TERMS STARTING WITH
reviewable ::: a. --> Capable of being reviewed.
reviewal ::: n. --> A review. html{color:
reviewer ::: n. --> One who reviews or reexamines; an inspector; one who examines publications critically, and publishes his opinion upon their merits; a professional critic of books.
reviewing ::: considering retrospectively; looking back on.
review ::: n. --> To view or see again; to look back on.
To go over and examine critically or deliberately.
To reconsider; to revise, as a manuscript before printing it, or a book for a new edition.
To go over with critical examination, in order to discover exellences or defects; hence, to write a critical notice of; as, to review a new novel.
To make a formal or official examination of the state of,
Review, April 1956. Philadelphia: Dropsie College.
Review, April, 1956.
Review (England), September, 1910, pp. 107-115.
Review, September 1910.]
TERMS ANYWHERE
account ::: n. --> A reckoning; computation; calculation; enumeration; a record of some reckoning; as, the Julian account of time.
A registry of pecuniary transactions; a written or printed statement of business dealings or debts and credits, and also of other things subjected to a reckoning or review; as, to keep one&
A. Church, review of the preceding, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 4l (1935), pp. 498-603.
affirm ::: v. t. --> to assert or confirm, as a judgment, decree, or order, brought before an appellate court for review.
To assert positively; to tell with confidence; to aver; to maintain as true; -- opposed to deny.
To declare, as a fact, solemnly, under judicial sanction. See Affirmation, 4. ::: v. i.
Amiga "computer" A range of home computers first released by {Commodore Business Machines} in early 1985 (though they did not design the original - see below). Amigas were popular for {games}, {video processing}, and {multimedia}. One notable feature is a hardware {blitter} for speeding up graphics operations on whole areas of the screen. The Amiga was originally called the Lorraine, and was developed by a company named "Amiga" or "Amiga, Inc.", funded by some doctors to produce a killer game machine. After the US game machine market collapsed, the Amiga company sold some {joysticks} but no Lorraines or any other computer. They eventually floundered and looked for a buyer. Commodore at that time bought the (mostly complete) Amiga machine, infused some money, and pushed it through the final stages of development in a hurry. Commodore released it sometime[?] in 1985. Most components within the machine were known by nicknames. The {coprocessor} commonly called the "Copper" is in fact the "{Video} Timing Coprocessor" and is split between two chips: the instruction fetch and execute units are in the "Agnus" chip, and the {pixel} timing circuits are in the "Denise" chip (A for address, D for data). "Agnus" and "Denise" were responsible for effects timed to the {real-time} position of the video scan, such as midscreen {palette} changes, {sprite multiplying}, and {resolution} changes. Different versions (in order) were: "Agnus" (could only address 512K of {video RAM}), "Fat Agnus" (in a {PLCC} package, could access 1MB of video RAM), "Super Agnus" (slightly upgraded "Fat Agnus"). "Agnus" and "Fat Agnus" came in {PAL} and {NTSC} versions, "Super Agnus" came in one version, jumper selectable for PAL or NTSC. "Agnus" was replaced by "Alice" in the A4000 and A1200, which allowed for more {DMA} channels and higher bus {bandwidth}. "Denise" outputs binary video data (3*4 bits) to the "Vidiot". The "Vidiot" is a hybrid that combines and amplifies the 12-bit video data from "Denise" into {RGB} to the {monitor}. Other chips were "Amber" (a "flicker fixer", used in the A3000 and Commodore display enhancer for the A2000), "Gary" ({I/O}, addressing, G for {glue logic}), "Buster" (the {bus controller}, which replaced "Gary" in the A2000), "Buster II" (for handling the Zorro II/III cards in the A3000, which meant that "Gary" was back again), "Ramsey" (The {RAM} controller), "DMAC" (The DMA controller chip for the WD33C93 {SCSI adaptor} used in the A3000 and on the A2091/A2092 SCSI adaptor card for the A2000; and to control the {CD-ROM} in the {CDTV}), and "Paula" ({Peripheral}, Audio, {UART}, {interrupt} Lines, and {bus Arbiter}). There were several Amiga chipsets: the "Old Chipset" (OCS), the "Enhanced Chipset" (ECS), and {AGA}. OCS included "Paula", "Gary", "Denise", and "Agnus". ECS had the same "Paula", "Gary", "Agnus" (could address 2MB of Chip RAM), "Super Denise" (upgraded to support "Agnus" so that a few new {screen modes} were available). With the introduction of the {Amiga A600} "Gary" was replaced with "Gayle" (though the chipset was still called ECS). "Gayle" provided a number of improvments but the main one was support for the A600's {PCMCIA} port. The AGA chipset had "Agnus" with twice the speed and a 24-bit palette, maximum displayable: 8 bits (256 colours), although the famous "{HAM}" (Hold And Modify) trick allows pictures of 256,000 colours to be displayed. AGA's "Paula" and "Gayle" were unchanged but AGA "Denise" supported AGA "Agnus"'s new screen modes. Unfortunately, even AGA "Paula" did not support High Density {floppy disk drives}. (The Amiga 4000, though, did support high density drives.) In order to use a high density disk drive Amiga HD floppy drives spin at half the rotational speed thus halving the data rate to "Paula". Commodore Business Machines went bankrupt on 1994-04-29, the German company {Escom AG} bought the rights to the Amiga on 1995-04-21 and the Commodore Amiga became the Escom Amiga. In April 1996 Escom were reported to be making the {Amiga} range again but they too fell on hard times and {Gateway 2000} (now called Gateway) bought the Amiga brand on 1997-05-15. Gateway licensed the Amiga operating system to a German hardware company called {Phase 5} on 1998-03-09. The following day, Phase 5 announced the introduction of a four-processor {PowerPC} based Amiga {clone} called the "{pre\box}". Since then, it has been announced that the new operating system will be a version of {QNX}. On 1998-06-25, a company called {Access Innovations Ltd} announced {plans (http://micktinker.co.uk/aaplus.html)} to build a new Amiga chip set, the {AA+}, based partly on the AGA chips but with new fully 32-bit functional core and 16-bit AGA {hardware register emulation} for {backward compatibility}. The new core promised improved memory access and video display DMA. By the end of 2000, Amiga development was under the control of a [new?] company called {Amiga, Inc.}. As well as continuing development of AmigaOS (version 3.9 released in December 2000), their "Digital Environment" is a {virtual machine} for multiple {platforms} conforming to the {ZICO} specification. As of 2000, it ran on {MIPS}, {ARM}, {PPC}, and {x86} processors. {(http://amiga.com/)}. {Amiga Web Directory (http://cucug.org/amiga.html)}. {amiCrawler (http://amicrawler.com/)}. Newsgroups: {news:comp.binaries.amiga}, {news:comp.sources.amiga}, {news:comp.sys.amiga}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.advocacy}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.announce}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.applications}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.audio}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.datacomm}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.emulations}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.games}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.graphics}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.hardware}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.introduction}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.marketplace}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.misc}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.multimedia}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.programmer}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.reviews}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.tech}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.telecomm}, {news:comp.Unix.amiga}. See {aminet}, {Amoeba}, {bomb}, {exec}, {gronk}, {guru meditation}, {Intuition}, {sidecar}, {slap on the side}, {Vulcan nerve pinch}. (2003-07-05)
Amiga ::: (computer) A range of home computers first released by Commodore Business Machines in early 1985 (though they did not design the original - see below). feature is a hardware blitter for speeding up graphics operations on whole areas of the screen.The Amiga was originally called the Lorraine, and was developed by a company named Amiga or Amiga, Inc., funded by some doctors to produce a killer game joysticks but no Lorraines or any other computer. They eventually floundered and looked for a buyer.Commodore at that time bought the (mostly complete) Amiga machine, infused some money, and pushed it through the final stages of development in a hurry. Commodore released it sometime[?] in 1985.Most components within the machine were known by nicknames. The coprocessor commonly called the Copper is in fact the Video Timing Coprocessor and is Agnus chip, and the pixel timing circuits are in the Denise chip (A for address, D for data).Agnus and Denise were responsible for effects timed to the real-time position of the video scan, such as midscreen palette changes, sprite the A4000 and A1200, which allowed for more DMA channels and higher bus bandwidth.Denise outputs binary video data (3*4 bits) to the Vidiot. The Vidiot is a hybrid that combines and amplifies the 12-bit video data from Denise into RGB to the monitor.Other chips were Amber (a flicker fixer, used in the A3000 and Commodore display enhancer for the A2000), Gary (I/O, addressing, G for glue logic), card for the A2000; and to control the CD-ROM in the CDTV), and Paula (Peripheral, Audio, UART, interrupt Lines, and bus Arbiter).There were several Amiga chipsets: the Old Chipset (OCS), the Enhanced Chipset (ECS), and AGA. OCS included Paula, Gary, Denise, and Agnus.ECS had the same Paula, Gary, Agnus (could address 2MB of Chip RAM), Super Denise (upgraded to support Agnus so that a few new screen modes were Gayle (though the chipset was still called ECS). Gayle provided a number of improvments but the main one was support for the A600's PCMCIA port.The AGA chipset had Agnus with twice the speed and a 24-bit palette, maximum displayable: 8 bits (256 colours), although the famous HAM (Hold And Modify) use a high density disk drive Amiga HD floppy drives spin at half the rotational speed thus halving the data rate to Paula.Commodore Business Machines went bankrupt on 1994-04-29, the German company Escom AG bought the rights to the Amiga on 1995-04-21 and the Commodore Amiga range again but they too fell on hard times and Gateway 2000 (now called Gateway) bought the Amiga brand on 1997-05-15.Gateway licensed the Amiga operating system to a German hardware company called Phase 5 on 1998-03-09. The following day, Phase 5 announced the introduction of a four-processor PowerPC based Amiga clone called the pre\box. Since then, it has been announced that the new operating system will be a version of QNX.On 1998-06-25, a company called Access Innovations Ltd announced to build a new Amiga chip set, the AA+, based partly on the AGA chips but with backward compatibility. The new core promised improved memory access and video display DMA.By the end of 2000, Amiga development was under the control of a [new?] company called Amiga, Inc.. As well as continuing development of AmigaOS (version 3.9 multiple platforms conforming to the ZICO specification. As of 2000, it ran on MIPS, ARM, PPC, and x86 processors. . . .Newsgroups: comp.binaries.amiga, comp.sources.amiga, comp.sys.amiga, comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, comp.sys.amiga.announce, comp.sys.amiga.applications, comp.sys.amiga.multimedia, comp.sys.amiga.programmer, comp.sys.amiga.reviews, comp.sys.amiga.tech, comp.sys.amiga.telecomm, comp.Unix.amiga.See aminet, Amoeba, bomb, exec, gronk, guru meditation, Intuition, sidecar, slap on the side, Vulcan nerve pinch.(2003-07-05)
appeal ::: 1. An earnest request for aid, support, sympathy, mercy, etc.; entreaty; petition; plea. 2. An application or proceeding for review by a higher tribunal. 3. The power or ability to attract, interest; attraction. appealed, appealing, sense-appeal.
appeal ::: v. t. --> To make application for the removal of (a cause) from an inferior to a superior judge or court for a rehearing or review on account of alleged injustice or illegality in the trial below. We say, the cause was appealed from an inferior court.
To charge with a crime; to accuse; to institute a private criminal prosecution against for some heinous crime; as, to appeal a person of felony.
To summon; to challenge.
appellant ::: a. --> Relating to an appeal; appellate. ::: n. --> One who accuses another of felony or treason.
One who appeals, or asks for a rehearing or review of a cause by a higher tribunal.
A challenger.
Applications Development Manager ::: (job) (Or Director) The person in a company who plans and oversees multiple projects and project managers. The Applications Development Managers strategy and standards. He or she administers department budget and reviews project managers.(2004-03-06)
Applications Development Manager "job" (Or "Director") The person in a company who plans and oversees multiple projects and {project managers}. The Applications Development Managers works with the {CIO} and senior management to determine systems development strategy and standards. He or she administers department budget and reviews project managers. (2004-03-06)
a prima vista: Sight-read (lit. "at first sight"); i.e., (to be) played or sung from written notation but without prior review of the written material
authorship ::: n. --> The quality or state of being an author; function or dignity of an author.
Source; origin; origination; as, the authorship of a book or review, or of an act, or state of affairs.
Balanced scorecard - An approach to performance measurement that also focuses on what managers are doing today to create future shareholder value. A balanced scorecard is a set of performance measures constructed for four dimensions of performance. The dimensions are financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. Having financial measures is critical even if they are backward looking. After all, they have a great effect on the evaluation of the company by shareholders and creditors. Customer measures examine the company's success in meeting customer expectations. Internal process measures examine the company's success in improving critical business processes. And learning and growth measures examine the company's success in improving its ability to adapt, innovate, and grow. The customer, internal processes, and learning and growth measures are generally thought to be predictive of future success (i.e., they are not backward looking). After reviewing these measures, note how "balance" is achieved: (I) performance is assessed across a balanced set of dimensions (financial, customer, internal processes, and innovation); (2) quantitative measures (e.g., number of defects) are balanced with qualitativemeasures (e.g., ratings of customer satisfaction); and (3) there is a balance of backward-looking measures (e.g., financial measures like growth in sales) and forward-looking measures (e.g., number of new patents as an innovation measure).
Berdyayev, Nikolai Alexandrovitch: (1874-1948) Is a contemporary Russian teacher and writer on the philosophy of religion. He was born in Kiev, exiled to Vologda when twenty-five; threatened with expulsion from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917, he became professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow. In 1922, he was expelled from the Soviet Union and he went to Berlin, where he established his Academy of Religious Philosophy. He moved his school to Paris and established a Russian review called Putj (The Way). His thought resembles that of the Christian Gnostics (see Gnosticism), and it owes a good deal to German idealism and mysticism (Boehme). He is a trenchant critic of systems as diverse as Communism and Thomistic Scholasticism. His most noted works are: Smyisl Istorii (The Meaning of History), Berlin, 1923; Novoye Srednevyekovye (transl. as The End of Our Time, N.Y., 1933), Berlin, 1924; Freedom and the Spirit, N. Y., 1935. V. J. Bourke, "The Gnosticism of N. Berdyaev", Thought, XI (1936), 409-22. -- VJ.B.
Bones The hard tissues that constitute the framework or skeleton of the physical body. They have an organic matrix for the inorganic mineral salts, which go through cycles of dissolution, changed location, crystallization, and reconstruction. Mineral molecules dissolving in their matrix and re-forming themselves anew occurs at that zero-point of transition between the living mineral matter and that of the live animal tissue. This transformation of the mineral atom through crystallization is “the same function, and bears the same relation to its inorganic (so-called) upadhi (or basis) as the formation of cells to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect and animal into man” (SD 2:255). The bones also furnish blood cells and mineral content to the blood stream. In the embryonic resume of racial imbodiments, the process of ossification appears after the progressive stages of its protoplasmic, gelatinous, and cartilaginous frames, analogous to those forms through which nascent humanity passed in the first two and one-half root-races. With the deposit of bones in the fetal framework, and its functional relation to the blood, and with the development of the placenta and of the organs in the mesoderm, the conditions review the gradual physicalization of the gelatinous androgynes of the early third root-race into the bisexual humanity with organized functions like the present mammalian type.
reviewable ::: a. --> Capable of being reviewed.
reviewal ::: n. --> A review. html{color:
reviewer ::: n. --> One who reviews or reexamines; an inspector; one who examines publications critically, and publishes his opinion upon their merits; a professional critic of books.
reviewing ::: considering retrospectively; looking back on.
review ::: n. --> To view or see again; to look back on.
To go over and examine critically or deliberately.
To reconsider; to revise, as a manuscript before printing it, or a book for a new edition.
To go over with critical examination, in order to discover exellences or defects; hence, to write a critical notice of; as, to review a new novel.
To make a formal or official examination of the state of,
c2man "tool" An automatic {documentation} extraction tool by Graham Stoney. c2man extracts comments from {C} source code to generate functional interface documentation in the same format as sections 2 and 3 of the {Unix} Programmer's Manual. It looks for comments near the objects they document, rather than imposing a rigid {syntax} or requiring the programmer to use a typesetting language. Acceptable documentation can often be generated from existing code with no modifications. c2man supports both {K&R} and {ISO}/{ANSI C} coding styles. Output can be in {nroff} -man, {Texinfo} or {LaTeX} format. It {automagically} documents {enum} parameter and return values, it handles both {C} (/* */) and {C++} (//) style comments, but not C++ grammar (yet). It requires {yacc}, {byacc} or {bison} for syntax analysis; {lex} or {flex} for {lexical analysis} and {nroff}, {groff}, {texinfo} or {LaTeX} to format the output. It runs under {Unix}, {OS/2} and {MS-DOS}. Version 2.0 patchlevel 25 (1995-10-25). {Washington FTP (ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/usenet/comp.sources.reviewed/volume03/)}. {Stuttgart FTP (ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/archive/comp.sources/reviewed/)}. {Patches (ftp://lth.se/pub/netnews/sources.bugs/volume93/sep/)}. Patches posted to {Usenet} newsgroups {news:comp.sources.bugs} and {news:comp.sources.reviewed}. (2003-05-02)
c2man ::: (tool) An automatic documentation extraction tool by Graham Stoney. c2man extracts comments from C source code to generate functional interface language. Acceptable documentation can often be generated from existing code with no modifications.c2man supports both K&R and ISO/ANSI C coding styles. Output can be in nroff -man, Texinfo or LaTeX format. It automagically documents enum parameter and flex for lexical analysis and nroff, groff, texinfo or LaTeX to format the output. It runs under Unix, OS/2 and MS-DOS.Version 2.0 patchlevel 25 (1995-10-25). . . .Patches posted to Usenet newsgroups comp.sources.bugs and comp.sources.reviewed.(2003-05-02)
canvass ::: n. --> To sift; to strain; to examine thoroughly; to scrutinize; as, to canvass the votes cast at an election; to canvass a district with reference to its probable vote.
To examine by discussion; to debate.
To go trough, with personal solicitation or public addresses; as, to canvass a district for votes; to canvass a city for subscriptions.
Close inspection; careful review for verification; as, a
Capabilities Maturity Model ::: (software) (CMM) The Software Engineering Institute's model of software engineering that specifies five levels of maturity of the processes of a expanded to cover other areas including Human Resources and Software Acquitition.The levels - focii - and key process areas are:Level 1 Initial - Heroes - None.Level 2 Repeatable - Project Management - Software Project Planning, Software Project Tracking and Oversight, Software Subcontract Management, Software Quality Assurance, Software Configuration Management, Requirements Management.Level 3 Defined - Engineering Process - Organisation Process Focus, Organisation Process Definition, Peer Reviews, Training Program, Inter-group Coordination, Software Product Engineering, Integrated Software Management.Level 4 Managed - Product and Process Quality - Software Quality Management, Quantitative Process Management.Level 5 Optimising - Continuous Improvement - Process Change Management, Technology Change Management, Defect Prevention.[Reference?](2001-04-28)
Capability Maturity Model "software" (CMM) The {Software Engineering Institute}'s model of {software engineering} that specifies five levels of maturity of the processes of a software organisation. CMM offers a framework for evolutionary process improvement. Originally applied to software development (SE-CMM), it has been expanded to cover other areas including Human Resources and Software Acquitition. The levels - focii - and key process areas are: Level 1 Initial - Heroes - None. Level 2 Repeatable - Project Management - Software Project Planning, Software Project Tracking and Oversight, Software Subcontract Management, Software Quality Assurance, Software Configuration Management, Requirements Management. Level 3 Defined - Engineering Process - Organisation Process Focus, Organisation Process Definition, Peer Reviews, Training Program, Inter-group Coordination, Software Product Engineering, Integrated Software Management. Level 4 Managed - Product and Process Quality - Software Quality Management, Quantitative Process Management. Level 5 Optimising - Continuous Improvement - Process Change Management, Technology Change Management, Defect Prevention. {(http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmm/cmm.html)}. (2001-04-28)
censor ::: n. --> One of two magistrates of Rome who took a register of the number and property of citizens, and who also exercised the office of inspector of morals and conduct.
One who is empowered to examine manuscripts before they are committed to the press, and to forbid their publication if they contain anything obnoxious; -- an official in some European countries.
One given to fault-finding; a censurer.
A critic; a reviewer.
cextract "programming, tool" A {C} {prototype} extractor by Adam Bryant "adb@cs.bu.edu". cextract can generate {header files} for large multi-file C programs, and will automatically generate prototypes for all of the functions in such a program. It can also generate a sorted list of all functions and their locations. cextract version 1.7 works with both {ANSI C} and {K&R C} and runs under {Unix} and {VMS}. Posted to comp.sources.reviewed. (1992-11-03)
cextract ::: (programming, tool) A C prototype extractor by Adam Bryant . cextract can generate header files for large and their locations. cextract version 1.7 works with both ANSI C and K&R C and runs under Unix and VMS.Posted to comp.sources.reviewed. (1992-11-03)
cfortran.h "library" A {transparent}, machine independent interface between {C} and {Fortran} routines and {global data}, developed by Burkhard Burow at CERN. It provides {macros} which allow the {C} {preprocessor} to translate a simple description of a C (Fortran) routine or global data into a Fortran (C) interface. Version 2.6 runs on {VAX}/{VMS}/{Ultrix}, {DECstation}, {Silicon Graphics}, {IBM} {RS/6000}, {Sun}, {Cray}, {Apollo}, {HP9000}, {LynxOS}, {f2c}, {NAG f90}. {(ftp://zebra.desy.de/cfortran/)}. cfortran.h was reviewed in RS/Magazine November 1992 and a user's experiences with cfortran.h are described in the Jan 93 issue of Computers in Physics. (1992-04-12)
code walk ::: (programming) Stepping through source code as part of a review. (1997-04-02)
code walk "programming" Stepping through {source code} as part of a {code review}. Where a code walk probably only follows the potential {control flow} of a program, a {dry run} is a more detailed manual execution of a program that also keeps track of the value of every {variable} involved. (2006-11-27)
Common Lisp "language" A dialect of {Lisp} defined by a consortium of companies brought together in 1981 by the {Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency} (DARPA). Companies included {Symbolics}, {Lisp Machines, Inc.}, {Digital Equipment Corporation}, {Bell Labs}., {Xerox}, {Hewlett-Packard}, {Lawrence Livermore Labs}., {Carnegie-Mellon University}, {Stanford University}, {Yale}, {MIT} and {USC Berkeley}. Common Lisp is {lexically scoped} by default but can be {dynamically scoped}. Common Lisp is a large and complex language, fairly close to a superset of {MacLisp}. It features {lexical binding}, data structures using defstruct and setf, {closures}, multiple values, types using declare and a variety of numerical types. Function calls allow "&optional", keyword and "&rest" arguments. Generic sequence can either be a list or an {array}. It provides formatted printing using escape characters. Common LISP now includes {CLOS}, an extended LOOP {macro}, condition system, {pretty printing} and logical pathnames. Implementations include {AKCL}, {CCL}, {CLiCC}, {CLISP}, {CLX}, {CMU Common Lisp}, {DCL}, {KCL}, {MCL} and {WCL}. Mailing list: "common-lisp@ai.sri.com". {ANSI Common Lisp draft proposal (ftp://ftp.think.com/public/think/lisp:public-review.text)}. ["Common LISP: The Language", Guy L. Steele, Digital Press 1984, ISBN 0-932376-41-X]. ["Common LISP: The Language, 2nd Edition", Guy L. Steele, Digital Press 1990, ISBN 1-55558-041-6]. (1994-09-29)
Compilation - The presentation of financial statement information by the entity without theaccountant’s assurance as to conformity with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). In performing this accounting service, the accountant must conform to the AICPA Statements on Standards for Accounting and Review Services (SSARS).
Compliance audit - The review of financial records to determine whether the entity is complying with specific procedures or rules.
C-Refine ::: A preprocessor for C and languages with similar syntax by Lutz Prechelt . C-Refine allows symbolic naming of code fragments so as to redistribute complexity and provide running commentary.Version 3.0 is available from comp.sources.reviewed archives. It is highly portable and has been ported to Unix, MS-DOS, Atari, Amiga. . (1992-07-16)
C-Refine A {preprocessor} for {C} and languages with similar syntax by Lutz Prechelt "prechelt@ira.uka.de". C-Refine allows symbolic naming of code fragments so as to redistribute complexity and provide running commentary. Version 3.0 is available from comp.sources.reviewed archives. It is highly portable and has been ported to {Unix}, {MS-DOS}, {Atari}, {Amiga}. {(ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/comp.sources.reviewed/volume02/crefine)}. (1992-07-16)
Creighton, James Edwin: (1861-1924) Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Cornell University. He was one of the founders and a president of the American Philosophical Association, American editor of Kant-Studien and editor of The Philosophical Review. He was greatly influenced by Bosanquet. His Introductory Logic had long been a standard text. His basic ideas as expressed in articles published at various times were posthumously published in a volume entitled Studies in Speculative Philosophy, a term expressive of his intellectualistic form of objective idealism. -- L.E.D.
criticism ::: n. --> The rules and principles which regulate the practice of the critic; the art of judging with knowledge and propriety of the beauties and faults of a literary performance, or of a production in the fine arts; as, dramatic criticism.
The act of criticising; a critical judgment passed or expressed; a critical observation or detailed examination and review; a critique; animadversion; censure.
critic ::: n. --> One skilled in judging of the merits of literary or artistic works; a connoisseur; an adept; hence, one who examines literary or artistic works, etc., and passes judgment upon them; a reviewer.
One who passes a rigorous or captious judgment; one who censures or finds fault; a harsh examiner or judge; a caviler; a carper.
The art of criticism.
Death ::: Death occurs when a general break-up of the constitution of man takes place; nor is this break-up amatter of sudden occurrence, with the exceptions of course of such cases as mortal accidents or suicides.Death is always preceded, varying in each individual case, by a certain time spent in the withdrawal ofthe monadic individuality from an incarnation, and this withdrawal of course takes place coincidentlywith a decay of the seven-principle being which man is in physical incarnation. This decay precedesphysical dissolution, and is a preparation of and by the consciousness-center for the forthcomingexistence in the invisible realms. This withdrawal actually is a preparation for the life to come ininvisible realms, and as the septenary entity on this earth so decays, it may truly be said to beapproaching rebirth in the next sphere.Death occurs, physically speaking, with the cessation of activity of the pulsating heart. There is the lastbeat, and this is followed by immediate, instantaneous unconsciousness, for nature is very merciful inthese things. But death is not yet complete, for the brain is the last organ of the physical body really todie, and for some time after the heart has ceased beating, the brain and its memory still remain activeand, although unconsciously so, the human ego for this short length of time, passes in review every eventof the preceding life. This great or small panoramic picture of the past is purely automatic, so to say; yetthe soul-consciousness of the reincarnating ego watches this wonderful review incident by incident, areview which includes the entire course of thought and action of the life just closed. The entity is, for thetime being, entirely unconscious of everything else except this. Temporarily it lives in the past, andmemory dislodges from the akasic record, so to speak, event after event, to the smallest detail: passesthem all in review, and in regular order from the beginning to the end, and thus sees all its past life as anall-inclusive panorama of picture succeeding picture.There are very definite ethical and psychological reasons inhering in this process, for this process forms areconstruction of both the good and the evil done in the past life, and imprints this strongly as a record onthe fabric of the spiritual memory of the passing being. Then the mortal and material portions sink intooblivion, while the reincarnating ego carries the best and noblest parts of these memories into thedevachan or heaven-world of postmortem rest and recuperation. Thus comes the end called death; andunconsciousness, complete and undisturbed, succeeds, until there occurs what the ancients called thesecond death.The lower triad (prana, linga-sarira, sthula-sarira) is now definitely cast off, and the remaining quaternaryis free. The physical body of the lower triad follows the course of natural decay, and its various hosts oflife-atoms proceed whither their natural attractions draw them. The linga-sarira or model-body remains inthe astral realms, and finally fades out. The life-atoms of the prana, or electrical field, fly instantly backat the moment of physical dissolution to the natural pranic reservoirs of the planet.This leaves man, therefore, no longer a heptad or septenary entity, but a quaternary consisting of theupper duad (atma-buddhi) and the intermediate duad (manas-kama). The second death then takes place.Death and the adjective dead are mere words by which the human mind seeks to express thoughts whichit gathers from a more or less consistent observation of the phenomena of the material world. Death isdissolution of a component entity or thing. The dead, therefore, are merely dissolving bodies -- entitieswhich have reached their term on this our physical plane. Dissolution is common to all things, becauseall physical things are composite: they are not absolute things. They are born; they grow; they reachmaturity; they enjoy, as the expression runs, a certain term of life in the full bloom of their powers; thenthey "die." That is the ordinary way of expressing what men call death; and the corresponding adjectiveis dead, when we say that such things or entities are dead.Do you find death per se anywhere? No. You find nothing but action; you find nothing but movement;you find nothing but change. Nothing stands still or is annihilated. What is called death itself shouts forthto us the fact of movement and change. Absolute inertia is unknown in nature or in the human mind; itdoes not exist.
Delivered Source Instruction "programming, unit" (DSI) One line of source code (LOC) developed by a project. DSI is the primary input to many tools for estimating software cost. The term "delivered" is generally meant to exclude non-delivered support software such as test drivers. However, if these are developed with the same care as delivered software, with their own reviews, test plans, documentation, etc., then they should be counted. The "source instructions" include all program instructions created by project personnel and processed into {machine code} by some combination of preprocessors, compilers, and assemblers. It excludes comments and unmodified utility software. It includes {job control language}, format statements, and data declarations. (1996-05-29)
Devachan[Tibetan, bde-ba-can, pronounced de-wa-chen] ::: A translation of the Sanskrit sukhavati, the "happy place"or god-land. It is the state between earth-lives into which the human entity, the human monad, enters andthere rests in bliss and repose.When the second death after that of the physical body takes place -- and there are many deaths, that is tosay many changes of the vehicles of the ego -- the higher part of the human entity withdraws into itselfall that aspires towards it, and takes that "all" with it into the devachan; and the atman, with the buddhiand with the higher part of the manas, become thereupon the spiritual monad of man. Devachan as a stateapplies not to the highest or heavenly or divine monad, but only to the middle principles of man, to thepersonal ego or the personal soul in man, overshadowed by atma-buddhi. There are many degrees indevachan: the highest, the intermediate, and the lowest. Yet devachan is not a locality, it is a state, a stateof the beings in that spiritual condition.Devachan is the fulfilling of all the unfulfilled spiritual hopes of the past incarnation, and anefflorescence of all the spiritual and intellectual yearnings of the past incarnation which in that pastincarnation have not had an opportunity for fulfillment. It is a period of unspeakable bliss and peace forthe human soul, until it has finished its rest time and stage of recuperation of its own energies.In the devachanic state, the reincarnating ego remains in the bosom of the monad (or of the monadicessence) in a state of the most perfect and utter bliss and peace, reviewing and constantly reviewing, andimproving upon in its own blissful imagination, all the unfulfilled spiritual and intellectual possibilitiesof the life just closed that its naturally creative faculties automatically suggest to the devachanic entity.Man here is no longer a quaternary of substance-principles (for the second death has taken place), but isnow reduced to the monad with the reincarnating ego sleeping in its bosom, and is therefore a spiritualtriad. (See also Death, Reincarnating Ego)
Double Data Rate Random Access Memory "storage" (DDR-RAM, DDR-SDRAM ...Synchronous...) {RAM} that transfers data on both 0-1 and 1-0 {clock} transitions, theoretically yielding twice the data transfer rate of normal RAM or {SDRAM}. {DDR-RAM Article (http://pcreview.co.uk/Article.php?aid=9)}. {DDR-SDRAM Article (http://www4.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q4/001030/)}. (2001-05-24)
dry run "programming" To execute a program by hand, writing values of variables and other run-time data on paper, in order to check its operation and {control flow} or to track down a {bug} (as part of {debugging}). A dry run is an extreme form of {desk check} or {code review} and is practical only for fairly simple programs, small amounts of data and simple external interfaces. It was often performed {off-line} using a {hardcopy} of the {source code}. Dry runs were common practice in the days when access to computers was limited but the availability of {screen editors} and fast {compilers} makes {debugging by printf} a more productive method in most cases. Sophisticated {debuggers} that allow you to get the computer to step through your source code line by line and show values of variables make even this unnecessary. (2006-11-27)
Due diligence – A qualitative assessment of management’s character and capability. Comprehensive due diligence may also include an examination of the books and records, asset appraisals, reviews of the company's other debt obligations, legal and accounting affairs, internal controls, planned capital expenditures, and other matters that bear on the company's future success and profitability. Due diligence is a legal requirement before public offerings.
Due_diligence ::: is an investigation or audit of a potential investment or product to confirm all facts, such as reviewing all financial records, plus anything else deemed material. It refers to the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a financial transaction with another party. Due diligence can also refer to the investigation a seller does of a buyer; items that may be considered are whether the buyer has adequate resources to complete the purchase, as well as other elements that would affect the acquired entity or the seller after the sale has been completed.
Earliest finish time (EFT) - In program review and evaluation technique (PERT), earliest time at which an activity may be completed.
Eden ::: A concurrent, object-oriented, distributed operating system and language, based on remote procedure call. It has both synchronous and asynchronous message passing.[The Eden System: A Technical Review, G. Almes et al, IEEE Trans Soft Eng SE-11(1):43-59 (Jan 1985)].
Eden "language, operating system" A {concurrent}, {object-oriented}, distributed {operating system} and language, {Eden Programming Language} (EPL), based on {remote procedure call}. It has both {synchronous} and {asynchronous} {message passing}. ["The Eden System: A Technical Review", G. Almes et al, IEEE Trans Soft Eng SE-11(1):43-59, Jan 1985]. (2009-05-26)
Embryology shows the optic thalami playing an early and leading part in connection with the pineal gland, then at the apex of the developing head, a biological review of early racial conditions when the pineal gland functioned as the only eye of vision. At that stage of evolution, the human was as unselfconscious in personality and as gelatinous in physical structure as the embryo now is at first. Nevertheless, he was a spiritual being, as he now is, being the reincarnating ego which directs the evolution of its marvelous body from the unit of a fertilized cell. The embryo repeats the gradual growth and dominating position of the cerebral hemispheres which, in the history of the third root-race, gave play to intellectual faculties at the expense of spiritual vision. Then the pineal “eye,” no longer active, retired to the hollow of the brain where the optic thalami became concerned with the development of the two eyes of physical vision. “It is a curious fact that it is especially in human beings that the cerebral hemispheres and the lateral ventricles have been developed, and that the optic thalami, corpora quadrigemina, and corpora striata are the principal parts which are developed in the mammalian brain” (SD 2:301).
Environmental Impact Appraisal ::: An environmental review supporting a negative declaration, i.e., the action is not a major Federal action significantly affecting the environment. It describes a proposed EPA action, its expected environmental impact, and the basis for the conclusion that no significant impact is anticipated.
Envoy {Motorola}'s integrated personal wireless communicator. Envoy is a {personal digital assistant} which incorporates two-way wireless and wireline communication. It was announced on 7 March 1994 and released in the third quarter of 1994. It runs {Genral Magic}'s {Magic Cap} {operating system} and Telescript(TM) communications language on Motorola's {Dragon} chip set. This includes the highly integrated {Motorola 68349} processor and a special purpose {application specific integrated circuit} (ASIC) referred to as Astro. This chip set was designed specifically for {Magic Cap} and {Telescript}. A user can write on the Envoy communicator with the accompanying stylus or a finger, to type and select or move objects on its screen. An on-screen keyboard can be used to input information, draw or write personal notations, or send handwritten messages and faxes. Envoy can send a wireless message to another Envoy, {PC} or fax; broadcast a message to a group, with each member of that group receiving the message in their preferred format; gather information based on your requirements; schedule a meeting and automatically invite attendees; screen, route and organise messages; send a business card to another Envoy across a conference room table; access real-time scheduling and pricing information for US airline flights, then order tickets via fax or {electronic mail}; keep track of contacts through an address book; receive daily news summaries and stock information; capture, organize and review business and personal expenses on-the-go; gather, edit and analyze information in spreadsheets and graphs compatible with {Lotus 1-2-3} and {Excel}; shop in an electronic mall. {(http://motorola.com/MIMS/WDG/Technology/Envoy/)}. [Was it released in Q3 '94?] (1995-01-18)
ephemeris ::: n. --> A diary; a journal.
A publication giving the computed places of the heavenly bodies for each day of the year, with other numerical data, for the use of the astronomer and navigator; an astronomical almanac; as, the "American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac."
Any tabular statement of the assigned places of a heavenly body, as a planet or comet, on several successive days.
A collective name for reviews, magazines, and all kinds
Financial planner - A professional engaged in providing personal financial planning services to individuals. A financial planner assists a client in the following ways: (1) assesses a client's financial history, such as tax returns, investments, retirement plan, wills, and insurance policies; (2) helps decide on a financial plan, based on personal and financial goals, history, and preferences; (3) identifies financial areas where a client may need help, such as building up retirement income or improving investment return; (4) prepares a financial plan based on the individual situation and discusses it thoroughly; (5) helps implement the financial plan, including referring the client to specialists, such as lawyers or accountants, if necessary; and (6) reviews the situation and financial plan periodically and suggests changes when needed.
formal review "project" A technical review conducted with the customer including the types of reviews called for in DOD-STD-2167A (Preliminary Design Review, Critical Design Review, etc.) (1996-05-15)
formal review ::: (project) A technical review conducted with the customer including the types of reviews called for in DOD-STD-2167A (Preliminary Design Review, Critical Design Review, etc.) (1996-05-15)
front side bus "hardware" (FSB) The {bus} via which a {processor} communicates with its {RAM} and {chipset}; one half of the {Dual Independent Bus} (the other half being the {backside bus}). The {L2 cache} is usually on the FSB, unless it is on the same chip as the processor [example?]. In {PCI} systems, the PCI bus runs at half the FSB speed. {Intel}'s {Pentium 60} ran the bus and processor at 60 {MHz}. All later processors have used multipliers to increase the internal {clock} speed while maintaining the same external clock speed, e.g. the {Pentium 90} used a 1.5x multiplier. Modern {Socket 370} {motherboards} support multipliers from 4.5x to 8.0x, and FSB speeds from 50 MHz to a proposed 83 MHz standard. These higher speeds may cause problems with some PCI hardware. Altering the FSB speed and the multiplier ratio are the two main ways of {overclocking} processors. {Toms Hardware - The Bus Speed Guide (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bus-speed-guide,49.html)}. {Toms Hardware - The Overclocking Guide (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclocking-guide,15.html)}. (2002-02-21)
Ghostscript "graphics, tool" The {GNU} {interpreter} for {PostScript} and {PDF}, with {previewers} for serval systems and many {fonts}. Ghostscript was originally written by L. Peter Deutsch "ghost@aladdin.com" of {Aladdin Enterprises}. The first public release was v1.0 on 1988-08-11. {GNU Home (http://gnu.org/software/ghostscript/)}. {News & community (http://ghostscript.com/)}. (2003-09-24)
Ghostscript ::: (graphics, tool) The GNU interpreter for PostScript and PDF, with previewers for serval systems and many fonts. Ghostscript was originally written of Aladdin Enterprises. The first public release was v1.0 on 1988-08-11.Current version: 8.11, as of 2003-08-29. . .(2003-09-24)
GNU Free Documentation License "legal" (GFDL) The {Free Software Foundation}'s license designed to ensure the same freedoms for {documentation} that the {GPL} gives to {software}. This dictionary is distributed under the GFDL, see the copyright notice in the {Free On-line Dictionary of Computing} section (at the start of the source file). The full text follows. Version 1.1, March 2000 Copyright 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. 0. PREAMBLE The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. 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TERMINATION You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See {here (http://gnu.org/copyleft/)}. Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. End of full text of GFDL. (2002-03-09)
GNU Free Documentation License ::: (legal) (GFDL) The Free Software Foundation's license designed to ensure the same freedoms for documentation that the GPL gives to software.This dictionary is distributed under the GFDL, see the copyright notice in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing section (at the start of the source file). The full text follows.Version 1.1, March 2000Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USAEveryone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.0. PREAMBLEThe purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONSThis License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. The Document, below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as you.A Modified Version of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.A Secondary Section is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.The Invariant Sections are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.The Cover Texts are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.A Transparent copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not Transparent is called Opaque.Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output purposes only.The Title Page means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License title page as such, Title Page means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.2. VERBATIM COPYINGYou may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the compensation in exchange for copies. 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COPYING IN QUANTITYIf you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100, and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.4. MODIFICATIONSYou may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has less than five).C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the publisher.D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices.F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's license notice.H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.I. Preserve the section entitled History, and its title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence.J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations published at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.K. In any section entitled Acknowledgements or Dedications, preserve the section's title, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles.M. Delete any section entitled Endorsements. Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version.N. Do not retitle any existing section as Endorsements or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section. If the Modified Version includes new front-matter Invariant Sections in the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.You may add a section entitled Endorsements, provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.5. COMBINING DOCUMENTSYou may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice.The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled History in the various original documents, forming one section entitled History; likewise combine any sections entitled Acknowledgements, and any sections entitled Dedications. You must delete all sections entitled Endorsements.6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTSYou may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKSA compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution being thus compiled, if they are not themselves derivative works of the Document.If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter of the entire aggregate, Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on covers around the whole aggregate.8. TRANSLATIONTranslation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant the original English version of this License, the original English version will prevail.9. TERMINATIONYou may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSEThe Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See .Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License or any does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.End of full text of GFDL.(2002-03-09)
greek 1. "text, graphics" To display text as abstract dots and lines in order to give a preview of layout without actually being legible. This is faster than drawing the characters correctly which may require scaling or other transformations. Greeking is particularly useful when displaying a reduced image of a document where the text would be too small to be legible on the display anyway. A related technique is {lorem ipsum}. (2006-09-18)
greek ::: 1. (text, graphics) To display text as abstract dots and lines in order to give a preview of layout without actually being legible. This is faster than of a document where the text would be too small to be legible on the display anyway.A related technique is lorem ipsum.(2006-09-18)
Hazaz, Hayim. “The Seraph.” The Literary Review,
hosting ::: n. --> An encounter; a battle.
A muster or review.
htmlcommentbox.com "web" A service for adding a comment box to any web page, allowing visitors to leave comments and the site owner to review them. {(http://htmlcommentbox.com/)} (2013-03-20)
In a world that is almost rent asunder in certain aspects, by selfishness, fear, and hatred, with a mounting suicide toll in all countries capable of statistical review, the truth about suicide and the fate of the suicide is not a subject for sentiment but for persistent reiteration.
Industry analysis - Is an analysis of various key factors relating to the industry. It may include an analysis of the industry life cycle, the history of the industry, an in-depth ratio analysis of the industries financial performance, a review of how differing trends such as seasonal fluctuations affect the industry, external influences on the industry such as government laws and a review of levels of competition both present and future for the specific industry.
in Jewish Quarterly Review, 1893-1894.
Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics (IGPL) A body of 700 researchers in various aspects of {logic} (symbolic, mathematical, computational, philosophical, etc.) from all over the world. The group's main rôle is as a research and information clearing house. The group also: supports exchange of information about research problems, references and common interest among group members; helps to obtain photocopies of papers; supplies review copies of books through the Journals on which some members are editors; organises exchange visits and workshops; advises on papers for publication; edits and distributes a Newsletter and an electronic Bulletin; keeps an {FTP archive} of papers, abstracts; obtains reductions on group purchases of logic books from publishers. {(http://theory.doc.ic.ac.uk/tfm/igpl.html)}. E-mail: "igpl-request@doc.ic.ac.uk". (1995-02-10)
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) A body composed of the {Internet Engineering Task Force} Area Directors and the IETF Chair. It provides the first technical review of {Internet} standards and is responsible for day-to-day "management" of the IETF. (1994-12-08)
Internet Engineering Steering Group ::: (IESG) A body composed of the Internet Engineering Task Force Area Directors and the IETF Chair. It provides the first technical review of Internet standards and is responsible for day-to-day management of the IETF. (1994-12-08)
ISO 9000 A set of international {standards} for both quality management and quality assurance that has been adopted by over 90 countries worldwide. The ISO 9000 standards apply to all types of organisations, large and small, and in many industries. The standards require: standard language for documenting quality processes; system to manage evidence that these practices are instituted throughout an organisation; and third-party auditing to review, certify, and maintain certification of organisations. The ISO 9000 series classifies products into generic product categories: hardware, software, processed materials, and services. Documentation is at the core of ISO 9000 conformance. In fact, the standards have been paraphrased as: "Say what you do. Do what you say. Write it down." In Britain it is associated with BS5750 which may become obsolete. ["The ISO 9000 Guide," c. 1993 Interleaf, Inc]. (1995-01-30)
Jean E. Sammet ::: (person) Author of several surveys of early programming languages, refererred to in many entries in this dictionary.E-mail: Relevant publications include:[Sammet, Jean E., Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, P-H 1969. QA76.5 .S213]. The definitive work on early computer language development.[Sammet, Jean E., Programming Languages: History and Future, CACM 15(7):601-610, Jul 1972].[Sammet, Jean E., Roster of Programming Languages Computers & Automation 16(6):80-82, June 1967; Computers & Automation 17(6):120-123, June 1968; Computers & Automation 21(6B), 30 Aug 1972; Computing Reviews 15(4): 147-160, April 1974; CACM 19(12):655-669, Dec 1976; SIGPLAN Notices 13(11):56, Nov 1978]. (1998-10-03)
Jean E. Sammet "person" Author of several surveys of early programming languages, refererred to in many entries in this dictionary. E-mail: sammet@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu Relevant publications include: [Sammet, Jean E., "Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals", P-H 1969. QA76.5 .S213]. The definitive work on early computer language development. [Sammet, Jean E., "Programming Languages: History and Future", CACM 15(7):601-610, Jul 1972]. [Sammet, Jean E., "Roster of Programming Languages" Computers & Automation 16(6):80-82, June 1967; Computers & Automation 17(6):120-123, June 1968; Computers & Automation 18(7):153-158, June 1969; Computers & Automation 19(6B):6-11, 30 Nov 1970; Computers & Automation 20(6B):6-13, 30 Jun, 1971; Computers & Automation 21(6B), 30 Aug 1972; Computing Reviews 15(4): 147-160, April 1974; CACM 19(12):655-669, Dec 1976; SIGPLAN Notices 13(11):56, Nov 1978]. (1998-10-03)
(Jewish Quarterly Review, 1893, pp. 399-419),
Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 11, pp. 1-45, 1898.
Khornerstone ::: A multipurpose benchmark from Workstation Labs used in various periodicals. The source is not free. Results are published in UNIX Review. (1993-04-15)
Khornerstone A multipurpose {benchmark} from {Workstation Labs} used in various periodicals. The source is not free. Results are published in "UNIX Review". (1993-04-15)
Korn, Alejandro: Born in San Vicente, Buenos Aires in 1860. Died in Buenos Aires, 1936. Psychiatrist in charge of Melchor Romero Hospital for the Insane and Professor of Anatomy at the National College of La Plata. Professor of Ethics and Metaphysics in the Universities of Buenos Aires and La Plata, from 1906-1930, and one time Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Buenos Aires. Director of his own review, Valoraciones, and patriarch of the modern philosophical tradition of Argentine. The following may be considered his most important works: Influencias Filosoficas en la Evolucion Nacional, 1919; La Libertad Creadora, 1922; Esquema Gnoseologico, 1924; El Concepto de Ciencia, 1926; Axiologia, 1930; Apuntes Filosoficos, 1935.
Latest finish time - In program evaluation and review technique (PERT), latest time at which an activity must be completed without holding up the complete project.
Latest start time - In program evaluation and review technique (PERT), latest time at which an activity must begin without holding up the complete project.
Latest time (LT) - In program evaluation and review technique(PERT), latest time at which an activity can be completed without extending the completion time of the project.
Literary Review, Spring 1958. In Hechaloth Rahhati,
London: Jewish Quarterly Review, July 1896, pp.
London: Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 7, 1894.
