this generous sky the country-folk
Could lead a freer life,-the fat, green fields
Offered rich pasturage, athwart the air
Rang tinkling cow-bells and the shepherds' pipes.
The knight met many a strolling troubadour,
Bearing his cithern, flute, or dulcimer;
And oft beneath some castle's balcony,
225
At night, he heard their mellow voices rise,
Blent with stringed instruments or tambourines,
Chanting some lay as natural as a bird's.
Then Nature stole with healthy influence
Into his thoughts; his love of beauty woke,
His Muse inspired dreams as in the past.
But after this came crueler remorse,
And he would tighten round his loins the rope,
And lie for hours beside some wayside cross,
And feel himself unworthy to enjoy
The splendid gift and privilege of life.
Then forth he hurried, spurred by his desire
To reach the City of the Seven Hills,
And gain his absolution. Some leagues more
Would bring him to the vast Campagna land,
When by a roadside well he paused to rest.
'T was noon, and reapers in the field hard by
Lay neath the trees upon the sun-scorched grass.
But from their midst one came towards the well,
Not trudging like a man forespent with toil,
But frisking like a child at holiday,
With light steps. The pilgrim watched him come,
And found him scarcely older than a child,
A large-mouthed earthen pitcher in his hand,
And a guitar upon his shoulder slung.
A wide straw hat threw all his face in shade,
But doffing this, to catch whatever breeze
Might stir among the branches, he disclosed
A charming head of rippled, auburn hair,
A frank, fair face, as lovely as a girls,
With great, soft eyes, as mild and grave as kine's.
Above his head he slipped the instrument,
And laid it with his hat upon the turf,
Lowered his pitcher down the well-head cool,
And drew it dripping upward, ere he saw
The watchful pilgrim, craving (as he thought)
The precious draught. 'Your pardon, holy sir,
Drink first,' he cried, 'before I take the jar
Unto my father in the reaping-field.'
Touched by the cordial kindness of the lad,
The pilgrim answered,-'Thanks, my thirst is quenched
From mine own palm.' The stranger deftly poised
226
The brimming pitcher on his head, and turned
Back to the reaping-folk, while Tannhauser
Looked after him across the sunny fields,
Clasping each hand about his waist to bear
The balanced pitcher; then, down glancing, found
The lad's guitar near by, and fell at once
To striking its tuned string with wandering hands,
And pensive eyes filled full of tender dreams.
'Yea, holy sir, it is a worthless thing,
And yet I love it, for I make it speak.'
The boy again stood by him and dispelled
His train of fantasies half sweet, half sad.
'That was not in my thought,' the knight replied.
'Its worth is more than rubies; whoso hath
The art to make this speak is raised thereby
Above all loneliness or grief or fear.'
More to himself than to the lad he spake,
Who, understanding not, stood doubtfully
At a loss for answer; but the knight went on:
'How came it in your hands, and who hath tuned
your voice to follow it.' 'I am unskilled,
Good father, but my mother smote its strings
To music rare.' Diverted from one theme,
Pleased with the winsome candor of the boy,
The knight encouraged him to confidence;
Then his own gift of minstrelsy revealed,
And told bright tales of his first wanderings,
When in lords' castles and kings' palaces
Men still made place for him, for in his land
The gift was rare and valued at its worth,
And brought great victory and sounding fame.
Thus, in retracing all his pleasant youth,
His suffering passed as though it had not been.
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed the boy gave ear,
His fair face flushing with the sudden thoughts
That went and came,-then, as the pilgrim ceased,
Drew breath and spake: 'And where now is your lyre?'
The knight with both hands hid his changed, white face,
Crying aloud, 'Lost! lost! forever lost!'
Then, gathering strength, he bared his face again
Unto the frightened, wondering boy, and rose
With hasty fear. 'Ah, child, you bring me back
227
Unwitting to remembrance of my grief,
For which I donned eternal garb of woe;
And yet I owe you thanks for one sweet hour
Of healthy human intercourse and peace.
'T is not for me to tarry by the way.
Farewell!' The impetuous, remorseful boy,
Seeing sharp pain on that kind countenance,
Fell at his feet and cried, 'Forgive my words,
Witless but innocent, and leave me not
Without a blessing.' Moved unutterably,
The pilgrim kissed with trembling lips his head,
And muttered, 'At this moment would to God
That I were worthy!' Then waved wasted hands
Over the youth in act of blessing him,
But faltered, 'Cleanse me through his innocence,
O heavenly Father!' and with quickening steps
Hastened away upon the road to Rome.
The noon was past, the reapers drew broad swaths
With scythes sun-smitten 'midst the ripened crop.
Thin shadows of the afternoon slept soft
On the green meadows as the knight passed forth.