Lorem ipsum ::: (text) A common piece of text used as mock-content when testing a given page layout or font.The following text is often used:Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetaur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.This continues at length and variously. The text is not really Greek, but badly garbled Latin. It started life as extracted phrases from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil), which read:Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat.Translation:But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.-- Translation by H. Rackham, from his 1914 edition of De Finibus.However, since textual fidelity was unimportant to the goal of having random text to fill a page, it has degraded over the centuries, into Lorem ipsum....The point of using this text, or some other text of incidental intelligibility, is that it has a more-or-less normal (for English and Latin, at least) distribution of ascenders, descenders, and word-lengths, as opposed to just using abc 123 abc 123, Content here content here, or the like.The text is often used when previewing the layout of a document, as the use of more understandable text would distract the user from the layout being examined. A related technique is greeking. .(2006-09-18)
Lorem ipsum "text" A common piece of text used as mock-{content} when testing a given page layout or {font}. The following text is often used: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetaur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum." This continues at length and variously. The text is not really Greek, but badly garbled Latin. It started life as extracted phrases from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero's "De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" ("The Extremes of Good and Evil"), which read: Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur? At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio cumque nihil impedit quo minus id quod maxime placeat facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. Itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat. Translation: But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure? On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains. -- Translation by H. Rackham, from his 1914 edition of De Finibus. However, since textual fidelity was unimportant to the goal of having {random} text to fill a page, it has degraded over the centuries, into "Lorem ipsum...". The point of using this text, or some other text of incidental intelligibility, is that it has a more-or-less normal (for English and Latin, at least) distribution of ascenders, descenders, and word-lengths, as opposed to just using "abc 123 abc 123", "Content here content here", or the like. The text is often used when previewing the layout of a document, as the use of more understandable text would distract the user from the layout being examined. A related technique is {greeking}. {Lorem Ipsum - All the facts (http://lipsum.com/)}. (2006-09-18)
magic number "jargon, programming" 1. In {source code}, some non-obvious constant whose value is significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted inconspicuously in-line ({hard-coded}), rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a commented "
magic number ::: (jargon, programming) 1. In source code, some non-obvious constant whose value is significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted inconspicuously in-line (hard-coded), rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a commented
Management decision cycle – This cycle involves five steps managers take in making decisions and following up on them. The five steps are: (1) the discovery of a problem or need; (2) alternative courses of action to solve the problem or meet the need are identified; (3) a complete analysis to determine the effects of each alternative on business operations is prepared; (4) with the supporting data, the decision maker chooses the best alternative; and (5) after the decision has been carried out, the accountant conducts a post decision review to see if the decision was correct or if other needs have arisen.
Manager of Business Applications "job" A person who plans and oversees multiple projects and project managers. He works with the {CIO} and senior management to determine systems development strategy and standards. He administers the department budget and reviews project managers. (2004-03-18)
Manager of Business Applications ::: (job) A person who plans and oversees multiple projects and project managers. He works with the CIO and senior management to determine systems development strategy and standards. He administers the department budget and reviews project managers.(2004-03-18)
metadata "data, data processing" /me't*-day`t*/, or combinations of /may'-/ or (Commonwealth) /mee'-/; /-dah`t*/ (Or "meta-data") Data about {data}. In {data processing}, metadata is definitional data that provides information about or documentation of other data managed within an application or environment. For example, metadata would document data about {data elements} or {attributes}, (name, size, data type, etc) and data about {records} or {data structures} (length, fields, columns, etc) and data about data (where it is located, how it is associated, ownership, etc.). Metadata may include descriptive information about the context, quality and condition, or characteristics of the data. A collection of metadata, e.g. in a {database}, is called a {data dictionary}. Myers of {The Metadata Company} claims to have coined the term in 1969 though it appears in the book, "Extension of programming language concepts" published in 1968, by {Philip R. Bagley}. Bagley was a pioneer of computer document retrieval. "A survey of extensible programming languages" by Solntsseff and Yezerski (Annual Review in Automatic Programming, 1974, pp267-307) cites "the notion of 'metadata' introduced by Bagley". (2010-05-15)
Mishnah (&
monitors ::: those who observe, supervise, or keep under review; esp. for the purpose of regulation or control.
Müller, Friedrich Max. (1823-1900). Arguably the most famous Indologist of the nineteenth century, born in Dessau, the capital of the duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, son of the famous Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller. He studied Sanskrit in Leipzig, receiving a doctorate in philology in 1843 at the age of twenty. In Berlin, he attended the lectures of Franz Bopp and Schelling. He went to Paris in 1846 where he studied with EUGÈNE BURNOUF, who suggested the project that would become his life's work, a critical edition of the Ṛgveda. In order to study the available manuscripts, he traveled to London and then settled in Oxford, where he would spend the rest of his life, eventually being appointed to a newly established professorship in comparative philology. Although best known for his work in philology, Indology, and comparative religion, Müller wrote essays and reviews on Buddhism throughout his career. Perhaps his greatest contribution to Buddhist studies came through his role as editor-in-chief of the Sacred Books of the East series, published between 1879 and 1910. Ten of the forty-nine volumes of the series were devoted to Buddhist works. Reflecting the opinion of the day that Pāli texts of the THERAVĀDA tradition represented the most accurate record of what the Buddha taught, seven of these volumes were devoted to Pāli works, with translations by THOMAS W. RHYS DAVIDS and HERMANN OLDENBERG, as well as a translation of the DHAMMAPADA by Müller himself. Among other Indian works, AsVAGHOsA's famous life of the Buddha appeared twice, translated in one volume from Sanskrit by E. B. Cowell and in another from Chinese by SAMUEL BEAL. HENDRIK KERN's translation of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") was included in another volume. The final volume of the series, entitled Buddhist Mahāyāna Texts (1894), included such famous works as the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra"), the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"), and the three major PURE LAND sutras, all Indian works (or at least so regarded at the time) but selected because of their importance for Japanese Buddhism. Müller's choice of these texts was influenced by two Japanese students: TAKAKUSU JUNJIRo and NANJo BUN'Yu, both JoDO SHINSHu adherents who had gone to Oxford in order to study Indology with Müller. Upon their return, they introduced to Japanese academe the philological study of Buddhism from Sanskrit and Pāli sources. The works in Buddhist Mahāyāna Texts were translated by Müller, with the exception of the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING (*Amitāyurdhyānasutra), which was translated by Takakusu. In his final years, with financial support of the King of Siam, Müller began editing the Sacred Books of the Buddhists series, which was taken over by T. W. Rhys Davids upon Müller's death in 1900.
muster ::: v. t. --> Something shown for imitation; a pattern.
A show; a display.
An assembling or review of troops, as for parade, verification of numbers, inspection, exercise, or introduction into service.
The sum total of an army when assembled for review and inspection; the whole number of effective men in an army.
Any assemblage or display; a gathering.
New Church Review, vol. 13,1906.
Nishitani Keiji. (西谷啓治) (1900-1990). Japanese philosopher and member of what came to be known as the KYOTO SCHOOL, a contemporary school of Japanese philosophy that sought to synthesize ZEN Buddhist thought with modern Western, and especially Germanic, philosophy. Nishitani was schooled in Ishikawa prefecture and Tokyo and graduated from Kyoto University in 1924 with a degree in philosophy. A student of NISHIDA KITARo (1870-1945), the founder of the Kyoto School, Nishitani became a professor in the Department of Religion at Kyoto University in 1935 and from 1937 to 1939 studied with Martin Heidegger in Freiburg, Germany. He later chaired the Department of Modern Philosophy at Kyoto Prefectural University from 1955 to 1963. In such works as his 1949 Nihirizumu (translated in 1990 as The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism) and Shukyo to wa nani ka ("What Is Religion?," 1961, translated in 1982 as Religion and Nothingness), Nishitani sought to synthesize German existentialism, Christian mysticism, and what he considered to be Zen experience. Where German philosophy, which is governed by logic and cognitive thinking, addressed ontological questions regarding the self, he argued that such means as Christian mysticism and Zen meditation could complement German philosophy in constructing a path to a complete realization of the self. Nishitani took issue with Nietzsche's nihilism by borrowing from the Buddhist concept of emptiness (suNYATĀ) to argue that recognition of the self as empty brings one to an understanding of things as they are (viz., the Buddhist concept of suchness, or TATHATĀ), and hence a true understanding and affirmation of oneself. Nishitani's philosophical justification of Japan's wartime activities, notably his contributions to the well-known journal Chuokoron ("Central Review") in the early 1940s, has become a controversial aspect of his work.
Node - In program evaluation and review technique (PERT), circle in a network representing the beginning and ending of activities. A node symbolises an event.
Objective Relativism: Epistemological theory which ascribes real objectivity to all perspectives and appearances of an object of perception. (See A. E. Murphy, "Objective Relativism in Dewey and Whitehead," Philosophical Review, Vol. XXXVI, 1927.) -- L.W.
of Moses” ( Jewish Quarterly Review, April 1956),
OpenBSD ::: (operating system) A version of BSD Unix with an emphasis on security. A lot of security work that is ported to other free operating systems originates with OpenBSD and a lot of code review is done here.Sub-projects of OpenBSD include implementations of , and CVS, to be called OpenCVS. .(2005-01-17)
OpenBSD "operating system" A version of {BSD Unix} with an emphasis on security. A lot of security work that is ported to other free operating systems originates with OpenBSD and a lot of {code review} is done here. Sub-projects of OpenBSD include implementations of {SSH (http://openssh.org/)}, {ntpd (http://openntpd.org/)}, and {CVS}, to be called OpenCVS. {OpenBSD Home (http://openbsd.org/)}. (2005-01-17)
open/closed principle "programming, theory" A principle used in {OOPL} which states that a {class} must be open and closed where open means it has the ability to be extended and closed means it cannot be modified other than by extension. The idea is that once a class has been approved for use having gone through code reviews, unit tests, and other qualifying procedures, you don't want to change the class very much, just extend it. In practice the open/closed principle simply means making good use of {abstraction} and {polymorphism}. (1997-09-23)
open/closed principle ::: (programming, theory) A principle used in OOPL which states that a class must be open and closed where open means it has the ability to be extended and closed means it cannot be modified other than by extension.The idea is that once a class has been approved for use having gone through code reviews, unit tests, and other qualifying procedures, you don't want to change the class very much, just extend it. In practice the open/closed principle simply means making good use of abstraction and polymorphism. (1997-09-23)
Open DataBase Connectivity ::: (standard, database) (ODBC) A standard for accessing different database systems. There are interfaces for Visual Basic, Visual C++, SQL and the ODBC driver pack contains drivers for the Access, Paradox, dBase, Text, Excel and Btrieve databases.An application can submit statements to ODBC using the ODBC flavor of SQL. ODBC then translates these to whatever flavor the database understands.ODBC 1.0 was released in September 1992.ODBC is based on Call-Level Interface and was defined by the SQL Access Group. Microsoft was one member of the group and was the first company to release a commercial product based on its work (under Microsoft Windows) but ODBC is not a Microsoft standard (as many people believe).ODBC drivers and development tools are available now for Microsoft Windows, Unix, OS/2, and Macintosh.[On-line document?][Unix Review, Aug 1995]. (1996-05-27)
Open DataBase Connectivity "standard, database" (ODBC) A {standard} for accessing different {database} systems. There are interfaces for {Visual Basic}, {Visual C++}, {SQL} and the ODBC driver pack contains drivers for the {Access}, {Paradox}, {dBase}, Text, {Excel} and {Btrieve} databases. An application can submit statements to ODBC using the ODBC flavor of SQL. ODBC then translates these to whatever flavor the database understands. ODBC 1.0 was released in September 1992. ODBC is based on {Call-Level Interface} and was defined by the {SQL Access Group}. {Microsoft} was one member of the group and was the first company to release a commercial product based on its work (under {Microsoft Windows}) but ODBC is not a Microsoft standard (as many people believe). ODBC drivers and development tools are available now for {Microsoft Windows}, {Unix}, {OS/2}, and {Macintosh}. [On-line document?] ["Unix Review", Aug 1995]. (1996-05-27)
paccavekkhanaNāna. In Pāli, "reviewing knowledge"; the recollection of any meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA, S. DHYĀNA) or object of concentration, the attainment of any of the four noble paths (P. magga, S. MĀRGA), or the fruition (PHALA) of a noble path. In the case of a noble attainment, reviewing knowledge arises in the following manner. According to the Pāli ABHIDHAMMA analysis, first, path consciousness (MAGGACITTA) gives rise to two or three moments of fruition consciousness (PHALACITTA), after which the mind subsides into the subconscious mental continuum or life stream (BHAVAnGASOTA). The subconscious life stream continues until the mind adverts to the previous path moment for the purpose of reviewing it. This is followed by seven moments of mental excitation, called impulsion or advertence (javana), that take as their object the past path moment. Thereafter the mind again subsides into the subconscious life stream. The mind then adverts to previous moments of fruition for the purpose of reviewing them. This is followed by seven moments of mental excitation that take as their object the past fruition moments. In the same way that the practitioner reviews the path and fruition, he also reviews the afflictions (P. kilesa; S. KLEsA) eradicated from his mind, those remaining to be eradicated, nibbāna (S. NIRVĀnA) as an object, etc. He knows thereby what he has attained, what remains to be attained, and what he has experienced.
parade ::: v. t. --> The ground where a military display is held, or where troops are drilled.
An assembly and orderly arrangement or display of troops, in full equipments, for inspection or evolutions before some superior officer; a review of troops. Parades are general, regimental, or private (troop, battery, or company), according to the force assembled.
Pompous show; formal display or exhibition.
peer-reviewed journal: A journal which contains articles of a scholarly nature. The articles have been reviewed by others who are experts in their field. This therefore creates a higher degree of reliability for the articles in such a publication.
Performance audit – Is an appraisal of how a particular activity is carrying out the company's policies and procedures. Such review may cover any activity within a department, division, or local area.
PERT {Program Evaluation and Review Technique}
PERT - Program (or Project) Evaluation and Review Technique, is a model for project management designed to analyse and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project.
Portable Forth Environment ::: (language) (PFE) A highly portable Forth development system based on the ANSI standard for Forth, by Dirk-Uwe Zoller of FHT, Mannheim, Germany. PFE aims to be correct, complete, usable, and simple but it isn't optimised for speed. It supports all dpANS word sets. It runs on Linux, RS/6000, and HP-UX.Tektronix adopted PFE in 1998 and added modules and multithreading. You can load additional C objects at run time to extend the Forth dictionary. It can be targeted at different embedded environments by changing the terminal driver and initilisation routines.Current version: 0.30.27 preview, as of 2000-11-23. .E-mail: Guido Draheim .(2000-12-07)
pradaksina. (P. padakkhina; T. skor ba; C. yourao; J. unyo; K. uyo 右遶). In Sanskrit, "circumambulation" (lit. "moving to the right"); a common means of demonstrating reverence to a person, place, or sacred object in the Indian tradition, since it places the object of reverence at the center of one's worship activity. Traditionally, circumambulation was performed in a clockwise direction with the worshipper's right side facing the object (the left side being considered polluted because of Indian toilet practices). In Buddhism, adherents might circumambulate a relic (sARĪRA) or reliquary (STuPA), a monastery, an image, or even an entire geographical location, such as a sacred mountain. Reliquary mounds were designed to facilitate this practice, as they are often surrounded by reliefs depicting important stereotypical episodes in the life of the Buddha (see BAXIANG), which worshippers would review and recollect as they circumambulated the stupa. The custom of making ritual circumambulations around stupas appears to have come into popularity early in the Buddhist tradition. See also GNAS SKOR BA.
Preliminary Assessment::: The process of collecting and reviewing available information about a known or suspected waste site or release.
proceedings "publication" (Proc.) A printed collection of papers presented at a conference or meeting, e.g. "The Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Microelectronics for Neural Networks and Fuzzy Systems". Along with learned journals, conference proceedings are a major repository of peer-reviewed research results. (2008-07-16)
Procreation The progressive series of methods by which the human life-wave has reproduced its kind on earth is closely related to the unfolding of composite human nature, and is also a part of the evolutionary history of the rounds and races. The reimbodying ego manifested its composite nature in the degree corresponding to the various gradations of matter in and through which it slowly descended, plane after plane, to the present state of things. Evidences of this series of former kinds of racial imbodiments, and of the progressive modes of reproduction are found repeated in the development of the human embryo, in the persistence of vestigial organs in adults, and in reproductive methods which still prevail in the lower kingdoms of plant and animal life. The histologist, in watching the division of cells, sees a microscopic review of the age-old history of mankind’s series of imbodiments. He observes, in the lowest forms of life, a homogeneous speck of protoplasm dividing into two. Next, in a nucleated cell, the cell nucleus splits into two subnuclei which develop within the cell wall, or burst through to multiply outside into independent entities. This fission is a copy of the reproductive method of the first root-race. The next type of cell division is budding, where a portion of the parent swells out at the surface, finally to separate and to grow into a full-sized individual, as in many vegetables, the sea anemone, etc. This repeats the way in which the primeval human race merged out of its first reproductive method. At the next step in biology, the parent organism throws off a single cell which develops into a multicellular organism like the parent, as in bacteria and mosses. The formation of these spores is followed by a type of intermediate hermaphroditism with the bisexual organs inhering in the same individual, as in plants. Corresponding to this, about the middle of the second root-race, the “buds” grew more numerous and became what zoologists would call human spores or seeds, or what Blavatsky described as vital sweat. Thus many of these buds at certain seasons when the parent entity had become mature, would leave it, as do the spores or seeds of plants today. These seeds were taken care of by nature and developed in the proper environment. At present, the exceptional cases of multiple human births hint at this long-past condition in procreation.
Program Evaluation and Review Technique "programming" (PERT) A method used to size a software product and calculate the Standard Deviation (SD) for risk assessment. The PERT equation (beta distribution) estimates the Equivalent {Delivered Source Instructions} (EDSIs) and the SD based on the analyst's estimates of the lowest possible size, the most likely size, and the highest possible size of each computer program component (CPC). (1996-05-29)
Program Evaluation and Review Technique ::: (programming) (PERT) A method used to size a software product and calculate the Standard Deviation (SD) for risk assessment. The PERT equation the most likely size, and the highest possible size of each computer program component (CPC). (1996-05-29)
prototyping ::: The creation of a model and the simulation of all aspects of a product. CASE tools support different degrees of prototyping. Some offer the end-user the ability to review all aspects of the user interface and the structure of documentation and reports before code is generated.
prototyping The creation of a model and the {simulation} of all aspects of a product. {CASE} tools support different degrees of prototyping. Some offer the end-user the ability to review all aspects of the {user interface} and the structure of documentation and reports before code is generated.
Quality review - The evaluation by one accounting firm or accountant of the soundness of the practices of another accounting firm or accountant.
Quality control - 1. procedures to establish an optimal level of audit performance by practitioners. Included are proper supervision over field work, evaluation of internal control, and employment of generally accepted auditing standards. The monitoring of a CPA firm's system of quality control by a peer reviewer involves consideration of the adequacy and relevance of the CPA firm's procedures, practices, and compliance thereto, effectiveness of professional development, and quality of the CPA firm's practice aids. Or 2. policies and techniques used to assure that some level of performance has been achieved. Included are controls in design and inspection. Variances from established norms are identified and rectified. Or 3. in manufacturing, procedures to achieve a desired level of satisfaction of the operation or product being produced. A number of tests and measurements may be required to determine that a part meets required specifications.See Total Quality Management (TQM) and benchmarking (best practices).
Quarterly Review, pp. 399-419. Philadelphia: Dropsie
Quarterly Review, vol. 80. London, 1915.
R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, New York and London, 1937. Review by S. MacLane, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 44 (1938), pp. 171-176. Review by S. C. Kleene, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 4 (1939), pp. 82-87.
readvertency ::: n. --> The act of adverting to again, or of reviewing.
recense ::: v. t. --> To review; to revise.
recension ::: n. --> The act of reviewing or revising; review; examination; enumeration.
Specifically, the review of a text (as of an ancient author) by an editor; critical revisal and establishment.
The result of such a work; a text established by critical revision; an edited version.
Registration - 1. act or fact of making an entry of any class of transactions or statements for the purpose of documentation for future reference. Such documentation may be in the form of financial information noted in registers, such as a cash register. Or 2. process that requires publicly issued securities to be reviewed by the SEC. 3. recording of stocks or bonds in the owner's class="d-title" name as opposed to bearer's class="d-title" name.
Reincarnating Ego ::: In the method of dividing the human principles into a trichotomy of an upper duad, an intermediate duad,and a lower triad -- or distributively spirit, soul, and body -- the second or intermediate duad,manas-kama, or the intermediate nature, is the ordinary seat of human consciousness, and itself iscomposed of two qualitative parts: an upper or aspiring part, which is commonly called the reincarnatingego or the higher manas, and a lower part attracted to material things, which is the focus of whatexpresses itself in the average man as the human ego, his everyday ordinary seat of consciousness.When death occurs, the mortal and material portions sink into oblivion; while the reincarnating egocarries the best and noblest parts of the spiritual memory of the man that was into the devachan or heavenworld of postmortem rest and recuperation, where the ego remains in the bosom of the monad or of themonadic essence in a state of the most perfect and utter bliss and peace, constantly reviewing andimproving upon in its own blissful imagination all the unfulfilled spiritual yearnings and longings of thelife just closed that its naturally creative faculties automatically suggest to the entity now in thedevachan.But the monad above spoken of passes from sphere to sphere on its peregrinations from earth, carryingwith it the reincarnating ego, or what we may for simplicity of expression call the earth-child, in itsbosom, where this reincarnating ego is in its state of perfect bliss and peace, until the time comes when,having passed through all the invisible realms connected by chains of causation with our own planet, itslowly "descends" again through these higher intermediate spheres earthwards. Coincidently does thereincarnating ego slowly begin to reawaken to self-conscious activity. Gradually it feels, at firstunconsciously to itself, the attraction earthwards, arising out of the karmic seeds of thought and emotionand impulse sown in the preceding life on earth and now beginning to awaken; and as these attractionsgrow stronger, in other words as the reincarnating ego awakens more fully, it finds itself under thedomination of a strong psychomagnetic attraction drawing it to the earth-sphere.The time finally comes when it is drawn strongly to the family on earth whose karmic attractions orkarmic status or condition are the nearest to its own characteristics; and it then enters, or attaches itselfto, by reason of the psychomagnetic attraction, the human seed which will grow into the body of thehuman being to be. Thus reincarnation takes place, and the reincarnating ego reawakens to life on earthin the body of a little child.
rejudge ::: v. t. --> To judge again; to reexamine; to review; to call to a new trial and decision.
Request For Comments "standard" (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered {Internet} informational documents and {standards} widely followed by commercial software and {freeware} in the {Internet} and {Unix} communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been {RFC 822}, the Internet {electronic mail} format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as {ANSI}. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of {ANSI} or {ISO}. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the {TCP/IP} documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated {misfeatures} that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. {rfc.net (http://rfc.net/)}. {W3 (http://w3.org/hypertext/DataSources/Archives/RFC_sites.html)}. {JANET UK FTP (ftp://nic.ja.net/pub/newsfiles/JIPS/rfc)}. {Imperial College, UK FTP (ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/rfc/)}. {Nexor UK (http://nexor.com/public/rfc/index/rfc.html)}. {Ohio State U (http://cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/top.html)}. See also {For Your Information}, {STD}. (1997-11-10)
Request For Comments ::: (standard) (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard.The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards.The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO.Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of joke RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon.The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. . . . .See also For Your Information, STD. (1997-11-10)
requirements analysis "project" The process of reviewing a business's processes to determine the business needs and {functional requirements} that a system must meet. (1996-08-01)
requirements analysis ::: (project) The process of reviewing a business's processes to determine the business needs and functional requirements that a system must meet. (1996-08-01)
resurvey ::: v. t. --> To survey again or anew; to review. ::: n. --> A second or new survey.
reveiwing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Review
Review, April 1956. Philadelphia: Dropsie College.
Review, April, 1956.
Review (England), September, 1910, pp. 107-115.
Review, September 1910.]
revisal ::: n. --> The act of revising, or reviewing and reexamining for correction and improvement; revision; as, the revisal of a manuscript; the revisal of a proof sheet; the revisal of a treaty.
revise ::: v. t. --> To look at again for the detection of errors; to reexamine; to review; to look over with care for correction; as, to revise a writing; to revise a translation.
To compare (a proof) with a previous proof of the same matter, and mark again such errors as have not been corrected in the type.
To review, alter, and amend; as, to revise statutes; to revise an agreement; to revise a dictionary.
revision ::: n. --> The act of revising; reexamination for correction; review; as, the revision of a book or writing, or of a proof sheet; a revision of statutes.
That which is made by revising.
R. Harlev, George Boole, F.R.S., The British Quarterly Review, vol. 44 (1866). pp 141-181 Anon., George Boole, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. 15 (1867). Obituary notices of fellows deceased, pp. vi-xi. P.E.B. Jourdain, George Boole, The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 41 (1910), pp. 332-352.
Risk Identification ::: Recognizing that a hazard exists and trying to define its characteristics. Often risks exist and are even measured for some time before their adverse consequences are recognized. In other cases, risk identification is a deliberate procedure to review, and it is hoped, anticipate possible hazards.
Risk_tolerance ::: is the degree of variability in investment returns that an investor is willing to withstand. Risk tolerance is an important component in investing. You should have a realistic understanding of your ability and willingness to stomach large swings in the value of your investments; if you take on too much risk, you might panic and sell at the wrong time. BREAKING DOWN 'Risk Tolerance' Risk tolerance assessments for investors abound, including risk-related surveys or questionnaires. As an investor, you may also want to review historical worst-case returns for different asset classes to get an idea of how much money you would feel comfortable losing if your investments have a bad year or bad series of years. Other factors affecting risk tolerance are the time horizon you have to invest, your future earning capacity, and the presence of other assets such as a home, pension, Social Security or an inheritance. In general, you can take greater risk with investable assets when you have other, more stable sources of funds available. Aggressive Risk Tolerance Aggressive investors tend to be market-savvy. A deep understanding of securities and their propensities allows such individuals and institutional investors to purchase highly volatile instruments, such as small company stocks that can plummet to zero or options contracts that can expire worthless. While maintaining a base of riskless securities, aggressive investors reach for maximum returns with maximum risk.
Romero, Francisco: Born in 1891. Professor of Philosophy at the Universities of Buenos Aires, La Plata, and the National Institute for Teachers. Director of the Philosophical Library of the Losada Publishing House, and distinguished staff member of various cultural magazines and reviews in Latin America. Francisco Romero is one of the most important figures in the philosophical movement of South America. He is the immediate successor of Korn, and as such he follows on the footsteps of his master, doing pioneer work, not only striving towards an Argentinian philosophy, but also campaigning for philosophy in the nations of Latin America through a program of cultural diffusion. Among his most important writings, the following may be mentioned: Vteja y Nueva Concepcion de la Realidad, 1932; Los Problemas de la Filosofia de la Cultura, 1936; Filosofia de la Persona, 1938; Logica (In collaboration with Pucciarelli), 1936; Programa de una Filosofia, 1940; Un Filosofo de la Problematicidad, 1934; Descartes y Husserl, 1938; Contribucion al Estudio de las Relaciones de Comparacion, 1938; Teoria y Practica de la Verdad, 1939. Three characteristic notes may be observed in the philosophy of Romero Aporetics or Problematics, Philosophy of Weltanschauungen, Philosophy of the Person. The first has to do with his criterion of knowledge. Justice to all the facts of experience, over against mere system building, seems to be the watchword. The desirability and gradual imposition of Structuralism as the modern Weltanschauung, over against outworn world conceptions such as Evolution, Mechanism, Rationalism, etc., is the emphasis of the second principle of his philosophy. Personality as a mere function of transcendence, with all that transcendence implies in the realm of value and history, carries the main theme of his thought. See Latin American Philosophy. -- J.A.F.
Rudimentary or Vestigial Organs These include a number of different tissue-remnants or organs of primitive type, some of which are only transients in the developing fetus, while others persist in the bodies of animals or man, where they are dwarfed, atrophied, or functionless as far as is known. The vermiform appendix, the ear muscles, the gill clefts, pineal gland, rudimentary tail of the embryo, etc., are referred to as affording silent testimony to the reality of functions which were vitally active in primeval life, but which have long since atrophied in the course of animal and human progress (SD 2:119). The fact of such organs in the human body is adduced in support of the Darwinian theory, but it can equally well support the theory that the mammals came from man. Again, we know that, though man did not evolve from the apes, there was a time when his form somewhat resembled that which the apes now have. The possession of distinct traces in each sex of the reproductive apparatus of the other sex is biological evidence of ancient hermaphroditism. The undifferentiated sex of the embryo during its early growth also reviews the asexual character of the first root-races. The present routine process of maturation or reduction of chromosomes in the fertilized cell, and the death of the polar cells, appear to biologists as somehow unnaturally involved. This process, however, apparently in some degree, echoes distantly the change in the third root-race from an androgynous reproductive method to that of the separated sexes. The law of retardation which operates when a higher type has been evolved, now “preserves hermaphroditism as the reproductive method of the majority of plants and many lower animals” (SD 2:172n). Thus, man is not the copy but the evolutionary prototype, for “the potentiality of every organ useful to animal life is locked up in Man — the microcosm of the Macrocosm” (SD 2:685). The human form is the repertory of all mammalian forms, and nature preserves organs and functions in vestigial condition against a future time when, if these organs and functions be latent and not merely in process of disappearance, they will become active again. This accounts for the occasional reversion to utterly unknown primeval types as noted in teratology. A general unity of type has been preserved throughout the ages all through the multitude of organisms which grew out of a few basic types. “The economy of Nature does not sanction the co-existence of several utterly opposed ‘ground plans’ of organic evolution on one planet” (SD 2:683).
Samson’s parents (see Jewish Quarterly Review,
Saturday-night special ::: (From police slang for a cheap handgun) A quick-and-dirty program or feature kluged together during off hours, under a deadline, and in response to pressure from a salescritter. Such hacks are dangerously unreliable, but all too often sneak into a production release after insufficient review.[Jargon File] (1994-11-11)
Saturday-night special "jargon" (From police slang for a cheap handgun) A {quick-and-dirty} program or feature {kluge}d together during off hours, under a deadline, and in response to pressure from a {salescritter}. Such hacks are dangerously unreliable, but all too often sneak into a production release after insufficient review. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-11)
Science ::: A process through which knowledge is acquired. The scientific method conventionally begins with an observation and proceeds to formulate a hypothesis. From there a sound experiment is designed with appropriate variables to study and controls set to try to narrow the focus to the variable of study (i.e. whether the independent variable is causing a change in the dependent variable). If the results of the experiment align with the hypothesis then further experiments are designed and peer-reviewed to ensure validity. If the results do not align then the hypothesis may need to be reworked. This is a simplification of the process but is the primary method of knowledge acquisition in society today. Unfortunately the mental state of the experimenters and the subjects cannot be controlled adequately and there needs to be a rethinking of this method to truly understand and decipher the mystery of consciousness. The process of meditation is used to decipher the factors that give rise to conscious experience.
text ::: 1. Executable code, especially a pure code portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a multitasking operating system.Compare English.2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary ASCII or EBCDIC representation (see flat ASCII). Those are text files; you can review them using the editor.These two contradictory senses confuse hackers too.[Jargon File] (1995-03-16)
text 1. Executable code, especially a "pure code" portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a {multitasking} {operating system}. Compare {English}. 2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary {ASCII} or {EBCDIC} representation (see {flat ASCII}). "Those are text files; you can review them using the editor." These two contradictory senses confuse hackers too. [{Jargon File}] (1995-03-16)
-. “The Poets and the Angels.” The Literary Review,
The Testament of Solomon (Jewish Quarterly Review,
This book represents more than twelve years of effort. Donald Lopez initiated the project with the assistance of several of his graduate students at the University of Michigan, many of whom have now gone on to receive their degrees and be appointed to university positions. Around that time, Robert Buswell asked Lopez to serve as one of the editors of his two-volume Encyclopedia of Buddhism (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2004). When that project was completed, Lopez invited Buswell to join him as coauthor of the dictionary project, an offer he enthusiastically accepted, bringing with him his own team of graduate students from UCLA. In dividing up responsibilities for the dictionary, Buswell took principal charge of entries on mainstream Buddhist concepts, Indian abhidharma, and East Asian Buddhism; Lopez took principal charge of entries on MahAyAna Buddhism in India, Buddhist tantra, and Tibetan Buddhism. Once drafts of the respective sections were complete, we exchanged files to review each other's sections. Over the last seven years, we were in touch almost daily on one or another aspect of the project as we expanded upon and edited each other's drafts, making this a collaborative project in the best sense of the term. Graduate students at both the University of Michigan and UCLA assisted in gathering materials for the dictionary, preparing initial drafts, and tracing the multiple cross-references to Asian language terms. This project would have been impossible without their unstinting assistance and extraordinary commitment; we are grateful to each of them. Those graduate students and colleagues who made particularly extensive contributions to the dictionary are listed on the title page.
This descent of the ray tip into, and selection of, suitable earth of matter, has been the basis of all the various methods of procreation. The process began in the huge ovoid form of the ethereal first root-race by simple division of this human cell, as the embryo today repeats in beginning its rapid review of racial records. “One infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in the formation of an organism, determining alone and unaided, by means of constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future man (or animal) in its physical, mental, and psychic characteristics. . . . those germinal cells do not have their genesis at all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from the ancestral germinal cell passed from father to son through long generations” (SD 1:223n). See also HEREDITY; PROCREATION; REPRODUCTION
Though fragments of the absolute experience, our minds somehow remain separate selves and persons. Though infinite and all-comprehensive in extent, and reviewing ad infinitum its own infinity in knowing that it knows that it knows, the Absolute is nevertheless a finished and closed whole. Though shot through and through with error and evil and sin and suffering, the Absolute is nevertheless perfect, and perfect because of them, since struggle with them and triumph over them is of the essence of its perfection. Though a temporal process, it is nevertheless overarches that process in a single act of comprehension in which past, present, and future are grasped, even as the successive notes of a musical phrase are grasped, as an eternally present completed fact.
tiger team (US military jargon) 1. Originally, a team whose purpose is to penetrate security, and thus test security measures. These people are paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g. leave cardboard signs saying "bomb" in critical defence installations, hand-lettered notes saying "Your codebooks have been stolen" (they usually haven't been) inside safes, etc. After a successful penetration, some high-ranking security type shows up the next morning for a "security review" and finds the sign, note, etc. and all hell breaks loose. Serious successes of tiger teams sometimes lead to early retirement for base commanders and security officers (see the {patch} entry for an example). 2. Recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or special {firefighting} group called in to look at a problem. A subset of tiger teams are professional {crackers}, testing the security of military computer installations by attempting remote attacks via networks or supposedly "secure" communication channels. Some of their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the greatest hacks of all times. The term has been adopted in commercial computer-security circles in this more specific sense. [{Jargon File}]
trap-door function "cryptography, mathematics" A special class of {one-way function}, which is reversible if you know a certain secret associated with the function. {(http://rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/faq/2-3-2.html)}. {(http://ieor.berkeley.edu/~jshu/knapsack/Review/OverviewPK.html)}. (2003-05-22)
UBASIC ::: Yuji Kida .An extension of BASIC for symbolic mathematics and number theory.UBASIC supports bignums, fractions, complex numbers, polynomials and integer factorisation. It runs under MS-DOS and is written in assembly language.Current version: 8. .[Review, W.D. Neumann, Notices of AMS 36 (May/June 1989)][A math-oriented high-precision BASIC, Notices of the A.M.S, 38 (Mar 1991)]. (1992-07-06)
UBASIC Yuji Kida "kida@rkmath.rikkyo.ac.jp". An extension of {BASIC} for {symbolic mathematics} and {number theory}. UBASIC supports {bignums}, fractions, complex numbers, polynomials and integer factorisation. It runs under {MS-DOS} and is written in {assembly language}. {(ftp://ftp.simtel.com/math/utk/software/msdos/number.theory/ubasic/)}. [Review, W.D. Neumann, Notices of AMS 36 (May/June 1989)] ["A math-oriented high-precision BASIC", Notices of the A.M.S, 38 (Mar 1991)]. (1992-07-06)
U. Cassina, L'oeuvre philosophique de G. Peano, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, vol. 40 (1933), pp. 481-491. Peirce, Charles Sanders: American Philosopher. Born in Cambridge, Mass, on September 10th, 1839. Harvard M.A. in 1862 and Sc. B. in 1863. Except for a brief cireer as lectuier in philosophy at Harvard, 1864-65 and 1869-70 and in logic at Johns Hopkins, 1879-84, he did no formal teaching. Longest tenure was with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for thirty years beginning in 1861. Died at Milford, Pa. in 1914 He had completed only one work, The Grand Logic, published posthumously (Coll. Papers). Edited Studies in Logic (1883). No volumes published during his lifetime but author of many lectures, essays and reviews in periodicals, particularly in the Popular Science Monthly, 1877-78, and in The Monist, 1891-93, some of which have been reprinted in Chance, Love and Logic (1923), edited by Morris R. Cohen, and. together with the best of his other work both published and unpublished, in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931-35), edited by Charles Hartshorne ¦ind Paul Weiss. He was most influenced by Kant, who had he thought, raised all the relevant philosophical problems but from whom he differed on almost every solution. He was excited by Darwin, whose doctrine of evolution coincided with his own thought, and disciplined by laboratory experience in the physical sciences which inspired his search for rigor and demonstration throughout his work. Felt himself deeply opposed to Descartes, whom he accused of being responsible for the modern form of the nominalistic error. Favorably inclined toward Duns Scotus, from whom he derived his realism. Philosophy is a sub-class of the science of discovery, in turn a branch of theoretical science. The function of philosophy is to expliin and hence show unity in the variety of the universe. All philosophy takes its start in logic, or the relations of signs to their objects, and phenomenology, or the brute experience of the objective actual world. The conclusions from these two studies meet in the three basic metaphysical categories: quality, reaction, and representation. Quality is firstness or spontaneity; reaction is secondness or actuality; and representation is thirdness or possibility. Realism (q.v.) is explicit in the distinction of the modes of being actuality as the field of reactions, possibility as the field of quality (or values) and representation (or relations). He was much concerned to establish the realism of scientific method: that the postulates, implications and conclusions of science are the results of inquiry yet presupposed by it. He was responsible for pragmatism as a method of philosophy that the sum of the practical consequences which result by necessity from the truth of an intellectual conception constitutes the entire meaning of that conception. Author of the ethical principle that the limited duration of all finite things logically demands the identification of one's interests with those of an unlimited community of persons and things. In his cosmology the flux of actuality left to itself develops those systematic characteristics which are usually associated with the realm of possibility. There is a logical continuity to chance events which through indefinite repetition beget order, as illustrated in the tendency of all things to acquire habits. The desire of all things to come together in this certain order renders love a kind of evolutionary force. Exerted a strong influence both on the American pragmatist, William James (1842-1910), the instrumentalist, John Dewey (1859-), as well as on the idealist, Jociah Royce (1855-1916), and many others. -- J.K.F.
Validate-1. to attest to the correctness and reliability of a financial item. A validity review or test is required by the accountant to satisfy the legitimacy of the item. An example of validation is the examination and approval of an employee's expense request form by a supervisor. Another example is the counting of petty cash to see that it conforms to the amount in the financial records. Or 2. to make something legal or effective. An example is signing one's class="d-title" name to a bill of sale, which closes the deal.
VII. Leonine Restoration (1879). The Encyclical Aeterni Patris of Leo XIII gave this new movement a conscious direction. Since Leo XIII's time to the present day, Catholic Scholars have been active both in the fields of speculation and history. Numerous reviews have been founded and Scholasticism has raised its voice even in the non-sectarian Universities of America. -- W.G.
Watson, John Broadus: (1878-1958) American psychologist and leading exponent of Behaviorism (see Behaviorism), studied and served as Instructor at the University of Chicago, and was appointed Professor of Experimental Psychology at Johns Hopkins University 1908 where he served until 1920. Since then he engaged in the advertising business in New York City. The program for a behavioristic psychology employed the objective methods of the biological sciences and excluded the introspective method of earlier psychology; it is formulated by Watson in "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It," Psychological Review XX (1913), and Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, 1914. -- L.W.
woman ::: (tool) A replacement for the Unix man documentation browsing command. Version 1.157 of woman runs under/on 386BSD, OSF, Apollo Domain/OS, BSD, HP-UX, IBM RS-6000, Irix, Linux, Solaris, Sony NEWS, SunOS, Ultrix, Unicos.Posted to comp.sources.reviewed Volume 3, Issue 50 on 05 Jul 1993 by Arne Henrik Juul , archive-name woman-1.157. . . (1995-03-21)
woman "tool" A replacement for the {Unix} {man} {documentation} browsing command. Version 1.157 of woman runs under/on {386BSD}, {OSF}, {Apollo} {Domain/OS}, {BSD}, {HP-UX}, {IBM} {RS-6000}, {Irix}, {Linux}, {Solaris}, {Sony} {NEWS}, {SunOS}, {Ultrix}, {Unicos}. Posted to comp.sources.reviewed Volume 3, Issue 50 on 05 Jul 1993 by Arne Henrik Juul "arnej@pvv.unit.no", archive-name woman-1.157. {FTP USC, USA (ftp://usc.edu/archive/usenet/sources/comp.sources.reviewed/volume3/woman-1.157/)}. {FTP Imperial, UK (ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/comp.sources.reviewed/volume3/woman-1.157/)}. (1995-03-21)
writing in the National Review on “The Christian
KEYS (10k)
3 Dr Robert A Hatch
1 Nandita Chatterjee
1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9810342
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
25 Anonymous
17 Harvard Business Review
8 The Paris Review
8 John Irving
7 Jennifer L Armentrout
7 Donald Trump
6 Roger Ebert
6 Joyce Carol Oates
6 John Updike
6 Dorothy Parker
6 David Allen
6 Bob Woodward
5 Vladimir Nabokov
5 Laszlo Bock
5 Judd Apatow
4 William Monahan
4 Lord Byron
4 Kevin Bacon
4 Jeremy Stoppelman
4 Jennifer Weiner
1:Weekly Reviews ::: Dedicate at least one afternoon or entire evening during the weekend to review all of your courses. Make certain you have an understanding of where each course is going and that your study schedule is appropriate. Do the 4x6 thing: One card for each chapter. Then ask yourself how each chapter relates to other chapters, and then, how the readings relate to each of the lectures. Are there contradictions? Differences of opinion, approach, method? What evidence is there to support the differences of opinion? What are your views? Can you defend them? A good exercise. ~ Dr Robert A Hatch, How to Study, #KEYS
2:Practical Review Tools ::: Flash cards, Chapter Outlines, 4x6 Summaries: You need to find ways to repeat and rehearse information and ideas that work for you. Any number of creative tools can be used to help you organize and remember information and make it manageable. I like 4x6 cards. They are sturdy, large enough to hold succinct information, and you can scribble ideas that jog the memory. The beauty 4x6's is that they can be carried anywhere. You can study them at the library, laundry, or lavatory. They travel on the bus, they can save you from a boring date, they can be thrown away immediately without guilt or survive years of faithful service. ~ Dr Robert A Hatch, How to Study, #KEYS
3:A major part of the book is devoted to poetry. It opens with Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. The author has a novel way of appreciating this most wonderful epic, which continually overwhelms and bewilders us. He has taken this bewilderment as the subject of the chapter "An Uninitiated Reader's Response to Savitri". This is a rarely explored area, namely the magical poetic beauty of Savitri that casts a spell on the reader even when he does not always understand its content. For the lover of poetry is attracted by its "beauty and strength", "he is overawed by the grandeur of the animated spirituality". Any time spent with Savitri thus becomes a special moment in his life. Later in the book we find another kind of appreciation of the epic in the chapter on K. D. Sethna as a "crusader of aesthetic yoga". There the author calls Savitri the "Odyssey of Integral Yoga" where yoga and poetry come together. He also appreciates the "sensitive analysis of stylistic effect" by Sethna, who uses wonderful quotations from Savitri as examples of adequate style, effective style, illumined style, etc. (From the Near to Far by Dr. Saurendranth Basu) ~ Nandita Chatterjee, review of the book, #KEYS
4:
Sweet Mother, Just as there is a methodical progression of exercises for mental and physical education, isn't there a similar method to progress towards Sri Aurobindo's yoga?
It should vary with each individual.
Could you make a step-by-step programme for me to follow daily?
The mechanical regularity of a fixed programme is indispensable for physical, mental and vital development; but this mechanical rigidity has little or no effect on spiritual development where the spontaneity of an absolute sincerity is indispensable. Sri Aurobindo has written very clearly on this subject. And what he has written on it has appeared in The Synthesis Of Yoga.
However, as an initial help to set you on the path, I can tell you: (1) that on getting up, before starting the day, it is good to make an offering of this day to the Divine, an offering of all that one thinks, all that one is, all that one will do; (2) and at night, before going to sleep, it is good to review the day, taking note of all the times one has forgotten or neglected to make an offering of one's self or one's action, and to aspire or pray that these lapses do not recur. This is a minimum, a very small beginning - and it should increase with the sincerity of your consecration. 31 March 1965
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother, [T1],#KEYS
5:THE FOUR FOUNDATIONAL PRACTICES
Changing the Karmic Traces
Throughout the day, continuously remain in the awareness that all experience is a dream. Encounter all things as objects in a dream, all events as events in a dream, all people as people in a dream.
Envision your own body as a transparent illusory body. Imagine you are in a lucid dream during the entire day. Do not allow these reminders to be merely empty repetition. Each time you tell yourself, "This is a dream," actually become more lucid. Involve your body and your senses in becoming more present.
Removing Grasping and Aversion
Encounter all things that create desire and attachment as the illusory empty, luminous phenomena of a dream. Recognize your reactions to phenomena as a dream; all emotions, judgments, and preferences are being dreamt up. You can be certain that you are doing this correctly if immediately upon remembering that your reaction is a dream, desire and attachment lessen.
Strengthening Intention
Before going to sleep, review the day and reflect on how the practice has been. Let memories of the day arise and recognize them as memories of dream. Develop a strong intention to be aware in the coming night's dreams. Put your whole heart into this intention and pray strongly for success.
Cultivating Memory and joyful Effort
Begin the day with the strong intention to maintain the practice. Review the night, developing happiness if you remembered or were lucid in your dreams. Recommit yourself to the practice, with the intention to become lucid if you were not, and to further develop lucidity if you were. At any time during the day or evening it is good to pray for success in practice. Generate as strong an intention as possible. This is the key to the practice, ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:it's a good idea to review past mistakes before committing new ones. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 2:Review your goals twice every day in order to be focused on achieving them. ~ les-brown, @wisdomtrove 3:Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 4:I don't want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 5:I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 6:Review Any Relevant Checklists: Is there anything you haven’t done that you need to do? ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 7:Review your mission statement. Create three long-term goals that support your mission. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 8:Review Waiting For: List Record appropriate actions for any needed follow-up. Check off received items. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 9:I was very vulnerable to criticism for many years. I could read a bad review and remember it my whole life. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 10:Review Next Actions Lists: Mark off completed actions. Review for reminders of further action steps to capture. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 11:One bad review doesn't ruin my day because I realize what a badge of honor it is to get a bit of criticism at all. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 12:For what do we live, but to make sport by subjecting our neighbors to endless discretionary review for minor additions? ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 13:Libraries should be open to all - except the censor. [Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960] ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 14:Review whatever lists, overviews, and orientation maps you need to, as often as you need to, to get their contents off your mind. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 15:It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 16:The Path of the Law. Address to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Harvard Law Review, Volume 10, March 25, 1897. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 17:Whoever shall review his life, will find that the whole tenor of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 18:Review Pending and Support Files: Browse through all work-in-progress support material to trigger new actions, completions, and waiting-fors. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 19:According to the best research, less than 3% of Americans have written goals, and less than 1% review and rewrite their goals on a daily basis. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 20:Review Someday/Maybe List: Check for any projects that may have become active and transfer them to Projects. Delete items no longer of interest. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 21:This is the place. Stand still, my steed,- Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy past The forms that once have been. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 22:Those who have had near-death experiences often report total recall of what has happened in their lives, which they review from a detached perspective. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 23:Send me no more reviews of any kind. I will read no more of evil or good in that line. Walter Scott has not read a review of himself for thirteen years . ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 24:Review your mission statement, roles and goals, and current weekly plan. What are your top three priorities for this week? These are your Quadrant II activities? ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 25:When we start a new venture, we base it on hard research and analysis. Typically, we review the industry and put ourselves in our customer's shoes to see what we could do better. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 26:Think about your goals and review them daily. Every morning when you begin, take action on the most important task you can accomplish to achieve your most important goal at the moment. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 27:The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarized in a school or college examination paper or a brisk critical review. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 28:Collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 29:Review Projects (and Larger Outcome) Lists: Evaluate the status of projects, goals, and outcomes one by one, ensuring that at least one current kick-start action for each is in your system. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 30:From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 31:The Weekly Review is the time to: Gather and process all your stuff. Review your system. Update your lists. Get clean, clear, current, and complete. You have to use your mind to get things off your mind. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 32:Systematic decision review also shows executives their own weaknesses, particularly the areas in which they are simply incompetent. In these areas, smart executives don't make decisions or take actions. They delegate. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 33:Previous Calendar Data: Review past calendar dates in detail for remaining action items, reference information, and so on, and transfer that data into the active system. Be able to archive your last week’s calendar with nothing left uncaptured. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 34:I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book. From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it. Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book -and does. ~ groucho-marx, @wisdomtrove 35:Pictures pass me in long review,& 36:& 37:Make reflecting on your life a regular routine. Whether you keep a journal, or make reflecting on your day part of your evening routine, or have a weekly session where you review your life or take some time away from the office to reflect on everything … it’s important that you give things some thought. Regularly. ~ leo-babauta, @wisdomtrove 38:Everyone has failed, everyone has misspoken, everyone has meant well but done the wrong thing. Your favorite restaurants, cafes and books have all gotten a one-star review along the way. No brand is perfect, no individual can pretend to be either. Perfect can't possibly be the goal, we're left with generous, important and human instead. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 39:I was amplifying the negative at the expense of the positive, not to serve any useful function, not to make my writing better, but to destroy it. The lizard brain, so attuned to people laughing behind our backs, was on high alert for this sort of criticism and would do anything it could to stop me from writing again. I haven't sought out and read a review or a tweet since. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 40:Don't wait until you die to learn the warrior's way. Do it now, each night, just before you drift off to sleep. As you review your day, consider these two questions of courage and love. Learn from each day, so that each day you can show a little more courage and a little more love. Then, as incidents occur, you may rise to the occasion and look back at the end of your life and feel good about the way you lived. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 41:There was one person who greatly and directly benefited my career& 42:You don't want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don't want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 43:Process Your Notes: Review any journal entries, meeting notes, or miscellaneous notes scribbled on notebook paper. List action items, projects, waiting-fors, calendar events, and someday/ maybes, as appropriate. File any reference notes and materials. Stage your Read / Review material. Be ruthless with yourself, processing all notes and thoughts relative to interactions, projects, new initiatives, and input that have come your way since your last download, and purging those not needed. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 44:If you hear a good idea, capture it; write it down. Don't trust your memory. Then on a cold wintry evening, go back through your journal, the ideas that changed your life, the ideas that saved your marriage, the ideas that bailed you out of bankruptcy, the ideas that helped you become successful, the ideas that made you millions. What a good review-going back over the collection of ideas that you gathered over the years. So be a collector of good ideas for your business, for your relationships, for your future. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 45:Most people have major leaks in their collection process. Many have collected things but haven't processed or decided what action to take about them. Others make good decisions about "stuff" in the moment but lose the value of that thinking because they don't efficiently organize the results. Still others have good systems but don't review them consistently enough to keep them functional. Finally, if any one of these links is weak, what someone is likely to choose to do at any point in time may not be the best option. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 46:I am never much interested in the effects of what I write... .I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my... books. Two times out of three I know something about the reviewer, and in very few cases have I any respect for his judgments. Thus his praise, if he praises me, leaves me unmoved. I can't recall any review that has even influenced me in the slightest. I live in sort of a vacuum, and I suspect that most other writers do, too. It is hard to imagine one of the great ones paying any serious attention to contemporary opinion. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 47:.. is an active and internal process that includes investigating one's attitudes, memories and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one's full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one's external circumstances in an effort to recreate one's life in a way that serves activation of will - the will to see and accept truths about one's life and how one has used one's energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem, and health. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 48:.. is an active and internal process that includes investigating one's attitudes, memories and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one's full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one's external circumstances in an effort to recreate one's life in a way that serves activation of will - the will to see and accept truths about one's life and how one has used one's energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem, and health. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 49:Someday, in the moment of death, your whole life will pass before you. In a few fractions of a second-because time no longer applies-you will see many incidents from your life in order to learn. You will review your life with two questions in your consciousness: Could I have shown a little more courage in these moments? Could I have shown a little more love? You will see where you let fear stop you from expressing who you are, how you feel, or what you need. You will see whether you were able to expand into these moments, just a little, to show love, or whether you contracted. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Alva Johnston. ~ The Paris Review, #NFDB
2:B. Cory Kilvert ~ The Paris Review, #NFDB
3:Muriel Spark. If ~ The Paris Review, #NFDB
4:Silent Spring. It ~ The Paris Review, #NFDB
5:The Elements of Style. ~ The Paris Review, #NFDB
6:England's Flying Saucer Review, ~ John A Keel, #NFDB
7:To read is human, to review is divine. ~ Peter James, #NFDB
8:Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~ The Paris Review, #NFDB
9:To review ones store is to mow twice. ~ George Herbert, #NFDB
10:It was like sending a dog to review Cats. ~ Paul Murray, #NFDB
11:One cannot review a bad book without showing off. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
12:I rarely read or buy a book because of a review. ~ Jim Harrison, #NFDB
13:I will find your books and review with nastiness. ~ Andy Warhol, #NFDB
14:thing, “Typhoon and the Tor Bay” it was called, ~ The Paris Review, #NFDB
15:What is a budget review? A personal review with numbers ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
16:If you get a bad review, you take that in your stride. ~ Anish Kapoor, #NFDB
17:I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
18:It's much easier to say negative things in a review. ~ Mitchell Hurwitz, #NFDB
19:The New York Times Review of Books is toilet paper. Used. ~ James Purdy, #NFDB
20:FYI, I’m giving this establishment a really crappy Yelp review. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
21:Online review sites are the slushpiles of feedback. ~ S Kelley Harrell M Div, #NFDB
22:Review ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
23:Every time another review comes out I let out a deep breath. ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
24:A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
25:For once I am living my life rather than watching it pass in review. ~ Lee Smith, #NFDB
26:The best thing you can do for a writer is give them a bad review. ~ Eileen Myles, #NFDB
27:I'd never seen anyone do a rebuttal review to some of the reviews. ~ Mark Ruffalo, #NFDB
28:Once you become a victim, you cease to become a leader, ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
29:Writing ain't easy, support your indie author & write a review! ~ Ben Jackson, #NFDB
30:A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution. ~ Dustin Hoffman, #NFDB
31:I have friends who will critique me much harder than any review. ~ Wynton Marsalis, #NFDB
32:You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review. ~ E A Bucchianeri, #NFDB
33:a glass of wine will taste better after reading a positive review of it, ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
34:Each time I reach a goal or read a great review, I am beyond pleased. ~ Rachel Gibson, #NFDB
35:it's a good idea to review past mistakes before committing new ones. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
36:Beer, Michael. “Conducting a Performance Appraisal Interview ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
37:National Review will support the rightwardmost viable candidate. ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
38:REVIEW 1 John 1:9 Ephesians 2:8–9 1 John 4:7 Psalm 34:19 Jeremiah 33:3 ~ Pamela L McQuade, #NFDB
39:Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good. ~ Plato, #NFDB
40:I don't want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
41:Paul Benacerraf, ‘What Numbers Could Not Be,’ Philosophical Review (1965). ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
42:A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
43:I have almost never been compared to male writers in any review. All women. ~ Kate Zambreno, #NFDB
44:I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book. ~ Groucho Marx, #NFDB
45:As I review my life, I feel I must have missed the point, either then or now. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
46:I don't think, until the end, I had read a positive review of Boy Meets World. ~ Will Friedle, #NFDB
47:A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
48:every time a reader leaves a book review, a crippled monkey gets a free banana. I ~ Bobby Adair, #NFDB
49:I read every single review, because I love film criticism and I'm interested. ~ Melanie Lynskey, #NFDB
50:He must be some escaped lunatic. Said an early Boston review of Leaves of Grass. ~ David Markson, #NFDB
51:I was a journalist and wrote about filmmakers, but I didn't review movies per se. ~ Curtis Hanson, #NFDB
52:It’s tough when markets change and your people within the company don’t. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
53:Review the past, Learn the lessons, Forgive the self, Forgive others, Dwell in peace. ~ Caris Roane, #NFDB
54:As the 'critic of color,' I'm frequently asked to review Indian and Pakistani writers. ~ Parul Sehgal, #NFDB
55:Kenyon Review) – Ваша заметка в месте 239 | Добавлено: среда, 12 марта 2014 г. в 12:04:41 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
56:Luc : It's time for our annual review of Rules You Disrespectful Bastards Never Follow. ~ Chloe Neill, #NFDB
57:A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch. ~ Kingsley Amis, #NFDB
58:A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, #NFDB
59:It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
60:Of all reviews, the crushing review is the most popular, as being the most readable. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
61:Playing without a concurrent critical review of one's skills will simply get you nowhere. ~ Edmar Mednis, #NFDB
62:How oft review; each finding, like a friend, Something to blame, and something to commend. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
63:I can get very depressed by a review that is unfair, unreasonable, and totally destructive. ~ John O Hara, #NFDB
64:On mobile, what are the core apps? It's basically messaging, mapping and review data. ~ Jeremy Stoppelman, #NFDB
65:We are trying to pick the next president, not review the birth of the current president. ~ Chris Matthews, #NFDB
66:Another review also concluded that “teacher ratings and learning are not closely related ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer, #NFDB
67:It's enormously cheering to get a good review by someone who seems to understand your work. ~ Kenneth Koch, #NFDB
68:was indicated that the Draft Committee would meet within the year to review and, if necessary, ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
69:Marking and underscoring a book makes it more interesting, and far easier to review rapidly. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
70:Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #NFDB
71:If I get a bad review, I dont take it personally because everyone is entitled to their opinion. ~ Gareth Gates, #NFDB
72:male peer reviewers regularly drag down aggregate review scores for TV shows aimed at women, ~ Jaclyn Friedman, #NFDB
73:My first review for the TV movie The Bionic Showdown said I was as interesting as a bus ride. ~ Sandra Bullock, #NFDB
74:Review your description of the world, what it is to be a woman, and see how inadequate it is. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
75:Speed of change is the driving force. Leading change competently is the only answer. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
76:For the movie review columns, I always knew exactly what I was going to write about - the movies. ~ Fran Lebowitz, #NFDB
77:Judicial review has been a part of our democracy in this constitutional government for over 200 years. ~ Ron Kind, #NFDB
78:Review your work. You will find, if you are honest, that 90% of the trouble is traceable to loafing. ~ Ford Frick, #NFDB
79:Every philosophical review ought to be a philosophy of reviews at the same time. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
80:I've never yet read a review of one of my own books that I couldn't have written much better myself. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
81:OK my sweeties - HELP PLEASE... ...you can flag that bitch - 48 people LIKE her review already, really?? ~ J C Cliff, #NFDB
82:A five-star review on Amazon.com leads to approximately twenty more books sold than a one-star review. ~ Jonah Berger, #NFDB
83:If I never received a bad review then I wouldn't be a real writer, but I much prefer the good ones ~ Charity Parkerson, #NFDB
84:I'm a California boy. I don't tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.
(Paris Review Interview) ~ Ray Bradbury,#NFDB
85:As I review the events of my past life I realize how subtle are the influences that shape our destinies. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
86:Here I end (thank God) the first and dullest business of this book—the rough review of recent thought. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
87:Seeing your name on the list for KP or guard duty when you're in the Army is like reading a bad review. ~ Robert Duvall, #NFDB
88:That’s my latest Yelp review,” he explained. “Posted by someone with the screen name Nanananabooboo. ~ Rachel Higginson, #NFDB
89:A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper. ~ The Paris Review, #NFDB
90:In moments of crisis, all you gotta do is review your multiplication tables, and it’ll all blow over! ~ Andrea Camilleri, #NFDB
91:One of the very first things I will do is to order a thorough review of our cyberdefenses and weaknesses. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
92:I will only start taking book reviews seriously from the day that books are able to review readers. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
93:The sort of people who intermittently review their children, she thinks, rather than raise them. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett, #NFDB
94:I was very vulnerable to criticism for many years. I could read a bad review and remember it my whole life. ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
95:People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
[in review of a book] ~ Abraham Lincoln,#NFDB
96:I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it shall be behind me. ~ Max Reger, #NFDB
97:The hateful reviews are very funny. And sometimes you can enjoy a hateful review much more than a good review. ~ Gaspar Noe, #NFDB
98:If you bought a copy of this book, you own it and can choose to keep it, sell it, give it away, or review it. ~ Alvin E Roth, #NFDB
99:Sooner or later we have to die, and if then we review the past years with regret, it is too late, isn’t it? ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
100:To be a dissenter was to be unfunded because the peer-review system rewards conformity and excludes criticism, ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
101:When army review its forces more than 6 months and not attacking the enemy, know it is a danger to his people ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
102:American citizens have been killed abroad by drones with no due process, no accountability, no judicial review. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
103:It is in your power to review your life, to look at things you saw before, but from another point of view ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
104:They need to review this secret world. We have an incredibly powerful government that gets on automatic pilot. ~ Bob Woodward, #NFDB
105:Turning Goals into Results: The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms,” Harvard Business Review, July–August, 1999. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
106:a special issue of the Review of Radical Political Economics (vol. 10, no. 3, 1978) on uneven regional development ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
107:I was a history major in school. I review the past a lot and think about music history and how culture unfolds. ~ Bruce Pavitt, #NFDB
108:A person who can't finish their literature review might have a curiosity problem, not a project management problem. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
109:One bad review doesn't ruin my day because I realize what a badge of honor it is to get a bit of criticism at all. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
110:The FBI had a right to review that. And they did and they found Hillary Clinton not in any criminal violation. ~ Chris Matthews, #NFDB
111:My dream when I was 14 was someday I could have a David Levine caricature of me in 'The New York Review of Books.' ~ Chris Hayes, #NFDB
112:Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
113:You've got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
114:I practice yoga and take a steam-filled bath or shower. Then I sit quietly and review and prioritize my to-do list. ~ Donna Karan, #NFDB
115:My work is very much like the restaurant critic's - a number of factors come together to make for a strong review. ~ Hank Stuever, #NFDB
116:In the New York Times Book Review Chloë Schama writes, “A plague of women’s backs is upon us in the book cover world. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
117:I review what I know once again, confronting the monolith now alien and almost unconnected to me: my marriage. ~ Suzanne Finnamore, #NFDB
118:Keep an eye on the big picture. Constantly review what's happening around you, not just what you personally are doing. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
119:Larry E. Greiner’s classic Harvard Business Review article titled “Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow, ~ Verne Harnish, #NFDB
120:A major effort is required in order to improve performance in the recruitment of Americans. —KGB ANNUAL REVIEW, 1984 ~ Luke Harding, #NFDB
121:Identifying core ideology is a discovery process, but setting the envisioned future is a creative process. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
122:Yelp is in a very nice spot: local data, and especially review data, is one of the killer apps on mobile phones. ~ Jeremy Stoppelman, #NFDB
123:For what do we live, but to make sport by subjecting our neighbors to endless discretionary review for minor additions? ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
124:Libraries should be open to all - except the censor. [Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960] ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
125:You should always know how you're doing against your metrics. You should always have a weekly review meeting every week. ~ Sam Altman, #NFDB
126:you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained ~ Brad Stone, #NFDB
127:All models are wrong, but some are useful.” In other words, models intentionally simplify our complex world. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
128:If someone writes a nice review of my record, I feel like I should take them out to dinner or go over and clean their apartment. ~ Moby, #NFDB
129:The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the Ayatollah Khomeini. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
130:The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book. ~ Walter Kaufmann, #NFDB
131:If you review the commercial history, you will discover anyone who controls oriental trade will get hold of global wealth. ~ James J Hill, #NFDB
132:Given the circumstances, I think the rabbi did a very good job. What did you think?”
“It's my policy not to review funerals. ~ A M Homes,#NFDB
133:I've read a lot of bad books. I used to review books for a living, and when you're a reviewer you read tons of terrible books. ~ John Green, #NFDB
134:Just as the police review their operational tactics, so we in the Home Office will review the powers available to the police. ~ Theresa May, #NFDB
135:Decide what it is you want, write it down, review it constantly, and each day do something that moves you toward those goals. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
136:I don’t think we [Black Sabbath] ever got a good review for anything we did. Which is why I never bother with reviews. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
137:It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes. ~ Bob Woodward, #NFDB
138:Sometimes the critics review me harshly for not being critical of government but it's not me who has said I was political. ~ Janeane Garofalo, #NFDB
139:When you turn professional, you become an entertainer, and like every other entertainer, you don't want to get a bad review. ~ Scott Hamilton, #NFDB
140:Ask a programmer to review ten lines of code, he’ll find ten issues. Ask him to do five hundred lines, and he’ll say it looks good. ~ Gene Kim, #NFDB
141:. Rita G. McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan, “Discovery-Driven Planning,” Harvard Business Review, July–August, 1995, 4–12. ~ Clayton M Christensen, #NFDB
142:There is more to the world than what a review board publishes about an officer or aeronaut, Miss Lancaster. Guard. Your. Tongue. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
143:National Review's premise was that conformity was especially egregious among the intellectuals, that herd of independent minds. ~ George F Will, #NFDB
144:Especially what took place at the end of the school day: general review and self-criticism, the communists’ favorite pastime. ~ Kazuki Kaneshiro, #NFDB
145:It is essential for the good of criticism that both the critic and the public face the fact that a review is not the voice of God. ~ Judith Crist, #NFDB
146:It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
147:My favorite review described me as the cinematic equivalent of junk mail. I don't know what that means, but it sounds like a dig. ~ Steve Buscemi, #NFDB
148:You should look up some of the reviews. The New York Times review is so over-the-top funny. It's hysterical. You should dig it out. ~ Judd Apatow, #NFDB
149:A review of some 113 published studies concluded that there was good evidence for a relationship between health and productivity ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer, #NFDB
150:How do we identify trends? Not by trendlines. My favorite tools are exponential moving averages that we'll review in the next section. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
151:The library remains a sacred place for secular folk ["What Libraries Can (Still) Do," The New York Review Daily, October 26, 2015]. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
152:A bad review is a good review. The worst review they can give you is no review at all, and that’s the one they give almost everybody. ~ Todd Snider, #NFDB
153:I've never read a review from anybody that said, "I don't want to watch this anymore because it's just too funny. I laughed too much." ~ Jack Kenny, #NFDB
154:I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
155:lead us safe through all difficult places. Keep us always with constant felicities. ~ Sri Aurobindo15 August 1915Arya - A Philosophical Review Vol 2, #NFDB
156:There is something immensely scary about putting yourself out there for people to love or hate you, fan or pan you, review or screw you. ~ L V Lewis, #NFDB
157:When you review the Central American wars or other Latin American wars, you find that there were dictators and there were insurgents. ~ Alvaro Uribe, #NFDB
158:For someone who's had the level of success I've had, there's been very little critical review of my work, which is pretty fascinating. ~ Billy Corgan, #NFDB
159:He [Steele] was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, review of Aikin's Life of Addisan., #NFDB
160:Review whatever lists, overviews, and orientation maps you need to, as often as you need to, to get their contents off your mind. After ~ David Allen, #NFDB
161:At the end of the day in business, it's not about peer review and getting into a scientific journal. You either increase sales, or not. ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
162:Having not had a chance to review the tape and obviously not been in the tunnel, I will take the Wenger amendment on this one for now. ~ Phil Cornwell, #NFDB
163:Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it. ~ Federico Fellini, #NFDB
164:I must attend a meeting of the curriculum review committee after class.” “This is the committee which nothing does?” “The very same. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
165:Killingsworth MA, Gilbert DT. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science. 2010;330:932. § Harvard Business Review. Jan-Feb 2012:88. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
166:No, happily that unjust prejudice is forgotten which made the son responsible for the father's actions. Review your life, Albert ... ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
167:The critic leaves at curtain fall
To find, in starting to review it,
He scarcely saw the play at all
For starting to review it. ~ E B White,#NFDB
168:Before going to sleep at night, . . . take a few minutes to review the day. “Did I live in the direction of my ideals today?” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh #Buddhism, #NFDB
169:I call time-outs like these “vigilance breaks”—brief pauses before high-stakes encounters to review instructions and guard against error. ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
170:I'm only... I'm only unhappy when the reviews are bad, but give me a good review and I'm a... I'm just screaming all over the place with joy. ~ Alan King, #NFDB
171:I tend to write things and review it afterwards and realise what comes out. I very rarely ever write something and have to take it back. ~ Ellie Goulding, #NFDB
172:There’s no review blurb from Jesus on the back of this book saying, I’m okay; you’re okay. Jesus says nobody’s okay. We’re all broken. But ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
173:Whoever shall review his life, will find that the whole tenor of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
174:Andy Grove, the longtime CEO of Intel, was known to be so harsh and intimidating that a subordinate once fainted during a performance review. ~ Brad Stone, #NFDB
175:[Public] libraries should be open to all—except the censor.
[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960] ~ John F Kennedy,#NFDB
176:Get us out of here,” I said to the driver. “Now, or I swear I’ll leave a review so scathin’ that your own ma won’t talk to ye for a month. ~ Shayne Silvers, #NFDB
177:Okay, so I’m not Yale Law Review, but I’m proud of my diploma. University of Miami. Night division. Top half of the bottom third of my class. ~ Paul Levine, #NFDB
178:Once the Constitution became a legal rather than a political document, judicial review, although not judicial supremacy, became inevitable. ~ Gordon S Wood, #NFDB
179:heart?""Will you write for Bunion and Callous, the trade organ of the Floorwalkers' Union, a thousand-word review of your career?""Will ~ Christopher Morley, #NFDB
180:I'm not here to say what [Clintons] did wrong. I mean, there's going to be plenty of post-mortem review of what should have gone differently. ~ Keith Ellison, #NFDB
181:North Korea referred to The Interview as absolutely intolerable and a wanton act of terror. Even more amazing: not the worst review the movie got. ~ Tina Fey, #NFDB
182:Funnel all potentially meaningful inputs through minimal channels, directed to you for easily accessed review and assessment about their nature. ~ David Allen, #NFDB
183:He is the best!!! says one review, with an overkill of exclamation points that makes me question the reviewer’s mental health and state of mind. ~ Mary Kubica, #NFDB
184:[My wife Margot] was the - I guess, the coordinator or the production manager [of The Jazz Review], and we got to know each other and we married. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
185:The overall review average matters, of course, but it doesn’t matter as much as you might think once the sheer number of reviews gets high enough. ~ Sean Platt, #NFDB
186:If you don’t review the progress, you can’t make adjustments. You can’t learn from mistakes. You can’t get better, and ultimately, you can’t finish. ~ Jon Acuff, #NFDB
187:May 2001, the Harvard Business Review published an article by Neil Churchill and John Mullins, titled “How Fast Can Your Company Afford to Grow? ~ Walker Deibel, #NFDB
188:This is the place. Stand still, my steed,- Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy past The forms that once have been. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
189:If I had to do a record review, I'd say it's got a cannibal, consumption, obsessive, violent-sex, romance angle, but with an upbeat swing to it. ~ Marilyn Manson, #NFDB
190:It is more important to know who you are than where you are going, for where you are going will change as the world around you changes. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
191:It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism. ~ Richard Linklater, #NFDB
192:Well, well," said he, "do not make yourself unhappy. If you are a good girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of them. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
193:Aspiring writers should read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review. ~ William Kennedy, #NFDB
194:Hats off to Tavia Gilbert who made Bones alive for me. What a great writer and narrator team. You make listening fun!” (Audible.com reader review) ~ Tavia Gilbert, #NFDB
195:I think when I dropped The Eulogy is when it became more [about] feedback because that's when Pitchfork wanted to review it and things like that. ~ Cakes da killa, #NFDB
196:Look at the people who review. Look at their commitment to being "right" and "safe". If I had listened to my critics I would have given up years ago. ~ John Fante, #NFDB
197:Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. ~ Vannevar Bush, #NFDB
198:E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
199:The clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.
["Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," The Westminster Review, 1885.] ~ George Eliot,#NFDB
200:[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me. ~ Tallulah Bankhead, #NFDB
201:You are a total bitch with no humor. Please go get treatment and ENJOY my latest novel!!!! You old crow!"
[Response to a review of her book] ~ Susan Reinhardt,#NFDB
202:For a moment he felt like devoting the next ten years to working his way to a position as art critic on purpose to review Bertrand's work unfavorably. ~ Kingsley Amis, #NFDB
203:I love the way the American trade magazines never give anybody a bad review because they're afraid the advertising will be taken out. It's so hysterical. ~ Elton John, #NFDB
204:intervals: review after 1 hour then 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 14 days, 21 days, 28 days, 2 months, 3 months and then it should be in your memory forever. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
205:Review the list backwards and you will notice that it will all still be there. By reviewing it backwards, you make the images clearer for your memory. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
206:Send me no more reviews of any kind. I will read no more of evil or good in that line. Walter Scott has not read a review of himself for thirteen years . ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
207:As you review your efforts, can you honestly see the food game? Who won? Who lost? Questions about winning and losing bring us to the meat of the matter. ~ Judi Hollis, #NFDB
208:When it comes to overcoming writing hurdles, getting sick is like suffering a review from a critic with an axe to grind; you can't let it get you down! ~ Max Hawthorne, #NFDB
209:Why the gay press doesn't review your books?"
"They don't?"
"They don't, Arthur. Don't pretend you haven't noticed. You're not in the cannon. ~ Andrew Sean Greer,#NFDB
210:[George] Uhlenbeck was a highly gifted physicist. One of his remarkable traits was he would read every issue of T%he Physical Review from cover to cover. ~ Abraham Pais, #NFDB
211:I sat down with my long time business partner and Rap-A-Lot CEO James Prince to review the music that we had and quickly came up with an outstanding track list. ~ Bun B, #NFDB
212:Girls are always so keen to review [3525] Whether one’s virtuous, and sticks to the rules. They think if a man can be led, he’ll follow too. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
213:A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer - in the form of a review or something. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
214:I was in the original cast of Wicked, and that got a bad review in The New York Times, and it’s the most successful thing that’s ever been put onstage. ~ Norbert Leo Butz, #NFDB
215:For me writing and acting all comes out of the same place, a compulsion to review and connect to something. For me they are more similar than different. ~ Aleksa Palladino, #NFDB
216:I have sparred with commenters as a music writer (on The Rumpus, among other places, see e.g., my review about Taylor Swift), and that was plenty of training! ~ Rick Moody, #NFDB
217:The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
218:If, hypothetically, Western Catholicism were to review the issue of celibacy, I think it would do so for cultural reasons, not so much as a universal option. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
219:So you see [the act of teaching] teaches me also, and is as good as a general review of what I've learned, in a pleasanter way than going over it alone. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
220:If we're 15 minutes into a lifeless, redundant, status-based 1:1 and I don't have anything sitting in my back pocket, I'm going to turn it into a performance review. ~ Rands, #NFDB
221:In the long transition to sleep I entertain a complex paranoia about a group of people who will be assigned to review each action I have taken throughout my life. ~ Sam Pink, #NFDB
222:REVIEW! We had been recognized by a big-time newspaper music critic as Jersey badasses gone to teach those West Coast sissy boys something about THE ROCK! ~ Bruce Springsteen, #NFDB
223:With toilet books, people don't review them that much. They don't really pay much attention to them. It's just like, "Oh, okay. I'll put this in your stocking." ~ Drew Magary, #NFDB
224:It makes it difficult to decide which to go see, since no film about say, some tragic genocide in Africa is going to get a bad review even if it's poorly made. ~ Terry Zwigoff, #NFDB
225:The fact is that a car used by Gerry Adams and myself during the course of the Mitchell review was bugged by elements within British military intelligence. ~ Martin McGuinness, #NFDB
226:editorial process that will support creation, review and revision, publication, performance tracking, and ongoing maintenance. (You’re also going to need resources, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
227:Just as it's unfair to review a taco stand for not being a four-star restaurant, I also have to be mindful that not every drama on TV is trying to be "The Wire." ~ Hank Stuever, #NFDB
228:We were very grateful that the response [for Jessica Jones series] has been so positive. If we get a great review, then more people watch it. It's so exciting! ~ Krysten Ritter, #NFDB
229:When I was editor of the Erotic Review I fielded endless phone calls from elderly readers who thought I might like to pop round in my spare time and thrash them ~ Rowan Pelling, #NFDB
230:Entertaining these opinions of the course to be pursued, I beg of gentlemen to look at the question, as I have done, in a calm review of facts and of principles. ~ Caleb Cushing, #NFDB
231:I read a review on the Herald, it says it takes 40 minutes to get to the first sex session apparently and the whole movie only contains 11 minutes of forbidden fruit. ~ John Key, #NFDB
232:In my reviews, I feel it's good to make it clear that I'm not proposing objective truth, but subjective reactions; a review should reflect the immediate experience. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
233:I never met Meehl, but he was one of my heroes from the time I read his Clinical vs. Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
234:I like it when shows end intentionally, and Review, especially, has such a long form narrative that it feels like you need to give it a thoughtfully constructed finale. ~ Andy Daly, #NFDB
235:Doyle and Vick (2005: 90) argue in their review of the UK regulatory framework, ‘[s]imply creating a single regulatory body does not guarantee regulatory “convergence”’. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
236:I think it's a good idea to be - to fairly identify where things could have gone better once you get the facts, once you get the data and once you're able to review. ~ Keith Ellison, #NFDB
237:…my books are derived from city images, and the city of my dreams or nightmares is Mexico City. (The Art of Fiction, No. 68. The Paris Review, No. 82, Winter 1981.) ~ Carlos Fuentes, #NFDB
238:To offer toleration to those gripped by animosity to your way of life is to open the door to destruction." An elaborate lit review, more the history of conservatism. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
239:At the level of ego-psychology', wrote Mowrer in his survey on 'Motivation' in the Annual Review for 1952, 'there may be said to be only one master motive: anxiety. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
240:I'm writing a review of three books on feminism and science, and it's about social constructionism. So I would say I'm a social constructionist, whatever that means ~ Clifford Geertz, #NFDB
241:In a way I feel I have been vindicated because I hadn't done anything wrong. The Review Committee gave me a patient hearing and I put my point of view across to them. ~ Sourav Ganguly, #NFDB
242:I remember the review from Michael Wilmington in Chicago, and Gene Siskel wrote really smart reviews where I thought, "Oh, they totally get what we're attempting to do." ~ Judd Apatow, #NFDB
243:I like drama as well. When I played Hamlet, I got one review that said, "This must surely be the funniest Hamlet in history," but schoolgirls would still cry when he died. ~ Jason Gann, #NFDB
244:If you were to review your fringe sketch with an objective eye, could you say it was comprehensive enough? What are the assumptions you’ve made versus the knowledge you have? ~ Amy Webb, #NFDB
245:Ads answered out of desperation in the New York Review of Books proved equally futile as…the 'Bay Area Bisexual' told me I didn't quite coincide with either of her desires. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
246:When justices seize authority from the other branches of the federal government, as well as state and local governments, under the rubric of judicial review, that’s tyranny. ~ Mark Levin, #NFDB
247:To review: We have a dog that's been resurrected, a peasant girl who sees the future, a supernaturally strong oblate, and a Jewish boy with the power of miraculous healing. ~ Adam Gidwitz, #NFDB
248:Well, I heard of Sunny Ade, and looks as if his music is gonna be big on a global level, because I was in London the other day and some people asked me to review the album. ~ Dennis Brown, #NFDB
249:And it's always possible that you will not get a nice review. So - and that's enraging of course, to get a bad review, you can't talk back, and it's sort of shaming in a way. ~ Peter Carey, #NFDB
250:As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next. ~ Rachel Cusk, #NFDB
251:Here's what I'm saying, that there is now ongoing a post-mortem review of what could have gone better [during Hillary Clinton campaign] and what mistakes may have been made. ~ Keith Ellison, #NFDB
252:It’s well worth reading about Netflix on Glassdoor.com, a website that lets employees anonymously review their companies. Note how many times the “culture of fear” is mentioned. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
253:If every man who passed an unjust judgment on his fellow should be condemned, how many judges would be found so vain and foolish as to review and condemn their Maker’s work? ~ Clarence Darrow, #NFDB
254:Not even Pearl Young, the NACA’s first female engineer and the founder of the agency’s rigorous editorial review process, left behind research with her name on it. From ~ Margot Lee Shetterly, #NFDB
255:Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review. ~ Edward Dahlberg, #NFDB
256:I aspire to be able to appreciate and review a director based on their accomplishments and based on who they are and what they bring to the material, regardless of their gender. ~ Jodie Foster, #NFDB
257:Review the past, but let it not rule you. Always ACT in the present with thought of the future, but do not let fear of the future bind you. Welcome the destiny that awaits you! ~ Robin D Owens, #NFDB
258:'You shouldn't say thank you for a good review,' said Harriet. 'That would imply that one had done a favour to the author, whereas one has simply done justice to the book.' ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
259:If I begin my book with a review of the coup, it is only to show that my abiding interests for Australia did not end with it. They shall end only with a long and fortunate life. ~ Gough Whitlam, #NFDB
260:I hurried upstairs and powered up my laptop. I checked on the review I'd posted last night. No comments. People sucked. But I did gain five new followers. People rocked. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
261:I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
262:Reviewing books is all about coziness. It is all of it a kind of caucus race. Women review women, Jewish writers review and praise Jewish writers, blacks review blacks, etc. ~ Alexander Theroux, #NFDB
263:If you want to write a negative review, don't tickle me gently with your aesthetic displeasure about my work. Unleash the goddamn Kraken."
[on Twitter, July 17, 2012] ~ Scott Lynch,#NFDB
264:The fragment, like a fraction, reminds us of its foundation in totality. ~ Françoise Meltzer, “What is Wrong with National Literature Departments?” European Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (2009), p. 163, #NFDB
265:I'm a very thoughtful, forward-thinking, planner kind of person. I love Excel spreadsheets and five-year-plans, and I love to review every year how my New Year's resolutions went. ~ Jenna Fischer, #NFDB
266:I understand that the legal position is under review in South Africa and that there will soon be a broader set of organizations to which donors can give and claim tax deductions. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
267:Post election in 1988, he famously swept a copy of Bill Buckley’s National Review off a coffee table in his Kennebunkport, Maine home and said “well we don’t need this shit anymore. ~ Roger Stone, #NFDB
268:To philosophise is to learn to die – philosophising is a soaring up to the Godhead – the knowledge of Being as Being. ~ Karl Jaspers, "Philosophy and Science", World Review Magazine (March 1950)., #NFDB
269:Getting your first review is like getting your teeth whitened. You hope it doesn’t hurt as much as they say on the internet and you also hope it will leave you with a blinding smile. ~ Kathy Parks, #NFDB
270:If I am to speak for ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now. —Woodrow T. Wilson ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
271:I have never read a review for anything I have ever done, be it for theater or movies, just because. I am really good about that. And YouTube comments. People will hide behind that. ~ Skylar Astin, #NFDB
272:Now that we’ve done the tea party,” Luc said, pushing back the notepad and settling into his chair, “it’s time for our annual review of Rules You Disrespectful Bastards Never Follow. ~ Chloe Neill, #NFDB
273:[P]ersonally, I know I’d prefer to read an honest review by someone who has no reason to lie, than a book reviewer who has an employer and a publishing house to keep happy. ~ Catherine Ryan Howard, #NFDB
274:Soon after I left university, I came up with another definition of a literary critic or would be critic: someoone who uses churlish towards the end of an article or review. ~ Gerald Murnane, #NFDB
275:Steve didn’t believe in reviews,” remembers Jon Rubinstein. “He disliked all that formality. His feeling was, ‘I give you feedback all the time, so what do you need a review for? ~ Brent Schlender, #NFDB
276:When we start a new venture, we base it on hard research and analysis. Typically, we review the industry and put ourselves in our customer's shoes to see what we could do better. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
277:A review of the science suggests that uncertainty is so high as to raise a good prospect that mandatory green house gas reductions will produce little or no environmental benefit. ~ Kenneth P Green, #NFDB
278:He [Temple] was a man of the world among men of letters, a man of letters among men of the world. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, review of Life and Writings of Sir William Temple., #NFDB
279:Robert Penn Warren said in the Saturday Review that the poem is a little myth of man's capacity for making life meaningful. And in the end the poem is a light by which we may see life. ~ Robert Bly, #NFDB
280:[The way I work] is like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
(The Paris Review, Winter 1986, No. 101) ~ E L Doctorow,#NFDB
281:In these unfiltered, un-moderated social media posts people are speculating about others' motivations. And you could no more put that in a peer review for a journal than you could fly. ~ Susan Fiske, #NFDB
282:Sensing the difficulty in producing change, some people try to manipulate events quietly behind the scenes and purposefully avoid any public discussion of future direction. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
283:The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarized in a school or college examination paper or a brisk critical review. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
284:Any actress will tell you, when you've been given a starring role in the initial run of a show, you want to be getting the standing ovations every night, not just on review night. ~ Martine McCutcheon, #NFDB
285:Registration Day' by Gavin Gunhold (1899— )
Toronto Review of Poetry, 1947
On registration day at taxidermy school
I distinctly saw the eyes of the stuffed moose
Move. ~ Gordon Korman,#NFDB
286:the convention system was an effective gatekeeper, in that it systematically filtered out dangerous candidates. Party insiders provided what political scientists called “peer review. ~ Steven Levitsky, #NFDB
287:Using human rights commitments more effectively, either as part of negotiations in the WTO or as part of the trade policy review process, poses issues of equality in a practical venue. ~ Mary Robinson, #NFDB
288:I've often heard academics disparage non-academic writing in terms that suggest it could be a negative in the tenure process, irrespective of the quality of academic work under review. ~ Daniel Drezner, #NFDB
289:What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
290:I don't work under the illusion that I'm the next whatever. Every time a record comes out, if it gets a good review, I'm like, "Well, one more year, guys. We bought ourselves another year". ~ Ariel Pink, #NFDB
291:If you criticize what you’re doing too early you’ll never write the first line.”
[Paris Review, interview with Jodi Daynard, The Art of Fiction No. 113, Winter II 1989] ~ Max Frisch,#NFDB
292:mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown.” —New York Times Book Review ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
293:Most companies today operate in a turbulent environment with complex strategies that, though valid when they were launched, may lose their validity as business conditions change. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
294:next actions will make sense for you: • “Calls” • “At Computer” • “Errands” • “Office Actions” or “At Office” (miscellaneous) • “At Home” • “Agendas” (for people and meetings) • “Read/Review ~ David Allen, #NFDB
295:There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words."
[Interview, The Paris Review, Summer 1956] ~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
296:When it’s time to review and accept your agreement, it will be posted to your online RSU account and you will receive a notification email from Amazon’s stock plan administrator Morgan Stanley ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
297:(1) collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do. ~ David Allen, #NFDB
298:I was twelve when my father’s stories began appearing in the Gentleman’s Review. But that was almost fourteen years ago. And, in the natural way of things, I’ve aged one year every year since. ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
299:of a total of 268) affixed their signatures to the Nineteen Articles.
It was indicated that the Draft Committee would meet within the year to review and, if necessary, revise the statement. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
300:Once the Government Accountability Office did a review of food safety systems in other countries and found many things about those food safety systems that were better than ours [American]. ~ Marion Nestle, #NFDB
301:Rehearsals at the Silver Slipper's Burlesque Review had been brutal because of the physical toll on the body. Rehearsals for Cristos the Incredible were brutal because Cristos was an ass. ~ Kristen Painter, #NFDB
302:When an older writer tries to tell a younger writer through a review what kind of career she should be pursuing, it tends to speak to the reviewer's anxieties rather than the book itself. ~ Jennifer Weiner, #NFDB
303:A verbose, prosaic review which mentions whistling winds and the timeless feeling of jade doesn't mean anything to me; I don't need a novella telling me about how an album is like a fine meal. ~ David Cross, #NFDB
304:From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
305:Djinn,” she said. “We go to review the troops. Clothe me as befits a queen.”
“Silks and satins?” he asked, eyes sparkling like sapphires. “White brocade?”
“Armor,” she said. “And flame. ~ Elizabeth Bear,#NFDB
306:I just wanted to stop and try to get some perspective. [ A Period of Transition] it was just a matter of wanting to review the whole thing...to try and get some relationship to what I was doing. ~ Van Morrison, #NFDB
307:This then is the list of the three essentials in the cultivation of the memory: (1) Use and exercise; review and practice; (2) Attention and Interest; and (3) Intelligent Association. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
308:But in another, I think a woman's going to go into a shop to find a coat or a jacket and I just don't think she's not going to go into a shop because of a bad review she probably didn't even read. ~ Marc Jacobs, #NFDB
309:My review of 2001, the year, is the same as my review of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It went on too long, it was hard to follow, and you could only enjoy it if you were really, really, *really* stoned. ~ Lewis Black, #NFDB
310:Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you’ve learned about the grand themes of life. ~ Carl Safina, #NFDB
311:More than 40 percent of Americans aged twenty years and older have either diabetes or prediabetes according to a review of data from the 2005–2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. ~ Joel Fuhrman, #NFDB
312:If a life review is done with candor and honesty, we will see just how many of our acts and achievements, which at the time seemed virtuous and good, were also inadvertently the cause of harm. ~ Robert A. Johnson, #NFDB
313:In an interview in the Paris Review, novelist and Rebel John Gardner made an observation that I’ve never forgotten: “Every time you break the law you pay, and every time you obey the law you pay. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
314:We will also require that follow-up reviews take place on a regular basis determined by the sensitive nature of the security involved. The review will be very much exact and recommended by experts. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
315:But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now. ~ Rick Moody, #NFDB
316:I'll put out an album, and people review it, and some people love it, and some people tear it apart. By nature of the project, I've always wanted this to be something where people react strongly to it. ~ Girl Talk, #NFDB
317:We need a top-to-bottom review of every economic development and assistance program we have to ensure that they encourage everyone to strive instead of settle, because there is dignity in all work. ~ Carly Fiorina, #NFDB
318:When 'Play' first came out, journalists didn't review it; it didn't get radio play. And then it became this big successful record and, I hate to admit this, I found myself liking the fame. I bought into it. ~ Moby, #NFDB
319:You get a good review, and it’s like crack. You need another hit. And another. And another. I know authors are like Tinkerbell and generally need applause to survive, but it’s a slippery slope. ~ Alexandra Bracken, #NFDB
320:After one of my plays came out, I had mixed reviews, some bad and some good. One day, it dawned on me. I thought, 'I wrote a play and he wrote a review, and that's the difference between him and me.' ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
321:I have one rave New York Times review framed next to a flop Los Angeles Times review. And it's for the same show. These people watched the same show. That's what happens. They love it, they hate it. ~ Bruce Vilanch, #NFDB
322:In other words, good negotiators need to develop a poker face-not one that remains expressionless, always hiding true feelings, but one that displays the right emotions at the right times. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
323:In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitudes. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
324:A life without purpose is a languid, drifting thing; Every day we ought to review our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let me make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught! ~ Thomas a Kempis, #NFDB
325:I was Computer Shopper's linux columnist for more than half a decade, from the late 90s onwards. Yes, I know about Linux. (My first review of a Linux distro in the press was published in late 1996.) ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
326:Nature might be a great experimentalist, but one who would never pass muster with an ethics review board—contravening the Helsinki Declaration and every norm of moral decency, left, right, and center. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
327:Sometimes, I think surviving looks crazy. But it never is, okay?” Her teeth clench. “Surviving is the best way to tell the people who have hurt you that they can go to hell.” Chapter Twelve Data review. ~ Sarah Fine, #NFDB
328:Some writers refuse to lay their heads peaceably on the pillow of literary history in order to give posterity good dreams." -- review in London Review of Books, of the works of Knut Hamsun (26 nov 1998) ~ James Wood, #NFDB
329:A review of summit day photographs will show that I was clothed in the latest, highest quality, high altitude gear, comparable, if not better, than that worn by the other members of our expedition. ~ Anatoli Boukreev, #NFDB
330:A similar dynamic exists when managers sit down to give employees their annual review and salary increase. The employees focus on the extrinsic reward—a raise, a higher rating—and learning shuts down. I ~ Laszlo Bock, #NFDB
331:Every day I review the ways he works, I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I’m watching my step. GOD rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
332:Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States. ~ Terry Southern, #NFDB
333:This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
334:Nature might be a great experimentalist, but one who would never pass muster with an ethics review board – contravening the Helsinki Declaration and every norm of moral decency, left, right, and center. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
335:Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books. ~ Richard Ford, #NFDB
336:The truth is the justice system does need review, there are troubling questions that need to be answered, law enforcement needs to respect the community and the community needs to respect law enforcement. ~ Mario Cuomo, #NFDB
337:According to the infographic produced by Westminster Bridge Student Accommodation (WBSA), if you don’t organize and review your notes within the first 9 hours, 60% of what you have learned will be forgotten. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
338:All my books are accidental books - they come from reacting to things and thinking about things and engaging in a real way. They are not about, 'Oh, did it get a good review in the Guardian?' I don't care. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
339:Getting a job done fast is fruitless if it isn’t done right. Individuals and Teams must constantly evaluate their progress. If an individual or Team starts to lose focus, they must take a step back and review. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
340:I remember one review of The Office Christmas Special that compared it unfavourably to Dickens. What? You're saying I'm not as good as the greatest storyteller ever. Boo! Boo! I think I can live with that. ~ Ricky Gervais, #NFDB
341:The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful. ~ Ken Kesey, in "Ken Kesey, The Art of Fiction No. 136" by Robert Faggen, in The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994)., #NFDB
342:a review and you'll receive a free copy of Andrew J. Morgan's sci-fi thriller Noah's Ark. Once you've left your review, get in touch at andrewjamesmorgan.com to receive your free copy of Noah's Ark. Thank ~ Andrew J Morgan, #NFDB
343:Before there was Ronald Reagan there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry, there was National Review , and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind. ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
344:In our swamp of media sensationalism and group-speak, BOSTON REVIEW stands out as a bold voice for reason and argument, one of the very, very few places that offers intelligence, integrity, and variety. ~ Martha C Nussbaum, #NFDB
345:The Weekly Review is the time to: Gather and process all your stuff. Review your system. Update your lists. Get clean, clear, current, and complete. You have to use your mind to get things off your mind. Most ~ David Allen, #NFDB
346:On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” —Thomas Babington Macaulay, Review of Southey’s Colloquies on Society ~ Douglas E Richards, #NFDB
347:Recomiendo encarecidamente la lectura de «The CEO of Automattic on Holding ‘Auditions’ to Build a Strong Team» del número de abril de 2014 de la revista Harvard Business Review (lo encontrarás en hbr.org). ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
348:We work in a first-draft culture. Type an e-mail. Send. Write a blog entry. Post. Whip up some slides. Speak. But it’s in crafting and recrafting—in iteration and rehearsal—that excellence emerges. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
349:Certainly some guy eating cardboard in Cincinnati has lost any ordinary impetus to review your novel decently if he's just read you just got six figures out of Warner Bros - which incidentally was not true. ~ William Monahan, #NFDB
350:Coffee, even the decaffeinated version, appears to protect against type 2 diabetes. In a 2009 review, each additional daily cup of coffee lowered the risk of diabetes by 7 percent, even up to six cups per day.23 ~ Jason Fung, #NFDB
351:If people around the world knew how well people at Guantanamo Bay are treating prisoners, they would not fall prey to the accusations that some in our Chamber are making. They are all receiving judicial review. ~ Robin Hayes, #NFDB
352:Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence (for a review of this evidence, see Langlois et al., 2000). ~ Robert B Cialdini, #NFDB
353:Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms "skyhooks." Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't. ~ Garrett Hardin, #NFDB
354:A few years ago, I stumbled upon the book How to Become a Rainmaker,3 and I like to review it occasionally to refresh my sense of the emotional drivers that fuel decisions. The book does a great job to explain the ~ Chris Voss, #NFDB
355:Arise my soul, and review your deeds which have preceeded from you. Scrutinize them closely, and shed the rain of your tears, declaring openly to Christ your thoughts and deeds, so that you may be justified. ~ Andrew of Crete, #NFDB
356:Charles was at the apex of his career, coming off a Lannan Fellowship year and a front-page Times review that had anointed him as the heir of John Barth and Stanley Elkin, but he didn’t know it was the apex. ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
357:If you are doing a peer review of somebody's paper before publication, the editor would not allow you to speculate about the person's motives, about their place in the hierarchy. It's not scientifically relevant. ~ Susan Fiske, #NFDB
358:The KGB still killed people, the KGB would not execute its last prisoner until the final days of its existence in 1991, but by the eighties a termination required paperwork and signatures and a post-action review. ~ Tom Clancy, #NFDB
359:I support such a review, ... But the reality is that we don't need the results of a strategic study to know that there are some pressing problems in our military that demand our attention and our assistance now. ~ Joe Lieberman, #NFDB
360:It was just this interesting, my first, the first time you hear your child in any way criticize you. It's the worst review of your life and it's really relieving to find out that they don't know what they're saying. ~ Tea Leoni, #NFDB
361:We need to review our policies as it applies to urban cities - You see, I'm losing either of them, but especially cities like Baltimore, we need to review them and I think we should come with no pre conception. ~ Julie Roginsky, #NFDB
362:I have to be the luckiest husband who ever lived. My wife is a sex goddess.” Sam laughed. “Make sure to post a review to my website.” “No way. I’m not telling anyone else what I have, because everyone will want it. ~ Marie Force, #NFDB
363:On the day the world is blown up, the playwright whose show opened the night before will be leafing past the news section of the Times to find his review--as he ascends through the stratosphere, oblivious. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
364:President Obama has announced a task force to review the tax codes. He's concerned there are too many loopholes and too many people manipulating the system to avoid paying taxes. And that's just in his administration. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
365:The cyber review team will proceed with the most sensitive systems first, but ultimately all systems will be analyzed and made as secure as modern technology permits. And hopefully, that's gonna be our technology. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
366:There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
367:So many Jonathans. A plague of literary Jonathans. If you read only the New York Times Book Review, you’d think it was the most common male name in America. Synonymous with talent, greatness. Ambition, vitality. ~ Jonathan Franzen, #NFDB
368:avoid catastrophic climate change. In 2018, MIT Technology Review surveyed our progress; with three decades left to go, the world was on track to complete the necessary energy revolution in four hundred years. ~ David Wallace Wells, #NFDB
369:It's interesting that during [Hillary Clinton's] FBI review, which took place on a massive holiday and which wasn't recorded and lots of other things, that she went 39 times. She didn't remember, she didn't remember. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
370:The novels that get praised in the NY Review of Books aren't worth reading. Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best and only literature of our times. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
371:Even if individual researchers are prone to falling in love with their own theories, the broader process of peer review and institutionalized skepticism are designed to ensure that, eventually, the best ideas prevail. ~ Chris Mooney, #NFDB
372:Most of the papers which are submitted to the Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
373:These two lists are your map for each day. Review them each morning, along with your calendar, and ask: What’s the plan for today? Where will I spend my time? How will it further my focus? How might I get distracted? ~ Peter Bregman, #NFDB
374:We know we are very special,” Davis writes in “Special”: “Yet we keep trying to find out in what way: not this way, not that way, then what way?” (from James Wood's review of the FSG "Collected Stories of Lydia Davis") ~ Lydia Davis, #NFDB
375:Systematic decision review also shows executives their own weaknesses, particularly the areas in which they are simply incompetent. In these areas, smart executives don't make decisions or take actions. They delegate. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
376:We've undergone a very heavy level of scrutiny by review boards because of Genesis and because of the Columbia accident. . . . It was a cultural shift in NASA, that you're now required to understand all the risks. ~ Donald E Brownlee, #NFDB
377:For additional examples, read the Harvard Business Review article titled “Building Your Company’s Vision,” by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras. You’ll notice that all the Values listed are phrases, not single words. ~ Verne Harnish, #NFDB
378:to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.” The product review revealed how unfocused Apple had become. The company ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
379:It's been...interesting."