He trudged amidst the sea of poisonous flowers
On the Campagna's undulating plain,
With Rome, the many-steepled, many-towered,
Before him regnant on her throne of hills.
A thick blue cloud of haze o'erhung the town,
But the fast-sinking sun struck fiery light
From shining crosses, roofs, and flashing domes.
Across his path an arching bridge of stone
Was raised above a shrunken yellow stream,
Hurrying with the light on every wave
Towards the great town and outward to the sea.
Upon the bridge's crest he paused, and leaned
Against the barrier, throwing back his cowl,
And gazed upon the dull, unlovely flood
That was the Tiber. Quaggy banks lay bare,
Muddy and miry, glittering in the sun,
And myriad insects hovered o'er the reeds,
Whose lithe, moist tips by listless airs were stirred.
When the low sun had dropped behind the hills,
He found himself within the streets of Rome,
228
Walking as in a sleep, where naught seemed real.
The chattering hubbub of the market-place
Was over now; but voices smote his ear
Of garrulous citizens who jostled past.
Loud cries, gay laughter, snatches of sweet song,
The tinkling fountains set in gardens cool
About the pillared palaces, and blent
With trickling of the conduits in the squares,
The noisy teams within the narrow streets,All these the stranger heard and did not hear,
While ringing bells pealed out above the town,
And calm gray twilight skies stretched over it.
Wide open stood the doors of every church,
And through the porches pressed a streaming throng.
Vague wonderment perplexed him, at the sight
Of broken columns raised to Jupiter
Beside the cross, immense cathedrals reared
Upon a dead faith's ruins; all the whirl
And eager bustle of the living town
Filling the storied streets, whose very stones
Were solemn monuments, and spake of death.
Although he wrestled with himself, the thought
Of that poor, past religion smote his heart
With a huge pity and deep sympathy,
Beyond the fervor which the Church inspired.
Where was the noble race who ruled the world,
Moulded of purest elements, and stuffed
With sternest virtues, every man a king,
Wearing the purple native in his heart?
These lounging beggars, stealthy monks and priests,
And womanish patricians filled their place.
Thus Tannhauser, still half an infidel,
Pagan through mind and Christian through the heart,
Fared thoughtfully with wandering, aimless steps,
Till in the dying glimmer of the day
He raised his eyes and found himself alone
Amid the ruined arches, broken shafts,
And huge arena of the Coliseum.
He did not see it as it was, dim-lit
By something less than day and more than night,
With wan reflections of the rising moon
Rather divined than seen on ivied walls,
229
And crumbled battlements, and topless columnsBut by the light of all the ancient days,
Ringed with keen eager faces, living eyes,
Fixed on the circus with a savage joy,
Where brandished swords flashed white, and human blood
Streamed o'er the thirsty dust, and Death was king.
He started, shuddering, and drew breath to see
The foul pit choked with weeds and tumbled stones,
The cross raised midmost, and the peaceful moon
Shining o'er all; and fell upon his knees,
Restored to faith in one wise, loving God.
Day followed day, and still he bode in Rome,
Waiting his audience with the Cardinal,
And from the gates, on pretext frivolous,
Passed daily forth,-his Eminency slept,Again, his Eminency was fatigued
By tedious sessions of the Papal court,
And thus the patient pilgrim was referred
Unto a later hour. At last the page
Bore him a missive with Filippo's seal,
That in his name commended Tannhauser
Unto the Pope. The worn, discouraged knight
Read the brief scroll, then sadly forth again,
Along the bosky alleys of the park,
Passed to the glare and noise of summer streets.
'Good God!' he muttered, 'Thou hast ears for all,
And sendest help and comfort; yet these men,
Thy saintly ministers, must deck themselves
With arrogance, and from their large delight
In all the beauty of the beauteous earth,
And peace of indolent, untempted souls,
Deny the hungry outcast a bare word.'
Yet even as he nourished bitter thoughts,
He felt a depth of clear serenity,
Unruffled in his heart beneath it all.
No outward object now had farther power
To wound him there, for the brooding o'er those deeps
Of vast contrition was boundless hope.
Yet not to leave a human chance untried,
He sought the absolution of the Pope.
In a great hall with airy galleries,
230
Thronged with high dignitaries of the Church,
He took his seat amidst the humblest friars.
Through open windows came sweet garden smells,
Bright morning light, and twittered song of birds.
Around the hall flashed gold and sunlit gems,
And splendid wealth of color,-white-stoled priests,
And scarlet cardinals, and bishops clad
In violet vestments,-while beneath the shade
Of the high gallery huddled dusky shapes,
With faded, travel-tattered, sombre smocks,
And shaven heads, and girdles of coarse hemp;
Some, pilgrims penitent like Tannhauser;
Some, devotees to kiss the sacred feet.