"Aw." He actually rolled his eyes. "Interesting? That's the review I get? I'm pretty sure the earth moved."
"Well..." My cheeks heated. "You're the farmer. It's your job to notice the earth. ~ Sarina Bowen,#NFDB
380:In my game, you get brokenhearted a bit. You do a play, get a bad review in the papers... actors are sensitive; you think of all the work you've done, and it breaks your heart, but you learn to shrug it off and to carry on. ~ Phil Daniels, #NFDB
381:I review books.
Do you get paid for them?
I laughed out loud at that. No, not at all.
Daemon seemed confused by that. So you review books and you don't get paid if someone buys a book based on your review? ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
382:Margot [Hentoff] used to write regularly for The Voice, for The New York Review of Books, for Harper's Bazaar, and she really had the most distinctive writing style, even more than mine, than I've ever seen in this business. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
383:The quality of people you have around you as a manager is so vital. There are various factors that influence that process; fitness, form and the tactical approach to your opponent are all areas I review on a daily basis. ~ Brendan Rodgers, #NFDB
384:MERCER USED TO PASS THE TIME, during his post-grad months of flipping burgers out on Route 17, by polishing his opinions on life and literature for that future date when they would grace the pages of The Paris Review. ~ Garth Risk Hallberg, #NFDB
385:What follows is a review of the results of one study I worked on, sponsored by the Institute for Psychedelic Research at San Francisco State University in which the objective was to enhance creative problem-solving ability. ~ James Fadiman, #NFDB
386:If one could order a crime as one does a dinner, what would you choose? . . . Let’s review the menu. Robbery? Frogery? No, I think not. Rather too vegetarian. It must be murder—red-blooded murder—with trimmings, of course. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
387:Lying is the message. Its not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power of the truth itself.
"The Putin Paradigm," New York Review of Books ~ Masha Gessen,#NFDB
388:So, she merely remarked that it would make an excellent article for the North American Review. In other words, she praised it and at the same time subtly suggested that it wouldn’t do as a speech. Lyman Abbott saw the point, ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
389:Until recently, scientists were largely convinced that anger, fear, sadness, happiness, and disgust, as emotional faculties, arise from separate, innate, culturally universal neural modules in the brain (for a review see [5,9]). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
390:Using awareness, personal responsibility and inner work to review our unskillful or frightened reactions, we become more adept at turning habitual reactions to balanced responses. These moments are very exciting and gratifying. ~ John Earle, #NFDB
391:I proceeded to a joint review of the British and American forces. There was a long march past in threes, during which the tune “United States Marines” bit so deeply into my memory that I could not get it out of my head. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
392:Obama has built his public image around his ability to bridge divisions - racial, ideological or generational. And that was his reputation, even at Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the 'Law Review. ~ Mara Liasson, #NFDB
393:The conference began on March 12. Among the experts were Lawrence, Cox and Gertrude Bell; for ten days they passed in review every aspect of the future of the Middle East. Economy was the goal, political stability the means. ~ Martin Gilbert, #NFDB
394:As a planning board commissioner, I have to review the applications for development throughout the city, and the bulk of those applications have been for the waterfront. I think the progress the waterfront has made is amazing. ~ Frank Vincent, #NFDB
395:In 1986, I read a remarkable article by Israel Rosenfield in The New York Review of Books in which he discussed the revolutionary work and views of Gerald M. Edelman. Edelman was nothing if not bold. “We are at the beginning of ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
396:Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on. ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
397:The authors of a 2012 Cochrane review (the medical profession’s gold standard analysis) on home versus hospital births blamed the higher complication rate in hospital on “impatience and easy access to many medical procedures.”13 ~ Jo Marchant, #NFDB
398:When you accomplish a goal, don't cross it out. Instead, write 'victory' next to it and move on to the next one. This way, whenever you have a bad day, all you have to do is to review your victories to feel good about yourself. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
399:I review books."
"Do you get paid for them?"
I laughed out loud at that. "No, not at all."
Daemon seemed confused by that. "So you review books and you don't get paid if someone buys a book based on your review? ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
400:Leaving a review will only take a minute — it doesn’t have to be long or involved, just a sentence or two that tells people what you liked about the book, to help other readers know why they might like it, too, and to help us write ~ Sean Platt, #NFDB
401:Life is stranger than fiction. It's nice to have stuff that people don't know about. And it helps when you read a bad review. You can go, "This guy doesn't have me figured out." There's more mystery to you than they understand. ~ Dolph Lundgren, #NFDB
402:Narrow scope of judicial power was the reason that people accepted the idea that the federal courts could have the power of judicial review; that is, the ability to decide whether a challenged law comports with the Constitution. ~ Sam Brownback, #NFDB
403:We [ with Edward Herman] believe that the empirical evidence we review there - and elsewhere, in a great deal of joint and separate work - lends substantial support to the conclusions; whether that is true is for others to judge. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
404:As Tony Judt wrote a few years ago in The New York Review of Books,8 Arendt made many small errors for which her critics will never forgive her. But she got many of the big things right and for this she deserves to be remembered. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
405:Every time a reader leaves a review, an aspiring author gets a new pencil. Yeah, I know that line sucks but I’ve been in front of my computer proofreading for something like fourteen hours straight trying to get this book published ~ Bobby Adair, #NFDB
406:I don’t suppose you could have picked some more public way to self-destruct? Attempted to assassinate the Emperor with your pocketknife during the Birthday Review, say, or raped a sheep in the Great Square during rush hour? ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
407:The review of studies of seasonal patterns for peak months of occurrence for episodes of mania and depression indicates that there is a consistency of findings despite the methodological problems intrinsic to such research. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
408:All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. ~ Russell Brand, #NFDB
409:It is abundantly clear that a total review of all intelligence programs is necessary so that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are fully informed as to what is actually being carried out by the intelligence community. ~ Dianne Feinstein, #NFDB
410:26. Kieran C. R. Fox, “Is Meditation Associated with Altered Brain Structure? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Morphometric Neuroimaging in Meditation Practitioners,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 43 (2014): 48–73. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
411:On the Paris Review website, Nicole Rudnick wrote that the stunt reminded her of a post last year on Gawker, whose writer tested TGI Friday’s “Endless Appetizers” promotion, “during which she ate mozzarella sticks for close to 14 hours. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
412:[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start."
(Interview, The Paris Review, Issue 64, Winter 1975) ~ P G Wodehouse,#NFDB
413:When we launched our [ Vogue] site around five years ago, I had already started this process on paper. We are now building an enormous portfolio of photos, we've uploaded two million photos and we have three people that review them. ~ Franca Sozzani, #NFDB
414:I had come looking for a parade, for a military review of champions marching in ranks. Instead I was left with a brawl of ancestors, a herd of dissenters, sometimes marching together but just as often marching away from each other. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
415:In John A. D’Elia’s recent biography of George Ladd, he notes how, at the height of Ladd’s academic career, a harsh review of one of Ladd’s books by one of his peers completely devastated him, even to the point of alcoholism. ~ Andreas J K stenberger, #NFDB
416:All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself. ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, #NFDB
417:I have published in 'The New Yorker,' 'Holiday,' 'Life,' 'Mademoiselle,' 'American Heritage,' 'Horizon,' 'The Ladies Home Journal,' 'The Kenyon Review,' 'The Sewanee Review,' 'Poetry,' 'Botteghe Oscure,' the 'Atlantic Monthly,' 'Harper's.' ~ Paul Engle, #NFDB
418:KEVIN HOGAN is the author of 21 books, including The Science of Influence: How to Get Anyone to Say Yes (Wiley, 2010) and The Psychology of Persuasion: How to Persuade Others to Your Way of Thinking (Pelican Publishing, 1996). ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
419:Luckily, a recent survey published in the American Sociological Review revealed that atheists are the least trusted group in America—less trusted, even, than homosexuals. It makes sense at least we trust the homosexuals with our hair. ~ Stephen Colbert, #NFDB
420:The spectacle is by definition immune from human activity, inaccessible to any projected review or correction. It is the opposite of dialogue. Whenever representation takes on an independent existence, the spectacle reestablishes its rule. ~ Guy Debord, #NFDB
421:Because this absolutely insane - the craziest thing I'd ever done. Worse than giving a one-star review, scarier than asking for an interview with an author I'd give my firstborn to eat lunch with, more stupid than kissing Daemon. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
422:O what a blessed day that will be when I shall . . . stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed; when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears, and possess the glory which was the end of all! ~ Richard Baxter, #NFDB
423:She [Justice sandra Day O'Connor] rejected the [George] Bush administration's claim that it could indefinitely detain a United States citizen. She upheld the fundamental principle of judicial review over the exercise of government power. ~ Patrick Leahy, #NFDB
424:A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
425:If somebody writes a review of a dry cleaner, that piece of content is not wildly viral. It's not like a viral video that can spread across the world in a matter of minutes, so as a result, each market is almost an island unto itself. ~ Jeremy Stoppelman, #NFDB
426:Next day at the review the Tsar asked Prince Andrey where he desired to serve; and Bolkonsky ruined his chances for ever in the court world by asking to be sent to the front, instead of begging for a post in attendance on the Tsar's person. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
427:Awesome. What types of books do you review?” I hated this part of telling people from work about my blog. I never knew if the attorneys would raise their noses in the air and judge my taste in “literature.” Here goes nothing. “Chick lit, ~ Meredith Schorr, #NFDB
428:If people are going to do post-publication peer review, they need to abide by the same rules as they abide by for pre-publication peer review: not being ad hominem, being respectful, giving the author a chance to respond in a reasonable way. ~ Susan Fiske, #NFDB
429:An article on digital distraction in the June issue of The Harvard Business Review cites an estimate, by the Information Overload Research Group, that the problem is costing the U.S. economy nine hundred and ninety-seven billion dollars a year. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
430:Let's review the cost-free techniques that we've learned so far for raising an achievement-oriented, obedient, drug-free, virgin adult: Calamity, Praise, Local Theater, and flat feet. Another key element is "Strong Father Figure / Fear Thereof." ~ Tina Fey, #NFDB
431:My aspiration to spend time at sea as requisite literary training died long ago, as a teenager, on a white-knuckled ferry ride to Elba during a torrential rainstorm [Kushner, Rachel, Diary, London Review of Books, January 14, 2015]. ~ Rachel Kushner, #NFDB
432:The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one's gloves. ~ O Henry, #NFDB
433:As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court. ~ Byron White, #NFDB
434:The important thing when conducting an internal review is to do without the constraints, without the doubts, fears, and expectations of what you “should” be doing. You have to be able to set aside the obstacles of time, money, and obligation. ~ Keith Ferrazzi, #NFDB
435:Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties."
(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988) ~ John Irving,#NFDB
436:A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot."
[Baffled at a Bookcase (London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 15, 28 July 2011)] ~ Alan Bennett,#NFDB
437:As I was coming up on the stage, there was one source that could make or break you, the New York Times. Inevitably there would be one actor singled out for a better review, or worse, than somebody else. The effect of that was cancerous, divisive. ~ Kevin Bacon, #NFDB
438:An extrapolation of its present rate of growth reveals that in the not too distant future Physical Review will fill bookshelves at a speed exceeding that of light. This is not forbidden by general relativity since no information is being conveyed. ~ David Mermin, #NFDB
439:We consider it vital that the community of nations be drawn together in an orderly, disciplined, rational way to review the history of our global environment, to assess the potential for future climate change, and to develop effective programs. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
440:Critics? How do they happen? I know how it happened to me. I would send a poem or story to a magazine and they would say this doesn't suit our needs precisely but on the other hand you sound interesting. Would you be interested in doing a review? ~ Leslie Fiedler, #NFDB
441:It always felt good typing up a review on a book I enjoyed and I went all out, finding bizarre pictures to emphasis the wow factor. I preffered ones with cute kittens and llamas. And Dean Winchester. Hitting 'publish post' cracked a smile. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
442:Harvard Business Review that he said reminded him of me. The article—“Parables of Leadership” by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne—was composed of a series of ancient parables that focused on what the authors called “the unseen space of leadership. ~ Phil Jackson, #NFDB
443:I found out about reviews early on. They're mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That's probably why I'm less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason. ~ Barry Hannah, #NFDB
444:Given the cost of borrowings and the $100 billion in Government reserves, there is no reason for us to borrow. We should review the situation carefully. Besides, borrowings are possible, but we must understand what is more profitable at this point. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
445:We'll review President Obama's plan [on closing Guantanamo], but since it includes bringing dangerous terrorists to facilities in U.S. communities, he should know that the bipartisan will of Congress has already been expressed against that proposal. ~ Audie Cornish, #NFDB
446:For a seeker, Guru Purnima is a day of significance, is a day of New Year. It is the day to review one’s progress on the spiritual path and renew one’s determination and focus on the goal, and to resolve what one wants to do in the coming year ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
447:Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, where his primary activities are writing a review column for the local Rhinoceros Times and feeding birds, squirrels, chipmunks, possums, and raccoons on the patio. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
448:Have you ever gotten a bad review, Master Huud?"
"Hundreds of them."
"Do they hurt?"
"Of course. But you get over it. Critics are just people, lad. They're entitled to their opinions. They're not the enemy."
"Who is the enemy?"
"Censors. ~ Katie Waitman,#NFDB
449:We [in Think Broader.] went through and looked at coverage in different industries and were able to point out to newsrooms that they had these hidden biases. We'd do a review and provide a report card, and provide our suggestion on how to avoid bias. ~ Paula Broadwell, #NFDB
450:When I went into 'Fiddler,' I wondered about the response I'd get - the backlash because I'm openly gay. There was none. I toured Canada and America, and not one single review suggested that I played the role gay or that I seemed anything but Tevye. ~ Harvey Fierstein, #NFDB
451:In an article on Bunyan lately published in the "Contemporary Review" - the only article on the subject worth reading on the subject I ever saw (yes, thank you, I am familiar with Macaulay's patronizing prattle about "The Pilgrim's Progress") etc. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
452:As I review the nature of the creative drive in the inventive scientists that have been around me, as well as in myself, I find the first event is an urge to make a significant intellectual contribution that can be tangible embodied in a product or process. ~ Edwin Land, #NFDB
453:I started playing that game I play when I'm feeling lonely, the one where I review all of my prior relationships, marveling that so many sweet, smart, pretty girls have come into my life and that I've found a way to fuck things up with every one of them. ~ Davy Rothbart, #NFDB
454:As a publisher what you are trying to build is a long life for a book, to help it find its readers in many different ways, whether or not it made this list or got that review, etc. I'm sure some of that thinking has been useful to me as a writer as well. ~ Danielle Dutton, #NFDB
455:I have just read your lousy review. You sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an eightulcer man on a four ulcer job ... I have never met you but if I do, you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and a supporter below. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
456:I spent a good deal of time going back over my childhood, my midlife, to try to understand who I was. We're supposed to be complete and whole, and you can't be whole if you're trying to be perfect. Doing a life review helped me get over the disease to please. ~ Jane Fonda, #NFDB
457:the majority of the learning on a tactical exercise comes afterwards in what is called an “after action review,” where all the participants talk about what took place. This phase is so important that to not do it is to have essentially wasted the exercise. ~ Dave Grossman, #NFDB
458:some of the first words a child learns are brand names, because they don’t have to sound them out. It becomes part of your environmental vocabulary [Whitney Curry Wimbish & Sarah Gerard, "The Binary Companion," LA Review of Books, January 22, 2015]. ~ Sarah Gerard, #NFDB
459:the appointed day came, the birds assembled before Jupiter's throne; and, after passing them in review, he was about to make the Jackdaw king, when all the rest set upon the king-elect, stripped him of his borrowed plumes, and exposed him for the Jackdaw that he was. ~ Aesop, #NFDB
460:The Son of God Among Greeks and Romans,” Harvard Theological Review 93.2 (2000): 85–100. Two zealous rabbis, Judas son of Sepphoraeus and Matthias son of Margalus, led an uprising that attacked the Temple and tried to destroy the eagle that Herod placed atop the ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
461:Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from another. ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
462:An ad for cigars appears in 100,000 newspapers; sales of that brand increase by 3% for a short time thereafter. A new play receives a viciously negative review in a theatrical journal that prints 500 copies; the playwright shoots himself. Who’s the better writer? ~ Jason Lutes, #NFDB
463:Here's the thing: Authors live or die by recommendations. [That's one of the reason I review so many books on Goodreads.] Giving books you love good reviews is one of the nicest things you can do for an author. What's more it's good for the entire community. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
464:It is the depravity of institutions and movements that given in the beginning to express life, they often end in throttling that very life. Therefore, they need constant review, perpetual criticism and continuous bringing back to the original purposes and spirit. ~ Frank Viola, #NFDB
465:The NCI sent (,)...to review our funding(,)...people connected with the nuclear establishment...It was a pretty much foregone conclusion, that if you send people in to review the funding, who stand most to be hurt by this research, the funding will be denied. ~ Rosalie Bertell, #NFDB
466:If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
467:In every analysis you need to isolate what the real assets are and you must not forget to examine the franchise to do business, to review the character and competence of the management and to estimate the outcome if the whole business had to be turned into cash. ~ Peter Cundill, #NFDB
468:In software you can't really add people and expect to get more done, because their ability to understand the program and what's going on it would require so much investment and all their work would require so much review that you'd be more likely to slow things down. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
469:Pictures pass me in long review,-- Marching columns of dead events. I was tender, and, often, true; Ever a prey to coincidence. Always knew I the consequence; Always saw what the end would be. We're as Nature has made us -- hence I loved them until they loved me. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
470:The construction industry is the world’s second largest (after agriculture), worth $8 trillion a year. But it’s remarkably inefficient. The typical commercial construction project runs 80% over budget and 20 months behind schedule, according to McKinsey. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
471:One understands why law clerks follow the Bluebook. But why a judge would direct his law clerks to do so, or even tolerate their doing so, is a mystery to me. Are judges sheep? Why should they care what kids at the Harvard Law Review consider proper abbreviation? ~ Richard A Posner, #NFDB
472:Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-Thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
473:Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
474:[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes?" and then get every drop of juice out of them."
(Interview, The Paris Review, Issue 64, Winter 1975) ~ P G Wodehouse,#NFDB
475:An important part of any focusing regimen is to set aside time at the end of the day - just before going to sleep - to acknowledge your successes, review your goals, focus on your successful future, and make specific plans for what you want to accomplish the next day. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
476:Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent with physical suffering, from too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
477:Un poète doit laisser des traces de son passage, non des preuves. Seules les traces font rêver. ~ A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams. ~ René Char, as quoted in The French-American Review (1976) by Texas Christian University, p. 132., #NFDB
478:He was especially intent that the federal judiciary check any legislative abuses. In number 78, Hamilton introduced an essential concept, never made explicit in the Constitution: that the Supreme Court should be able to review and overturn legislation as unconstitutional. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
479:Horror. I can't manage it. I become--well--horrified. Self-help books have a similar effect.
When asked, "Any literary genre you simply can't be bothered with?" - (By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from the NYT Book Review, by Pamela Paul) ~ Emma Thompson,#NFDB
480:of the highest asthma death rates in the Western world – third only behind Estonia and Spain – and the number of fatalities is rising rapidly. In 2012, 1,250 people died from asthma – a 10 per cent rise in three years. The review suggests more than 800 such deaths could have ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
481:You know, you get a bad review as a writer, you remember it for 10 years. You get a hundred good reviews, you forget them all. You say hello to a hundred people in the city and it doesn't mean anything to you. One racist comment passes by, and it sticks with you a decade. ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
482:We thought a magazine, even a self proclaimed literary review, had to be involved in politics. We felt sex was healthy and made (then) bold use of fiction and graphics so declaring. We operated on a shoestring and still got our issues out on time. In short, we had a ball. ~ Barney Rosset, #NFDB
483:At Microsoft I had many years of experience and history and seeing connections. With my direct reports, the job at Microsoft was to delegate and then be able to properly review, but not to micromanage. To have a way of connecting and integrating without getting in the way. ~ Steve Ballmer, #NFDB
484:Whereas the EU Green Paper argued that such a need was rapidly diminishing (see COM 1997 623 Final: 20), national policy reviews were more hesitant. The Swedish review argued that existing must-carry provisions should be maintained, whereas the Norwegian Commission was divided ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
485:A manager’s assessments are compared to those of managers leading similar teams, and they review their employees collectively: A group of five to ten managers meet and project on a wall their fifty to a thousand employees, discuss individuals, and agree on a fair rating. This ~ Laszlo Bock, #NFDB
486:Kids are not physical creatures, and they're not stupid. They know all about violence and power and raw emotions. What's really scary is when adults pretend that such things don't exist."
(Grossman's review of The Hunger Games in "Time" magazine, Sept. 7, 2009) ~ Lev Grossman,#NFDB
487:There were several packages waiting for me at the post office
and I only barely squealed. They were advanced reader copies
from other bloggers passing them along for review. And I was,
like, whatever. Sure evidence I was coming down with mad cow
disease. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
488:I remember the Time review [on the Hit and Run]said that there wasn't one laugh in it. And I had watched the movie 50 times with audiences, and it always played great. There was certainly a moment where you could tell the audience was like, "Wow, this is really getting weird." ~ Judd Apatow, #NFDB
489:reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Published by Perrin Briar. Cover design by James at goonwrite.com. ~ Perrin Briar, #NFDB
490:I think reviewers have become particularly venomous because, in a way, the power has been sucked from them. A 15-year-old can write a review on the Internet and it means as much as Roger Ebert's review, and that just makes Roger Ebert mad, so he comes out harder and stronger. ~ Todd Phillips, #NFDB
491:All a starred review amounts to is an expression of brand loyalty, an assertion of personal preference for one brand of literature above another. It is as hopelessly beside the point as giving four stars to your mother, three stars to your childhood, or two stars to your cat. ~ Eleanor Catton, #NFDB
492:Groucho Marx, in his later days, gave me the best review I've ever had and probably will ever have. I changed a light bulb over his bed, and when I came off of his bed with the used one after putting the new one in, Groucho said, 'That's the best acting I've ever seen you do.' ~ Elliott Gould, #NFDB
493:I have an enduring, very robust infatuation with dictators. I have an infatuation with Stalin, Mao, and Mussolini. In the Paris Review interview I did (in 2013), I said my next book, this one, was going to be about Mussolini. I wound up only having a Mussolini cameo in the book. ~ Mark Leyner, #NFDB
494:ERIK ERIKSON, ONE OF the most innovative psychoanalysts of the twentieth century, wrote about these moments of existential review in his work on the human life cycle. He famously argued that all of us go through eight stages of development, each marked by a specific conflict. ~ Jennifer Senior, #NFDB
495:The Harvard Business Review recently had an article called 'The Human Moment,' about how to make real contact with a person at work: ... The fundamental thing you have to do is turn off your BlackBerry, close your laptop, end your daydream and pay full attention to the person. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
496:In December of 2002, the late Richard Corliss, a respected movie critic with a long and illustrious career, wrote an embarrassing letter of support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan in the guise of a Time magazine review of Peter Jackson's The Two Towers. ~ Viggo Mortensen, #NFDB
497:Judicial review involves a court overturning an act of Congress or of the executive branch on the grounds that the act in question contravenes the federal Constitution. It is founded on the principle that courts will be unbiased guardians of the clear meaning of the Constitution. ~ Mark R Levin, #NFDB
498:When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. . . . On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. . . . Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, #NFDB
499:I've always felt that if a thing had been said in the best way, how can you say it better? … If you are charmed by an author, I think it's a very strange and invalid imagination that doesn't long to share it. Somebody else should read it. ~ Marianne Moore, Paris Review interview (November 1960)., #NFDB
500:The rout, that dreary review of fashionable fineries, that parade of well-dressed self-infatuations, is one of those English inventions currently mechanifying the other nations. England seems determined to see the entire world bored just as she is, and just as bored as she. ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
501:The question was, in a sense, at Princeton Review, how much value was I adding as a public company CEO. I was adding less than other people might've... I think you want to move on when you've given your best work and then feel that you're not going to add as much value moving forward. ~ John Katzman, #NFDB
502:A review of studies by physicians found that excessive exercise is bad for your heart. Another study says a daily serving of chocolate is actually good for your heart. That's got to make next year New Year's resolution easier to keep. "I'm going to exercise less. Eat a little more chocolate. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
503:I believe love is why we're here on the planet and that ultimately it's our purpose for life. They say people who've had near-death experiences often report back that at the end of our lives we have a life review and we're asked one question, and that question is, how much did you love? ~ Marci Shimoff, #NFDB
504:I’m interested in so many different things and I’d like to cover a lot of territory. I’m trying to see my show as the Sunday Times. You have the Arts & Leisure section, you have the Op-Ed page, you have the Book Review...even the Style section has those wonderful essays about relationships. ~ Joy Behar, #NFDB
505:Instead of critics reviewing my movies, now what they're really doing is trying to match wits with me. Every time they review my movies, it's like they want to play chess with the mastermind and show off every reference they can find, even when half of it is all of their own making. ~ Quentin Tarantino, #NFDB
506:I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean? It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
507:A review in the Journal of the American Medical Association of thirty-six studies that looked at the physical growth, cognition, language and motor skills, behavior, attention, affect, and neurophysiology found no connection between prenatal exposure to cocaine and a decrease in functioning. ~ Cris Beam, #NFDB
508:I say I'm in love with her, what does that mean?
It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly she explains me to myself; like genius she is ignorant of what she does. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
509:Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not question, criticise or insult the other, for fear of being hounded and murdered. These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems. ~ Hanif Kureishi, #NFDB
510:knew everything about him, the way wives do. I even knew the inside of him, having been there that day in Dr. Ruffner’s office to review the footage of Joe’s colon. We sat and watched light travel through his most intimate inner tubing, and after that we were really bound together for life. ~ Meg Wolitzer, #NFDB
511:Occasionally an unsuspecting innocent will stumble into a movie like this and send me an anguished postcard, asking how I could possibly give a favorable review to such trash. My stock response is Ebert's Law, which reads: A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
512:It's clear now that Donald Trump and his administration doesn't want the start a trade war. What we are seeing is a very careful and meticulous review of all the tools they have available and to use those to start bringing cases against countries under existing law that they think are unfair. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
513:My dear, you will be woefully disappointed if in my story you expect any thing like a novel. I once heard a general say, that nothing was less like a review than a battle; and I can tell you that nothing is more unlike a novel than real life. Of all lives, mine has been the least romantic. ~ Maria Edgeworth, #NFDB
514:Pictures pass me in long review,--
Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender, and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
We're as Nature has made us -- hence
I loved them until they loved me. ~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
515:The four stages of acceptance:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so."
(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464) ~ J B S Haldane,#NFDB
516:If I'm reviewing a record, man, I play that record to death, which is ironic in a way because if I review a concert I feel very confident in myself, certainly at this point, and have for most of my career. You're only hearing it once and then you go to your typewriter and you write the review. ~ Gary Giddins, #NFDB
517:Jordan [Ruddes], he learned that way, and that's what he knows how to do. That's how he kind of approaches all music, whether it's to learn a cover song that we're going to play, or to review Dream Theater music - he always uses charts. That's what he knows. I really rely a lot more on memory. ~ John Petrucci, #NFDB
518:I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean?
It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
519:Reviews help other readers find books. If you enjoyed the book and could take a moment to post a short review on the website you brought it from, tell a friend, tweet about it or mention it on your Facebook page, I'd greatly appreciate it. If you did all four I'd be super-duper-extra grateful. ~ Robert J Crane, #NFDB
520:Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either."
(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988) ~ John Irving,#NFDB
521:Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either."
(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988) ~ John Irving,#NFDB
522:Emily Zanotti is a Republican political strategist and author. She is a regular contributor to The American Spectator and a featured opinion columnist with The Wall Street Journal. Her work has appeared across the political spectrum, in National Review, The Daily Caller, Slate, and elsewhere. ~ Joanne Bamberger, #NFDB
523:It is useful for companies to look at AI through the lens of business capabilities rather than technologies. Broadly speaking, AI can support three important business needs: automating business processes, gaining insight through data analysis, and engaging with customers and employees. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
524:Something we do know is that review coverage does go to male authors more than women authors. That's a fact. I think it's one of those examples of unconscious bias: If you hire a lot of male journalists, they're more likely to pick up the latest Ian McEwan novel than the latest A.S. Byatt novel. ~ Emma Donoghue, #NFDB
525:There are five degrees of initiative that the manager can exercise in relation to the boss and to the system: wait until told (lowest initiative); ask what to do; recommend, then take resulting action; act, but advise at once; and act on own, then routinely report (highest initiative). ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
526:When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing. ~ Chuck Klosterman, #NFDB
527:As soon as I enter office I am going to ask Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to begin a comprehensive review of these cases in order to develop a list of regions and countries from which immigration must be suspended until proven and effective vetting mechanisms can be put in place. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
528:Didn't think her vision was consistent with the ORC, especially the way the Council wishes to work with the ORC. For example, with regard to the zoning ordinance, the Council sees a comprehensive approach, the ORC wants to review the ordinances and simplify them. Pam's vision was counter to that. ~ Norman Foster, #NFDB
529:Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences. ~ George Will, #NFDB
530:I look like hell.” He stood before her, angling his body away so that the burned side of his face still faced the stairs and his good eye swept up and down her form slowly, lazily, almost … erotically. “If this is hell, I need to review my definition of heaven. I’ve clearly been lowballing paradise ~ Katy Regnery, #NFDB
531:The rise of the citizen review site is a sobering development. No longer are you on top of the mountain, blasting your marketing message down to the masses through your megaphone. All of a sudden, the masses are conversing with one another. If your service or product isn't any good, they'll out you. ~ David Pogue, #NFDB
532:So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
533:Furthermore, even these limited accomplishments should be obtained, Barbauld cautioned, “in a quiet and unobserved manner” for the display of knowledge by a woman is “punished with disgrace.”6 Besides, the Monthly Review complained in a 1763 review, “intense thought spoils a lady’s features.”7 ~ Karen Swallow Prior, #NFDB
534:Left the poem at the typists and sent off the two others: looking in a copy of the English Review for its address, I was disgusted by the poetry in it—all in the worst modern tradition—and half thought of not sending mine. But I decided I need not be nice, as I shall almost certainly be rejected anyway. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
535:Any time we discuss a historical event, we review the facts, and sometimes we argue about what really took place, what was said, what was observed. However, once we agree on the facts (or agree to disagree), we are still left with the most important question we can ask: What is the meaning of the event? ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
536:Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
537:So if you find out how you prevent yourself from growing, from using your potential, you have away of increasing this, making life richer, making you more and more capable of mobilizing yourself. And our potential is based upon a very peculiar attitude: to live and review every fresh second ~ Frederick Salomon Perls, #NFDB
538:The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. --“The Negro Child—His Self-Image,” in Saturday Review (New York, 21 Dec. 1963; repr. in The Price of the Ticket as “A Talk to Teachers,” 1985) Europe ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
539:I wanted to look right. I remember a review - a very positive one - in The New York Times that said I was so good in the role [Earl Mills] that I "even managed to overcome a terrible red wig." I wanted to write her and tell her about the agony I'd gone through with the perm, but I thought better of it. ~ Brent Spiner, #NFDB
540:Businesses must recognize that the voice of the customer is now more powerful than ever before. Whether Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, review sites, product forums, blogs, or Pinterest, your customers are sharing their experiences on platforms where audiences can find what others are saying about you. ~ Brian Solis, #NFDB
541:I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up. ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
542:In protests against the killing of Michael Brown, relegitimizing the police has taken the form of demands for police accountability, for citizens’ review boards, for police to wear cameras—as if more surveillance could possibly be a good thing for those too poor to survive within the law in the first place. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
543:I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 83.2 ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
544:Once every year we review market rates and issue raises automatically. Our target is to pay everyone at the company at the top 10 percent of the market regardless of their role. So whether you work in customer support or ops or programming or design, you’ll be paid in the top 10 percent for that position. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
545:General Review Of The Sex Situation
Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?
~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
546:It's time for us to review the circumstances under which corporations gain rights superior to that of individuals in our society. It's time for us to look at the practices of corporations and holding them accountable for violations of law which often go unnoticed because there is very little regulation. ~ Dennis Kucinich, #NFDB
547:Under the president's spying program, there are no checks and balances. There is no outside review of the legality of this brazen infringement on the civil rights and liberties of the American people. Undeterred by the public outcry, the president [George Bush] vows to continue spying on American citizens. ~ Samuel Alito, #NFDB
548:A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies [that praised the drugs] were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. ~ Marcia Angell, #NFDB
549:In a review of more than two hundred studies, researchers concluded that the more self-focused we are, the more anxious—and also the more depressed and generally negative—we become.16 Self-focus even makes us more sensitive to physical difficulties, such as stomach upset, nasal congestion, and muscle tension.17 ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
550:In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report. ~ Frederick Seitz, #NFDB
551:If you can do one thing you thought was utterly impossible, it causes you to rethink your beliefs. Life is both subtler and more complex than some of us like to believe. So if you haven't done so already, review your beliefs and decide which ones you might change now and what you would change those beliefs to. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
552:Most children, even very bright ones, need constant review and practice to truly own a concept in grammar, math or science. In schools today, on paper it may appear that kids are learning skills, but in reality they are only renting them, soon to forget what they've learned over the weekend or summer vacation. ~ Rafe Esquith, #NFDB
553:One thing I noticed over time is that if I got a bad review, usually the bad part of it was at the very end. I could tell that nobody read the whole review because they would just say, "It was great to see the review!" In a way, my brain shuts down at the end of an article. It doesn't really want to go to the end. ~ Jim Shaw, #NFDB
554:[Obama] was the Harvard Law Review president who never published a word, the community organizer who never organized a thing, the state legislator who voted present.
And then one day came the day when it wasn't enough simply to be. For the first time in his life, he had to do it. And it turns out he can't. ~ Mark Steyn,#NFDB
555:I tend to go see whatever film has been most obnoxiously hyped, marketed, and oversold in any given week…art films? Bah! Won’t find too many of those discussed here. And every once in a while, I may review a TV show, theatrical production, record album, concert, or book (yeah, probably not too many of those either). ~ Roy Sexton, #NFDB
556:National Review once opined, many years ago, that, every year, the Nobel peace prize should go to the U.S. secretary of defense: The American military is the number-one guarantor of peace in the world. But maybe something like a Nobel freedom prize would be a more appropriate award for Reagan than a peace prize. ~ Jay Nordlinger, #NFDB
557:They should whistle at men in the streets, aid beauty parlors, picket toy manufacturers who produce sexist toys, convert in sizable numbers to militant lesbianism, provide feminist divorce counseling, establish make-up withdrawal centers, adopt their mothers' family names." - The Third World of Women, Partisan Review ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
558:There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.
(Interview with Paris Review, 1958) ~ Ernest Hemingway,#NFDB
559:Critics may find this hard to believe, but students in American public schools today are studying and mastering far more difficult topics in science and mathematics than their peers forty or fifty years ago. People who doubt this should review the textbooks in common use then and now or look at the tests then and now. ~ Diane Ravitch, #NFDB
560:I don't read my reviews. Unless I'm unfortunate enough to catch something by accident, which happens, and it's always a bad review. Always, it's amazing. I will be sitting in a café, and I will open a random paper right to the page of the review.... And then you're sucked in and go home and never want to go out again. ~ Keira Knightley, #NFDB
561:Maybe just as many women writers as male writers could be billed as the next great American writer by their publisher. Maybe book criticism sections could review an equal amount of female and male writers. Maybe Oprah could start putting some books by women authors in her book club, since most of her audience is women. ~ Jami Attenberg, #NFDB
562:We need to do a top/bottom review of the federal government and for every agency administration bureaucracy that is not called for in the United States Constitution, we have to really ask the question what is its purpose, how many people work there, how much does it cost the taxpayers and what is the value to our society. ~ Josh Mandel, #NFDB
563:I don’t really want to have to review the safety procedures for your department yet again, Professor. Especially when you’ve been doing so well with the departmental fatalities.’
‘Only three this year!’ the Professor said, smiling happily before noticing the look on Nero’s face. ‘Which is, of course, three too many. ~ Mark Walden,#NFDB
564:Laura from The Mysteries Of Laura is the most different from me personally that I've ever played. I'm a very thoughtful, forward-thinking, planner kind of person. I love Excel spreadsheets and five-year-plans, and I love to review every year how my New Year's resolutions went. I'm like that, and that is not Laura at all. ~ Jenna Fischer, #NFDB
565:Not surprisingly, the federal judiciary nearly always rules in favor of the federal government. Judicial review, contrary to the assurances of its advocates, has hardly restrained Congress at all. Instead it has progressively stripped the states of their traditional powers, while allowing federal power to grow unchecked. ~ Joseph Sobran, #NFDB
566:Eighty-five per cent of the crowd is going to fall in love with me - they're going to feel it, wow. But fifteen per cent are going to think, 'This guy is obnoxious.' I spend enormous time with them - every negative review of 'Crush It!' on Amazon has a response from me - and I can probably bring back ten of the fifteen. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk, #NFDB
567:It makes no sense to analyze whether an envisioned future is the right one. With a creation—and the task is creation of a future, not prediction—there can be no right answer. Did Beethoven create the right Ninth Symphony? Did Shakespeare create the right Hamlet? We can’t answer these questions; they’re nonsense. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
568:recommend the habit of a weekly review in which you make a plan for the workweek ahead (see Rule #4). During my experiments with 4DX, I used a weekly review to look over my scoreboard to celebrate good weeks, help understand what led to bad weeks, and most important, figure out how to ensure a good score for the days ahead. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
569:Relax and breathe. The trouble with imaginative people is that we're good at picturing the worst that could happen to us. Fear is often just the imagination taking a wrong turn. Bad criticism is not the end of the world. As far as I know, no one has ever died from a bad review. Take a deep breath and accept whatever comes. ~ Austin Kleon, #NFDB
570:Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads. ~ Clay Shirky, #NFDB
571:I was co-editor of the magazine called The Jazz Review, which was a pioneering magazine because it was the only magazine, then or now, in which all the articles were written by musicians, by jazz men. They had been laboring for years under the stereotype that they weren't very articulate except when they picked up their horn. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
572:Meanwhile, the younger Mr. Carson had ended his review, and began to listen to what was going on. He finished his breakfast, got up, and pulled five shillings out of his pocket, which he gave to Wilson as he passed him, for the “poor fellow.” He went past quickly, and calling for his horse, mounted gaily, and rode away. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
573:Mitch McConnell, 72, is second only to Henry Clay as the state's most consequential public servant. McConnell's skills have been honed through five terms. He is, however - let us say the worst - not cuddly. National Review has said he has 'an owlish, tight-lipped public demeanor reminiscent of George Will.' Harsh. But true. ~ George Will, #NFDB
574:It is especially imperative for Congress to exercise careful judgment in this area, because of the difficulty under existing laws, in obtaining judicial review of Postal Service abuses. ...We strongly oppose the legislation's infringement of rights guaranteed under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. ~ John Shattuck, #NFDB
575:Science has a culture that is inherently cautious and that is normally not a bad thing. You could even say conservative, because of the peer review process and because the scientific method prizes uncertainty and penalises anyone who goes out on any sort of a limb that is not held in place by abundant and well-documented evidence. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
576:Under true peer-review...a panel of reviewers must accept a study before it can be published in a scientific journal. If the reviewers have objections the author must answer them or change the article to take reviewers' objections into account. Under the IPCC review process, the authors are at liberty to ignore criticisms. ~ Richard Lindzen, #NFDB
577:But the truth is, there's little even the most organized people can do to prepare themselves for having children. They can buy all the books, observe friends and relations, review their own memories of childhood. But the distance between those proxy experiences and the real thing, ultimately, can be measured in light-years. ~ Jennifer Senior, #NFDB
578:Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
579:Stephen King writes mass fiction but gets reviewed by the New York Times and writes for the New Yorker. Critics say to me, "Shut up and enjoy your money," and I think, OK, I'll shut up and enjoy my money, but why does Stephen King get to enjoy his money and get reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Book Review? ~ Jennifer Weiner, #NFDB
580:Excuses are the explanations we use for hanging on to behaviors we don't like about ourselves; they are self-defeating behaviors we don't know how to change. InExcuses Begone! I review 18 of the most common excuses people use, such as "I'm too busy, too old, too fat, too scared or it's going to take too long or be too difficult." ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
581:Putting the right book in the right kid’s hands is kind of like giving that kid superpowers. Because one book leads to the next book and the next book and the next book and that is how a world-view grows. That is how you nourish thought. ~ Cecil Castellucci, “Better to Light a Candle than to Curse the Darkness” on the LA Review of Books blog., #NFDB
582:By his own assessment, he was no genius. He had "no great quickness of apprehension or wit" or "power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought." On the many occasions when I share those feelings, I find it encouraging to review those words because that Englishman did okay for himself—his name was Charles Darwin. ~ Leonard Mlodinow, #NFDB
583:making. In the state of Washington, for example, a review of juvenile sentencing reports found that prosecutors routinely described black and white offenders differently.68 Blacks committed crimes because of internal personality flaws such as disrespect. Whites did so because of external conditions such as family conflict. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
584:In contrast to the notion that any publicity is good publicity, negative reviews hurt sales for some books. But for books by new or relatively unknown authors, negative reviews increased sales by 45%.... Even a bad review or negative word of mouth can increase sales if it informs or reminds people that the product or idea exists. ~ Jonah Berger, #NFDB
585:It's very hard, I think, for critics to write positive reviews, because there's not that much to say about something you like. You can kind of say 'I really like that band' and then if you're forced to fill up the rest of an article, you've got to start saying heady things. It's much easier to say negative things in a review. ~ Mitchell Hurwitz, #NFDB
586:Only once before, in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison, which established the principle of judicial review, had the Court invalidated an act of Congress on constitutional grounds. John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts dissented; Curtis was so outraged by the decision that he resigned from the bench. Much ~ Eric Foner, #NFDB
587:more about nutrients in foods at the US Nutrients Database here. Happy shopping and I hope this Paleo list of foods helps you get through the checkout more quickly and home to prepare your beautifully healthy Paleo meals! That ends the Paleo shopping list, If it's helped you with your grocery list please leave a review below. Thanks! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
588:Nuclear, ecological, chemical, economic — our arsenal of Death by Stupidity is impressive for a species as smart as Homo sapiens ["Strange New World," http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/boo...]. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
589:There's a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What's the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it's exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That's really cool. That's the biggest signifier of closing the gaps. ~ Matthew McConaughey, #NFDB
590:Adrenaline addiction The unwillingness or inability of busy people to slow down and review, reflect, assess, and discuss their business and their team. An adrenaline addiction is marked by anxiety among people who always have a need to keep moving, keep spinning, even in the midst of obvious confusion and declining productivity ~ Patrick Lencioni, #NFDB
591:I’ll meet you tomorrow morning at ten in your office, and explain everything. In the meantime, go home and get some sleep.”
“I have a meeting with McConnell and Baroja tomorrow at ten A.M. to review some procedures,” he said.
Now, that was the J.B. I knew. Never mind the demon attack; procedures needed reviewing. ~ Christina Henry,#NFDB
592:I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care. I could not have wept if I had tried. I had no wish to review the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities. ~ Apsley Cherry Garrard, #NFDB
593:Not only do fossil fuel companies receive $775 billion to $1 trillion in annual global subsidies, but they pay nothing for the privilege of treating our shared atmosphere as a free waste dump—a fact that has been described by the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change as “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen. ~ Naomi Klein, #NFDB
594:We don’t have the luxury of having the Urim and the Thummim,” Wilson said, in a nod to the stones that the Israelite high priest used in Old Testament times to learn God’s will. “Nor do we have a living prophet with us. So we must rely upon the Holy Spirit’s leading in our own Bible study as we review the plain teachings of Scripture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
595:A chart review (Herman, 1986) found that 67 percent of twelve psychiatric outpatients with BPD had a history of abuse in childhood or adolescence. And a qualitative study (Bryer, Nelson, Miller, & Krol, 1987) found that 86 percent of fourteen hospitalized patients with BPD had experienced sexual abuse before the age of sixteen. ~ Sheri Van Dijk, #NFDB
596:I started work on my first French history book in 1969; on 'Socialism in Provence' in 1974; and on the essays in Marxism and the French Left in 1978. Conversely, my first non-academic publication, a review in the 'TLS', did not come until the late 1980s, and it was not until 1993 that I published my first piece in the 'New York Review.' ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
597:Mathematics is a tool which ideally permits mediocre minds to solve complicated problems expeditiously. ~ Floyd Alburn Firestone, Vibration and Sound (1939) 2nd ed., p. 8, as quoted by Raymond L. Wilder, "The Nature of Modern Mathematics," The Evolution of the Science of Numbers, Quarterly Review of the Michigan Alumnus, Vol. 65, 1958-1959, p. 302., #NFDB
598:Everyone has failed, everyone has misspoken, everyone has meant well but done the wrong thing. Your favorite restaurants, cafes and books have all gotten a one-star review along the way. No brand is perfect, no individual can pretend to be either. Perfect can't possibly be the goal, we're left with generous, important and human instead. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
599:On the other side, you have the conservative intelligentsia - magazines like National Review, which has a big anti-Trump issue; Weekly Standard editor, conservative talk show hosts - they're mounting a big anti-Trump effort, pro-Cruz effort because they think [Donald] Trump is dangerous and he's not qualified to be commander in chief. ~ Mara Liasson, #NFDB
600:rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, and in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
601:Although The Terminator is arguably the more visionary of the first two films, [Terminator 2] is the more visually and viscerally satisfying. It's an exhausting experience and, even 18 years after its release (as I write this review), few films have matched it within the science fiction genre for sheer white-knuckle exhilaration. ~ James Berardinelli, #NFDB
602:Every February my classmates and I were herded into assemblies for a ritual review of the Civil Rights Movement. Our teachers urged us toward the example of freedom marchers, Freedom Riders, and Freedom Summers, and it seemed that the month could not pass without a series of films dedicated to the glories of being beaten on camera. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
603:If, on a full and final review, my life and practice shall be found unworthy of my principles, let due infamy be heaped on my memory; but let none be led thereby to distrust the principles to which I proved recreant, nor yet the ability of some to adorn them by a suitable life and conversation. To unerring time be all this committed. ~ Horace Greeley, #NFDB
604:Inferences concerning a trustee’s ability to accomplish specific tasks and honest intent to keep promises have been at the core of Western theorizing on trust since Deutsch (1960) initially defined trust as an individual’s confidence in the intentions and capabilities of a partner (Lewicki, McAllister, & Bies, 1998 for a review). This ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
605:The thing about being on the trail is that you have hours and hours to think, so at first you review the things you have been thinking about. Then you have the thoughts you were planning to have. But after that you still have thinking time and no planned thoughts, so you start to think about things you never expected to think about. ~ Suzanne Roberts, #NFDB
606:Nearly two decades later, on his final day in office, President Clinton had issued Rich a highly unusual pardon. It was unusual because the pardon was given to a fugitive, which was, to my knowledge, unprecedented. It was also unusual, and suspicious, because it had not gone through the normal review process at the Department of Justice. ~ James Comey, #NFDB
607:These, in review, are the baby steps to owning less: • Write down your goals. • Start decluttering with the easy targets in your lived-in areas. • Then go room by room, tossing out and tidying up. • Eliminate duplicates as you make your circuit. • Share your story with others to keep yourself motivated during and beyond the first steps. ~ Joshua Becker, #NFDB
608:To enhance the defense of the other agencies of government, including our law enforcement agency - it's so important. They're doing such a great job, by the way. We will put together a team of our best military, civilian, and private sector cybersecurity experts to comprehensively review all of our cybersecurity systems and technologies. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
609:You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.
(Interview, The Paris Review) ~ William S Burroughs,#NFDB
610:Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson star. I neglected to mention that, maybe because I was trying to place them in this review's version of the Witness Protection Program. If I were taken off the movie beat and assigned to cover the interior design of bowling alleys, I would have some idea of how they must have felt as they made this film. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
611:The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books, or write opinion pieces about what they think of Neil Young, or why they quit watching ER or whatever. And because of that, I think there's a lot of people who write about my books with the premise of, "Why this guy? Why not me?" ~ Chuck Klosterman, #NFDB
612:2. One of the governmental agencies responsible for the cosmetics industry is the FDA, but it doesn’t review cosmetics before they go on the market, it can’t recall a product if there’s a problem, and it has banned only about a dozen toxic chemicals from beauty products, compared with the more than 1,300 that are banned in the European Union. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
613:Okay, this is Fran Lebowitz. She gave an interview once for the Paris Review about trying to write fiction and saying that fiction writers start talking about how characters are talking to them, and it's crazy, she's never had that. And I also thought, I'm never gonna be able to do this, because I didn't feel that for a really long time. ~ Sloane Crosley, #NFDB
614:Harvard Business Review study found that 80 percent of marketers are unhappy with their ability to measure marketing return on investment (ROI). Not because the tools aren’t good enough, but because they’re too good, and marketers are seeing for the first time that their strategies are “often flawed and their spending is inefficient.”4 Noah ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
615:Revolutionary politics, revolutionary art, and oh, the revolutionary mind, is the dullest thing on earth. When we open a revolutionary review, or read a revolutionary speech, we yawn our heads off. It is true, there is nothing else. Everything is correctly, monotonously, dishearteningly revolutionary. What a stupid word! What a stale fuss! ~ Wyndham Lewis, #NFDB
616:We discuss calling the police. We have to quickly review anything that could go wrong if we do. Are our immigration papers in order? They are. Do we have outstanding parking tickets? I have three, Achor Achor two. We calculate whether or not we have enough in checking accounts to pay the tickets if the police demand it. We decide that we do. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
617:I don't think it's a matter of going back and having a review of our process. Our process is about as thorough as there can be. Is it imperfect? Yes. Is there risk? Yes, but we start with the fact that we have an American that's being held hostage and that American's life is in danger and that's where we start. And then we proceed from there. ~ Chuck Hagel, #NFDB
618:Just consider the CIA and its effort to suppress the Senate's review of its torture program. Take in the fact that we live in a country that a) legalized torture and b) where no one was ever held to account for it, and now the government's internal look at what happened is being suppressed by the CIA. That's a frightening landscape to be in. ~ Laura Poitras, #NFDB
619:Blade Runner is a rare science fiction movie so full of material that pages can be written about it without scratching the surface. A review like this can provide little more than an overview. A detailed exploration of the movie, its style, and its mysteries requires dedication that only someone immersed in Blade Runner lore can provide. ~ James Berardinelli, #NFDB
620:One of my first directives, after taking office, will be asking the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all relevant federal departments to conduct a thorough review of United States cyber defenses and identify all vulnerabilities - and we have to do that immediately - including to our power grid, our communications system, and all vital infrastructure. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
621:A mediocre review or careless slight can no longer harm him, but heartbreak, real true heartbreak, can pierce his thin hide and bring out the same shade of blood as ever. How can so many things become a bore by middle age—philosophy, radicalism, and other fast foods—but heartbreak keeps its sting? Perhaps because he finds fresh sources for ~ Andrew Sean Greer, #NFDB
622:Mindy Sue, you are a pretty, lively, successful female, fluent in French and German. You are a professional woman but also sportif. You care buckets, I can see that. How did you get yourself in this terrible predicament? How did you become a four-line seventy-five-cents-a-word advertisement in the back pages of The New York Review of Books? ~ Donald Barthelme, #NFDB
623:As soon as I enter office, I am going to ask the Department of State, which has been brutalized by Hillary Clinton to begin a comprehensive review of foreign-born individuals terror cases in order to develop a list of regions and countries from which immigration must be suspended until proven and effective vetting mechanisms can be put in place. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
624:In fact, on a side note, after the success of the first record, I got asked to write for some pop artists, as everybody does, and I did a couple songs for some of these massive stars and the review that I got back was, "This artist likes the song but it's too POP-y for them." I was like, "What do you mean, I thought I was writing for a pop star." ~ Aaron Bruno, #NFDB
625:John Archer in a definitive 2006 review, “There is a weak and inconsistent association between testosterone levels and aggression in [human] adults, and … administration of testosterone to volunteers typically does not increase their aggression.” The brain doesn’t pay attention to fluctuations of testosterone levels within the normal range. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
626:Last month, Charlottesville's police chief announced that his department was unable to confirm the gang-rape allegations published in the magazine. The police review, which included interviews with 70 people connected to the case, also showed that university administrators acted quickly to offer assistance to Jackie and investigate the allegations. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
627:The Future of Humanity Institute conducted a poll of academic experts on global risks. They gave an estimate of 19 percent probability that the human species will go extinct before the end of this century. The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change factored a 9.5 percent risk of extinction within the next century into its calculations. ~ George Marshall, #NFDB
628:I don't spend a lot of time online. My mother's really good at picking out if she sees a really great review, and she'll forward it to me. She's like my little Internet filter. It's always nice to see something going up; if I want to find something on Nathan Fillion, I do know where to look, but I've got a nice little delivery system in my mom. ~ Nathan Fillion, #NFDB
629:There was a f**king review in f**king Melody Maker [of the first BOSSANOVA single, 'Velouria'] - 'Sounds like someone's been taking singing lessons'. Like, motherf**king A! I am the singer. Who do sing SONGS. It's like I never sang before; like I was - I don't know - reading PROSE on my previous records and now I sing. EXCUUUUUUSE me for singing ~ Black Francis, #NFDB
630:What do you read?
I read what friends tell me is good. This explains the book's success, partially. It got very good reviews. Good reviews will get you a readership right away, but that's it. The review or the article appears one day in a magazine or a newspaper, then it's gone. Word of mouth is a continuing phenomenon, much more powerful. ~ John Berendt,#NFDB
631:Thoughtful design, code review, pair programming, and a considered test strategy (including TDD practices and fully automated unit test suites) are all of the utmost importance. Techniques like assertions, defensive programming, and code coverage tools will all help minimise the likelihood of errors sneaking past. We all know these mantras. Don’t we? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
632:I get rewarded virtually every day with something amazing to see - whether it's a new shot, a miniature sweater, someone who's figured out how to make the hair look really great. We found a way to do the rain, finally. And mud. Make the trees. So I get to stay in constant motion as a director, you know, reviewing things. And there's a lot to review. ~ Henry Selick, #NFDB
633:I never expected to be in the papers. I personally never expected to be in the papers. The height of my ambition for these books was, well frankly, to get reviewed. A lot of children's books don't even get reviewed.. forget good review, bad review. Personally, no, I never expected to be in the papers so it's an odd experience when it happens to you . ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
634:I think that the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch and so we’re going to be doing a complete review of FDA operations. At bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter. That’s what Sasha eats for lunch. Probably three times a week... ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
635:But if you build a habit of only shopping for items from a list, then you decrease the likelihood of eating junk food—and you’ll save a lot of money along the way. Description: Look in your refrigerator, review the meals you have planned, and check out your cupboard. Write down a list of only the items you need, and do it before you leave for the store. ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
636:You did not get a very good review from Dr. Trinh," he wrote. "She was very quick to contact me and to let me know that I should stay away from you because you obviously wanted to do damage to the memory of our dearest Celestine. She also said that she did not feel that you were very intelligent, or maybe you were just American, she's not sure... ~ David Cronenberg, #NFDB
637:When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but to a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him. The review, the stacks in Brentano's, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
638:It didn’t mention that the “article” was a letter to the editor, published in 1980, and that its conclusions were based on a simple review of the charts of hospitalized patients, not a scientific study of long-term narcotic use. But the idea was out there, published in a scientific journal: Fewer than 1 percent of pain patients would develop addictions. ~ John Temple, #NFDB
639:The day will come when you will review your life and be thankful for every minute of it. Every hurt, every sorrow, every joy, every celebration, every moment of your life will be a treasure to you, for you will see the utter perfection of the design. You will stand back from the weaving and see the tapestry, and you will weep at the beauty of it. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
640:Yeah, I’m gonna need to write this . . .” Januscheitis said, pulling Faith up from where she was passed out on the computer keyboard. “ ‘. . . it was, like, awesome . . .’ is not going to pass review.” “Wazzat?” Faith said. “We’re going to have to talk about report writing language, ma’am,” Januscheitis said, getting the lieutenant to her feet. “Tomorrow. ~ John Ringo, #NFDB
641:on what we heard—” “Now don’t you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man. . . .” But Jem took exception to Reverend Sykes, and we were subjected to a lengthy review of the evidence with Jem’s ideas on the law regarding rape: it wasn’t rape if she let you, but she had to be eighteen—in Alabama, ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
642:Our objective is to begin a national conversation to better support individuals and families living with ASD in Canada. The Summit will review the recent National Needs Assessment Survey and provide leaders with a better understanding of ASD surveillance across the country. We are pleased that Minister Bergen will be part of this important discussion. ~ Cynthia Carroll, #NFDB
643:A: Why yes you can! Even better if you tell others or write a review. I read every single review on Amazon, I promise. This is how books are discovered, so if you want other readers to find the books you’re enjoying, take a few minutes and craft a review. Do it for all the books you enjoy. As writers, our souls subsist on your feedback. It means a lot to us! ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
644:a recent review of the evidence concluded that there is a very small and statistically insignificant relationship between student evaluations and learning, and that “the more objectively learning is measured, the less likely it is to be related to the evaluations.”48 Another review also concluded that “teacher ratings and learning are not closely related ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer, #NFDB
645:David became a lavish supporter of the arts in New York and appeared regularly in the society pages. Charles, meanwhile, kept a lower profile but assiduously invited sympathetic members of the media to his donor summits, such as the talk radio host Glenn Beck, the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and the National Review columnist Ramesh Ponnuru. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
646:Qiu Guangling, director of the Department of Foreign Investment Administration at the Ministry of Commerce, said recently, "The revision this time aims to unify domestic laws on foreign investments and will focus on the equal treatment of foreign and domestic investments, strengthening security review and advancing the reforms of foreign investment regulation. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
647:Bob Dylan was really mad with my wife. I had asked by Rolling Stone - the only assignment I ever had for them - to do a story on the Rolling Thunder Review, which was Bob Dylan, Alan Ginsberg, Joan Baez and a host of stars. My wife, some weeks before, had written in The New York Times that The Kid wasn't The Kid anymore and he wasn't all that winning anymore. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
648:If you are clear where you are going and you take several steps in that direction every day, you eventually have to get there. If I head north out of Santa Barbara and take five steps a day, eventually I have to end up in San Francisco. So decide what you want, write it down, review it constantly, and each day do something that moves you toward those goals. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
649:Even a bad review is still a review. It means someone cared enough to take the time to say: Hey, this sucks. Don’t bother. Buy a DVD instead...Yes, someone cared. And isn’t that what every writer dreams of?...So, how did I deal with bad reviews? How else? I cry. I get mad. I pretend not to care. Then I pour myself a glass of wine and call a friend to complain. ~ C W Gortner, #NFDB
650:Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want. ~ Martha Grimes, #NFDB
651:When a handful of students came to RBG in 1970 and asked her to teach the first-ever Rutgers class on women and the law, she was ready to agree. It took her only about a month to read every federal decision and every law review article about women’s status. There wasn’t much. One popular textbook included the passage “Land, like woman, was meant to be possessed. ~ Irin Carmon, #NFDB
652:I was planning on writing a detailed review of several books on web security tonight, but the Obama collapse has superseded my best-laid plans. Here’s another open thread for this important topic, as America wrestles with the issue of whether it would be a good idea to elect a President with a 20-year history of associating with people who hate America. ~ Charles Foster Johnson, #NFDB
653:When I'm scared - and I'm always scared when I have to face an audience, when I have to read a review, when I publish a book...then, I think of my grandfather. My grandfather was this strong, tough Basque who would never bend....What would he do? Well, he would go ahead, close his eyes, and drive forward. You do it and the spirit that is within you....is there. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
654:Sales and theater have much in common. Both take guts. Salespeople pick up the phone and call strangers; actors walk onto the stage in front of them. Both invite rejection—for salespeople, slammed doors, ignored calls, and a pile of nos; for actors, a failed audition, an unresponsive audience, a scathing review. And both have evolved along comparable trajectories. ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
655:We have just had the most amazing time. Every now and then, we'll come across a review where the person didn't like it and we're like, "What? Really? How could you not like it?" All of us like it so much, and we have such a great time at work. We've just been really blessed, and we're all standing here going, "Wait a minute, how did this happen?" It's been awesome. ~ Angie Harmon, #NFDB
656:At the prosecution table, Flagler gave me his Ivy League snicker. If I wanted, I could dangle him out the window by his ankles. But then, I was picking up penalties for late hits while he was singing tenor with the Whiffenpoofs. Okay, so I’m not Yale Law Review, but I’m proud of my diploma. University of Miami. Night division. Top half of the bottom third of my class. ~ Paul Levine, #NFDB
657:Largely ignored, by gurus and governments, are the older, high-impact growth firms. Though they generate almost all of the innovation and job growth in economies, there are not enough of them to garner the favorable attention of politicians or book publishers. For more on this topic, read Verne’s interview in Business Review Europe titled “Give the Gazelles a Break”. ~ Verne Harnish, #NFDB
658:Here is a summary of the twenty-one great ways to stop procrastinating and get more things done faster. Review these rules and principles regularly until they become firmly ingrained in your thinking and actions, and your future will be guaranteed. 1. Set the table: Decide exactly what you want. Clarity is essential. Write out your goals and objectives before you begin. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
659:Her eyes were the eyes of one who can remember; one whose childhood does not fade like a dream, nor whose youth vanish like a sunbeam. She would not take life loosely and incoherently, in parts, and let one season slip as she entered on another: she would retain and add; often review from the commencement, and so grow in harmony and consistency as she grew in years. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
660:Review everything you hear. You will not hear everything the first time, so double-check. Compare notes with your team members. You will often discover new information that will help you advance the negotiation. ■Use backup listeners whose only job is to listen between the lines. They will hear things you miss. In other words: listen, listen again, and listen some more. ~ Chris Voss, #NFDB
661:Stories are the only things that give any meaning to our pointless, shapeless lives."
"Literature above all is a mode of transport. It lifts you up out of whatever situation you’re in and it puts you down somewhere else. It fucking escapes you. That’s what literature is."
-Jumping Off a Cliff: An Interview with Kevin Barry, the Paris Review. November 2013 ~ Kevin Barry,#NFDB
662:Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.” Atticus’s ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
663:GOD made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him. When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start. Now I’m alert to GOD’s ways; I don’t take God for granted. Every day I review the ways he works; I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I’m watching my step. GOD rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
664:In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yourself up as much as possible as a way of keeping on. Sort of cheering for yourself in the great football stadium of life."
(Barnes & Noble Review, email dialogue with Cameron Martin, Feb. 09, 2009) ~ T Coraghessan Boyle,#NFDB
665:I was amplifying the negative at the expense of the positive, not to serve any useful function, not to make my writing better, but to destroy it. The lizard brain, so attuned to people laughing behind our backs, was on high alert for this sort of criticism and would do anything it could to stop me from writing again. I haven't sought out and read a review or a tweet since. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
666:Luck is very important – it is 50%. But that luck will not come unless you put in the effort and in the effort, a very important element according to me is a daily review of what am I doing, where am I going and being ruthlessly honest with yourself. Most people blame the environment… My belief is I CAN CHANGE, and that we must learn to be nakedly honest with ourselves. ~ Rashmi Bansal, #NFDB
667:When I was a kid and a young man I read everything. When I was about 23, I was incredibly lucky in that I wound up with several book review columns, which meant that I had to read huge amounts of stuff that was outside my experience and outside my comfort zone. I think every young writer should be forced to read the kind of stuff they would not normally read for pleasure. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
668:I am 100 percent confident. This is a security review that was requested. It is being carried out. It will be resolved. But I have to add if there's going to be a security review about me, there's going to have to be security reviews about a lot of other people, including Republican office holders, because we've got this absurd situation of retroactive classifications. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
669:When Khrushchev asked whether his brass hats would guarantee that keeping the missiles in Cuba would not bring about nuclear war, they looked at him, he later told Norman Cousins of the Saturday Review, an informal emissary between Kennedy and Khrushchev, “as though I were out of my mind or, what was worse, a traitor. So I said to myself, ‘To hell with these maniacs.’”6 ~ Robert F Kennedy, #NFDB
670:It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble - whether instituting open housing, civilian compliant review boards, or sex education programs - when they presume that a reform is an inevitable comcomitant of progress. It is then they are most likely to establish their reforms by to-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues. ~ Rick Perlstein, #NFDB
671:Perhaps the central question about [Eliot] Porter's work is about the relationship between science, aesthetics, and environmental politics. His brother, the painter and critic Fairfield Porter, wrote in a 1960 review of [Porter's] colour photographs: 'There is no subject and background, every corner is alive,' and this suggests what an ecological aesthetic might look like. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
672:However good we are, however correctly we seek to lead our lives, tragedies do occur. We can blame others, look for justification, imagine how our lives would have been different without them. But none of that matters: they have happened, and that is that. From this point on, it is necessary that we review our own lives, overcome fear, and begin the process of reconstruction. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
673:If the souls of the dead could speak, they'd scream for release. Not just release from the Lake, but from their memories. Memories gnaw away at me relentlessly. I remember so much of my past, all the times where I failed or could have done better. With nothing else to do, I'm forced to review my life, over and over. Even my most minor errors become supreme lapses of judgement. ~ Darren Shan, #NFDB
674:I had decided that it is the fate of my generation never to have known the noble law of the sea, and to live, instead, in an era when the captain leaves his ship not last, but first. Call it the new spirit of capitalism, ushered in with all the other forms of ruthlessness that mark contemporary times [Kushner, Rachel, Diary, London Review of Books, January 14, 2015]. ~ Rachel Kushner, #NFDB
675:It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble—whether instituting open housing, civilian complaint review boards, or sex education programs—when they presume that a reform is an inevitable concomitant of progress. It is then that they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureacratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues. ~ Rick Perlstein, #NFDB
676:It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble - whether instituting open housing, civilian compliant review boards, or sex education programs - when they presume that a reform is an inevitable comcomitant of progress. It is then they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues. ~ Rick Perlstein, #NFDB
677:Leadership couples emotional intelligence with the courage to raise the tough questions, challenge people's assumptions about strategy and operations-and risk losing their goodwill. It demands a commitment to serving others; still at diagnostic, strategic, and tactile reasoning; the guts to get beneath the surface of tough realities and the heart to take the grief. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
678:Meaning can be usually be approximated, but often by sacrificing style. When I review my translations into Spanish, that's what I'm most concerned with, reading the sentences aloud in Spanish to make sure they sound the way I want them to. To be honest, I much prefer being translated into Greek or Japanese; in those cases, you have no way of being involved, and no pressure. ~ Daniel Alarcon, #NFDB
679:I found the best ideas usually came, not when one was actively striving for them, but when one was in a more relaxed state… I used to take long solitary walks on Sundays, during which I tended to review the current situation in a leisurely way. Such occasions often proved fruitful, even though (or perhaps, because) the primary purpose of the walk was relaxation and not research. ~ Paul Dirac, #NFDB
680:GOD made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him. When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start. Now I’m alert to GOD’s ways; I don’t take God for granted. Every day I review the ways he works; I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I’m watching my step. GOD rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
681:Review, friends—troops long past review,” the Duke intoned. “All to fate a weight of pains and dollars. Their spirits wear our silver collars. Review, friends—troops long past review: Each a dot of time without pretense or guile. With them passes the lure of fortune. Review, friends—troops long past review. When our time ends on its rictus smile, we’ll pass the lure of fortune. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
682:KEY POINTS—EMBRACING ACCOUNTABILITY • Accountability on a strong team occurs directly among peers. • For a culture of accountability to thrive, a leader must demonstrate a willingness to confront difficult issues. • The best opportunity for holding one another accountable occurs during meetings, and the regular review of a team scoreboard provides a clear context for doing so. ~ Patrick Lencioni, #NFDB
683:Nicholas Stern, formerly chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, and principal author of the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change (commissioned by U.K. prime minister Gordon Brown), has called climate change “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen.”55 No wonder the defenders of free market capitalism are worried. ~ Naomi Oreskes, #NFDB
684:The review and clean-up effort, if successful, will bring welcome relief to millions of frustrated users in search of current information. But the job will be a big one. One place to start would be the website of the agency in charge of managing government domain-names. It lists the chairman of its parent organisation as “Premier Wen Jiabao”. Mr Wen left office more than two years ago. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
685:I follow my own nose. So I read things that are different. People will always say to me, "Have you read Robert S. Bosco's latest novel?" or "Have you read so and so's history of Peru, which is reviewed in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times and has a buzz about it?" I don't even know what you're talking about. I'm like from another planet. I'm a pygmy from the jungle. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
686:I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I absolutely love summers books this one is another one on her belt. Hard to put down, he knew is rockstar career would just stop if he didn't get the help he needed. He decides it's best to go into a retreat. Then that's when he saw her Sharon. Great read have to buy to find out what happens. ~ Summer Cooper,#NFDB
687:Our brief review of the history of the Americas begins to give a sense of the forces that shape political and economic institutions. Different patterns of institutions today are deeply rooted in the past because once society gets organized in a particular way, this tends to persist. We’ll show that this fact comes from the way that political and economic institutions interact. This ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
688:the library is the last free space for the gathering and sharing of knowledge: “Our attention cannot be bought and sold in a library.” As a tradition barely a century and a half old in the United States, it gives physical form to the principle that public access to knowledge is the foundation of democracy ["What Libraries Can (Still) Do," The New York Review Daily, October 26, 2015]. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
689:To begin with clear and self-evident principles, to advance by timorous and sure steps, to review frequently our conclusions, and examine accurately all their consequences; though by these means we shall make both a slow and a short progress in our systems; are the only methods, by which we can ever hope to reach truth, and attain a proper stability and certainty in our determinations. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
690:After discussion and careful review of her answers, there was nothing in her comments that we could prove was a lie beyond a reasonable doubt. There was no moment when investigators caught her in a lie. She did not at any point confess wrongdoing or indicate that she knew what she had done with her emails was wrong. Whether we believed her or not, we had no significant proof otherwise. ~ James Comey, #NFDB
691:I notice that I only publish once every four years. It takes a couple of years to write a book and then, for me, for one reason or another, it usually takes about a year of sort of dicking around before I start up. I write a review or little magazine pieces and touring with the other book. But mainly it's just you're not ready, I'm not ready to start another. You're just not up for it. ~ Carolyn See, #NFDB
692:It is now 55 years since my last book report, which is a long time to live with a guilty conscience. So here it is: In the spring of 1956 I wrote a highly favorable review of the Bible without reading a word of it, and it was the last A I ever got in English. Why it has taken so long to come clean I'm not sure, except I have always been extremely sensitive about my academic reputation. ~ Pete Dexter, #NFDB
693:so well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony; and, on looking back to seasons which in review appear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that each hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so that, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
694:The day of the experimental session was spent as follows: 8:30. Arrival at session room 9:00. Psychedelic material taken (200 milligrams of mescaline), equivalent to 100 micrograms of LSDb 9:00–12:00. Music played while subjects relaxed with eyes closed 12:00–1:00. Psychological testing 1:00–5:00. Participants worked on problems 5:00–6:00. Discussion of experience; review of solutions ~ James Fadiman, #NFDB
695:SpaceX, for example, would have written down all the steps needed to replace a filter—put on gloves, wear safety goggles, remove a nut—and then want to alter this procedure or use a different type of filter. The FAA would need a week to review the new process before SpaceX could actually go about changing the filter on the rocket, a lag that both the engineers and Musk found ridiculous. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
696:The idea was to anger the drama kids, not hurt any of them. I'm not a deer hunter. I decided to prey on their most basic, cherished fear. "This play sucks! No one likes it. Not even the junior high bloggers will review this lame excuse for a Moliere," I yelled, and chucked tomatillos at the stager, over, under, and past the ducking, traumatized performers in French aristocrat costumes. ~ Sarah Skilton, #NFDB
697:There is only one princess in the Disney tales, one girl who gets to be exalted. Princesses may confide in a sympathetic mouse or teacup, but they do not have girlfriends. God forbid Snow White should give Sleeping Beauty a little support. Let's review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married, and be taken care of the rest of their lives. ~ Peggy Orenstein, #NFDB
698:In 1916, Infants' and Children's Wear Review insisted upon pink for boys and blue for girls. In 1939, Parents magazine claimed that pink was a good color for boys because it was a pale version of red, which was the color of Mars, the war god. Blue was good for girls because it was the color of Venus, and of the Virgin Mary. So, pink for girls is a relatively recent trend, and utterly random. ~ Tim Gunn, #NFDB
699:One day God will review your answers to these life questions. Did you put Jesus at the center of your life? Did you develop his character? Did you devote your life to serving others? Did you communicate his message and fulfill his mission? Did you love and participate in his family? These are the only issues that will count. As Paul said, “Our goal is to measure up to God’s plan for us.”21 ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
700:Congress has a limited role in regards to the nuclear agreement with Iran. We do have a review statute that was enacted into law where we review Iran's compliance with the agreement, and we have certain requirements on the President to keep us informed. What we have seen so far is that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear part of the agreement, but certainly has violated non-nuclear issues. ~ Ben Cardin, #NFDB
701:Fighting the Blues with Greens Here’s a statistic you probably haven’t heard: Higher consumption of vegetables may cut the odds of developing depression by as much as 62 percent.26 A review in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience concluded that, in general, eating lots of fruits and veggies may present “a non-invasive, natural, and inexpensive therapeutic means to support a healthy brain. ~ Michael Greger, #NFDB
702:From Iraq to Guantanamo Bay, international standards and the framework of international law are being given less when they should be given more importance. I am pleased that the courts in the United States are beginning to review what has happened to those detained in Guantanamo Bay. Similarly in Iraq we need to bring our strategies back within the framework of international norms and law. ~ Mary Robinson, #NFDB
703:When I heard the book (Thomas Friedman's latest) was actually coming out, I started to worry. Among other things, I knew I would be asked to write the review. The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. ~ Matt Taibbi, #NFDB
704:For this reason I get impatient with people who depict Marx’s dialectic as a closed method of analysis. It is not finite; on the contrary, it is constantly expanding, and here he is explaining precisely how. We only have to review what we have already experienced in reading Capital; the movement of its argument is a perpetual reshaping, rephrasing and expansion of the field of contradictions. ~ David Harvey, #NFDB
705:One reason that a truth and reconciliation process is needed for group selection is to return to the simplicity of the original problem and Darwin’s solution. As Ed Wilson and I put it in our recent review article titled “Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology“: Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary. ~ David Sloan Wilson, #NFDB
706:Most of us know intuitively that a score on a personality test, a rank on a standardized assessment, a grade point average, or a rating on a performance review doesn’t reflect your, or your child’s, or your students’, or your employees’ abilities. Yet the concept of average as a yardstick for measuring individuals has been so thoroughly ingrained in our minds that we rarely question it seriously. ~ Todd Rose, #NFDB
707:Would you like to assist me with my choice of underwear as well?” My sarcasm whistled right over his head.
“I would be delighted. While I’d love to see you in a balconette bra, I’m afraid for this particular occasion I would have to go with a foam-lined seamless due to the tight fit of the garment across your breasts . . . Perhaps I could come over and review what you have available . . . ~ Ilona Andrews,#NFDB
708:Most private traders on a losing streak keep trying to trade their way out of a hole. A loser thinks a successful trade is just around the corner, and that his luck is about to turn. He keeps putting on more trades and increases his size, all the while digging himself a deeper hole in the ice. The sensible thing to do would be to reduce your trading size and then stop and review your system. ~ Alexander Elder, #NFDB
709:Once in every few publishing seasons there is an Event. For no apparent reason, the great heart of the Public gives a startled jump, and the public's great purse is emptied to secure copies of some novel which has stolen into the world without advance advertising and whose only claim to recognition is that The Licensed Victuallers' Gazette has stated in a two-line review that it is 'readable'. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
710:So why didn't ABCP investors -- at least the large institutional investors -- have a better grasp of the uncertain nature of market disruption triggers as defined under Canadian-style liquidity? Probably because the contracts were not available for review to investors wishing to purchase ABCP -- yet another example of the lack of transparency surrounding the distribution and sale of this product. ~ Paul Halpern, #NFDB
711:As I wrote on the Harvard Business Review website in 2010, that’s what wisdom means to organizational psychologist (and my intellectual hero) Karl Weick. Wise people “have the courage to act on their beliefs and convictions at the same time that they have the humility to realize that they might be wrong, and must be prepared to change their beliefs and actions when better information comes along. ~ Robert I Sutton, #NFDB
712:In the 1970s, the Church Committee investigated intelligence gathering by the NSA, CIA, and FBI. It was able to reform these agencies only after extensive research and discovery. We need a similar committee now. We need to convince President Obama to adopt the recommendations of his own NSA review group. And we need to give the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board real investigative powers. ~ Bruce Schneier, #NFDB
713:The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books. When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing. ~ Chuck Klosterman, #NFDB
714:Sent to the Monk"
Night falls
and the empty intimacy of the whole world
fills my heart to frothing.
The past has trudged to this one spot
and falls into the stream,
its flashlight in its mouth.
Ancient tears beneath the surface
rise and scatter like carp,
while an ivory hairpin floats away
like a loose tooth going back in time.
Columbia Poetry Review. Spring 2014 ~ Mary Ruefle,#NFDB
715:Who am I? What have I done with my life? Who can I trust?
That last one is a doozy. It haunts you in moments of doubt. Sometimes when you wake up at night, you wonder if you've put your faith in the right people. Sometimes when you find yourself alone, for whatever reason, you review every little thing you know about someone, searching your memory for small, subtle things you may have missed about them. ~ Jim Butcher,#NFDB
716:I don't believe anybody has a right to own any kind of a firearm. I believe in order to obtain a permit to own a firearm, that person should undergo an exhaustive criminal background check. In addition, an applicant should give up his right to privacy and submit his medical records for review to see if the person has ever had a problem with alcohol, drugs or mental illness... The Constitution doesn't count! ~ John Silber, #NFDB
717:It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,” Magie said of her game in a 1902 issue of The Single Tax Review. “It might well have been called the ‘Game of Life,’ as it contains all the elements of success and failure in the real world, and the object is the same as the human race in general seem to have, i.e., the accumulation of wealth. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
718:I was never a critic. I was a journalist and wrote about filmmakers, but I didn't review movies per se. I make that distinction only because I came to it strictly as someone who was just a lover of storytellers and cinematic storytellers. And I still am. I'm still a great movie fan, and I ,that love of movies is very much alive in me. I approach the movies I make as a movie-lover as much as a movie-maker. ~ Curtis Hanson, #NFDB
719:My main qualm about TV criticism has been when people review TV the way they review movies. They watch the pilot, and write a definitive review of the show. The obvious analogy is that you don't read the first eight pages of a book and then talk about whether the book works or not. People want so desperately in this day and age to declare something thumbs-up or thumbs-down that they declare it immediately. ~ Michael Schur, #NFDB
720:The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security. In spite of our repeated requests, the N.S.A. has not provided evidence of any instance when the agency used this program to review phone records that could not have been obtained using a regular court order or emergency authorization. ~ Glenn Greenwald, #NFDB
721:In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful reappearance of the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in ground where, THREE HUNDRED YEARS PREVIOUSLY, the victims of the pestilence had been buried. Mr. Cooper, in explaining the causes of some epidemics, remarks that the opening of the plague burial-grounds at Eyam resulted in an immediate outbreak of disease.'—NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, NO. 3, VOL. 135. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
722:The extent of the memory depends, first, on the daily use we make of it; secondly, upon the attention with which we consider the objects we would impress upon it; and, thirdly, upon the order in which we range our ideas." This then is the list of the three essentials in the cultivation of the memory: (1) Use and exercise; review and practice; (2) Attention and Interest; and (3) Intelligent Association. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
723:Pain is powerful medicine. While it may be unpleasant to take this medicine, it is what shapes and inspires us. As you review the story of your life, you will find that growth was almost always preceded by hardship—the loss of a job, the passing of a loved one, challenges with health, the end of a relationship. Rather than avoiding pain, yoga asks us to surrender to it, to look deep into it, and to be healed by it. ~ Darren Main, #NFDB
724:Certain I am that every author who has written a book with earnest forethought and fondly cherished designs will bear testimony to the fact that much which he meant to convey has never been guessed at in any review of his work; and many a delicate beauty of thought, on which he principally valued himself, remains, like the statue of Isis, an image of truth from which no hand lifts the veil. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
725:Historian Robert Proctor has recently documented the creation of newsletters, magazines, and journals—including journals with ostensible peer review—in which the results of industry-sponsored research could be reported, published, and then cited, as if they were independent. These included Tobacco and Health, Science Fortnightly, and the Indoor Air Journal.13 It was a simulacrum of science, but not science itself. ~ Naomi Oreskes, #NFDB
726:since the draw-down in forces triggered by the 2010 defense review, the units the Laundry can draw upon have been depleted. There are now just two SAS squadrons, 120 men in total, to cover all contingencies: and only half of them are available at any given time. If the shit really hits the fan they can draw on the regular Army and the Air Force for support, but there will be delays in getting everyone up to speed. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
727:The hiring rules are strictly followed, no matter who the applicant. Not long after she graduated from Harvard, Molly Munger applied at Munger, Tolles for an associate's position. She interviewed with Carla Hills, but Hills did not offer her a job, allegedly because Molly had not made the Harvard Law Review. Apparently in Hills estimation, that meant Molly's credentials weren't quite up to Munger, Tolles's standards.4 ~ Janet Lowe, #NFDB
728:a review of trials of acupuncture for back pain showed that the studies that were properly blinded showed a tiny benefit for acupuncture, which was not “statistically significant” (we’ll come back to what that means later). Meanwhile, the trials that were not blinded—the ones in which the patients knew whether they were in the treatment group or not—showed a massive, statistically significant benefit for acupuncture. ~ Ben Goldacre, #NFDB
729:Company may not a) trade in stock or other securities while in possession of material nonpublic information or b) pass on material nonpublic information to others without express authorization by the Company or recommend to others that they trade in stock or other securities based on material nonpublic information. The Company has adopted guidelines designed to implement this policy. All employees are expected to review ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
730:In the mid-1990s, while serving as senior editor for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, I proposed a thought experiment to test whether Buddhism could spread around the globe. That test consisted of a single question: Did Buddhism have a teaching that was so universal it could pass quickly from person to person without getting stopped in its tracks, leaping across national, ethnic, economic, and even religious boundaries? ~ Clark Strand, #NFDB
731:Real word of mouth dips in and out of different spaces. You eat at a good restaurant. You mention it to people at the office. One of them emails your recommendation to his wife. She emails four friends, and they have lunch there. Two mention the restaurant to other friends at a party, and one of them blogs about it. Someone reads the blog and calls a buddy about eating there. They review it online. You get the idea. ~ Andy Sernovitz, #NFDB
732:Dr. Peter Boghossian’s A Manual for Creating Atheists is a precise, passionate, compassionate and brilliantly reasoned work that will illuminate any and all minds capable of openness and curiosity. This is not a bedtime story to help you fall asleep, but a wakeup call that has the best chance of bringing your rational mind back to life.
(Review of Dr. Peter Boghossian's book, 'A Manual for Creating Atheists') ~ Stefan Molyneux,#NFDB
733:We believe that the possibility of the future far exceeds the accomplishment of the past. We review the past with the common sense, but we anticipate the future with transcendental senses. In our sanest moments we find ourselves naturally expecting or prepared for far greater changes than any which we have experienced within the period of distinct memory, only to be paralleled by experiences which are forgotten. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
734:Acting is not a genteel profession. Actors used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. Those people's performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment. Those players moved the audience not such that they were admitted to a school, or received a complimentary review, but such that the audience feared for their soul. Now that seems to me something to aim for. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
735:This will include the various methods of internal monitoring, attack and penetration, investigation of suspected hackers or rogue employees - and you have plenty of rogue employees - and identity protection for government employees. The review team will also remain current on the constantly evolving new methods of attack and will attempt to anticipate them and develop defenses as often as possible before breaches occur. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
736:In the recent article “The Secret of Scale” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Peter Murray looked at how advocacy organizations achieved true scale and predictable revenue.6 He found that organizations like AARP and the National Rifle Association (NRA) have expanded to provide lifestyle benefits, like group insurance, product discounts, and access to special events—going well beyond traditional advocacy. ~ Robbie Kellman Baxter, #NFDB
737:As for the further risk that the patient could suffer positive harm at the hands of the alternative therapists, chiropractic therapy stands out as one of the few alternative treatments that are dangerous in themselves. In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experienced temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. Patients ~ Nick Cohen, #NFDB
738:Language would have evolved first as an internal object, a kind of "language of thought" (LOT), with externalisation (hence communication) an ancillary process. I can't review here the strong and growing evidence to support this conclusion, but I have elsewhere. There are ample reasons why having a LOT would confer selectional advantage: the person so endowed could plan, interpret, reflect, etc., in ways denied to others. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
739:What would a broad scientific code of ethics look like? It would lay out the moral and ethical principles under which science should and should not be conducted. It would have some means of enforcement or exposure of scientists who did not meet this standard, so the public could evaluate their claims in that context. It would have guidelines for best practices in research, peer review, independence, and disclosure. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
740:Science advances by trial and error. When mistakes are made, the peer-review publication process usually roots them out. Cuccinelli's version of the scientific process would be "make an error and go to trial." Einstein did not arrive at E=mc2 in his first attempt. If he were working in the state of Virginia under Cuccinelli today, he could be jailed for his initial mistakes and perhaps never achieve that landmark equation. ~ Scott Mandia, #NFDB
741:The team’s diagnosis of a problem this morning centers on Sergio. The entire group has just spent time discussing Sergio’s most recent review. On any given day, all employees are getting and giving feedback from multiple sources about how they’re doing their jobs. Nothing in a formal review comes as a surprise. But it’s also expected that individual reviews will be discussed with the entire team and with total candor. Niko ~ Robert Kegan, #NFDB
742:Technology Review (Technology Review) - La tua evidenziazione alla posizione 1463-1464 | Aggiunto in data mercoledì 23 Luglio 2014 13:04:22 A SigFox base station can serve a radius of tens of kilometers in the countryside and five kilometers in urban areas. To connect to the network, a device will need a $1 or $2 wireless chip that’s compatible, and customers will pay about $1 in service charges per year per device. ========== ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
743:(1) the Muse visits during, not before, the act of composition, and (2) the writer takes dictation from that place in his mind that knows what he should write next.
-from a review by Roger Ebert of film "Starting Out In the Evening" (2007).
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/p... ~ Roger Ebert,#NFDB
744:Technology offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy, and communication without emotional risk, while actually making people feel lonelier and more overwhelmed.
“A song that became popular on YouTube in 2010, ‘Do You Want to Date My Avatar?’ ends with the lyrics ‘And if you think I’m not the one, log off, log off, and we’ll be done.’ ”
from a review of Alone Together by S. Turkle ~ Michiko Kakutani,#NFDB
745:The worst reviews, by my mind, are those from individuals who enjoy entertaining themselves by writing something bad about books they actually never read, which is as clear as day from what they’re saying. It’s even more puzzling for an author to check some of these “honest” reviewers’ pages and see that they created their profile with one goal in mind; to post you a bad review, as there’s nothing else they wanted to rate. ~ Sahara Sanders, #NFDB
746:We live in a vengeful time. You didn't get the orange chicken you ordered or the sticky rice? And now you're already home? Meaning you'd have to drive all the way back to get the orange chicken and sticky rice you ordered? Injustice! And thus avenge. Avenge the proprietor's crimes! This [is] our contemporary version of balance, of speaking truth to power. Avenge the proprietor on thy customer-review site! Right the imbalance! ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
747:Once a month, O’Brien brings together cops, prosecutors, parole agents, and judges to conduct brainstorming sessions about recent homicides in the area. Together, they suggest ideas about how the violence might be prevented. “For years, the federal government has had a review commission to look at every death on the highway and see what can be learned from it,” O’Brien told me. “We’re using the same idea for shootings in Milwaukee. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
748:Ah, but sir,' said Lascelles, 'it is precisely by passing judgments upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does. ~ Susanna Clarke, #NFDB
749:I've not been to Afghanistan or - but what people are clearly pointing to is that it becomes more difficult to have it. You could do it. I think weather is a factor. The most important factor though is credibility and legitimacy. What I wanted earlier to say is what I think Senator [John] Kerry is pointing to, which is important, is the strategic review on whether to send more troops is only one piece of the puzzle, important piece. ~ Rahm Emanuel, #NFDB
750:Ships series is available in e-book, softcover print, and audiobook versions. Please visit my website, http:// scottjucha.com, for publication locations. You may also register at my website to receive email notification about the publish dates of my novels. If you’ve been enjoying this series, please consider posting a review on Amazon, even a short one. Reviews attract other readers and help indie authors, such as me. Alex and friends ~ S H Jucha, #NFDB
751:Ah, but, sir,” said Lascelles, “it is precisely by passing judgements upon other people’s work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one’s own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one’s theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does. ~ Susanna Clarke, #NFDB
752:It was interesting watching the Afghanistan war review deliberations, this three-month process where Barack Obama did the most thorough foreign policy review ever by a modern American president. Compare that to Libya. For a month he said we weren't going to do anything, then suddenly changed his mind and did it on the fly. My view is that it's not how long or quick you take to make a decision, it's whether you make the right one. ~ Michael Hastings, #NFDB
753:I'm working for a woman, not a lady. What I hate the most is that "lady" talk. You know, when I read a review, "The lady wears a Bottega Veneta. . . ." What lady? It's the same girls who are walking the runway an hour later elsewhere. But probably it is just the sophistication in our material, the nuance of the color, or the quality of the makeup or the hair that make people think that way. Most people just don't understand simplicity. ~ Tomas Maier, #NFDB
754:As far as a theoretical point of view for my generation, I'm probably the most successful theoretician. I mean, double albums and concepts and dresses and major disasters and wonderful successes and yet you don't see the critical review of my work. Why? Because it's all focused on the persona. Billy Corgan. But I get to sort of jump in and be Billy Corgan. But then I get to sort of jump back out and be like, sensitive man in the corner. ~ Billy Corgan, #NFDB
755:Riding a wave of interest in technology, Stanford University has become America’s “it” school, by measures that Harvard once dominated. Stanford has had the nation’s lowest undergraduate acceptance rate for two years in a row; in five of the last six years, it has topped the Princeton Review survey asking high school seniors to name their “dream college”; and year in and year out, it raises more money from donors than any other university. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
756:with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
757:There are twenty-five positions in the book. We just need to try out about five of them to give a fair review.”
“Five?” Ben tried to mas his disappointment. As turned on as he was he could have tried out five tonight alone.
“Maybe more if we have time. I know you’re busy this week. I don’t want to impose on your cock.”
“Impose on it. Please.”
“Should we get started?”