The brassy blare of trumpets smote the air,
Shrill pipes and horns with swelling clamor came,
And through the doorway's wide-stretched tapestries
Passed the Pope's trumpeters and mace-bearers,
His vergers bearing slender silver wands,
Then mitred bishops, red-clad cardinals,
The stalwart Papal Guard with halberds raised,
And then, with white head crowned with gold ingemmed,
The vicar of the lowly Galilean,
Holding his pastoral rod of smooth-hewn wood,
With censer swung before and peacock fans
Waved constantly by pages, either side.
Attended thus, they bore him to his throne,
And priests and laymen fell upon their knees.
Then, after pause of brief and silent prayer,
The pilgrims singly through the hall defiled,
To kiss the borders of the papal skirts,
Smiting their foreheads on the paven stone;
Some silent, abject, some accusing them
Of venial sins in accents of remorse,
Craving his grace, and passing pardoned forth.
Sir Tannhauser came last, no need for him
To cry 'Peccavi,' and crook suppliant knees.
His gray head rather crushed than bowed, his face
Livid and wasted, his deep thoughtful eyes,
His tall gaunt form in those unseemly weeds,
Spake more than eloquence. His hollow voice
Brake silence, saying, 'I am Tannhauser.
For seven years I lived apart from men,
231
Within the Venusberg.' A horror seized
The assembled folk; some turbulently rose;
Some clamored, 'From the presence cast him forth!'
But the knight never ceased his steady gaze
Upon the Pope. At last,-'I have not spoken
To be condemned,' he said, 'by such as these.
Thou, spiritual Father, answer me.
Look thou upon me with the eyes of Christ.
Can I through expiation gain my shrift,
And work mine own redemption?' 'Insolent man!'
Thundered the outraged Pope, 'is this the tone
Wherewith thou dost parade thy loathsome sin?
Down on thy knees, and wallow on the earth!
Nay, rather go! there is no ray of hope,
No gleam, through cycles of eternity,
For the redemption of a soul like thine.
Yea, sooner shall my pastoral rod branch forth
In leaf and blossom, and green shoots of spring,
Than Christ will pardon thee.' And as he spoke,
He struck the rod upon the floor with force
That gave it entrance 'twixt two loosened tiles,
So that it stood, fast-rooted and alone.
The knight saw naught, he only heard his judge
Ring forth his curses, and the court cry out
'Anathema!' and loud, and blent therewith,
Derisive laughter in the very hall,
And a wild voice that thrilled through flesh and heart:
'ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE!'
Half-mad he clasped both hands upon his brow,
Amidst the storm of voices, till they died,
And all was silence, save the reckless song
Of a young bird upon a twig without.
Then a defiant, ghastly face he raised,
And shrieked, ''T is false! I am no longer thine!'
And through the windows open to the park,
Rushed forth, beyond the sight and sound of men.
By church nor palace paused he, till he passed
All squares and streets, and crossed the bridge of stone,
And stood alone amidst the broad expanse
Of the Campagna, twinkling in the heat.
He knelt upon a knoll of turf, and snapped
232
The cord that held the cross about his neck,
And far from him the leaden burden flung.
'O God! I thank Thee, that my faith in Thee
Subsists at last, through all discouragements.
Between us must no type nor symbol stand,
No mediator, were he more divine
Than the incarnate Christ. All forms, all priests,
I part aside, and hold communion free
Beneath the empty sky of noon, with naught
Between my nothingness and thy high heavensSpirit with spirit. O, have mercy, God!
Cleanse me from lust and bitterness and pride,
Have mercy in accordance with my faith.'
Long time he lay upon the scorching grass,
With his face buried in the tangled weeds.
Ah! who can tell the struggles of his soul
Against its demons in that sacred hour,
The solitude, the anguish, the remorse?
When shadows long and thin lay on the ground,
Shivering with fever, helpless he arose,
But with a face divine, ineffable,
Such as we dream the face of Israel,
When the Lord's wrestling angel, at gray dawn,
Blessed him, and disappeared.
Upon the marsh,
All night, he wandered, striving to emerge
From the wild, pathless plain,-now limitless
And colorless beneath the risen moon;
Outstretching like a sea, with landmarks none,
Save broken aqueducts and parapets,
And ruined columns glinting 'neath the moon.
His dress was dank and clinging with the dew;
A thousand insects fluttered o'er his head,
With buzz and drone; unseen cicadas chirped
Among the long, rank grass, and far and near
The fire-flies flickered through the summer air.
Vague thoughts and gleams prophetic filled his brain.
'Ah, fool!' he mused, 'to look for help from men.