“I will literally, actually, in reality die if we don’t. ~ Tiffany Reisz,#NFDB
758:In science, however, “God did it” is not a testable hypothesis. Inquiring minds want to know how God did it and what forces or mechanisms were at work. “God works in mysterious ways” will not pass peer review. Even such explanations as “belief in God” or “religiosity” must be broken down into their component parts to find possible causal mechanisms for the links between belief and behavior that lead to health, well-being, and longevity. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
759:It wasn’t the Sierra Club that tried to pressure the National Academy of Sciences over the 1983 Carbon Dioxide Assessment; it was officials from the Department of Energy under Ronald Reagan. It wasn’t Environmental Defense that worked with Bill Nierenberg to alter the Executive Summary of the 1983 Acid Rain Peer Review Panel; it was the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. And it was the Wall Street Journal spreading the attack ~ Naomi Oreskes, #NFDB
760:I want to say that what is cool about writing self-aware first person narrative is that the awareness is not necessarily the same awareness of the reader. I have a story coming out in the Paris Review and it's about a hipster. He think's he's self-aware, he's very introspective and analytical, but when you're reading it you can totally see through his self-analysis because you have a higher awareness than he does. I like playing with that too. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh, #NFDB
761:I went on tours with [Bob] Dylan - the big one was in 1975 and called Roaring Thunder Review. I knew him well because I met him around the time he did his second album, in 1963. He recorded one of my songs called Shadows. In the 1970s, it was suggested that we do a duet, because we had the same manager, Albert Grossman, who also managed Odetta and Peter, Paul and Mary. Dylan and I respected what each other did, but I just decided not to do it. ~ Gordon Lightfoot, #NFDB
762:Nowadays when a poet with one privately printed book can have his next three years taken care of by a Guggenheim fellowship, a Kenyon Review fellowship, and the Prix de Rome, it is hard to remember what chances the poet took in that small-town world, how precariously hand-to-mouth his existence was. And yet in one way the old days were better; [Vachel] Lindsay after a while, by luck and skill, got far more readers than any poet could get today. ~ Randall Jarrell, #NFDB
763:the process of science works to achieve via repeated testing, confirmation, and peer review. If knowledge is falsifiable but holds up regardless of who does the testing, it is said to be reliable; i.e., objective. A scientific conclusion is always provisional, because knowledge is never complete, and it is always political, because new knowledge always threatens the status quo, but it is also increasingly reliable as it is tested and survives. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
764:Change is not necessarily slow. A team eager or desperate for improvement can progress quickly. It doesn't need to wait long to assimilate one change before moving on to the next practice. If you change too fast, though, you risk slipping back into old practices and values. When this happens, take time to regroup. Remind yourself of the values you want to hold. Review your practices and remind yourself why you chose them. New habits take time to solidify. ~ Kent Beck, #NFDB
765:The subcortical circuits that know such gut truths before we have words for them include the amygdala and the insula. A scholarly review of gut intuitions concludes that using feelings as information is a “generally sensible judgmental strategy,” rather than a perennial source of error, as the hyperrational might argue.1 Tuning in to our feelings as a source of information taps into a vast amount of decision rules that the mind gathers unconsciously. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
766:The first step to retention is to briefly review your book almost immediately after finishing it. It's easier if you've marked passages and taken notes in the margins and on the endpapers. You can then go back through your book, reminding yourself why you marked the particular passages and wrote the commentary you did. This may encourage you to add to your marginalia or write longer notes elsewhere. ~ Steve Leveen, The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life (2005), p. 39., #NFDB
767:There is the review intended to sell a book, — which comes out immediately after the appearance of the book, or sometimes before it; the review which gives reputation, but does not affect the sale, and which comes a little later; the review which snuffs a book out quietly; the review which is to raise or lower the author a single peg, or two pegs, as the case may be; the review which is suddenly to make an author, and the review which is to crush him. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
768:Turn off your radio. Put away your daily paper. Read one review of events a week and spend some time reading good books. They tell too of days of striving and of strife. They are of other centuries and also of our own. They make us realize that all times are perilous, that men live in a dangerous world, in peril constantly of losing or maiming soul and body. We get some sense of perspective reading such books. Renewed courage and faith and even joy to live. ~ Dorothy Day, #NFDB
769:But it was the Count’s review of the Contents—a list of 107 essays on the likes of Constancy, Moderation, Solitude, and Sleep—that confirmed his initial suspicion that the book had been written with winter nights in mind. Without a doubt, it was a book for when the birds had flown south, the wood was stacked by the fireplace, and the fields were white with snow; that is, for when one had no desire to venture out and one’s friends had no desire to venture in. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
770:If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review,in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
771:There are some movies that deserve criticism. They want people to know that it's a great dramatic accomplishment and has some great performances in it. But, c'mon. Yes, you will have some fun if you go see 'Snakes on a Plane.' Snakes are biting people - and they're biting them right on screen. There's nothing to review. It's not 'Snakes on the Waterfront.' You don't have snakes going, 'I coulda been a constrictor.' No. Hell no. It's 'Snakes on a Plane.' ~ Samuel L Jackson, #NFDB
772:Scientists were believed to be free of conflicts if their only source of funding was a federal agency, but all nutritionists knew that if their research failed to support the government position on a particular subject, the funding would go instead to someone whose research did. “To be a dissenter was to be unfunded because the peer-review system rewards conformity and excludes criticism,” George Mann had written in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1977. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
773:The lawyer specializes in wills and trusts. The lawyer wants to know all details of your financial life. A good lawyer will create personalized documents that address your exact financial situation. You will be charged a flat fee. No hourly billing. The fee includes the creation of all three documents. The fee includes funding your trust. The quote includes time to review the entire document—word by word—with you. Remember, power is knowing exactly what you have. ~ Suze Orman, #NFDB
774:And we are to meditate on “every word that comes from the mouth of God.” There is no more useful discipline to this careful process of verse by verse meditation than memorization. Memorization is not the same as meditation, but it is almost impossible for someone to memorize a passage of Scripture without somewhat deepening his/her understanding of those verses. Plus, once the passage is memorized, a lifetime of reflection is now available through ongoing review ~ Andrew M Davis, #NFDB
775:Incidentally, the very, very first review that James Lavelle and I saw of Endtroducing was very negative! It was in The Wire, and the context of the review was that, you know, Mo'Wax was so far behind Ninja Tune. Heheheh. And people wonder why there was this sense of a feud between labels! We just kind of looked at each other and we were like, 'Oh, well, let the floodgates open!' But, not to be facile, that was literally the last bad review I ever saw for that album. ~ DJ Shadow, #NFDB
776:The big scandal around IG Farben this week is the unlucky subsidiary Spottbilligfilm AG, whose entire management are about to be purged for sending to OKW weapons procurement a design proposal for a new airborne ray which could turn whole populations, inside a ten-kilometer radius, stone blind. An IG review board caught the scheme in time. Poor Spottbilligfilm. It had slipped their collective mind what such a weapon would do to the dye market after the next war. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
777:There was one person who greatly and directly benefited my career--my agent Virginia Kidd. From 1968 to the late nineties she represented all my work, in every field except poetry. I could send her an utterly indescribable story, and she'd sell it to Playboy or the Harvard Law Review or Weird Tales or The New Yorker--she knew where to take it. She never told me what to write or not write, she never told me, That won't sell, and she never meddled with my prose. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
778:DeBow’s Review noted with contempt. “It is a melancholy exemplification of the facility with which a philanthropist, who devotes himself exclusively to the eradication of one form of evil, can deceive himself, and come to regard any means justifiable, in the pursuance of a supposed good end,” the reviewer said. “That subtle analyst of character, Nathaniel Hawthorne, has ably dissected this species of delusion in the Blithedale romance.” He recommended that Stowe ~ Brenda Wineapple, #NFDB
779:Futurist Aldo Palazzeschi... exhorts us in L'antidolore (1913) to laugh heartily at the mortality built into the plan of creation not out of spite, as has traditionally been the case, but because suffering and death are nothing but pranks of the prime trickster, God. If anything it is the devil who is the spirit of gravity, and it is in taking him seriously that we plummet from grace. ~ Thomas Harrison, in "Laughter and the Tree Of Knowledge" in the Romanic Review (May-November 2006), #NFDB
780:We have had campaign-finance reform, and reform of the seniority system in Congress, and endless rounds of anticorruption measures in the federal government. Calls for “transparency” and “accountability” have meant more administrative and judicial supervision. In turn, power flows to impersonal institutions (agency review boards, courts, and so on) and away from elected leaders who can get things done—and who can be punished at the ballot box for delay and disappointment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
781:A review of the psychological literature suggests that mindfulness in particular fosters many components of physical and mental health: It improves immune function, blood pressure, and cortisol levels; it reduces anxiety, depression, neuroticism, and emotional reactivity. It also leads to greater behavioral regulation and has shown promise in the treatment of addiction and eating disorders. Unsurprisingly, the practice is associated with increased subjective well-being.13 ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
782:of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely ~ Lauren Landish, #NFDB
783:Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. ... The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit. An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country. ~ Charles Simić, "Age of Ignorance" New York Review of Books, March 20, 2012, #NFDB
784:I could start this review by stating that Dumb and Dumberer lives up to its name, or by calling it stupid, moronic, and idiotic, but I believe that approach is a trap, since a movie like this might relish being the object of such bland invectives. Instead, let me try a few that can't possibly be misconstrued as twisted praise: unfunny, boring, torturous, and unwatchable. ... [N]o movie could be more aptly compared to raw sewage than this film - Directed By Troy Miller. ~ James Berardinelli, #NFDB
785:Let’s review, shall we? 1. List off your old stories that you’ve gotten into the habit of thinking and saying. 2. Journal about the false rewards you get from them. 3. Feel into these false rewards, thank them for their help, and decide to let them go. 4. Take each false reward and write a new, powerful story to replace it with. 5. Repeat this new story, or affirmation, over and over and over until it becomes your truth. 6. Behold your awesome new life. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
786:Daemon snatched the yellow packages from my hands. “Oh! Books! You have books!”
I laughed as several people waiting in line looked over their shoulders. “Hand them over.”
He clutched them to his chest, making moony eyes. “My life is now complete.”
“My life would be complete if I could actually post a review on something other than the school library computers.”
I did that about twice a week since my latest laptop went to the big computer heaven in the sky. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
787:If one writing contributed more than any other to the framework in which this work Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions developed, it would be an essay entitled 'The Use of Knowledge in Society,' published in the American Economic Review of September 1945, and written by F. A. Hayek . . In this plain and apparently simple essay was a deeply penetrating insight into the way societies function and malfunction, and clues as to why they are so often and so profoundly misunderstood. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
788:Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile has conducted extensive research on employees working in creative endeavors in order to understand how work environments foster or impede creativity and innovation. She has consistently found that work environments in which employees have a high degree of operational autonomy lead to the highest degree of creativity and innovation. Operational autonomy, of course, can be seen as the extreme version of process fairness. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
789:The acomodador or giving-up point: there is always an event in our lives that is responsible for us failing to progress: a trauma, a particularly bitter defeat, a disappointment in love, even a victory that we did not quite understand, can make cowards of us and prevent us from moving on. As part of the process of increasing his hidden powers, the shaman must first free himself from that giving-up point and, to do so, he must review his while life and find out where it occured. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
790:"We are willing to worship a God only if God makes us safe. Thus you get the silly question, How does a good God let bad things happen to good people? Of course, it was a rabbi who raised that question, but Christians took it up as their own. Have you read the Psalms lately? We're seeing a much more complex God than that question gives credit for." ~ Stanley Hauerwas from the Chronicle for Higher Education, The Chronicle Review, "A Complex God" September 28, 2001 The Chronicle Review Page: B6, #NFDB
791:You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
792:Five years ago the Library of Congress began a project that collects every utterance on Twitter, in the name of preserving the nation’s digital heritage. That is billions weekly, sucked up for storage in secure tape archives, and the Library has yet to figure out how to make any of it available to researchers. Divorced from a human curator, the unfiltered mass of Twitter may as well be a garbage heap ["What Libraries Can (Still) Do," The New York Review Daily, October 26, 2015]. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
793:These same experiences make of the sequence of life cycles a generational cycle, irrevocably binding each generation to those that gave it life and to those for whose life it is responsible. Thus, reconciling lifelong generativity and stagnation involves the elder in a review of his or her own years of active responsibility for nurturing the next generations, and also in an integration of earlier-life experiences of caring and of self-concern in relation to previous generations. ~ Erik Erikson, #NFDB
794:One of the things I hear a lot from people is how they found my book, or how they’ve shared it with other people.
This always warms my bitter old heart, not just because I like selling more books, (though I do) but because reccomending a book to a friend is one of the most sincere forms of flattery there is. If you read someone I wrote and like it enough to tell a friend, that means I’ve done something right. That means more to me than any sort of professional review…. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,#NFDB
795:The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not. On the question you raised, the effects of wounds vary greatly. Simple wounds which do not break bone are of little account. They sometimes give confidence. Wounds which do extensive bone and nerve damage are not good for writers, nor anybody else."-Interview for the Paris Review, 1956 ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
796:If you have 15 minutes per visit, and you spend the first 9 minutes just collecting information from them, before you do anything else, you know half of your visit is gone already. So if you have an automated system that has most of that and, and in some cases I actually have patients complete questionnaires before they come in, so I'd gotten most of the information I need to ask about, already recorded, instead of having 9 minutes I can take 3 minutes to review all this information. ~ William Davis, #NFDB
797:I had written a book of short stories which was published under the title of "Uncle Tom's Children". When the review of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awful naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears. ~ Richard Wright, #NFDB
798:It wasn’t the Sierra Club that tried to pressure the National Academy of Sciences over the 1983 Carbon Dioxide Assessment; it was officials from the Department of Energy under Ronald Reagan. It wasn’t Environmental Defense that worked with Bill Nierenberg to alter the Executive Summary of the 1983 Acid Rain Peer Review Panel; it was the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. And it was the Wall Street Journal spreading the attack on Santer and the IPCC, not Mother Jones. ~ Naomi Oreskes, #NFDB
799:As a journalist, I never critiqued anyone. I never review books. I've never felt qualified as a musician to say whether someone is a good musician or a bad musician. What happens with Black writers and Black artists is that if you're critiqued, for example, by a Black historian who wants to get his name on the cover of "The New York Times," and he says something, like, wacky, well, he'll get his name on the cover of "The New York Times" and he might get tenure, and your career suffers. ~ James McBride, #NFDB
800:five principles of memory: • Make memories more memorable. • Maximize laziness. • Don’t review. Recall. • Wait, wait! Don’t tell me! • Rewrite the past. These principles will enable you to remember more in less time. Combined, they form a system that can insert thousands of words and grammar rules so deeply into your mind that you’ll be able to recall them instantly. Most attractively, this system can take what little spare time you have and steadily turn it into a usable foreign language. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
801:If Congress sees fit to impose a capitation, or other direct tax, it must be laid in proportion to the census; if Congress determines to impose duties, imposts, and excises, they must be uniform throughout the United States. These are not strictly limitations of power. They are rules prescribing the mode in which it shall be exercised... This review shows that personal property, contracts, occupations, and the like have never been regarded by Congress as proper subjects of direct tax. ~ Salmon P Chase, #NFDB
802:What can you think when one review says "this album is brilliant, and all the songs flow into the utmost brilliant song 'The Upside-Down Cross'" then another review says "this album is brilliant, except for that horrible and pointless song 'The Upside-Down Cross'," and another review will say "Jeffrey really sounds confident and relaxed on this new album", the next reviewer says "Jeffrey sounds more depressed and awful than ever" - these totally contrasting reviews happen all the time! ~ Jeffrey Lewis, #NFDB
803:Responsibility for collective failure or miscalculation can be avoided by lamenting the absence of good leaders. There appears little willingness to consider that Pakistan might need to review some of the fundamental assumptions in its national belief system—militarism, radical Islamist ideology, perennial conflict with India, dependence on external support, and refusal to recognize ethnic identities and religious pluralism—to break out of permanent crisis mode to a more stable future. ~ Husain Haqqani, #NFDB
804:The PURPOSE of the DATA INTEGRITY BOARD review meeting is NOT for the purpose of reviewing the INTEGRITY of the paperwork because that has already been decided, it is for the PURPOSE of determining the CHARACTER & STANDING of THE MAN/WOMAN who brought the perfect paperwork and was intending to use the perfect paperwork for COMMERCIAL settlement and closure. So they have to find out if the STATUS and CHARACTER of the party who is going to use the paperwork was going to be ALLOWED to use it. ~ Jack Smith, #NFDB
805:I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I wasn't allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence was: "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces." ~ Paul Halmos, #NFDB
806:I'm excited because Deanna and I are on our way toward our stated objective of becoming scholars of the early Pink Floyd.
I feel that we have a fairly good grasp of the all of the music, including the singles, through the first two albums, Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets, and we've done some of the groundwork on More, Ummagumma, Zabriskie Point and Atom Heart Mother, although all of those need more review.
Anyway, #feelingchuffed ~ Sienna McQuillen Sienna ~ Sienna McQuillen,#NFDB
807:Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations. --“Nobody Knows My Name,” in Partisan Review ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
808:Our generation grew up with the Review as a fact of life. It was America’s literary magazine. To our minds, it still is. It has launched our favorite writers. It has made a special claim for the quarterly as such, being both timely and lasting, free of the news of the day or the pressure to please a crowd. Most of all, the Review has shown, repeatedly, that works of imagination can be as stylish and urgent as the flashiest feature reporting, and can do more to refocus our picture of the world. ~ Lorin Stein, #NFDB
809:Combining the experience of a seasoned university president with the analysis of a respected legal scholar, Derek Bok explores what he concludes are 'signs of excessive commercialization in every part of the university.' His somber assessment of the current state of athletics, scientific research, and distance education, and his call for review and restraint, should engage the attention of every faculty senate in the country. He has given us a timely, candid, courageous, and important book. ~ Frank H T Rhodes, #NFDB
810:We think of a feminist as someone a woman becomes in reaction to personal indignities and social injustices. But the truth is, such inequities only awaken her to the feminist she has always fundamentally been - that is, a person who understands that her first responsibility is to her own humanity. That's why, for my money, the first known use of the word 'feminist' is still the best, appearing in an 1895 book review: a woman who 'has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence. ~ Susan Faludi, #NFDB
811:A British journalist, Sydney Brooks, writing in the North American Review, gauged America to be just as isolationist as ever. And why not, he asked? “The United States is remote, unconquerable, huge, without hostile neighbors or any neighbors at all of anything like her own strength, and lives exempt in an almost unvexed tranquility from the contentions and animosities and the ceaseless pressure and counter-pressure that distract the close-packed older world.” While easy in concept, neutrality in ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
812:Saw in the review of a book recently: “One of those unfortunate affairs—women, even the nicest of them, tend to fall in love with men quite unworthy of them.” This review, of course, written by a man. The truth is that when “nice women” fall in love with “unworthy men” it is always either because these men have “named” them, or because they have an ambiguous uncreated quality impossible to the “good” or “nice” men. The normal, the good men, are finished and completed and without potentialities. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
813:Miss Temminnick, you are in receipt of the highest marks we have ever given in a six-month review. Your mind seems designed for espionage.
Nevertheless, you veer away from perfect in matters of etiquette. Do not let these marks go to your head; there are many girls at this school who are better than you.
Our biggest concern is what you get up to when we are not watching. Because, if nothing else, this test has told us you are probably spying on us, as well as everyone around you. ~ Gail Carriger,#NFDB
814:It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism. And there's so many expectations involved, too. You're going in to see the latest Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick film, you really have high hopes, and you can't help but find that it's not exactly what you had in your head going in. Until you can watch it again, you can't accept the work for what it intends to be. It takes at least a second viewing. ~ Richard Linklater, #NFDB
815:No matter how unreasonable others may seem, I am responsible for not reacting negatively. Regardless of what is happening around me I will always have the prerogative, and the responsibility, of choosing what happens within me. I am the creator of my own reality. When I [review my day], I know that I must stop judging others. If I judge others, I am probably judging myself. Whoever is upsetting me most is my best teacher. I have much to learn from him or her, and in my hearts, I should thank that person. ~ Bill W, #NFDB
816:One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is usually dull. Remember when you first wanted to be a writer? Eight or ten years old, reading about thin-lipped heroes flying over mysterious viny jungles toward untold wonders? That's what you wanted to write about, about what you didn't know. So. What mysterious time and place don't we know?"
[Remember This: Write What You Don't Know (New York Times Book Review, December 31, 1989)] ~ Ken Kesey,#NFDB
817:There are really only two standards of appellate review: plenary and deferential. Conventionally there are four basic standards (with many variants), which in ascending order of deference to the trial court or administrative agency are de novo, clearly erroneous, substantial evidence, and abuse of discretion. But the last three are, in practice, the same, because finer distinctions are beyond judges’ cognitive capacity. The multiplication of unusual distinctions is a familiar judicial pathology. ~ Richard A Posner, #NFDB
818:Abstract: Careful review of a vast array of relevant evidence clearly leads to the conclusion that some unidentified flying objects are intelligently controlled vehicles whose origin is outside our solar system. All the arguments against the extraterrestrial origin seem to be based upon false reasoning, misrepresentation of evidence, neglect of relevant information, ignorance of relevant technology, or pseudo sophisticated assumptions about alien appearance, motivation, or government secrecy... ~ Stanton T Friedman, #NFDB
819:Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant wit of their review. But in criticisms of religion even clarity ceases to be a virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a ‘rant’. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
820:Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant with of their review. But in criticisms of religion even clarity ceases to be a virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a 'rant'. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
821:Confronted by an absolutely infuriating review, it is sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic. Is there any truth to the rumor that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event, is he able to construct a simple English sentence? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism, does he write "I had a fun time"? Was he ever arrested for burglary? I don't know that you will prove anything this way, but it is perfectly harmless and quite soothing. ~ Jean Kerr, #NFDB
822:I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
823:This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.
(Žižek, S. "Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks." London Review of Books 33.2 (2011): 9-10. ) ~ Slavoj i ek,#NFDB
824:If you hear a good idea, capture it; write it down. Don't trust your memory. Then on a cold wintry evening, go back through your journal, the ideas that changed your life, the ideas that saved your marriage, the ideas that bailed you out of bankruptcy, the ideas that helped you become successful, the ideas that made you millions. What a good review-going back over the collection of ideas that you gathered over the years. So be a collector of good ideas for your business, for your relationships, for your future. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
825:The Strongman continued his mental review. “And the petty little saints in the town were . . . obscure, don’t you see, far from help, far from the mainstream, alone amid the rolling farmlands . . . unknown. It was a perfect place to begin the process.” His beastly face grew tight and bitter. “Until they started praying. Until they ceased being so comfortable and started weeping before God! Until they began to reclaim the power of the . . .” The Strongman sealed his lips. “The Cross?” the aide volunteered. ~ Frank E Peretti, #NFDB
826:It’s the opening of Manderlay in Cannes, and I’m sitting next to this guy who’s writing for a tiny fictitious French paper called ‘On the Sunny Side,’ and he’s writing a review on the film, and he’s obviously bored. Then he tells me about all the cars he owns, and how rich he is, and all these things... So, at a certain point, he says, "So what do you do?" Then I take out this very strange hammer we have in the Danish building business, and I say, "I kill." And then I kill him. It is as stupid as it sounds. ~ Lars von Trier, #NFDB
827:Most of the crackpot papers which are submitted to The Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published. When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself it will be only half-understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
828:It is difficult to live in such a way that all our relationships are in effective control, and usually it doesn’t make that much difference as long as some relationships are satisfying. But when you get sick, it is a good idea to review all of them. Some may be more rankling than you are willing to admit. You can review these relationships by yourself; with the help of a friend or family member you trust; with your doctor if he or she can give you the time; or, best of all, with the aid of a good counselor. ~ William Glasser, #NFDB
829:Reviews are all bullshit, because they always change. When House of 1000 Corpses came out, all the reviews were awful. It was impossible to find a review better than "The worst movie ever made." And now I'll see more-modern magazines, and sometimes they'll re-review things, and I'll read this great review for it. It's the same thing with White Zombie! People talk about "Oh, White Zombie, these classic records. Why don't you do them now?" Everyone hated those records when they came out! The reviews were terrible. ~ Rob Zombie, #NFDB
830:They’d be responsible for documenting what they learned, and Brent would never be allowed to work on the same problem twice. I’d review each of the issues weekly, and if I find out that Brent worked a problem twice, there will be hell to pay. For both the level 3s and Brent.” I add, “Based on Wes’ story, we shouldn’t even let Brent touch the keyboard. He’s allowed to tell people what to type and shoulder-surf, but under no condition will we allow him to do something that we can’t document afterward. Is that clear? ~ Gene Kim, #NFDB
831:But the company had a lengthy review process for any changes to core products because those changes “forked” the code and made it more difficult to maintain. Google and other Silicon Valley companies tried hard to avoid that, believing that the elegant products coming out of the Silicon Valley headquarters should be good enough for users around the globe. I fought for months to get this change made and eventually prevailed, but in the meantime Baidu had won over more users with its China-centric product offering. ~ Kai Fu Lee, #NFDB
832:If the work comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am, serve me,' then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist's talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, 'Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake'. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
833:helps the reader decide whether the paper is worth reading further. 2. It gives the reader a first idea of the contribution: a new method, chemical, reaction, application, preparation, compound, mechanism, process, algorithm, or system. 3. It provides clues on the type of paper (review paper or introductory paper), its specificity (narrow or broad), its theoretical level, and its nature (simulation or experimental). By the same means, it helps the reader assess the knowledge depth required to benefit from the paper. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
834:I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.” Atticus’s ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
835:Upon its debut, The Room was a spectacular bomb, pulling in all of $1,800 during its initial two-week Los Angeles run. It wasn't until the last weekend of the film's short release that the seeds of its eventual cultural salvation were planted. While passing a movie theater, two young film students named Michael Rousselet and Scott Gairdner noticed a sign on the ticket booth that read: NO REFUNDS. Below the sign was this blurb from a review: “Watching this film is like getting stabbed in the head.” They were sold. ~ Greg Sestero, #NFDB
836:articles on the Web such as Patricia Smith’s 2009 article in education.com, “Pitch In! Getting Your Kids to Help with Chores,” Esther Davidowitz’s 2012 article “Get Kids to Pitch In” in parenting.com, and freelance health writer Annie Stuart’s piece “Divide and Conquer Household Chores” for WebMD.com. Based on my review of various sources and my own life experience, here are my tips for how to get kids to step outside of the comfort of doing as little as possible and into the zone of doing one’s part.12 1. ~ Julie Lythcott Haims, #NFDB
837:Each tool symbolizes one of the four things to keep in mind when supervising any project. •The conch-shell trumpet stands for clear communication. The yajaman needs to clearly communicate his expectations to his team. •The wheel stands for repetition and review. The yajaman needs to appreciate that all tasks are repetitive and need to be reviewed periodically. •The lotus is about appreciation and praise. It complements the club. •The club stands for reprimand and disciplinary actions. It complements the lotus. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
838:. . . there is no direct evidence of serotonin or norepinephrine deficiency despite thousands of studies that have attempted to validate this notion.”22 And in a scathing review on major depression published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008, the researchers write: “. . . numerous studies of norepinephrine and serotonin metabolites in plasma, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid as well as postmortem studies of the brains of patients with depression, have yet to identify the purported deficiency reliably.”23 ~ Kelly Brogan, #NFDB
839:Apple’s founder reportedly fired employees in the elevator and screamed at underperforming executives. Perhaps there is something endemic in the fast-paced technology business that causes this behavior, because such intensity is not exactly rare among its CEOs. Bill Gates used to throw epic tantrums. Steve Ballmer, his successor at Microsoft, had a propensity for throwing chairs. Andy Grove, the longtime CEO of Intel, was known to be so harsh and intimidating that a subordinate once fainted during a performance review. ~ Brad Stone, #NFDB
840:[In an interview published in The Sunday Book Review]
Interviewer: Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you?
Gaiman: Wait, do you think those things are exclusive? That books can only be one or the other? I would rather read a book with all of those things in it: a laughing, crying, educating, distracting book. And I would like more than that, the kind of book where the pages groan under the weight of keeping all such opposites apart. ~ Neil Gaiman,#NFDB
841:[When asked if he had ever learned anything about his work from film criticism]
No. To see a film once and write a review is an absurdity. Yet very few critics ever see a film twice or write about films from a leisurely, thoughtful perspective. The reviews that distinguish most critics, unfortunately, are those slambang pans which are easy to write and fun to write and absolutely useless. There's not much in a critic showing off how clever he is at writing silly, supercilious gags about something he hates. ~ Stanley Kubrick,#NFDB
842:Take Red Baron’s classic crust pepperoni version. Not only does this frozen pie have at least fifty-two separate ingredients, but these include lots of things I don’t want to eat, like butylated hydroxytoluene, which is banned in England and the FDA has said (for years) “should” be investigated owing to the possibility of turning other ingredients toxic or cancer causing. It also has butylated hydroxyanisole, a petroleum derived additive that has been “pending” FDA review of a citizen petition for a quarter century. I ~ Larry Olmsted, #NFDB
843:Most people have major leaks in their collection process. Many have collected things but haven't processed or decided what action to take about them. Others make good decisions about "stuff" in the moment but lose the value of that thinking because they don't efficiently organize
the results. Still others have good systems but don't review them consistently enough to keep them functional. Finally, if any one of these links is weak, what someone is likely to choose to do at any point in time may not be the best option. ~ David Allen,#NFDB
844:Feinstein examined the efficacy of various obesity treatments in a lengthy review in the Journal of Chronic Diseases, he dismissed exercise in a single paragraph. “There has been ample demonstration that exercise is an ineffective method of increasing energy output,” Feinstein noted, “since it takes far too much activity to burn up enough calories for a significant weight loss. In addition, physical exertion may evoke a desire for food so that the subsequent intake of calories may exceed what was lost during the exercise. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
845:One of the most serious [challenges] is increased military spending and the cost of maintaining and developing nuclear arsenals. Enormous resources are being consumed for these purposes, when they could be spent on the development of peoples, especially those who are poorest. For this reason I firmly hope that, during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference to be held this May in New York, concrete decisions will be made towards progressive disarmament, with a view to freeing our planet from nuclear arms ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
846:Ten Pathways toward a New Shabbat Do 1. Stay at home. Spend quality time with family and real friends. 2. Celebrate with others: at the table, in the synagogue, with friends or community. 3. Study or read something that will edify, challenge, or make you grow. 4. Be alone. Take some time for yourself. Check in with yourself. Review your week. Ask yourself where you are in your life. 5. Mark the beginning and end of this sacred time by lighting candles and making kiddush on Friday night and saying havdalah on Saturday night. ~ Arthur Green, #NFDB
847:Triggers explain why. Even a bad review or negative word of mouth can increase sales if it informs or reminds people that the product or idea exists. That’s why a sixty-dollar Tuscan red wine saw sales rise by 5 percent after a prominent wine website described it as “redolent of stinky socks.” It’s also one reason why the Shake Weight, a vibrating dumbbell that was widely ridiculed by the media and consumers, went on to do $50 million in sales. Even negative attention can be useful if it makes products and ideas top of mind. ~ Jonah Berger, #NFDB
848:A good critic is trying to tell you what she has learned about herself from the reading of a particular piece of literature. A bad reviewer is often trying to tell you how smart he is by declaring whether or not he liked a particular book. If he liked the book, then this is the kind of book a superior person likes, and vice versa. He might try to explain why he didn’t like it, but the review is really just a tautology. “I didn’t like this book because it is bad,” is equivalent to “This book is bad because I didn’t like it. ~ Kevin Guilfoile, #NFDB
849:From the writer's point of view, critics should be ignored, although it's hard not to do what they suggest. I think it's unfortunate to have critics for friends. Suppose you write something that stinks, what are they going to say in a review? Say it stinks? So if they're honest, they do, and if you were friends you're still friends, but the knowledge of your lousy writing and their articulate admission of it will be always something between the two of you, like the knowledge between a man and his wife of some shady adultery. ~ William Styron, #NFDB
850:Religion should be subject to commonsense appraisal and rational review, as openly discussible as, say, politics, art and the weather. The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others. ~ Jeffrey Tayler, #NFDB
851:I was reading an article in the Harvard Business Review, and it was talking about an organization that was researching companies that were reporting high levels of exhaustion. This team went into these companies to see what was driving such high levels of exhaustion. What they found was that while these employees were in fact exhausted, it wasn't just because of the ops tempo. They were actually exhausted because people were lonely. Their workforces were lonely, and that loneliness was manifesting itself in a feeling of exhaustion. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
852:Reading, in contrast to sitting before the screen, is not a purely passive exercise. The child, particularly one who reads a book dealing with real life, has nothing before it but the hieroglyphics of the printed page. Imagination must do the rest; and imagination is called upon to do it. Not so the television screen. Here everything is spelled out for the viewer, visually, in motion, and in all three dimensions. No effort of imagination is called upon for its enjoyment. ~ George F. Kennan, “American Addictions” in New Oxford Review (June 1993), #NFDB
853:There was a lot of downtime sitting by Mike, so I read. I had a little table on which I had my pile of books and, by the end, they were nearly as high as the studio ceiling. I used to get all the song titles from them. Even the album titles, as it turned out, because ‘A startling tale of power, corruption and lies’ was a review quote from the Daily Telegraph on the back of 1984 by George Orwell. ‘Leave Me Alone’ came from Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and ‘Ultraviolence’ was from A Clockwork Orange, to name but a few. ~ Peter Hook, #NFDB
854:A bad review – or several— is, of course, one of the unavoidable pitfalls of being published.Some authors cry. Others get drunk. Most get mad. A few take it in stride, or at least, pretend to. After all, it’s our book someone just skewered...In the end even a bad review is still a review. It means someone cared enough to take the time to say: Hey, this sucks... Buy a DVD instead...So, how did I deal with bad reviews? How else? I cry. I get mad. I pretend not to care. Then I pour myself a glass of wine and call a friend to complain. ~ C W Gortner, #NFDB
855:But when he began to think of human beings, his soul sickened again. He summoned them in review before him, one by one, and they all passed and left him alone, and not one stayed with him. But how far had he held fast to them? Had he been true? He had only been slower in letting go, that was all. No, it was not that. It was the dreary truth that a soul is always alone. Every belief in the fusing of soul with soul was a lie. Not your mother who took you on her lap, nor your friend, nor yet the wife who slept on your heart .... ~ Jens Peter Jacobsen, #NFDB
856:I am never much interested in the effects of what I write....I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my...books. Two times out of three I know something about the reviewer, and in very few cases have I any respect for his judgments. Thus his praise, if he praises me, leaves me unmoved. I can't recall any review that has even influenced me in the slightest. I live in sort of a vacuum, and I suspect that most other writers do, too. It is hard to imagine one of the great ones paying any serious attention to contemporary opinion. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
857:Though parted from all his soul held dear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never positively and consciously miserable; for, so well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony; and, on looking back to seasons which in review appear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that each hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so that, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
858:As my body lay dead on that stretcher (he later recovered from being struck by lightning attracted by his cell phone), I was reliving every moment of my life, including my emotions, attitudes, and motivations. The depth of emotion I experienced during this life review was astonishing. Not only could I feel the way both I and the other person had felt when an incident took place, I could also feel the feelings of the next person they reacted to. I was in a chain reaction of emotion, one that showed how deeply we affect one another. ~ Dannion Brinkley, #NFDB
859:First, take a moment to review the output of the first IOS ping command. By default, the Cisco IOS ping command sends five echo messages, with a timeout of 2 seconds. If the command does not receive an echo reply within 2 seconds, the command considers that message to be a failure, and the command lists a period. If a successful reply is received within 2 seconds, the command displays an exclamation point. So, in this first command, the first echo reply timed out, whereas the other four received a matching echo reply within 2 seconds. ~ Wendell Odom, #NFDB
860:I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
861:In Korea is what I do is I watch the playback of each take with all of the actors and spend a lot of time discussing each take. Also, I use the process we call auto-assembly because I storyboard my entire film right at the beginning, even before pre-production ever begins, so my vision is already laid out on the storyboard for everybody to share. It enables the on-set assembly person, as we call them, to cut together each take into a sequence. This enables a director to review the take within the context of the sequence of the scene. ~ Park Chan wook, #NFDB
862:Many Republicans, prodded by self-appointed legal and investigative experts on their favored media outlets, and often reacting to inaccurate or misleading news reporting, seemed certain the former secretary of state had committed the worst crimes since the Rosenbergs gave our nuclear secrets to the Russians in the 1950s and were executed for it. The Democrats, in turn, were dismissive of the case from the outset, claiming the examination of the emails wasn’t even an “investigation” but merely a “review” or some other tortured euphemism. ~ James Comey, #NFDB
863:an organization is a factory that manufactures judgments and decisions. Every factory must have ways to ensure the quality of its products in the initial design, in fabrication, and in final inspections. The corresponding stages in the production of decisions are the framing of the problem that is to be solved, the collection of relevant information leading to a decision, and reflection and review. An organization that seeks to improve its decision product should routinely look for efficiency improvements at each of these stages. The ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
864:In the case of the creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
865:After discussion and careful review of her answers, there was nothing in her comments that we could prove was a lie beyond a reasonable doubt. There was no moment when investigators caught her in a lie. She did not at any point confess wrongdoing or indicate that she knew what she had done with her emails was wrong. Whether we believed her or not, we had no significant proof otherwise. And there was no additional work the investigators thought they should do. This case was done. Now the American people needed to know what the FBI had found. ~ James Comey, #NFDB
866:Our first CTA is usually for another purchase: either the next book or a bundle of multiple books. After that we’ll have a call to join our e-mail list in order to get upcoming books free or at a discount. We often follow with a third CTA that contains either a list of our other books or (preferably) a link to a web page with that list (seeing as we can update the webpage easily but don’t want to update all of our books’ CTAs). Somewhere in there we usually try adding a request for the reader to leave a review for the book they’ve just read. ~ Sean Platt, #NFDB
867:While the idea of equal time for opposing opinions makes sense in a two-party political system, it does not work for science, because science is not about opinion. It is about evidence. It is about claims that can be, and have been, tested through scientific research—experiments, experience, and observation—research that is then subject to critical review by a jury of scientific peers. Claims that have not gone through that process—or have gone through it and failed—are not scientific, and do not deserve equal time in a scientific debate. ~ Naomi Oreskes, #NFDB
868:If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.
[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960] ~ John F Kennedy,#NFDB
869:Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke. In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson’s celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
870:On the first of July, while Ariel sat on their blanket, gazing out at the sun-spangled water, Chyna tried to read a newspaper, but every story distressed her. War, rape, murder, robbery, politicians spewing hatred from all ends of the political spectrum. She read a movie review full of vicious ipse dixit criticism of the director and screenwriter, questioning their very right to create, and then turned to a woman columnist’s equally vitriolic attack on a novelist, none of it genuine criticism, merely venom, and she threw the paper in a trash can. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
871:There was a review by Fairfield Porter from the 1950s about Mark Rothko, one of the more hallowed names in American art. Porter says something like, "Yeah, Rothko paints rectangles of color. They have mass but no weight." That's not in any way a detraction, but it's a description. And it has nothing to do with the spiritual dimension. The main thing is as an intelligent viewer, to identify just what those things are that it does, that those rectangles do, and then not assume that they do these things over here. I don't know why that's challenging. ~ David Salle, #NFDB
872:Healing... is an active and internal process that includes investigating one's attitudes, memories and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one's full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one's external circumstances in an effort to recreate one's life in a way that serves activation of will - the will to see and accept truths about one's life and how one has used one's energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem, and health. ~ Caroline Myss, #NFDB
873:Still, technology doesn’t necessarily ease the trepidation many people feel about going public with ideas—particularly at the rough, early stages. As the writer Peter Sims noted in63Harvard Business Review, most of us, throughout our school years and even in the business world, have been taught to hold back ideas until they are polished and perfect. That tendency toward overthinking and excessively preparing, rather than quickly trying out ideas to get feedback and to see what works and doesn’t, is a behavior that becomes ingrained over time. But ~ Warren Berger, #NFDB
874:Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and nothing can reach them so little as criticism. Only love can grasp them and keep hold of them and be just to them. Always trust yourself and your own feelings as opposed to any such analysis, review or introduction; if you should be wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and in time to new realisations. Allow your judgments their own quiet, undisturbed development, which like all progress must come from deep within you and cannot be forced or hastened by anything. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
875:Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful visionary, thou invincible millionaire,--once again review thy past life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the scenes where fate and misfortune conducted, and where despair received thee. Too many diamonds, too much gold and splendor, are now reflected by the mirror in which Monte Cristo seeks to behold Dantes. Hide thy diamonds, bury thy gold, shroud thy splendor, exchange riches for poverty, liberty for a prison, a living body for a corpse! ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
876:An important Italian critic once gave Fistful of Dollars a very bad review when it came out. Then he went to the university here [Rome] with Once Upon a Time in America. We showed it to 10,000 students. And while the man was speaking that day to the students, with me present, he said, "I have to state one thing. When I gave that review about Sergio's films, I should have taken into account that on Sergio Leone's passport, there should not be written whether the nationality is Italian or anything else. What should be written is: 'Nationality: Cinema.' " ~ Sergio Leone, #NFDB
877:This distinction between empathy and compassion is critical for the argument I’ve been making throughout this book. And it is supported by neuroscience research. In a review article, Tania Singer and Olga Klimecki describe how they make sense of this distinction: “In contrast to empathy, compassion does not mean sharing the suffering of the other: rather, it is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other’s well-being. Compassion is feeling for and not feeling with the other.” The ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
878:We can now give you a biological reason why cramming doesn’t work,” says Dr. Tully. The best way to prepare for a final exam is to mentally review the material periodically during the day, until the material becomes part of your long-term memory. This may also explain why emotionally charged memories are so vivid and can last for decades. The CREB repressor gene is like a filter, cleaning out useless information. But if a memory is associated with a strong emotion, it can either remove the CREB repressor gene or increase levels of the CREB activator gene. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
879:Dustin Wax says it well: No matter how organized you are, how together your system is, how careful you are about processing your inbox, making a task list, and working your calendar, if you don’t stop every now and again to look at the “big picture,” you’re going to get overwhelmed. You end up simply responding to what’s thrown at you, instead of proactively creating the conditions of your life.16 Find a time for your weekly review, add it to your calendar, and commit to doing it every week. I really can’t over-emphasize the importance of this discipline. ~ Tim Challies, #NFDB
880:...in one of his Irish Times columns written under the name of Myles na gCopaleen, [Flann] O’Brien offered a service to readers who owned books but did not open them. For a fee, books would be handled, with passages underlined or spines damaged or words such as ‘Rubbish’ or ‘Yes, but cf Homer, Od. iii, 151’ or ‘I remember poor Joyce saying the same thing to me’ written in the margins. Or inscriptions on the title page such as ‘From your devoted friend and follower, K. Marx.’"
--"Flann O'Brien's Lies," Colm Tóibin, London Review of Books, Jan. 5, 2012 ~ Colm T ib n,#NFDB
881:I don't want to name names because they'd be mad at me if I did, but people who are significant novelists can't get published by real publishers at this point, or have to go through two years of trying after writing a novel that's taken them five or six years and simply can't get the thing in print. Or it gets in print and it doesn't get reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and disappears without a trace. I mean, it's terrifying. I don't know how anybody can stand it. It's such an enormous amount of work and the economics of it are really quite brutal. ~ Tony Kushner, #NFDB
882:The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition. Although the mechanisms involved in large-scale integration are still largely unknown, we argue that the most plausible candidate is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands. ~ Francisco Varela, #NFDB
883:But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger, turn it upside down, and you'll find I've copied out all the fine words they said of you: "careful observer," "strong nervous English," "rising philosopher."
Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne's bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up, and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the review which speak about you, lad! ~ Elizabeth Gaskell,#NFDB
884:The war on drugs was never meant to be won. Instead, it will be prolonged as long as possible in order to allow various intelligence operations to wring the last few hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits from the global drug scam; then defeat will have to be declared. "Defeat" will mean, as it did in the case of the Vietnam War, that the media will correctly portray the true dimensions of the situation and the real players, and that public revulsion at the culpability, stupidity and venality of the Establishment's role will force a policy review. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
885:Whatever else it produces, an organization is a factory that manufactures judgments and decisions. Every factory must have ways to ensure the quality of its products in the initial design, in fabrication, and in final inspections. The corresponding stages in the production of decisions are the framing of the problem that is to be solved, the collection of relevant information leading to a decision, and reflection and review. An organization that seeks to improve its decision product should routinely look for efficiency improvements at each of these stages. The ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
886:The United States is strongly committed to the IPCC process of international cooperation on global climate change. We consider it vital that the community of nations be drawn together in an orderly, disciplined, rational way to review the history of our global environment, to assess the potential for future climate change, and to develop effective programs. The state of the science, the social and economic impacts, and the appropriate strategies all are crucial components to a global resolution. The stakes here are very high; the consequences, very significant. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
887:Obama nonetheless continued to seek bipartisan support. His experience with what Hillary Clinton labeled the “vast right-wing conspiracy” was limited. He had vaulted in only five years from the Illinois State Senate to the White House. He turned out to be unrealistically confident that he could transcend partisan rancor as he had while editing the Harvard Law Review. So when he received an invitation from Boehner and the others in the House Republican caucus to come up to Capitol Hill to consult with them about the stimulus package, Obama accepted, with much fanfare. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
888:Beliefs constitute the basic stratum, that which lies deepest, in the architecture of our life. By them we live, and by the same token we rarely think of them.... One may symbolize the individual life as a bank of issue. The bank lives on the credit of a gold reserve which is rarely seen, which lies at the bottom of metal coffers hidden in the vaults of the building. The most elementary caution will suggest that from time to time the effective condition of these guaranties--of these credences, one might say, that are the basis of credit--be passed in review. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
889:In a paper evaluating the case for trophic cascades in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, Peterson, Vucetich, and Douglas Smith, who trained on Isle Royale and now is a project leader for the Wolf Restoration Project at Yellowstone, argue that ecosystems are too complex to trace neat relationships, particularly in Yellowstone where grizzly bears, black bears, cougars, and wolves eat bison, deer, and elk. They also point out that, when you follow the threads of prey fluctuations, you often find at the source not wild-animal predators but human beings. ~ Sam Kean, #NFDB
890:I started as an artist and I had a side job moving some heavy boxes for a publishing company. They had just gotten a Mac for their art department, the department that creates the book covers. I was kind of showing the art director a thing or two about how to use a Mac. And one day everyone went out to lunch and I jumped on the computer and designed a book jacket and slipped it in the pile to go to the review board in New York. They picked my jacket and when the art director got back to Boston, he wanted to know who designed it and I said, "Me." He was like, "The box guy?" ~ Biz Stone, #NFDB
891:Being adopted felt like reading a book that had the first chapter ripped out. You might be enjoying the plot and the characters, but you'd probably also like to read that first line, too. However, when you took the book back to the store to say that the first chapter was missing, they told you they couldn't sell you a replacement copy that was intact. What if you read that first chapter and realized you hated the book, and posted a nasty review on Amazon? What if you hurt the author's feelings? Better just to stick with your partial copy and enjoy the rest of the story. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
892:A writer writes a book. People read it. You don't know what they're reading, really. You read a review and think, "That is so inaccurate. You can't have been reading my book with any kind of attention, because that is all wrong, that's even the wrong name you're including there." But these reviewers have been diminished in importance, the work is so little respected. If you're reviewed by a real critic, by James Wood or Louis Menand, then you get something that is informed, interesting, and highly articulate. But the average review doesn't have that kind of depth anymore. ~ James Salter, #NFDB
893:True, it was a difficult chair to slumber in; at the beginning, its magnificence overawed me and I sat gingerly in it, holding at eye level a copy of Sir Samuel Baker’s The Albert Nyanza in crushed levant. I then tried browsing through the latest English review, but somehow couldn’t get past the pictures of Ovomalt and thermal underwear. At last, I found the key in Max Lerner’s windy periods, and, lapped in his peristaltic rhetoric, slept like a baby. Once inside that chair, Lerner in hand, I was as remote from hypertension as from the Asiatic capitals where he bombinated. ~ S J Perelman, #NFDB
894:Why is it that in most children education seems to destroy the creative urge? Why do so many boys and girls leave school with blunted perceptions and a closed mind? A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind. Another question: why do some people remain open and elastic into extreme old age, whereas others become rigid and unproductive before they're fifty? It's a problem in biochemistry and adult education. ~ Aldous Huxley, in an interview by Raymond Fraser and George Wickes for The Paris Review, Issue 23, Spring 1960., #NFDB
895:There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
896:Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat and well-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a ‘tone poet’ and saint. But the thing is simply impossible…[T]o make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal ~ William James, #NFDB
897:I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book—third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time. ~ Robin Sloan, #NFDB
898:We admire Freud for his serious dedication, his willingness to retract, the stylistic tentativeness of some of his assertions, his lifelong review of his pet notions. We admire him for his very deviousness, his hedging,s and his misgivings, because they seem to make him more of an honest scientist, reflecting truthfully the infinite manifold of reality. But this is to admire him for the wrong reason. A basic cause for his own lifelong twistings was that he would never cleanly leave the sexual dogma, never clearly see or admit that the terror of death was the basic repression. ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
899:In our country, [habeas corpus ] means that if you've been sentenced and convicted in a state court, either to death or to some other kind of sentence, you have the right to petition a federal court to review what happened to you. And until [Bill] Clinton, you had three, four, five, even more years I collect records of people who have been on death row for eight, 10, 12, 14 years - this is before Clinton - who finally got a decent lawyer, usually a pro bono lawyer, and an investigator, and were able to find out - they - they're but approved that they're - that they were innocent. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
900:During their subsequent meetings, which were soon and often, Lance confessed and anatomized his passion for her. He even gave her its (the passion’s, of course) biography. It had been born of a book jacket, the one responsible for the only really nice thing ever said about Eloise Michaud in a metropolitan review—“The photo-portrait on the book jacket will move as many books as, say, good writing might. To be honest, however, the picture is worth quite the price of the volume. Miss Michaud is the most scrumptious scrivener ever to set pen to the paper of a book-club contract. ~ Theodore Sturgeon, #NFDB
901:First of all, if it’s on your mind, your mind isn’t clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection tool, that you know you’ll come back to regularly and sort through. Second, you must clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do, if anything, to make progress toward fulfilling it. You must use your mind to get things off your mind. Third, once you’ve decided on all the actions you need to take, you must keep reminders of them organized in a system you review regularly. ~ David Allen, #NFDB
902:Specify Level of Initiative Your employees can exercise five levels of initiative in handling on-the-job problems. From lowest to highest, the levels are: Wait until told what to do. Ask what to do. Recommend an action, then with your approval, implement it. Take independent action but advise you at once. Take independent action and update you at an agreed-on time; for example, your weekly meeting. When an employee brings a problem to you, outlaw use of level 1 or 2. Agree on and assign level 3, 4, or 5 to the monkey. Take no more than 15 minutes to discuss the problem. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
903:Legislatures, so this story goes, are hamstrung in their ability to enact the will of the people due to the growing power of bureaucrats, the large role played by central banks, the rise of judicial review, and the greater importance of international treaties and organizations. But there is also another big piece of the undemocratic puzzle: Even in areas where parliaments retain real power, they do a bad job of translating the views of the people into public policy. Elected by the people to represent their views, legislators have become increasingly insulated from the popular will. ~ Yascha Mounk, #NFDB
904:You," I surmised, and gestured round. "Thank you."
"No," he denied. His pale hair floated out from beneath his cap in a halo as he shook his head. "But I assisted. Thank you for bathing. It makes my task of checking on you less onerous. I'm glad you're awake. You snore abominably."
I let this comment pass. "You've grown." I observed.
"Yes. So have you. And you've been sick. And you slept quite a long time. And now you're awake and bathed and fed. You still look terrible. But you no longer smell. It's late afternoon now. Are there any other obvious facts you'd like to review? ~ Robin Hobb,#NFDB
905:And when I am finished for the day I go on great binges of information, skittering from one tidbit to the next, reading in quick gulps. At once, I’ve downloaded six episodes of Mad Men and tweeted a review from The Millions and updated my status and liked and commented and shared. It’s as if, having checked temporarily out of the great rush to witness and represent oneself online, and having spent instead a number of hours in the thick of imagination and the summer heat of my living room, I now have to scramble back into that perpetual heaving of information lest I disappear, irrelevant. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
906:The reality of the Life Review is becoming part of our every day understanding. We know that after death, we have to look at our lives again; and we’re going to agonize over every missed opportunity, over every case in which we failed to act. This knowledge is contributing to our determination to pursue every intuitive image that comes to mind, and keep it firmly in awareness. We’re living life in a more deliberate way. We don’t want to miss a single important event. We don’t want the pain of looking back later and realizing that we blew it, that we failed to make the right decisions. ~ James Redfield, #NFDB
907:Converting a complaint into a positive need requires a mental transformation from what is wrong with one’s partner to what one’s partner can do that would work. It may be helpful here to review my belief that within every negative feeling there is a longing, a wish, and, because of that, there is a recipe for success. It is the speaker’s job to discover that recipe. The speaker is really saying “Here’s what I feel, and here’s what I need from you.” Or, in processing a negative event that has already happened, the speaker is saying, “Here’s what I felt, and here’s what I needed from you. ~ John M Gottman, #NFDB
908:All of this highlights one of the most challenging obstacles that prevents teams from taking the time to work on how they work together: adrenaline addiction. Many if not most of the executives and managers I know have become so hooked on the rush of urgent demands and out-of-control schedules that the prospect of slowing down to review, think, talk, and develop themselves is too anxiety-inducing to consider. Of course, this is exactly what they need, which is what addiction is all about—doing things that are bad for you even when confronted with evidence that they are, well, bad for you. ~ Patrick Lencioni, #NFDB
909:Every night before you go to bed, review your day and either write down or mentally note ten things you can be grateful for in your life. These can be everything from the beautiful flowers in your garden to the fact that your heart is beating to the hour-long visit from your persnickety neighbor that taught you to be happy that you don’t have her life. Stopping and noticing throughout the day all the things that you can be grateful for is a great way to keep your frequency high at all times. So try and remember to do it all day long, but at the very least, make it part of your evening routine. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
910:Pynchon has been a favorite writer and a major influence all along. In many ways I see him as almost the start of a certain mutant pop culture imagery with esoteric historical and scientific information. Pynchon is a kind of mythic hero of mine, and I suspect that if you talk with a lot of recent SF writers you'll find they've all read Gravity's Rainbow (1973) several times and have been very much influenced by it. I was into Pynchon early on- I remember seeing a New York Times review of V. when it first came out- I was just a kid- and thinking, Boy, that sounds like some really weird shit! ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
911:Instead, what he was discovering, as I did, was that there was no such thing as post–Star Trek. In almost every story or review about whatever it was he was doing, almost inevitably there would be a reference or a comparison to Spock. “Tevye is not recognizable as Spock” or his character in the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers “is the evil side of Spock.” I’ve wondered if reporters or critics ever realized when they wrote that he had successfully made the audience forget Spock for a few hours that they actually were pointing out that no one had really forgotten about Spock. Forgotten? ~ William Shatner, #NFDB
912:Create a mission statement to keep focused on what’s important. (Revise annually.) Create long-term and short-term goals documents. (Revise quarterly, but look at daily.) Create a general task list associated with these goals. (Revise monthly as necessary.) Create a specific tasks list associated with these goals. (Revise quarterly.) Work the general and specific tasks into a monthly document broken down by week and day. Include in this monthly document any deadlines and any tasks that you need to perform but that are not connected to your long-term and short-term goals. (Review/revise daily.) ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
913:I review my three boyfriends, the three men I slept with in my twenties, searching for a common thread. Nothing. No consistent features, coloring, stature, personality. But one theme does emerge: they all picked me. And then dumped me. I played the passive role. Waiting for Hunter and then settling for Joey. Waiting to feel more for Nate. Then waiting to feel less. Waiting for Alec to go away and leave me in peace. And now Dex. My number four. And I am still waiting. For all of this to blow over. For his September wedding. For someone who gives me that tingly feeling as I watch him sleeping in... ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
914:The enrichment of the collective human mind, through the printing and circulation of books, is comparable only to that linking together of individual brains and experiences through the invention of discursive language. The increase in scope of scientific discovery and the tempo of mechanical invention can both be largely attributed to the printed book, and from the seventeenth century on, to the printed scientific paper and review. Changes that might have taken centuries to achieve through the circulation of a limited number of manuscripts took place almost overnight through the agency of print. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
915:The intellectual summits of my life had been completing my dissertation and publishing my book, and that was already more than ten years ago. Intellectual summits? Summits, full stop. In those days, at least, I’d felt justified. Since then I hadn’t produced anything except a few short articles for the Journal of Nineteenth-Century Studies, plus a couple for The Literary Review, when some new book touched on my field of expertise. My articles were clear, incisive and brilliant. They were generally well received, especially since I never missed a deadline. But was that enough to justify a life? ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
916:Weekly Reviews ::: Dedicate at least one afternoon or entire evening during the weekend to review all of your courses. Make certain you have an understanding of where each course is going and that your study schedule is appropriate. Do the 4x6 thing: One card for each chapter. Then ask yourself how each chapter relates to other chapters, and then, how the readings relate to each of the lectures. Are there contradictions? Differences of opinion, approach, method? What evidence is there to support the differences of opinion? What are your views? Can you defend them? A good exercise. ~ Dr Robert A Hatch, How to Study, #NFDB
917:In 2002, a Cochrane Collaboration review of the evidence concluded that low-fat diets induced no more weight loss than calorie-restricted diets, and in both cases the weight loss achieved “was so small as to be clinically insignificant.” A similar analysis was published in 2001 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In this case, the authors identified twenty-eight relevant trials of low-fat diets, of which at least twenty were also calorie-restricted. The overweight subjects consumed, on average, less than seventeen hundred calories a day for an average weight loss of not quite nine pounds over six months. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
918:One cannot read Genesis literally—meaning as a literally accurate description of physical, historical reality—in view of the state of scientific knowledge today and our knowledge of ancient Near Eastern stories of origins. Those who read Genesis literally must either ignore evidence completely or present alternate “theories” in order to maintain spiritual stability. Unfortunately, advocates of alternate scientific theories sometimes keep themselves free of the burden of tainted peer review. Such professional isolation can encourage casually sweeping aside generations and even centuries of accumulated knowledge. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
919:Paragraphs like this, in their infuriating insignificance, contribute to the unfocused incoherence of the novel: a form in which I revel in the most (if unfocused incoherence might be considered a “form”—I think it can—or an anti-form, if you won’t), for it asks nothing from the author except a consistent failure to pull things together in a satisfying manner, and forces the reader to strain hard to comprehend the author’s non-existent intentions, and justify their own heroic effort to stagger toward the end of the novel, even if only to write a scathing online review of the novel. I hope that makes no sense. ~ M J Nicholls, #NFDB
920:To become a magician you must do something very different,” the man said. This was clearly his set piece. “You cannot study magic. You cannot learn it. You must ingest it. Digest it. You must merge with it. And it with you. “When a magician casts a spell, he does not first mentally review the Major, Minor, Tertiary, and Quaternary Circumstances. He does not search his soul to determine the phase of the moon, and the nearest body of water, and the last time he wiped his ass. When he wishes to cast a spell he simply casts it. When he wishes to fly, he simply flies. When he wants the dishes done, they simply are. ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
921:Toy Story went on to become the top-grossing film of the year and would earn $358 million worldwide. But it wasn’t just the numbers that made us proud; money, after all, is just one measure of a thriving company and usually not the most meaningful one. No, what I found gratifying was what we’d created. Review after review focused on the film’s moving plotline and its rich, three-dimensional characters—only briefly mentioning, almost as an aside, that it had been made on a computer. While there was much innovation that enabled our work, we had not let the technology overwhelm our real purpose: making a great film. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
922:Volunteering to help others is the right thing to do, and it also boosts personal happiness; a review of research by the Corporation for National and Community Service shows that those who aid the causes they value tend to be happier and in better health. They show fewer signs of physical and mental aging. And it's not just that helpful people also tend to be healthier and happier; helping others causes happiness. "Be selfless, if only for selfish reasons," as one of my happiness paradoxes holds. About one-quarter of Americans volunteer, and of those, a third volunteer for more than a hundred hours each year. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
923:As a result of its investigation, the NIH said that to qualify for funding, all proposals for research on human subjects had to be approved by review boards—independent bodies made up of professionals and laypeople of diverse races, classes, and backgrounds—to ensure that they met the NIH’s ethics requirements, including detailed informed consent. Scientists said medical research was doomed. In a letter to the editor of Science, one of them warned, “When we are prevented from attempting seemingly innocuous studies of cancer behavior in humans … we may mark 1966 as the year in which all medical progress ceased. ~ Rebecca Skloot, #NFDB
924:For those still stuck in the trap of scientific skepticism, I recommend the book Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, published in 2007. The evidence for out-of-body consciousness is well presented in this rigorous scientific analysis. Irreducible Mind is a landmark opus from a highly reputable group, the Division of Perceptual Studies, based at the University of Virginia. The authors provide an exhaustive review of the relevant data, and the conclusion is inescapable: these phenomena are real, and we must try to understand their nature if we want to comprehend the reality of our existence. ~ Eben Alexander, #NFDB
925:Science is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room - in moments of devotion, a temple - and that his light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he anticipated - darkness still.
'The Rediscovery of the Unique' Fortnightly Review (1891) ~ H G Wells,#NFDB
926:In the Spring 2014 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Linda Heuman wrote in her article, ‘The Science Delusion’: In White’s view, once scientism rewrites our story so that the things human beings care about – like love, wonder, presence, or play – are reduced to atoms, genes, or neurons, human lives become easy prey to corporate and political interests. We become ‘mere functions within systems.’ White wants us to wake up and recognize that this view is not scientific discovery, it is ideology. Mistaking one for the other has profound consequences, ‘not just for knowledge but even more importantly for how we live. ~ Gordon White, #NFDB
927:... throughout his long life Newton continued to experiment in alchemy; indeed, he was, as Gleick writes, "the peerless alchemist of Europe". These studies in the dark art were conducted in deepest secrecy, and did not come to light until centuries after his death, when a large portion of his papers were reassembled. The economist John Maynard Keynes, the saviour of much of this documentation, was astonished by what he read. "Newton," Keynes told his students at Trinity, "was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians." ~ John Banville, (29 August 2003)"Review of Isaac Newton by James Gleick". The Guardian., #NFDB
928:The two parts cannot be done simultaneously. A border fence must be started first—and completed first. Only after all the ACLU lawsuits and INS rulings have run their course, and the border is still secure, do we move to Step Two. I happen to think we don’t do the amnesty part ever, but it’s tendentious even to discuss what to do with illegal aliens already here until we can prevent more from coming. We’ll talk about legalization as soon as it’s as hard to get into the United States as it used to be to get out of East Germany. To review: Step One: Secure the border. Step Two: Discuss what to do with illegals already here. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
929:In a Harvard Business Review article by Stephen M. R. Covey and Doug R. Conant—two leaders who have shaped how I try to show up in my own leadership—they described how “Inspiring Trust” was Doug’s number one mission in his remarkable ten-year turnaround of Campbell Soup Company. They quote information from the annual list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For,” where Fortune’s research showed that “trust between managers and employees is the primary defining characteristic of the very best workplaces,” and that companies with high levels of trust “beat the average annualized returns of the S&P 500 by a factor of three. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
930:The apostle John gave all the tests that he did in order to give the true believer a biblical basis for confidence. Let’s review his spiritual inventory: Do you enjoy fellowship with God and Christ? Are you sensitive to sin in your life? Do you obey the Scriptures? Do you reject this evil world? Do you love Christ and eagerly await His return? Do you see a decreasing pattern of sin in your life? Do you love other Christians? Do you receive answers to your prayers? Do you experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit? Can you discern between spiritual truth and error? Have you suffered on account of your faith in Christ? ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
931:You’ve made it impossible for me to read a book in peace. When you’re not here, I just gaze at the words until they tumble off the page into a puddle in my lap. Instead of reading, I sit there and review the hours of the day I spent in your company, and I am more charmed by that story than anything the author has scribbled down. I have never been lonely in my life, but you have made me lonely. When you are gone, I am a moping ruin. I thought I understood the world fairly well. But you have made it all mysterious again. And it’s unnerving and frightening and wonderful, and I want it to continue. I want all your mysteries. ~ Josiah Bancroft, #NFDB
932:As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee point out in their book, the four key measures of an economy’s health (per capita GDP, labor productivity, the number of jobs, and median household income) all rose together for most of the Cold War years. “For more than three decades after World War II, all four went up steadily and in almost perfect lockstep,” Brynjolfsson noted in a June 2015 interview with the Harvard Business Review. “Job growth and wage growth, in other words, kept pace with gains in output and productivity. American workers not only created more wealth but also captured a proportional share of the gains.” In ~ Thomas L Friedman, #NFDB
933:Over time, one of this engine's most potent impacts is in prioritizing investments for customer-driven growth by shifting the annual planning process. Instead of starting with the silos, leaders start with the customers' lives, identify priorities, and then determine collectively the investments to improve them to earn the right to growth. Without alignment among your executive team to regularly review the customer journey that this engine affords, investments are not fully optimized. Tactical actions are budgeted and implemented by silo, but complete customer experiences that drive growth are not improved. Rinse and repeat. ~ Jeanne Bliss, #NFDB
934:The world's Redeemer was treated as we deserve to be treated, in order that we might be treated as he deserved to be treated. He came to our world and took our sins upon his own divine soul that we might receive his imputed righteousness. He was condemned for our sins, in which he had no share, that we might be justified by his righteousness, in which we had no share. The world's Redeemer gave himself for us. Who was he? The Majesty of heaven, pouring out his blood upon the altar of justice for the sins of guilty man. We should know our relationship to Christ and his relationship to us.
The Review and Harold 3-21-91 PR-06 ~ Ellen G White,#NFDB
935:This culture gave rise to review sites and media watchdog groups (part of evangelicalism’s aforementioned cultural critique) who became moral bean counters, neatly cataloging infractions for concerned parents or easily offended saints. For example, one media watchdog group noted that the popular film The Blind Side (2009), despite a positive portrayal of evangelicals and a redemptive message, contained 10 sexual references, 3 scatological terms, 8 anatomical terms, and 7 mild obscenities — offenses that eventually resulted in Lifeway, one of the largest Christian bookstore chains in the world, removing the movie from its shelves. ~ Mike Duran, #NFDB
936:Because CPR resuscitates thousands today, it is now a commonly known “NDE” or near—death experience, that at the moment of death your whole life passes before you in an instant, with perfect clarity; and in this “life review” everything is seen truly, nothing is covered up. God is apparently sharing a foretaste of His own vision of our life with us, as He will do completely in Purgatory and / or Heaven; and repented and forgiven sins are part of this bitter yet sweet vision. St. Thomas had no CPR, and therefore few NDEs as his data, as we do, but he knew this anyway, if not inductively from data, then deductively from philosophy. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
937:what caused a law review article to be cited more or less. Fred and I collected citation information on all the articles published for fifteen years in the top three law reviews. Our central statistical formula had more than fifty variables. Like Epagogix, Fred and I found that seemingly incongruous things mattered a lot. Articles with shorter titles and fewer footnotes were cited significantly more, whereas articles that included an equation or an appendix were cited a lot less. Longer articles were cited more, but the regression formula predicted that citations per page peak for articles that were a whopping fifty-three pages long. ~ Ian Ayres, #NFDB
938:Picture
Meadow of matchsticks,
soon to be rekindled
by Spring the incendiary.
The exact flame of your blossoms
will ignite the passions
happily sapped by time-Dripdrop their excess went
and now miners' hats
light up like love before
your vein, the frame of which
is there to depict the drift,
the waste when I painted
all the review copies
they sent me. But those books
open to polar pages where you
and I weigh the ends of this
teeter totem down, you
at the head and nadir me;
where postmortem is
the aura of self-portrait,
its other half regained at last.
~ Bill Knott,#NFDB
939:By some estimates, there are 250 hacker groups in China that are tolerated and may even be encouraged by the government to enter and disrupt computer networks,” said the 2008 U.S.–China Security Review. “The Chinese government closely monitors Internet activities and is likely aware of the hackers’ activities. While the exact number may never be known, these estimates suggest that the Chinese government devotes a tremendous amount of human resources to cyber activity for government purposes. Many individuals are being trained in cyber operations at Chinese military academies, which does fit with the Chinese military’s overall strategy. ~ Mark Bowden, #NFDB
940:1. Review Table 2.1 on page 48: How many naps should your baby be getting? How many naps is your baby getting now? How many hours should your baby be napping? How many hours is your baby napping now? 2. Do you have a formal nap routine? 3. Are your baby’s naptimes/lengths consistent every day? Prebedtime Routine Log Baby’s Name: Age: Date: Key: Activity: active, moderate, or calm Noise: loud, moderate, or quiet Light: bright, dim, or dark ~ Elizabeth Pantley, #NFDB
941:you begin to pray, still and quiet yourself. Give thanks for some of the specific gifts God has given you today. Then ask the Holy Spirit to guide and direct your thoughts as you prayerfully review your day. Let the details play out like a short movie. Pay attention both to the things that gave you life and to the things that drained you. Notice where the Spirit invites you to linger and ponder. These are some questions you can adapt and use in the examen: When were you aware of God’s presence today? When did you sense God’s absence? When did you respond to God with love, faith, and obedience? When did you resist or avoid God? ~ Sharon Garlough Brown, #NFDB
942:Some political scientists worried about the new system. Binding primaries were certainly more democratic. But might they be too democratic? By placing presidential nominations in the hands of voters, binding primaries weakened parties’ gatekeeping function, potentially eliminating the peer review process and opening the door to outsiders. Just before the McGovern–Fraser Commission began its work, two prominent political scientists warned that primaries could “lead to the appearance of extremist candidates and demagogues” who, unrestrained by party allegiances, “have little to lose by stirring up mass hatreds or making absurd promises. ~ Steven Levitsky, #NFDB
943:Before Gutenberg The Dec. 12 Book World review of the novel “Gutenberg’s Apprentice” [“Capturing a long-past transformative movement,” Style] said that Johannes Gutenberg “is often imagined as a lone Renaissance genius who singlehandedly invented the technology of movable type.” Indeed, that Eurocentric view ignores well-documented Asian history. Bi Sheng invented movable type (first wooden, then ceramic) about 1040 in China. Movable metal type was developed in Korea , where the oldest book printed with metal type was published in 1377. Gutenberg was the first person in Europe to use movable metal type in the 1450s. Daniel Dzurek, Washington ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
944:In the pages that follow we shall review some of the ways that the quality of experience can be improved through the refined use of bodily processes. These include physical activities like sports and dance, the cultivation of sexuality, and the various Eastern disciplines for controlling the mind through the training of the body. They also feature the discriminating use of the senses of sight, hearing, and taste. Each of these modalities offers an almost unlimited amount of enjoyment, but only to persons who work to develop the skills they require. To those who do not, the body remains indeed a lump of rather inexpensive flesh. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
945:In casting our eyes over the world, it is extremely easy to distinguish the governments which have arisen out of society, or out of the social compact, from those which have not; but to place this in a clearer light than what single glance may afford, it will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen and on which they have been founded. They may be all comprehended under three heads.
First, Superstition.
Secondly, Power.
Thirdly, The common interest of society and the common rights of man.
The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and third of reason. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
946:A providence is shaping our ends; a plan is developing in our lives; a supremely wise and loving Being is making all things work together for good. In the sequel of our life's story, we shall see that there was a meaning and necessity in all the previous incidents, except those that were the result of our own folly and sin, and that even these have been made to contribute to the final result. Trust Him, child of God: He is leading you by a right way to the celestial city of habitation; and as from the terrace of eternity you review the path by which you came from the morning-land of childhood, you will confess that He has done all things well. ~ F B Meyer, #NFDB
947:Nearly two decades later, on his final day in office, President Clinton had issued Rich a highly unusual pardon. It was unusual because the pardon was given to a fugitive, which was, to my knowledge, unprecedented. It was also unusual, and suspicious, because it had not gone through the normal review process at the Department of Justice. The pardon had only been seen by then–Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who, without seeking input from the prosecutors or agents who knew the case, cryptically told the White House he was “neutral, leaning positive.” The New York Times editorial board called the pardon “a shocking abuse of federal power. ~ James Comey, #NFDB
948:suggest starting with a careful review of the relevant variables for solving the problem and then storing these values in your working memory. For example, if you’re working on the outline for a book chapter, the relevant variables might be the main points you want to make in the chapter. If you’re instead trying to solve a mathematics proof, these variables might be actual variables, or assumptions, or lemmas. Once the relevant variables are identified, define the specific next-step question you need to answer using these variables. In the book chapter example, this next-step question might be, “How am I going to effectively open this chapter?, ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
949:To God’s Honor and Praise We know that no Bible translation is perfect or final; but we also know that God uses imperfect and inadequate things to his honor and praise. So to our triune God and to his people we offer what we have done, with our prayers that it may prove useful, with gratitude for much help given, and with ongoing wonder that our God should ever have entrusted to us so momentous a task. Soli Deo Gloria!—To God alone be the glory! The Translation Oversight Committee* *A complete list of the Translation Oversight Committee, the Translation Review Scholars, and the Advisory Council, is available upon request from Crossway. Explanation of ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
950:I wish there was a song called “Nguyen and Ari,” a little ditty about a hardworking Vietnamese girl who helps her parents withthe franchised Holiday Inn they run, and does homework in thelobby, and Ari, a hardworking Jewish boy who does volunteerwork at his grandmother’s old-age home, and they meet afterschool at Princeton Review. They help each other study for theSATs and different AP courses, and then, after months of study-ing, and mountains of flashcards, they kiss chastely upon hear-ing the news that they both got into their top college choices.This is a song teens need to inadvertently memorize. Now that’sa song I’d request at Johnny Rockets! ~ Mindy Kaling, #NFDB
951:Before you begin, as in all prayer, remind yourself that you’re in God’s presence, and ask God to help you with your prayer. Gratitude: Recall anything from the day for which you are especially grateful, and give thanks. Review: Recall the events of the day, from start to finish, noticing where you felt God’s presence, and where you accepted or turned away from any invitations to grow in love. Sorrow: Recall any actions for which you are sorry. Forgiveness: Ask for God’s forgiveness. Decide whether you want to reconcile with anyone you have hurt. Grace: Ask God for the grace you need for the next day and an ability to see God’s presence more clearly. ~ James Martin, #NFDB
952:The competition to lead the Review was ferocious every year, involving rigorous vetting and a vote by eighty student editors. Being picked for the position was an enormous achievement for anyone. It turned out that Barack was also the first African American in the publication’s 103-year history to be selected—a milestone so huge that it had been written up in the New York Times, accompanied by a photo of Barack, smiling in a scarf and winter coat. My boyfriend, in other words, was a big deal. He could have landed any number of fat-salaried law firm jobs at that point, but instead he was thinking about practicing civil rights law once he got his degree, ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
953: Feet frozen, squeezed inside boots stiffened by showers and puddles, skull white hot from the gas burner hissing above his head, M. Folantin had barely eaten anything and even now bad luck wouldn't let him be; his fire was faltering, his lamp was smoking, his tobacco was damp and kept going out, staining the cigarette paper with yellow nicotine.
A great depression gripped him; the emptiness of his narrow life became apparent, and as he stirred the coals with his poker, M. Folantin, leaning forward in his armchair, his forehead resting on the mantelpiece, began to review his forty-year Way of the Cross, stopping in despair at each Station. ~ Joris Karl Huysmans,#NFDB
954:Hamilton articulated fundamental concepts that he later expanded upon in The Federalist Papers, concepts central to the future of American jurisprudence. In renting the property to Waddington, he declared, the British had abided by the law of nations, which allowed for the wartime use of property in occupied territory. New York’s Trespass Act violated both the law of nations and the 1783 peace treaty with England, which had been ratified by Congress. In urging the court to invalidate the Trespass Act, Hamilton expounded the all-important doctrine of judicial review—the notion that high courts had a right to scrutinize laws and if necessary declare them void. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
955:Learning is indeed a lifelong process. And as Alison Gopnik and colleagues argued in another recent book, every time the infant learns something, his or her brain is changed in a way that helps it learn something else. In a review of this book, a prominent developmental expert, Mark Johnson, noted that the early years are crucial not because the window of opportunity closes but because what is learned at this time becomes the foundation for subsequent learning. Indeed, much of the self is learned by making new memories out of old ones. Just as learning is the process of creating memories, the memories created are dependent on things we've learned before. ~ Joseph E LeDoux, #NFDB
956:it is not pleasant to recall something they must view with regret. They are, therefore, unwilling to direct their thoughts backward to illspent
hours, and those whose vices become obvious if they review the past, even the vices which were disguised under some allurement of momentary pleasure, do not have the courage to revert to those hours. No one willingly turns his thought back to the past, unless all his acts have been submitted to the censorship of his
conscience, which is never deceived; he who has ambitiously coveted, proudly scorned, recklessly conquered, treacherously betrayed, greedily seized, or lavishly squandered, must needs fear his own memory. ~ Seneca,#NFDB
957:Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome ...and well-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a ‘tone poet’ and saint. But the thing is simply impossible…Such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal… ~ William James, #NFDB
958:In the progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but frequently neglect to gather up experience as we go. We expend, if I may so say, the knowledge of every day on the circumstances that produce it, and journey on in search of new matter and new refinements: but as it is pleasant and sometimes useful to look back, even to the first periods of infancy, and trace the turns and windings through which we have passed, so we may likewise derive many advantages by halting a while in our political career, and taking a review of the wondrous complicated labyrinth of little more than yesterday. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
959:Like Some Old Fashioned Miracle
302
Like Some Old fashioned Miracle
When Summertime is done—
Seems Summer's Recollection
And the Affairs of June
As
As
Or
Or
infinite Tradition
Cinderella's Bays—
Little John—of Lincoln Green—
Blue Beard's Galleries—
Her Bees have a fictitious Hum—
Her Blossoms, like a Dream—
Elate us—till we almost weep—
So plausible—they seem—
Her Memories like Strains—Review—
When Orchestra is dumb—
The Violin in Baize replaced—
And Ear—and Heaven—numb—
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
960:When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, #NFDB
961:Readers have the right to say whatever the fuck they want about a book. Period. They have that right. If they hate the book because the MC says the word “delicious” and the reader believes it’s the Devil’s word and only evil people use it, they can shout from the rooftops “This book is shit and don’t read it” if they want. If they want to write a review entirely about how much they hate the cover, they can if they want. If they want to make their review all about how their dog Foot Foot especially loved to pee on that particular book, they can."
[Blog entry, January 9, 2012] ~ Stacia Kane,#NFDB
962:A review of 850 research papers concluded that people with religious involvement and belief system have better mental health outcomes. They have higher levels of psychological well-being such as life satisfaction, happiness, positive effect, and higher morale and less depression and suicide. If however you are gay or lesbian (in the closet or your sexuality/belief system unresolved)…….. it is the exact opposite….it can drive you crazy or kill you (suicide). Also it should be noted that this research has shown that the very places where Christian young people should feel safest (in their churches, Christian homes, schools and with friends) are actually places of harm. ~ Anthony Venn Brown, #NFDB
963:By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic--large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination--is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc.
Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it. ~ Philip K Howard,#NFDB
964:Practical Review Tools ::: Flash cards, Chapter Outlines, 4x6 Summaries: You need to find ways to repeat and rehearse information and ideas that work for you. Any number of creative tools can be used to help you organize and remember information and make it manageable. I like 4x6 cards. They are sturdy, large enough to hold succinct information, and you can scribble ideas that jog the memory. The beauty 4x6's is that they can be carried anywhere. You can study them at the library, laundry, or lavatory. They travel on the bus, they can save you from a boring date, they can be thrown away immediately without guilt or survive years of faithful service. ~ Dr Robert A Hatch, How to Study, #NFDB
965:I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood -- it is certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipation -- which these books arouse in a genuine collector. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
966:They say this city can absorb anyone. It does seem that every nationality is here in some part. There are dreamers and poets and landscape painters with dirty noses and wanderers like me who came here by chance and never left. They are all looking for something, travelling the world and the seven seas but looking for a reason to stay. I am not looking, I've found what it is I want...
I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean?
It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. Like genius, she is ignorant of what she does. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
967:Illumina’s soup-to-nuts strategy—of providing fundamental sequencing technologies as well as services that mine genomic insights—appears to be a winner as genomic information begins to touch the practice of medicine and enter everyday life. Illumina already has an iPad app that lets you review your genome if it has been analyzed. “One of the biggest challenges now is increasing the clinical knowledge of what the genome means,” Flatley says. “It’s one thing to say, ‘Here’s the genetic variation.’ It’s another to say, ‘Here’s what the variation means.’” Demand for that understanding will only increase as millions of people get sequenced. “We want to be at the apex of that effort,” he says. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
968:also have a new meeting minutes process. Everyone takes their own notes, but one person in the meeting volunteers to capture minutes. These are narrowed down to: Date: Meeting intention: Attendees: Key decisions: Tasks and ownership: The great thing about this new practice is that everyone in the meeting is responsible for stopping to say “Let’s capture this in the minutes”—not just the minute taker. And we now stop meetings five minutes early to review and agree on the minutes before we leave. Before we walk out of the meeting, the minute taker Slacks them to all of us and puts them in any other relevant channel so there isn’t any clean-up or synthesizing guesswork after we’ve dispersed. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
969:Hamilton had always regarded the judiciary as the final fortress of liberty and the most vulnerable branch of government. John Marshall remedied that deficiency, and many of the great Supreme Court decisions he handed down were based on concepts articulated by Hamilton. In writing the decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803), Marshall established the principle of judicial review—the court’s authority to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional—drawing liberally on Hamilton’s Federalist number 78. His decision in the landmark case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) owed a great deal to the doctrine of implied powers spelled out by Hamilton in his 1791 opinion on the legality of a central bank. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
970:The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when John Lanchester wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, The Heather Blazing. He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about the aftermath of Irish independence. I simply hadn't known that – and I loved the grandeur of the word "diptych". I went around quite snooty for a few days, thinking: "I wrote a diptych."
[Colm Tóibín, Novelist – Portrait of the Artist, The Guardian, 19 February 2013] ~ Colm T ib n,#NFDB
971:declined to keep licensing it out. “If the platform goes closed, it is over,” Kahng said. “Total destruction. Closed is the kiss of death.” Jobs disagreed. He telephoned Ed Woolard to say he was getting Apple out of the licensing business. The board acquiesced, and in September he reached a deal to pay Power Computing $100 million to relinquish its license and give Apple access to its database of customers. He soon terminated the licenses of the other cloners as well. “It was the dumbest thing in the world to let companies making crappier hardware use our operating system and cut into our sales,” he later said. Product Line Review One of Jobs’s great strengths was knowing how to focus. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
972:Miracles in mysticism don't occupy such an important place. It's metaphor, for the peasants, for the crowds, to impress people. What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. You plunge into it. Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth. ~ Elie Wiesel, in a 1978 interview with John S. Friedman, published in The Paris Review 26 (Spring 1984); and in Elie Wiesel : Conversations (2002) edited by Robert Franciosi, p. 87., #NFDB
973:If, on the other hand, we read books entitled On Impulse not just out of idle curiosity, but in order to exercise impulse correctly; books entitled On Desire and On Aversion so as not to fail to get what we desire or fall victim to what we would rather avoid; and books entitled On Moral Obligation in order to honour our relationships and never do anything that clashes or conflicts with this principle; then we wouldn’t get frustrated and grow impatient with our reading.
Instead we would be satisfied to act accordingly. And rather than reckon, as we are used to doing, ‘How many lines I read, or wrote, today,’ we would pass in review how ‘I applied impulse today the way the philosophers recommend ~ Epictetus,#NFDB
974:As I began to prune and shrivel I thought about going to the police and falsely confessing to everything, anything they wanted, just to get it over with. After a few years a college journalism class would review my trial and see that I was obviously innocent. There would be embarrassing publicity. The governor would grant me a pardon and I’d be released. At my press conference I’d say, “I knew God would make this day happen. In my heart, I was always free.” And then I would weep. And then I would sue the shit out of the city and the mayor’s office and the police department and anybody else I could find, to make sure that no one would ever have to suffer such terrible freedom in their heart again. ~ Paul Neilan, #NFDB
975:Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer? Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong. ~ Bill Gates cited in: "Programmers at Work: Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry", Tempus, by Susan Lammers (Editor), #NFDB
976:Islamic tradition does not recognize such presumptuous and conceited preoccupation as "reviewing", which is now widely practised among scholars who regard highly this legacy of the Western tradition modern scholarship. a Muslim scholar, with the work of another before him, would either - according to Islamic tradition - refute it (radd), or elaborate it further in commentary (sharh) as the occasion demands. there is no such thing as "reviewing" it, whether the "review" is termed as such or as any other term which describes it. If there are petty mistakes they turn a blind eye to them; if there are obscurities they explain them in commentary - they polish a positive work and make it shine. ~ Syed Muhammad Naquib al Attas, #NFDB
977:James's critical genius comes out most tellingly in his mastery over, his baffling escape from, Ideas; a mastery and an escape which are perhaps the last test of a superior intelligence. He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it. [...] In England, ideas run wild and pasture on the emotions; instead of thinking with our feelings (a very different thing) we corrupt our feelings with ideas; we produce the public, the political, the emotional idea, evading sensation and thought. [...] James in his novels is like the best French critics in maintaining a point of view, a view-point untouched by the parasite idea. He is the most intelligent man of his generation."
(Little Review, 1918) ~ T S Eliot,#NFDB
978:Look at Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations. Or consider the warring factions in India, Sri Lanka, China, Iraq, Czechoslovakia (until it happily split up), the Balkans, and Chechnya. Also review the festering hotbeds of tribal warfare—I mean the “beautiful mosaic”—in Third World disasters like Afghanistan, Rwanda, and South Central LA. If diversity is their strength, I’d hate to see what their weakness is. The fact that we have to be incessantly told how wonderful diversity is only proves that it’s not. It’s like listening to a waiter try to palm off the fish “special” on you before it goes bad. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
979:Under Grossman’s Regulation 2.0 scheme, government regulatory agencies would operate quite differently from the way they do today. Rather than establishing rules of market access, their primary job would be to establish and enforce requirements for after-the-fact transparency. Grossman imagines a city government responding to the arrival of Uber by passing an ordinance that states: “Anyone offering for-hire vehicle services may opt out of existing regulations as long as they implement mobile dispatch, e-hailing, and e-payments, 360-degree peer-review of drivers and passengers, and provide an open data API for public auditing of system performance with regards to equity, access, performance, and safety.”54 ~ Geoffrey G Parker, #NFDB
980:Further, in a review of personality research published in 1968, Walter Mischel found that none of the approaches met the gold standard of personality research very well, namely Allport's criterion of predicting with any certainty what people actually do. An extravert should make friends more easily than an introvert, whereas a conscientious person should meet more deadlines than a person who is not conscientious. Mischel found, however, that the typical correlation between personality traits and behavior was quite modest. This news shook up the field, because it essentially said that the traits personality psychologists were measuring were just slightly better than astrological signs at predicting behavior. ~ Timothy D Wilson, #NFDB
981:There are many small charges that are tacked on to your monthly bill statements, such as credit cards, cable, Internet, utilities, and ATM fees. All of them seem like a small amount, but when you add them up, the total amount wasted each month can be startling. They are the proverbial death of a thousand cuts. By creating a monthly habit to review these bills, you can identify opportunities to reduce or eliminate your recurring expenditures. Description: Once a month, go through each statement and highlight any questionable item. Also, if you feel that you’re spending too much money in a specific category, then earmark that expenditure. You’ll call this company and negotiate a lower price, which we’ll talk about next. ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
982:There are no beautiful women writers.’ ‘Yes there are.’ No there aren’t. Well, except for Edna O’Brien, who is actually a kind of genius and gained my undying admiration when she said plots are for precocious schoolboys (Book 2,738, Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, 7th Series, Secker & Warburg, London). ‘Here, look at Emily Dickinson,’ I said, and showed him the passport-sized photo on the back cover of the Collected Poems. ‘Her face, two prunes in porridge.’ ‘I don’t know, I think she looks nice,’ he said. ‘Nice?’ ‘She does. She looks interesting.’ Reader, pick any Brontë. Any one, doesn’t matter. What do you see? You see intelligence, you see an observer, you see distance, you don’t see beauty. ~ Niall Williams, #NFDB
983:The waves of refugees who washed into London, escaping from Hitler, and then from Stalin, were bone-poor, often threadbare, and lived as they could on a translation here, a book review, language lessons. They worked as hospital porters, on building sites, did housework. There were a few cafés and restaurants as poor as they were, catering for their nostalgic need to sit and drink coffee and talk politics and literature. They were from universities all over Europe, and were intellectuals, a word guaranteed to incite waves of suspicion in the breasts of the xenophobic philistine British, who did not necessarily think it a commendation when they admitted that these newcomers were so much better educated than they were. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
984:We tend to operate along very short-term goals. It’s very hard for us to put in place a project that looks 40 or 50 years ahead. It was interesting—a couple of years ago there was an article in the Whole Earth Review about a chapel at Oxford: that the main beam of this chapel, which was an oak beam about so by so, was rotted through with worms and had to be replaced. And it was no problem because, 800 years ago, an English king planted an oak tree that was to be grown for the specific purpose of replacing this beam when it should need to be replaced. And so this 750-year-old oak tree was cut and the beam hewn and put into place. And it inspired them to plant another oak tree—which is not a bad idea! ~ Terence McKenna, Ecology of Souls, #NFDB
985:l. ‘I don’t really want to have to review the safety procedures for your department yet again, Professor. Especially when you’ve been doing so well with the departmental fatalities.’
‘Only three this year!’ the Professor said, smiling happily before noticing the look on Nero’s face. ‘Which is, of course, three too many.’
‘A certain level of staff and student mortality is to be expected, Professor,’ Nero said, ‘but it’s best if we can try and avoid it where possible. Colonel Francisco was extremely lucky.’
‘Yes, he seemed rather angry when I saw him,’ the Professor said with a frown. ‘He said that it was a good job he was sitting down when it happened. I suppose it must have been quite a shock for him. ~ Mark Walden,#NFDB
986:Dawkins is an eloquent science journalist. What else is he? I mean journalism is a high and influential profession. But he’s not a scientist, he’s never done scientific research. My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…’
I don’t want to go on about this because he and I were friends. There is no debate between us because he’s not in the arena. I’m sorry he’s so upset. He could have distinguished himself by looking at the evidence, that’s what most science journalists do. When a journalist named Dawkins wrote a review in Prospect urging people not to read my book, I thought the last time I heard something like that I think it came from an 18th-century bishop. ~ Edward O Wilson,#NFDB
987:The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer's [review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the prehistoric origins of reviewing in Zoilism - a kind of pelting of pretentious literature with dung, lest the writers get above themselves; it is to the novelist what the gown of humiliation was to the Roman politician - a salutary ordeal. Less grandly, bad reviews are fun, so long as you are not the author. There is, it must be admitted, a kind of furtive blood sport pleasure in seeing a novelist suffer. You read on. Whereas most of us stop reading at the first use of the word 'splendid' or 'marvellous' in a review. ~ John Sutherland, #NFDB
988:Emilia typed in her password and checked her inbox. A review by the Secretariat de Gobernación of drug cartel activities across Mexico. A report of a robbery in Acapulco’s poorest barrio neighborhood that would probably never be investigated. Notice of a reward for a child kidnapped in Ixtapa who was almost certainly dead by now.
Her phone rang. It was the desk sergeant saying that a Señor Rooker wished to see her. Emilia avoided Rico’s eye as she said, yes, the sergeant could let el señor pass into the detectives’ area.
A minute later Rucker was standing by her desk, sweat beaded on his forehead. The starched collar of his shirt was damp.
“There’s a head,” he said breathlessly. “Someone’s head in a bucket on the hood of my car. ~ Carmen Amato,#NFDB
989:Did you know that in 90% of cases, hypothyroidism is an autoimmune disease? Did you know that autoimmune thyroid disease is linked to a gluten intolerance? Hashimoto’s and Graves’ disease are most likely caused by a gluten intolerance. What happens is that the molecular structure of gliadin (the protein in gluten) resembles the thyroid gland. If you don’t have a healthy intestinal lining, you can create holes; enter leaky gut syndrome. To review, leaky gut happens because food leaks into the bloodstream, and since your blood doesn’t know what the substances are, it puts your immune system into overdrive to kill the foreign substance (this is why I have my clients get a thyroid “antibody” test; it helps determine if there is a food allergy). ~ Maria Emmerich, #NFDB
990:But the evidence collated by the Central Bank of Ireland once the crisis was finally resolved in November 1970 showed quite the opposite. Their review of the closure concluded not only that “the Irish economy continued to function for a reasonably long period of time with its main clearing banks closed for business,” but that “the level of economic activity continued to increase” over the period.37 Both before and after the event, it seemed unbelievable—but somehow, it had worked: for six and a half months, in one of the then thirty wealthiest economies in the world, “a highly personalized credit system without any definite time horizon for the eventual clearance of debits and credits substituted for the existing institutionalized banking system. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
991:One learns of a victory either after the war is over, or at once, from the hilarious joy of one’s hall porter. One discovers the touch of genius in Berma’s acting a week after one has heard her, in the criticism of some review, or else on the spot, from the thundering acclamation of the stalls. But this immediate recognition by the crowd was mingled with a hundred others, all quite erroneous; the applause came, most often, at wrong moments, apart from the fact that it was mechanically produced by the effect of the applause that had gone before, just as in a storm, once the sea is sufficiently disturbed, it will continue to swell, even after the wind has begun to subside. No matter; the more I applauded, the better, it seemed to me, did Berma act ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
992:They found Hermione downstairs in the kitchen. She was being served coffee and hot rolls by Kreacher and wearing the slightly manic expression that Harry associated with exam review.
“Robes,” she said under her breath, acknowledging their presence with a nervous nod and continuing to poke around in her beaded bag. “Polyjuice Potion…Invisibility Cloak…Decoy Detonators…You should each take a couple just in case…Puking Pastilles, Nosebleed Nougat, Extendable Ears…”
They gulped down their breakfast, then set off upstairs, Kreacher bowing them out and promising to have a steak-and-kidney pie ready for them when they returned.
“Bless him,” said Ron fondly, “and when you think I used to fantasize about cutting off his head and sticking it on the wall. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
993:THE HOLOGRAPHIC LIFE REVIEW Here the subject feels the presence of, and re-experiences, not only every act but also every thought from his or her life and realizes that all is an energy field that influences others as well. All that has been done and thought seems to be stored. Because of their connection with the memories, emotions, and consciousness of other persons, subjects experience the consequences of their own thoughts, words, and actions for those persons at the very moment when they occurred. They understand that everything one does to others will ultimately be returned to oneself. Patients survey their whole life in one glance; time and space don’t seem to exist during this experience—instantaneously they are where they focus their attention. ~ Ervin Laszlo, #NFDB
994:We agreed that we wanted McDonald’s to be more than just a name used by many different people. We wanted to build a restaurant system that would be known for food of consistently high quality and uniform methods of preparation. Our aim, of course, was to insure repeat business based on the system’s reputation rather than on the quality of a single store or operator. This would require a continuing program of educating and assisting operators and a constant review of their performance. It would also require a full-time program of research and development. I knew in my bones that the key to uniformity would be in our ability to provide techniques of preparation that operators would accept because they were superior to methods they could dream up for themselves. ~ Ray Kroc, #NFDB
995:Novice forecasters often ask why not just say 0.5, coin toss, whenever they “know nothing” about a problem. There are several reasons why not. One is the risk of being ensnared in self-contradictions. Imagine you are asked whether the Nikkei stock index will close above 20,000 by June 30, 2015. Knowing nothing, you say 0.5 chance. Now suppose you are asked whether it will close above 22,000—and you again say 0.5—or between 20,000 and 22,000, and you again say 0.5. The more possibilities the questioner unpacks, the more obvious it becomes that the casual user of 0.5 is assigning incoherent probabilities that far exceed 1.0. See Amos Tversky and Derek Koehler, “Support Theory: A Nonextensional Representation of Subjective Probability,” Psychological Review ~ Philip E Tetlock, #NFDB
996:I received an advance copy of an upcoming book by Lucy Score, "Not Part of the Plan" and I am voluntarily writing this review. Oh my gosh, I don't know what to say first. I loved the male lead, Niko, and I'm so glad his love interest, Emma, finally learned to get out of her way to find love ever after. I loved that ALL the endearing characters of Blue Moon participated in the making of this love story (including the animals). The more I read of this series, the more I want to find Blue Moon and move there. Finally, I love the way I always learn something new from Lucy Score, especially the bitchen in the finest Yurt!
Now, I've just got to wait for Eva & Sheriff Cardona's story and I have a feeling Ellery is sure to follow. What a great read now and forever! ~ Lucy Score,#NFDB
997:McNamara revealed in his memoir In Retrospect that he had secretly advised President Kennedy, and after him President Johnson, that under no circumstances should they ever initiate nuclear war. He didn’t tell me that, but it was implicit in everything he had said. There is no doubt in my mind that he did give that advice and that it was the right advice. Yet it directly contradicted the U.S. “assurances” on U.S. readiness for first use he felt compelled to give repeatedly to NATO officials throughout his years in office. (NATO retains a first-use policy to this day, as does the United States outside the NATO area—perhaps now with a new degree of sincerity, indicated by the first-use premises of the Bush administration’s nuclear policy review leaked in March 2002.) ~ Daniel Ellsberg, #NFDB
998:Your memory of any sunny day in your childhood is merely a version of the last time you thought about it. Among the stunning implications is that intervening in the reconsolidation process can alter a memory and change how it feels. Some of the most intriguing research on this idea has been led by Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist who has been working since the 1970s to investigate how processes in the brain generate emotions. In recent years, he and colleagues have investigated whether giving people an antianxiety drug as they recall a traumatic experience can reduce the dread they feel upon further recollections. If it works, it could be one of many opportunities for reshaping memory, as LeDoux told MIT Technology Review ’s deputy editor, Brian Bergstein, in his NYU office. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
999:It is not just bookstores and libraries that are disappearing but museums, theaters, performing arts centers, art and music schools— all those places where I felt at home have joined the list of endangered species. The San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and my own hometown paper, The Washington Post, have all closed their weekend book review sections, leaving books orphaned and stranded, poor cousins to television and the movies. In a sign of the times, the Bloomberg News website recently transferred its book coverage to the Luxury section, alongside yachts, sports clubs and wine, as if to signal that books are an idle indulgence of the super-rich. But if there is one thing that should not be denied to anyone rich or poor it is the opportunity to dream. ~ Azar Nafisi, #NFDB
1000:his administration had just finished “a top-to-bottom review of our strategy” in Afghanistan. Bush laid out renewed aims: “To help the people of that country to defeat the terrorists and establish a stable, moderate, and democratic state that respects the rights of its citizens, governs its territory effectively, and is a reliable ally in this war against extremists and terrorists.” He admitted, “Oh, for some that may seem like an impossible task. But it’s not impossible.”11 In fact, the war on the ground was deteriorating by the month. Its challenges had at last attracted the White House’s attention. Yet the Bush administration’s new strategy remained informed by undue optimism, not least because Afghanistan still looked much better than Iraq. Bush was defensive about the comparison. ~ Steve Coll, #NFDB
1001:Romance is fiction.” He punctuated this statement by taking a bite of steak, and then chewing. “But it’s—it’s—” Interesting? Well researched? Engaging? Well written? All of the above. “Not what you expected?” he supplied, smirking around his bite. “What did you expect?” Shrugging, I lifted a small rectangle of lasagna on my fork and blew at the steam. “I guess something brainless.” I didn’t add that I followed The New York Times Book Review and they’d had more than their fair share of articles calling the romance genre “fluffy.” If you couldn’t trust The New York Times Book Review, who could you trust? “Why? Because it’s about love and has a happy ending? And only stories of unhappiness with tragic endings are important? Because a struggle that leads to something good isn’t worthwhile? ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
1002:Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations of their minds. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, "Thomson & Tait's Natural Philosophy" in Nature, Vol. 7 (Mar. 27, 1873) A review of Elements of Natural Philosophy [2] (1873) by Sir W. Thomson, P. G. Tait. See Nature, Vol. 7-8, Nov. 1872-Oct. 1873, pp. 399-400, or The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, p. 328., #NFDB
1003:There is probably no other science which presents such different appearances to one who cultivates and one who does not, as mathematics. To [the non-mathematician] it is ancient, venerable, and complete; a body of dry, irrefutable, unambiguous reasoning. To the mathematician, on the other hand, his science is yet in the purple of bloom of vigorous youth, everywhere stretching out after the "attainable but unattained," and full of the excitement of nascent thoughts; its logic is beset with ambiguities, and its analytic processes, like Bunyan's road, have a quagmire on one side and a deep ditch on the other, and branch off into innumerable by-paths that end in a wilderness. ~ C. H. Chapman, Review of Sophus Lie's Theorie der Transformationsgruppen (1892) Bulletin of the New York Mathematical Society 2, p. 61., #NFDB
1004:are sworn, you will be asked to state your name. I know ‘Lange’ is your stage name. Be sure to tell the jury your legal name is LaSalle. Let’s review your testimony again. “You will be asked if you lived with your sister.” “No, when I left college I got my own apartment.” “Are your parents living?” “No, my mother died three years after Leila and I came to New York, and I never knew my father.” “Now let’s review again your testimony, starting with the day before the murder.” “I had been out of town for three months with a stock company. . . . I got in on Friday night, March twenty-eighth, just in time to catch the last preview of Leila’s play.” “How did you find your sister?” “She was obviously under a terrible strain; she kept forgetting her lines. Her performance was a shambles. Between ~ Mary Higgins Clark, #NFDB
1005:The gift"
My wife gave me a tie made of the thread
of life. I was afraid to wear a tie
made of the thread of life. That it would snag.