Had they the will to aid, they lack the power.
In mine own flesh and soul the sin had birth,
Through mine own anguish it must be atoned.
Our saviours are not saints and ministers,
233
But tear-strung women, children soft of heart,
Or fellow-sufferers, who, by some chance word,
Some glance of comfort, save us from despair.
These I have found, thank heaven! to strengthen trust
In mine own kind, when all the world grew dark.
Make me not proud in spirit, O my God!
Yea, in thy sight I am one mass of sin,
One black and foul corruption, yet I know
My frailty is exceeded by thy love.
Neither is this the slender straw of hope,
Whereto I, drowning, cling, but firm belief,
That fills my inmost soul with vast content.
As surely as the hollow faiths of old
Shriveled to dust before one ray of Truth,
So will these modern temples pass away,
Piled upon rotten doctrines, baseless forms,
And man will look in his own breast for help,
Yea, search for comfort his own inward reins,
Revere himself, and find the God within.
Patience and patience!' Through the sleepless night
He held such thoughts; at times before his eyes
Flashed glimpses of the Church that was to be,
Sublimely simple in the light serene
Of future ages; then the vision changed
To the Pope's hall, thronged with high priests, who hurled
Their curses on him. Staggering, he awoke
Unto the truth, and found himself alone,
Beneath the awful stars. When dawn's first chill
Crept though the shivering grass and heavy leaves,
Giddy and overcome, he fell and slept
Upon the dripping weeds, nor dreamed nor stirred,
Until the wide plain basked in noon's broad light.
He dragged his weary frame some paces more,
Unto a solitary herdsman's hut,
Which, in the vagueness of the moonlit night,
Was touched with lines of beauty, till it grew
Fair as the ruined works of ancient art,
Now squat and hideous with its wattled roof,
Decaying timbers, and loose door wide oped,
Half-fallen from the hinge. A drowsy man,
Bearded and burnt, in shepherd habit lay,
Stretched on the floor, slow-munching, half asleep,
234
His frugal fare; for thus, at blaze of noon,
The shepherds sought a shelter from the sun,
Leaving their vigilant dogs beside their flock.
The knight craved drink and bread, and with respect
For pilgrim weeds, the Roman herdsman stirred
His lazy length, and shared with him his meal.
Refreshed and calm, Sir Tannhauser passed forth,
Yearning with morbid fancy once again
To see the kind face of the minstrel boy
He met beside the well. At set of sun
He reached the place; the reaping-folk were gone,
The day's toil over, yet he took his seat.
A milking-girl with laden buckets full,
Came slowly from the pasture, paused and drank.
From a near cottage ran a ragged boy,
And filled his wooden pail, and to his home
Returned across the fields. A herdsman came,
And drank and gave his dog to drink, and passed,
Greeting the holy man who sat there still,
Awaiting. But his feeble pulse beat high
When he descried at last a youthful form,
Crossing the field, a pitcher on his head,
Advancing towards the well. Yea, this was he,
The same grave eyes, and open, girlish face.
But he saw not, amidst the landscape brown,
The knight's brown figure, who, to win his ear,
Asked the lad's name. 'My name is Salvator,
To serve you, sir,' he carelessly replied,
With eyes and hands intent upon his jar,
Brimming and bubbling. Then he cast one glance
Upon his questioner, and left the well,
Crying with keen and sudden sympathy,
'Good Father, pardon me, I knew you not.
Ah! you have travelled overmuch: your feet
Are grimed with mud and wet, your face is changed,
Your hands are dry with fever.' But the knight:
'Nay, as I look on thee, I think the Lord
Wills not that I should suffer any more.'
'Then you have suffered much,' sighed Salvator,
With wondering pity. 'You must come with me;
My father knows of you, I told him all.
A knight and minstrel who cast by his lyre,
235
His health and fame, to give himself to God,Yours is a life indeed to be desired!
If you will lie with us this night, our home
Will verily be blessed.' By kindness crushed,
Wandering in sense and words, the broken knight
Resisted naught, and let himself be led
To the boy's home. The outcast and accursed
Was welcomed now by kindly human hands;
Once more his blighted spirit was revived
By contact with refreshing innocence.
There, when the morning broke upon the world,
The humble hosts no longer knew their guest.
His fleshly weeds of sin forever doffed,
Tannhauser lay and smiled, for in the night
The angel came who brings eternal peace.
__________
Far into Wartburg, through all Italy,
In every town the Pope sent messengers,
Riding in furious haste; among them, one
Who bore a branch of dry wood burst in bloom;
The pastoral rod had borne green shoots of spring,
And leaf and blossom. God is merciful.
~ Emma Lazarus,#NFDB |