That I’d spill coffee on it. But I wore it,
and every person who looked at it
saw something different. One
a waterfall, one a lava flow, one a forest
primeval. Coming home, I took it off
and forgot it on the bus. When I told
my wife, she laughed and said,
did you really think I’d give you a tie
made of the thread of life? That was a tie
made of silk, which is the memory
of cocoons, which are wombs, you were wearing
birth. I told her her thoughts
are the happy childhood I didn’t have.
The sun was in her hair, where it stayed
until she combed it out that night.
New England Review (vol. 31, no. 3, 2010) ~ Bob Hicok,#NFDB
1006:The gift"
My wife gave me a tie made of the thread
of life. I was afraid to wear a tie
made of the thread of life. That it would snag.
That I’d spill coffee on it. But I wore it,
and every person who looked at it
saw something different. One
a waterfall, one a lava flow, one a forest
primeval. Coming home, I took it off
and forgot it on the bus. When I told
my wife, she laughed and said,
did you really think I’d give you a tie
made of the thread of life? That was a tie
made of silk, which is the memory
of cocoons, which are wombs, you were wearing
birth. I told her her thoughts
are the happy childhood I didn’t have.
The sun was in her hair, where it stayed
until she combed it out that night.
New England Review (vol. 31, no. 3, 2010) ~ Bob Hicok,#NFDB
1007:I’ve met with many coaches and they ask me: “What happened to the coachable athletes? Where did they go?” Many of the coaches lament that when they give their athletes corrective feedback, the athletes grumble that their confidence is being undermined. Sometimes the athletes phone home and complain to their parents. They seem to want coaches who will simply tell them how talented they are and leave it at that. The coaches say that in the old days after a little league game or a kiddie soccer game, parents used to review and analyze the game on the way home and give helpful (process) tips. Now on the ride home, they say, parents heap blame on the coaches and referees for the child’s poor performance or the team’s loss. They don’t want to harm the child’s confidence by putting the blame on the child. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
1008:DYNAMITE (13 Sticks for Immediate Use—Handle with Care) PLAN tomorrow’s work today. Review the events of the day, very briefly before retiring. Keep your voice down. No screamers wanted. Train yourself to write very legibly. Keep your good humor even if you lose your shirt. Defend those who are absent. Hear the other side before you judge. Don’t cry over spilt milk. Learn to do one thing as well as anyone on earth can do it. Use your company manners on the family. If you must be rude, let strangers have it. Keep all your goods and possessions neat and orderly. Get rid of things that you do not use. Every day do something to help someone else. Read the Bible every day. These points may seem to be trite and obvious, but each one has hidden behind it, an invincible law of psychology and metaphysics. Try them. ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
1009:I know that, like many other writers, I have many faults, for I am the first to be dissatisfied with myself . . . At the moment when I am trying to review my life's work, I often realize with pain that I have literally failed to express one-twentieth part of what I had wanted to, and perhaps could have expressed. The thing that comforts me is the constant hope that one day God will grant me so much inspiration . . . that I shall be able to express myself more fully, that, in short, I shall express all that is locked in my heart and in my imagination . . . I cannot help feeling that there is much more hidden in me than I have hitherto been able to express as a writer. And yet, speaking without false modesty, there is a great deal that is true and that came from my heart in what I have expressed already. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1010:Memory in these incomparable streets, in mosaics of pain and sweetness, was clear to me now, a unity at last. I remembered small and unimportant things from the past: the whispers of roommates during thunderstorms, the smell of brass polish on my fingertips, the first swim at Folly Beach in April, lightning over the Atlantic, shelling oysters at Bowen's Island during a rare Carolina snowstorm, pigeons strutting across the graveyard at St. Philip's, lawyers moving out of their offices to lunch on Broad Street, the darkness of reveille on cold winter mornings, regattas, the flash of bagpipers' tartans passing in review, blue herons on the marshes, the pressure of the chinstrap on my shako, brotherhood, shad roe at Henry's, camellias floating above water in a porcelain bowl, the scowl of Mark Santoro, and brotherhood again. ~ Pat Conroy, #NFDB
1011:Multiple times he has tried writing his thoughts about Marianne down on paper in an effort to make sense of them. He's moved by a desire to describe in words exactly how she looks and speaks. Her hair and clothing. The copy of Swann's Way she reads at lunchtime in the school cafeteria, with a dark French painting on the cover and a mint-coloured spine. Her long fingers turning the pages. She's not leading the same kind of life as other people. She acts so worldly at times, making him feel ignorant, but then she can be so naive. He wants to understand how her mind works... He writes these things down, long run-on sentences with too many dependent clauses, sometimes connected with breathless semicolons, as if he wants to recreate a precise copy of Marianne in print, as if he can preserve her completely for future review. ~ Sally Rooney, #NFDB
1012:The company’s other primary commitment—to radical transparency—goes much deeper than the glass office walls. Every meeting is recorded, and (unless proprietary client information is discussed) every recording is available to every member of the organization. Each office and meeting room is equipped with audio recording technology. For example, if your boss and your boss’s boss are discussing your performance and you weren’t invited to the meeting, the recording is available for you to review. And you don’t have to scour every audio file to find out whether you were the subject of a closed-door conversation. If your name came up, you’re likely to be given a heads-up, just so that you will review the file. In effect, there is no such thing as a closed-door conversation; everything is part of a “historical record of what is true. ~ Robert Kegan, #NFDB
1013:Thank you to Steve Iwanski and Turnrow Books for this fantastic review of THE RESURRECTION OF JOAN ASHBY!!
Cherise Wolas' debut novel is a narrative tour-de-force. Never mind the admirable boldness of kicking it off with excerpts from (fictional) Joan Ashby's Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning story collections -- Wolas proceeds to delicately peel back the onion layers on Ashby's decades of retreat from the public eye. Like Lauren Groff in FATES AND FURIES, Wolas triumphs in depicting the mounting humiliations of domestic life like a psychological thriller. You know we're headed for the inevitable rug pull - and yet when it comes it still leaves you reeling. Forget about Joan Ashby; it's Cherise Wolas who will leave us waiting breathlessly for the next masterpiece.
—Steve Iwanski from Turnrow Books, Greenwood, MS ~ Cherise Wolas,#NFDB
1014:I personally find that having a couple of projects going at once can be an aid to focus, refreshing my brain as I go back and forth between them – a book review and a novel at the same time, for example. But I’ve seen that writers who are starting out sometimes throw their energy in so many different directions that they can never finish any of the projects, much less all of them.
To me a good test is this: what do you like to read? What kind of book moves and affects you the most? Is it the memoir, the novel, the long poem-collection? Personally, I find myself most immersed in the novel, and that’s why I write them – they have the most magic for me. The joy of self-expression is exhilarating, but ultimately choosing one venue for it can make your work much better – and same for your chances of actually finishing something. ~ Charles Finch,#NFDB
1015:● You and your co-worker sit together in a conference room and draw design alternatives on a whiteboard. ● You and your co-worker sit together at the keyboard and do detailed design in the programming language you’re using. ● You schedule a meeting to walk through your design ideas with one or more co-workers. ● You schedule a formal inspection with all the structured described in Chapter TBD. ● You don’t work with anyone who can review your work, so you do some initial work, put it into a drawer, and come back to it a week later. You will have forgotten enough that you should be able to give yourself a fairly good review. We try to solve the problem by rushing through the design process so that enough time is left at the end of the project to uncover the errors that were made because we rushed through the design process.—Glenford Myers ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1016:Its fall is entirely owing to itself, the seeds of death were in it from the commencement. The powers of satire and of derision, which it exercised with as little mercy as modesty, have proved, in the result, very humble powers; and after usurping an authority, the most dictatorial and audacious, a general doubt is now expressed as to the ability with which it was at one time supposed to have been conducted. Of this there certainly can be no dispute that it will be difficult to name as many volumes in the English language which afford so few quotable passages; and perhaps there can be no better proof of the original mediocrity of the contributors, whatever may have been the merit of a few occasional articles. ~ Blackwood's Magazine, "Historical View of the Rise, Progress, Decline and Fall of the Edinburgh Review" W. Blackwood, (1821), Vol.10, p. 680., #NFDB
1017:Officials in the state’s Department of Public Safety executed an operation that, at a stroke, seized more than $1.6 billion in drugs from organized crime. The operation was notable for its stealthiness. It was carried out without a single shot being fired, or a single person being hurt. In fact, no officers even had to get up from their desks, let alone draw their weapons. The billion-dollar bust was made when officials decided that instead of calculating the value of the drugs they seized at the border using wholesale prices, they would instead calculate them using much higher retail prices. With a single tweak to a spreadsheet, the value of drugs intercepted in the state shot up from $161 million to $1.8 billion. Conveniently, the tenfold upward revision came just a week before the department was due to hand in a performance review.1 Whether ~ Tom Wainwright, #NFDB
1018:I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense"
O California, don’t you know the sun is only a god
if you learn to starve for him? I’m bored with the ocean
I stood at the lip of it, dressed in down, praying for snow
I know, I’m strange, too much light makes me nervous
at least in this land where the trees always bear green.
I know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful.
Have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California?
The sun above you, the snow & stalled sea—a field of mirror
all demanding to be the sun too, everything around you
is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you
& it’s so sad, you know? You’re the only warm thing for miles
& the only thing that can’t shine.
Michigan Quarterly Review, Volume 54, Issue 3, Summer 2015 ~ Danez Smith,#NFDB
1019:no simple mechanism could do the job as well or better. It might simply be that nobody has yet found the simpler alternative. The Ptolemaic system (with the Earth in the center, orbited by the Sun, the Moon, planets, and stars) represented the state of the art in astronomy for over a thousand years, and its predictive accuracy was improved over the centuries by progressively complicating the model: adding epicycles upon epicycles to the postulated celestial motions. Then the entire system was overthrown by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, which was simpler and—though only after further elaboration by Kepler—more predictively accurate.63 Artificial intelligence methods are now used in more areas than it would make sense to review here, but mentioning a sampling of them will give an idea of the breadth of applications. Aside from the game AIs ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
1020:Chatyr Dah
The trembling Muslims kiss your foot and pray out loud,
O mast of the Crimean tall ship Chatyr Dah,
Minaret amid the hills and Padishah!
You, having fled above the cliffs into a cloud,
Stand at the gates of heaven, humbling the crowd,
And, like great Gabriel, guard lost Eden’s house, your shaw
Of trees a cloak where janissaries keep the law,
Your turban thunderbolts and lightning for the proud.
And yet sun scolds our brows and fog obscures our ways,
Locusts poach our crops and Gavur burn our homes,
Always, Chatyr Dah, as motionless as domes
In Mecca, you remain indifferent to our days,
Creation’s dragoman to what below you roams
Who only hears whatever God to nature says.
— translated from the Polish by Leo Yankevich
first appeared in the Sarmatian Review
~ Adam Mickiewicz,#NFDB
1021:Muir’s complaint in the third review, the annoying one, was that the whole work was sub-adult in its painlessness: ‘The good boys, having fought a deadly battle, emerge at the end of it well, triumphant and happy, as boys would naturally expect to do.’ There is a simple reply to this, which is to say that Frodo at least does not end up well, or happy, and that he avoids any suggestion of triumph, seeming in the end incurably scarred, a ‘burnt-out case’. He is admittedly taken away to be healed of his wounds, like King Arthur, though that is not the way Muir put it. But there are other people, and creatures, and things, which cannot be taken away or healed. In fact it is much easier to make a case out for Tolkien as a pessimist than as a foolish or childish optimist; it is another of the qualities which mark him out from most of those who have imitated him. ~ Tom Shippey, #NFDB
1022:Book publishers needed only to listen to Jeff Bezos himself to have their fears stoked. Amazon’s founder repeatedly suggested he had little reverence for the old “gatekeepers” of the media, whose business models were forged during the analogue age and whose function it was to review content and then subjectively decide what the public got to consume. This was to be a new age of creative surplus, where it was easy for anyone to create something, find an audience, and allow the market to determine the proper economic reward. “Even well meaning gatekeepers slow innovation,” Bezos wrote in his 2011 letter to shareholders. “When a platform is self-service, even the improbable ideas can get tried, because there’s no expert gatekeeper ready to say ‘that will never work!’ And guess what—many of those improbable ideas do work, and society is the beneficiary of that diversity. ~ Brad Stone, #NFDB
1023:Ballade At Thirty-Five
This, no song of an ingénue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments, -I loved them until they loved me.
Decked in garments of sable hue,
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents,
Wearing shower bouquets of rue,
Walk I ever in penitence.
Oft I roam, as my heart repents,
Through God's acre of memory,
Marking stones, in my reverence,
"I loved them until they loved me."
Pictures pass me in long review,-Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender, and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
We're as Nature has made us -- hence
I loved them until they loved me.
~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
1024:Why could Tolkien not be more like Sir Thomas Malory, asked [Edwin] Muir, in the third Observer review of those cited above, and give us heroes and heroines like Lancelot and Guinevere, who ' knew temptation, were sometimes unfaithful to their vows,' were engagingly marked by adulterous passion? But T.H. White had already considered that paradigm, was indeed rewriting it at the same time as Tolkien in The Once and Future King; and he had seen the core of Malory's work not in romantic vice but in the human urge to murder. In White the poisonous adder that provokes the last disastrous battle is no adder but a harmless grass-snake, and the flash of the sword which brings on the two armies is not natural self-defense but natural blood-lust, creating a continuum from cruelty to animals to world wars and holocausts. Malory has to be rewritten to encompass a new view of evil. ~ Tom Shippey, #NFDB
1025:When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken. ~ Theodore Dreiser, #NFDB
1026:Writing in the Quarterly Review Cecil insisted – in October 1862 – that the democratic idea is not merely a folly. It is a chimera. It is idle to discuss whether it ought to exist; for, as a matter of fact, it never does. Whatever may be the written text of a Constitution, the multitude always will have leaders among them, and those leaders not selected by themselves. They may set up the pretence of political equality, if they will, and delude themselves with a belief in its existence. But the only consequence will be that they will have bad leaders instead of good. Every community has natural leaders, to whom, if they are not misled by the insane passion for equality, they will instinctively defer. Always wealth, in some countries birth, in all intellectual power and culture, mark out the men to whom, in a healthy state of feeling, a community looks to undertake its government. ~ A N Wilson, #NFDB
1027:NO reader has ANY obligation to an author, whether it be to leave a review or to write a "constructive" one. I put out a product. You are consumers of that product. Since when does that mean you have to kiss my ass? Hey, I like Pop-Tarts and eat them a few times a year; since when does that mean I'm obligated to support Kellogg's in any way except legally purchasing the Pop-Tarts before I eat them? I wasn't aware that purchasing and consuming a product meant I was under some sort of fucking thrall in which I'm only allowed to either praise the Pop-Tart (which to be honest isn't hard, especially the S'mores flavor) or, if I am going to criticize a flavor, offer a specific and detailed analysis as to why, phrased in as inoffensive and gentle a manner as possible so as not to upset the gentle people at Kellogg's."
[Something in the Water? (blog post; January 9, 2012)] ~ Stacia Kane,#NFDB
1028:employment attorney review your severance letter of agreement before you sign it. “Even if you decide not to negotiate your financial package, you may want to negotiate other things, like health insurance and references for your next job,” she explains. Go in with the expectation that you won’t get everything you ask for, but you will get more than what they originally offered. Weinberg recommends an often-used formula to calculate severance: number of years at the company multiplied by two weeks’ pay = severance total. Request back pay for unused vacation days, plus a portion of the bonus you were expected to receive at the end of the year. Request a written letter of recommendation and assurance that it will be upheld if a prospective employer calls for references, and ask for a written agreement that any noncompete clause in your original offer is at this point null and void. ~ Ivanka Trump, #NFDB
1029:[...] if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.
[review of The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life, Nature 442, 983-984 (31 August 2006)] ~ Jerry A Coyne,#NFDB
1030:Rise, Oh My Soul, With Thy Desires To Heaven
1. Rise, oh my Soul, with thy desires to Heaven,
And with Divinest contemplation, use
Thy time, where times eternity is given,
And let vain thoughts no more thy thoughts abuse:
But down in darkness let them lie,
So live thy better, let thy worse thoughts die.
2. And thou, my Soul, inspir'd with holy flame,
View and review with most regardful eye,
That holy Cross whence thy salvation came,
On which thy Saviour, and thy sin did die:
For in that Sacred object is much pleasure,
And in that Saviour is my life, my treasure.
3. To thee (O Jesu) I direct my eye,
To thee my hands, to thee my humble knees,
To thee my heart shall offer sacrifice,
To thee my thoughts, who my thoughts only sees:
To thee my self, my self and all I give;
To thee I die, to thee I only live.
~ Anonymous Olde English,#NFDB
1031:Christianity is not only the revelation of truth, but also the fountain of holiness under the unceasing inspiration of the spotless example of its Founder, which is more powerful than all the systems of moral philosophy. It attests its divine origin as much by its moral workings as by its pure doctrines. By its own inherent energy, without noise and commotion, without the favor of circumstance—nay, in spite of all possible obstacles, it has gradually wrought the greatest moral reformation, we should rather say, regeneration of society which history has ever seen while its purifying, ennobling, and cheering effects upon the private life of countless individuals are beyond the reach of the historian, though recorded in God’s book of life to be opened on the day of judgment. To appreciate this work, we must first review the moral condition of heathenism in its mightiest embodiment in history. ~ Philip Schaff, #NFDB
1032:But this month is all about CITY OF JASMINE which I hope you already have in your hot little hands. My favorite review snippet? KIRKUS REVIEWS said it’s “part screwball comedy”.
I can’t tell you how much time I spent with Carole Lombard and William Powell and Irene Dunne when I was writing it. I adore the 30s comedies for their light-hearted take on relationships and adventure—and the glamorous settings and occasional dash of intrigue only heighten the magic. (Did you know that Nicholas Brisbane from my Lady Julia series was named for THE THIN MAN’s Nick Charles? And apologies to Dashiell Hammett, but I fell in love with the film long before I read the book and appreciated how much it had been lightened in the adaptation!) So when you’re reading CITY OF JASMINE, give some thought to who you’d like to see playing Evie and Gabriel—I’d love to hear who you’d cast in your own production. ~ Deanna Raybourn,#NFDB
1033:I don't know about you, but I'm kind of fed up with realism. After all, there's enough reality already; why make more of it? Why not leave realism for the memoirs of drug addicts, the histories of salt, the biographies of porn stars? Why must we continue to read about the travails of divorced people or mildly depressed Canadians when we could be contemplating the shopping habits of zombies, or the difficulties that ensue when living and dead people marry each other? We should be demanding more stories about faery handbags and pyjamas inscribed with the diaries of strange women. We should not rest until someone writes about a television show that features the Free People's World-Tree Library, with its elaborate waterfalls and Forbidden Books and Pirate-Magicians. We should be pining for a house haunted by rabbits.
(from the review of Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners in The Guardian) ~ Audrey Niffenegger,#NFDB
1034:The Moss Of His Skin
'Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next
to their fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the goddesses
of the tribes…'
-Harold Feldman, 'Children of the Desert' Psychoanalysis
and Psychoanalytic Review, Fall 1958
It was only important
to smile and hold still,
to lie down beside him
and to rest awhile,
to be folded up together
as if we were silk,
to sink from the eyes of mother
and not to talk.
The black room took us
like a cave or a mouth
or an indoor belly.
I held my breath
and daddy was there,
his thumbs, his fat skull,
his teeth, his hair growing
like a field or a shawl.
I lay by the moss
of his skin until
it grew strange. My sisters
will never know that I fall
out of myself and pretend
that Allah will not see
how I hold my daddy
like an old stone tree.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
1035:Difficulties had been expected in obtaining the Emperor’s signature to the Declaration of War against Serbia. When Margutti handed the necessary document to Count Paar, the Count remarked: ‘This may be all right, but all I can say is that men of eighty-four years of age don’t sign war proclamations.’ Count Berchtold had therefore fortified himself by laying before his master at the same time a report that the Serbians had already fired upon Austrian troop steamers on the Danube and that hostilities had in fact begun. The text submitted to Francis Joseph ended with the words ‘the more so as Serbian troops have already attacked a detachment of Imperial and Royal troops at Temes-Kubin.’ This was not true; and Berchtold, after the Emperor had signed the Declaration, erased the sentence, explaining the next day that the report was unconfirmed. But he did not give the Emperor any chance to review the decision. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1036:If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot the unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
1037:Before the siege, a documentary film about the Davidians had been produced by the Australian version of 20/20 as a result of child-abuse complaints made by two ejected Davidians from Australia. The film footage was instructive. They had filmed Koresh giving lengthy sermons to his followers at the compound. When our profilers brought these tapes in for us to review, the man we observed, with his silky smile, air of superiority, and emotionally laden sermonizing, came across as a slick con artist more than anything else. But we were detached law enforcement officers, not naive seekers after enlightenment. As we examined the faces of his followers, they appeared absolutely mesmerized, hanging on his every word. Comparing various statements he had made on these tapes, as well as statements he made to us, we could also see how easily he altered his stated beliefs to serve whatever seemed to be in his interest at the moment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1038:To me, the raveled sleeve of care is never more painlessly knitted up than in an evening alone in a chair snug yet copious, with a good light and an easily held little volume sloppily printed and bound in inexpensive paper. I do not ask much of it - which is just as well, for that is all I get. It does not matter if I guess the killer, and if I happen to discover, along around page 208, that I have read the work before, I attribute the fact not to the less than arresting powers of the author, but to my own lazy memory. I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours. In all reverence I say Heaven bless the Whodunit, the soothing balm on the wound, the cooling hand on the brow, the opiate of the people."
--Book review Of Ellery Queen: The New York Murders, from Esquire, January 1959 ~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
1039:The Akkerman Steppe
I launch myself across the dry and open narrows,
My carriage plunging into green as if a ketch,
Floundering through the meadow flowers in the stretch.
I pass an archipelago of coral yarrows.
It's dusk now, not a road in sight, nor ancient barrows.
I look up at the sky and look for stars to catch.
There distant clouds glint—there tomorrow starts to etch;
The Dnieper glimmers; Akkerman's lamp shines and harrows.
I stand in stillness, hear the migratory cranes,
Their necks and wings beyond the reach of preying hawks;
Hear where the sooty copper glides across the plains,
Where on its underside a viper writhes through stalks.
Amid the hush I lean my ears down grassy lanes
And listen for a voice from home. Nobody talks.
<small>— translated from the Polish by Leo Yankevich
first appeared in <i>the Sarmatian Review</i>
~ Adam Mickiewicz,#NFDB
1040:The Castle Ruins At Balaklava
These castles, whose remains are strewn in heaps for miles,
Once graced and guarded you, Crimea the ungrateful!
Today they sit upon the hills, each like a great skull
In which reptiles reside or men worse than reptiles.
Let’s climb a tower, search for crests upon worn tiles,
For an inscription or a hero’s name, the fateful
Bane of armies now forgotten by the faithful,
A wizened beetle wrapped in vines below the aisles.
Here Greeks wrought Attic ornaments upon the walls,
From which Italians would cast Mongols into chains,
And where the Mecca-bound once stopped to pray and beg.
Today above the tombs the shadow of night falls,
The black-winged buzzards fly like pennants over plains,
As if towards a city ever touched by plague.
— translated from the Polish by Leo Yankevich
first appeared in the Sarmatian Review
~ Adam Mickiewicz,#NFDB
1041:Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you’ve learned about the grand themes of life. It’s time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few facts about the drifting clouds…Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life... I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel- and steal- a little of that energy. ~ Carl Safina, #NFDB
1042:THE island dreams under the dawn
And great boughs drop tranquillity;
The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,
A parrot sways upon a tree,
Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.
Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:
How we alone of mortals are
Hid under quiet boughs apart,
While our love grows an Indian star,
A meteor of the burning heart,
One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam
and dart,
The heavy boughs, the burnished dove
That moans and sighs a hundred days:
How when we die our shades will rove,
When eve has hushed the feathered ways,
With vapoury footsole by the water's drowsy blaze.
First published as 'An Indian Song,' in the Dublin University Review, December 1886.
\
~ William Butler Yeats, The Indian To His Love
,#NFDB
1043:The Calm Of The Sea
Upon the height of Tarkankut
The pennant at the crow’s nest rises with the breeze,
Shafts of sunlight play upon the water’s breast
As on a bride-to-be who wakes to sigh and rest,
And wakes again and sighs for dreams that better please.
On naked spars the banner-shaped sails hang at ease.
The vessel is in chains now, leeside facing west,
Lulled by slow rocking. Passengers lampoon in jest,
Swabbies sigh to one another, slapping knees.
Blithe Sea! Among your jolly living creatures is
The polyp, sleeping in your depths when dark clouds swarm,
Wielding longish arms amid each starfish grave.
Sweet dreams! Below, a hydra of remembrances
Sleeps in the middle of mishaps and raging storm,
And when the heart is calm, its pincers flash and wave.
— translated from the Polish by Leo Yankevich
first appeared in the Sarmatian Review
~ Adam Mickiewicz,#NFDB
1044:The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through? I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up to the mark is by examining each story quite coldly before he starts writing it and asking himself it is all right as a story. I mean, once you go saying to yourself, "This is a pretty weak plot as it stands, but if I'm such a hell of a writer that my magic touch will make it okay," you're sunk. If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them."
(Interview, The Paris Review, Issue 64, Winter 1975) ~ P G Wodehouse,#NFDB
1045:Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and nothing can reach them so little as criticism. Only love can grasp them and keep hold of them and be just to them. Always trust yourself and your own feelings as opposed to any such analysis, review or introduction; if you should be wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and in time to new realisations. Allow your judgments their own quiet, undisturbed development, which like all progress must come from deep within you and cannot be forced or hastened by anything. The whole thing is to carry the full time and then give birth; to let every impression and every germ of a feeling consummate itself entirely within itself, in that which is dark, inexpressible, unconscious and unattainable by your own intelligence, and to await the hour of the delivery of a new clearness of vision. That alone is to live an artistic life, in understanding, as in creating. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1046:Really, Sage? A date?"
I sighed. "Yes, Adrian. A date."
A real date. Not, like, doing homework together," he added. "I mean like where you go out to a movie or something. And a movie that's not part of a school assignment. Or about something boring."
"A real date." I figured I wouldn't give him the specifics on the Shakespheare play.
"What's the lucky guy's name?"
"Brayden."
There was a pause. "Brayden? That his real name?"
"Why are you asking if everything's real? You think I'd make any of this up?"
"No, no," Adrian assured me. "That what's so ynbelievable about it. Is he cute?"
I glanced at the clock. It was time for me to meet my study group. "Gee, maybe I should just send you a picture to review?"
"Yes, please. And a full background check and life history."
"I have to go. Why do you care so much anyway?" I finally asked in exasperation.
His answer took a long time, which was uncharacteristic. ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
1047:B. How is Jesus able to understand our weaknesses? C. How is our great high priest different from us? 2. Read 1 John 4:9–11. A. How did God show his love for us? What was the purpose of this action (v. 9)? B. Why did Jesus come into this world, according to verse 10? C. What conclusion does John reach, based on what he has said in verses 9–10? 3. Read Hebrews 2:11–18. A. According to verse 11, what does Jesus call those he saves? Why does he call them this? B. What was the purpose for Jesus becoming human, according to verses 14–15? C. Why can Jesus fully understand any problem or challenge you face, according to verses 17–18? How does this make him the perfect helper for you? Battle Lines Spend some time thanking God for claiming you, saving you, and using you. Ask him to use you to bring others to him, and then look for ways to bless others as God has blessed you. Review the five stones with which you’ve been equipped to face your giants. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1048:The day after Congress declared war, the Socialist party met in emergency convention in St. Louis and called the declaration “a crime against the people of the United States.” In the summer of 1917, Socialist antiwar meetings in Minnesota drew large crowds—five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand farmers—protesting the war, the draft, profiteering. A local newspaper in Wisconsin, the Plymouth Review, said that probably no party ever gained more rapidly in strength than the Socialist party just at the present time.” It reported that “thousands assemble to hear Socialist speakers in places where ordinarily a few hundred are considered large assemblages.” The Akron Beacon-Journal, a conservative newspaper in Ohio, said there was “scarcely a political observer . . . but what will admit that were an election to come now a mighty tide of socialism would inundate the Middle West.” It said the country had “never embarked upon a more unpopular war. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
1049:So there you have it. O Software Architect, you must see the future. You must guess—intelligently. You must weigh the costs and determine where the architectural boundaries lie, and which should be fully implemented, and which should be partially implemented, and which should be ignored.
But this is not a one-time decision. You don’t simply decide at the start of a project which boundaries to implement and which to ignore. Rather, you watch. You pay attention as the system evolves. You note where boundaries may be required, and then carefully watch for the first inkling of friction because those boundaries don’t exist.
At that point, you weigh the costs of implementing those boundaries versus the cost of ignoring them—and you review that decision frequently. Your goal is to implement the boundaries right at the inflection point where the cost of implementing becomes less than the cost of ignoring.
It takes a watchful eye. ~ Robert C Martin,#NFDB
1050:Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale”
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths. ~ Dan Albergotti,#NFDB
1051:Senlin cleared his throat and furrowed his brow. "Marya, I... I have a difficult time expressing certain... genuinely held feelings. I..." he swallowed and shook his head. This was not how he wanted the speech to go. She waited patiently, and he gathered his thoughts. "You've made it impossible for me to read a book in peace. When you're not here, I just gaze at the words until they tumble off the page into a puddle in my lap. Instead of reading, I sit there and review the hours of the day I spent in your company, and I am more charmed by that story than anything the author has scribbled down. I have never been lonely in my life, but you have made me lonely. When you are gone, I am a moping ruin. I thought I understood the world fairly well. But you have made it all mysterious again. And it's unnerving and frightening and wonderful, and I want it to continue. I want all your mysteries. And if I could, I would give you a hundred pianos. I would... ~ Josiah Bancroft, #NFDB
1052:was a little embarrassed after I dressed and sat down to review my schoolwork. She had a large tumbler of imported sherry and poured me a small glass. The Jerez sherry was an indulgence she had learned during the two years she had lived in Barcelona and Ibiza. She pushed the schoolwork aside and started to talk, more a slangish monologue than a lecture: “I certainly don’t believe that story about you screwing a pheasant-hunter but that’s your business, and right now it should matter to no one except you. You’re going to have a hard time, because you are lovely and your body is as fine as I’ve seen.” I objected to this as ugly and irrelevant but she went on: “You have to study extremely hard and find some subject or profession you’re obsessed with because in our culture it has been very hard on the attractive women I know. They are leered at, teased, abused, set on a pedestal, and no one takes them seriously, so you have to use all your energies to develop ~ Jim Harrison, #NFDB
1053:A CHECKLIST FOR CHANGE Below are the questions you should review before attempting changes within an organization. When the questions can be answered with a yes, change tends to be easier. Questions that can only be answered with no (or maybe) usually indicate that change will be difficult. YES NO Will this change benefit the followers? Is this change compatible with the purpose of the organization? Is this change specific and clear? Are the top 20 percent (the influencers) in favor of this change? Is it possible to test this change before making a total commitment to it? Are physical, financial, and human resources available to make this change? Is this change reversible? Is this change the next obvious step? Does this change have both short- and long-range benefits? Is the leadership capable of bringing about this change? Is the timing right? ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1054:Michael Ledeen—a contributing editor of National Review and a Freedom Scholar at the influential neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute—wrote on the National Review blog in November 2006: 'I had and have no involvement with our Iraq policy'. I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place.'
Ledeen, however, wrote in August 2002 of 'the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein' and when he was interviewed for Front Page Magazine the same month and asked, 'Okay, well if we are all so certain about the dire need to invade Iraq, then when do we do so?' Ledeen replied: 'Yesterday.' There is obvious, substantial risk in falsely claiming that one opposed the Iraq War notwithstanding a public record of support. But that war has come to be viewed as such a profound failure that that risk, at least in the eyes of some, is outweighed by the prospect of being associated with Bush's invasion. ~ Glenn Greenwald,#NFDB
1055:One August evening in 1996, a publisher named Nigel Newton left his office in London’s Soho district and headed home, carrying a stack of papers. Among them were fifty sample pages from a book he needed to review, but Newton didn’t have high hopes for it. The manuscript had already been rejected by eight other publishers. Newton didn’t read the sample pages that evening. Instead, he handed them over to his eight-year-old daughter, Alice. Alice read them. About an hour later, she returned from her room, her face glowing with excitement. “Dad,” she said, “this is so much better than anything else.” She wouldn’t stop talking about the book. She wanted to finish reading it, and she pestered her father – for months – until he tracked down the rest. Eventually, spurred by his daughter’s insistence, Newton signed the author to a modest contract and printed five hundred copies. That book, which barely made it to the public, was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.fn1 ~ Jake Knapp, #NFDB
1056:Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in others:
Giving orders, and obeying them—
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements—
Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)—
Reporting an event—
Speculating about an event—
Forming or teasing a hypothesis—
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams—
Making up a story; and reading it—
Singing catches—
Guessing riddles—
Making riddles—
Making a joke; telling it—
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic—
Translating from one language into another—
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.
—It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.) ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,#NFDB
1057:Federal review of San Diego police urges more supervision By ELLIOT SPAGAT SAN DIEGO (AP) — A U.S. Justice Department review of the San Diego Police Department finds lack of supervision and failure to hold officers accountable contributed to an environment that produced a rash of misconduct allegations. The audit released Tuesday offers 40 recommendations to improve recruiting, hiring, training and supervision aimed at more quickly identifying problem officers. Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman pledged to adopt all of the suggestions, but said some will require time and money. Zimmerman's predecessor, William Lansdowne, requested the federal review last year after misconduct allegations against officers rocked the department. Several were accused of committing sexual assault or battery while on-duty. Officer Anthony Arevalos was sentenced to eight years in prison after being charged with soliciting sexual favors from women he pulled over in traffic stops. Posted: Mar 17 3:56 pm ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1058:Most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering people... appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution... production is carried on for profit, not for use.... The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness... This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success... The education of the individual... would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success... ~ Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?, Monthly Review (1 May 2009) Originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949)., #NFDB
1059:..."Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: "One of the best" (we are still on definitions of happiness) "was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.'" Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe."
-Review of the book, Happiness, by (Professor) William Lyon Phelps. Review title: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light; November 5, 1927 ~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
1060:Storing Log Messages for Later Review With logging to the console and to terminals, an event happens, IOS sends the messages to the console and terminal sessions, and then IOS can discard the message. However, clearly, it would be useful to keep a copy of the log messages for later review, so IOS provides two primary means to keep a copy. IOS can store copies of the log messages in RAM by virtue of the logging buffered global configuration command. Then any user can come back later and see the old log messages by using the show logging EXEC command. As a second option—an option used frequently in production networks—all devices store their log messages centrally to a syslog server. RFC 5424 defines the Syslog protocol, which provides the means by which a device like a switch or router can use a UDP protocol to send messages to a syslog server for storage. All devices can send their log messages to the server. Later, a user can connect to the server (typically with a graphical user ~ Wendell Odom, #NFDB
1061:After a few months, I decided to do one more leg of the Le Noise tour and film the last show with Jonathan Demme in Toronto's Massey Hall/ It turned out to be a great night. Everyone was very happy because we had captured it. During a review of the digital files, we realized that the resolution was not full, it was a stepped down quality, not the best it could be. My own team's excuses were not adequate, because I was not informed of the decision to go to a lesser quality. Lesser quality is so accepted as normal now that even I had used it unknowingly. I went back to Massey Hall and set up a PA system like the one I used at the show, played back the mixes through the PA, and rerecorded the house sound at the highest resolution. I did the best I could with a bad situation. It does sound great now. Thankfully, the PA mix was only one step down from the highest resolution, so when it resonated in the hall and was rerecorded at the highest level, a high resolution hall sound was captured. ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
1062:But another type of life review happens to all of us when we die and our consciousness leaves the physical body at the end of each lifetime. This time it is not done with a therapist, but rather with our spiritual guides or other wise beings; it is not a clinical life review but a karmic one. As we are replenished by the beautiful light, our awareness is directed to review the results of our actions while we were on the physical plane. We see the people we have harmed and we feel their emotional reactions, magnified greatly. Similarly, we feel the emotions, again enhanced, of those we have aided and loved. In this manner, we examine all our relationships, and we deeply experience all the anger, hurt, and despair that we have caused—but also all the gratitude, appreciation, love, and hope that we have elicited. This life review is not done in a spirit of punishment or guilt. By truly understanding the result of our behavior, we learn the importance of loving-kindness and compassion. As ~ Brian L Weiss, #NFDB
1063:The whole brigade took a queer, perverse pride in the regimental band of the 6th Wisconsin—not because it was so good, but because it was so terrible. It was able to play only one selection, something called “The Village Quickstep,” and its dreadful inefficiency (the colonel referred to it in his memoirs as “that execrable band”) might have been due to the colonel’s quaint habit of assigning men to the band not for musical ability but as punishment for misdemeanors—or so, at least, the regiment stoutly believed. The only good thing about the band was its drum major, one William Whaley, who was an expert at high and fancy twirling of his baton. At one review, in camp around Washington, the brigade had paraded before McClellan, who had been so taken with this drum major’s “lofty pomposity” (as a comrade described it) that he took off his cap in jovial salute—whereupon the luckless Whaley, overcome by the honor, dropped his baton ignominiously in the mud, so that his big moment became a fizzle.4 ~ Bruce Catton, #NFDB
1064:Richard Lewontin is amazingly candid about this fact. In the New York Review of Books he makes this stunning admission: Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs . . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.4 ~ Gregory Koukl, #NFDB
1065:In a world that’s getting ever richer, where cows produce more milk and robots produce more stuff, there’s more room for friends, family, community service, science, art, sports, and all the other things that make life worthwhile. But there’s also more room for bullshit. As long as we continue to be obsessed with work, work, and more work (even as useful activities are further automated or outsourced), the number of superfluous jobs will only continue to grow. Much like the number of managers in the developed world, which has grown over the last thirty years without making us a dime richer. On the contrary, studies show that countries with more managers are actually less productive and innovative.15 In a survey of 12,000 professionals by the Harvard Business Review, half said they felt their job had no “meaning and significance,” and an equal number were unable to relate to their company’s mission.16 Another recent poll revealed that as many as 37% of British workers think they have a bullshit job.17 ~ Rutger Bregman, #NFDB
1066:Dr. Luise Light is a nutrition expert and led the team at the Department of Agriculture that made the original recommendations for the food pyramid. If you review her original recommendations, they sounds very similar to dietary advice given by nutritionists today: lots of vegetables, more lean sources of protein like fish and nuts, and less dairy and processed foods. Those guidelines, according to Dr. Light, did not survive their trip to the office of the Head of the Department of Agriculture. In a 2004 account, she described herself as “shocked” by the changes that were made. Her team placed fruits and vegetables at the base of the pyramid and whole-grain breads and cereals further up. The new guidelines not only switched carbohydrates to the base of the pyramid, it moved processed foods like crackers and corn flakes, which Dr. Light and her team had placed at the top of the pyramid with chocolate, to the base of the pyramid. Even with all the edits, the food pyramid was not released for another 12 years. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1067:APPLICATION SUGGESTIONS For a full day, listen to your language and to the language of the people around you. How often do you use and hear reactive phrases such as “If only,” “I can’t,” or “I have to”? Identify an experience you might encounter in the near future where, based on past experience, you would probably behave reactively. Review the situation in the context of your Circle of Influence. How could you respond proactively? Take several moments and create the experience vividly in your mind, picturing yourself responding in a proactive manner. Remind yourself of the gap between stimulus and response. Make a commitment to yourself to exercise your freedom to choose. Select a problem from your work or personal life that is frustrating to you. Determine whether it is a direct, indirect, or no control problem. Identify the first step you can take in your Circle of Influence to solve it and then take that step. Try the thirty-day test of proactivity. Be aware of the change in your Circle of Influence. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1068:In urging the court to invalidate the Trespass Act, Hamilton expounded the all-important doctrine of judicial review—the notion that high courts had a right to scrutinize laws and if necessary declare them void. To appreciate the originality of this argument, we must recall that the country still lacked a federal judiciary. The state legislatures had been deemed the most perfect expression of the popular will and were supposed to possess supreme power. Mrs. Rutgers’s lawyers asserted state supremacy and said congressional action could not bind the New York legislature. At bottom, Rutgers v. Waddington addressed fundamental questions of political power in the new country. Would a treaty ratified by Congress trump state law? Could the judiciary override the legislature? And would America function as a true country or a loose federation of states? Hamilton left no doubt that states should bow to a central government: “It must be conceded that the legislature of one state cannot repeal the law of the United States. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
1069:Besides,” said Mr Norrell, “I really have no desire to write reviews of other people's books. Modern publications upon magic are the most pernicious things in the world, full of misinformation and wrong opinions.”
“Then sir, you may say so. The ruder you are, the more the editors will be delighted.”
“But it is my own opinions which I wish to make better known, not other people's.”
“Ah, but, sir,” said Lascelles, “it is precisely by passing judgements upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.”
“Hmm,” said Mr Norrell thoughtfully, “you may be right. But, no. It would seem as if I were lending support to what ought never to have been published in the first place. ~ Susanna Clarke,#NFDB
1070:The review in the newspaper the next day was not very good. But by then I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier. One of the things I'd been most afraid of had finally happened, with a whole lot of people watching, and it had indeed been a nightmare. But sitting with all that vulnerability, I discovered I could ride it...Out of nowhere, I remembered something one of my priest friends had said once, that grace is having a commitment to - or at least an acceptance of - being ineffective and foolish. That our bottled charm is the main roadblock to drinking that clear, cool glass of love. I remembered what Grace's stories were all about: self-forgiveness, and taking care of one another. It wasn't far away from Jesus saying to feed his sheep. Now, I'm not positive he meant room service. But maybe he did. So I ate strawberries and melon and cookies, then put on the heat, and got in the tub. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1071:In the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the DOD presented its long-range assessment of United States military readiness and plans for the future. By statute, the National Defense Panel (NDP), a nonpartisan ten-member body appointed by Congress, is required to review the QDR’s adequacy. The panel concluded that under the Obama administration’s military plan “there is a growing gap between the strategic objectives the U.S. military is expected to achieve and the resources required to do so.”71 The significant funding shortfall is “disturbing if not dangerous in light of the fact that global threats and challenges are rising, including a troubling pattern of territorial assertiveness and regional intimidation on China’s part, the recent aggression of Russia in Ukraine, nuclear proliferation on the part of North Korea and Iran, a serious insurgency in Iraq that both reflects and fuels the broader sectarian conflicts in the region, the civil war in Syria, and civil strife in the larger Middle East and throughout Africa. ~ Mark R Levin, #NFDB
1072:The fact is that black drivers are 23 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers1, between 1.5 and 5 times more likely to be searched (while shown to be less likely than whites to turn up contraband in these searches),2 and more likely to be ticketed3 and arrested4 in those stops. This increase in stops, searches, and arrests also leads to a 3.5–4 times higher probability that black people will be killed by cops (this increase is the same for Native Americans interacting with police, a shamefully underreported statistic). Even when we aren’t arrested or killed, we are still more likely to be abused and dehumanized in our stops. A 2016 review of a thirteen-month period showed that Oakland police handcuffed 1,466 black people in nonarrest traffic stops, and only 72 white people5, and a 2016 study by the Center for Policing Equity found that blacks were almost 4 times more likely to be subject to force from police—including force by hand (such as hitting and choking), pepper spray, tazer, and gun—than white people. ~ Ijeoma Oluo, #NFDB
1073:As it is, I guess I find "Jack and Diane" a little disgusting.
As a child of immigrant professionals, I can't help but notice the wasteful frivolity of it all. Why are these kids not at home doing their homework? Why aren't they setting the table for dinner or helping out around the house? Who allows their kids to hang out in parking lots? Isn't that loitering?
I wish there was a song called "Nguyen & Ari," a little ditty about a hardworking Vietnamese girl who helps her parents with the franchised Holiday Inn they run, and does homework in the lobby, and Ari, a hardworking Jewish boy who does volunteer work at his grandmother's old-age home, and they meet after school at Princeton Review. They help each other study for the SATs and different AP courses, and then, after months of studying, and mountains of flashcards, they kiss chastely upon hearing the news that they both got into their top college choices. This is a song teens need to inadvertently memorize. Now that's a song I'd request at Johnny Rockets! ~ Mindy Kaling,#NFDB
1074:A second level of analysis for conceptualizing spirituality is in terms of personalized goals or strivings, or what Emmons and colleagues have called "ultimate concerns" (Emmons, 1999; Emmons, Cheung, & Tehrani, 1998). A rapidly expanding database now exists that demonstrates that personal goals are a valid representation of how people structure and experience their lives: They are critical constructs for understanding the ups and downs of everyday life, and they are key elements for understanding both the positive life as well as psychological dysfunction (Karoly, 1999). People's priorities, goals, and concerns are key determinants of their overall quality of life. The possession of and progression toward important life goals are essential for long-term well-being. Several investigators have found that individuals who are involved in the pursuit of personally meaningful goals possess greater emotional well-being and better physical health than do persons who lack goal direction (see Emmons, 19 9 9, for a review). ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1075:Our joint report was published on August 26, 2010, as the cover article of the prestigious journal Nature. Knowing the controversy involved, the Nature editors had proceeded with unusual caution. One of them familiar with the subject and the mode of mathematical analysis came from London to Harvard to hold a special meeting with Nowak, Tarnita, and myself. He approved, and the manuscript was next examined by three anonymous experts. Its appearance, as we expected, caused a Vesuvian explosion of protest—the kind cherished by journalists. No fewer than 137 biologists committed to inclusive fitness theory in their research or teaching signed a protest in a Nature article published the following year. When I repeated part of my argument as a chapter in the 2012 book The Social Conquest of Earth, Richard Dawkins responded with the indignant fervor of a true believer. In his review for the British magazine Prospect, he urged others not to read what I had written, but instead to cast the entire book away, “with great force,” no less. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
1076:The fourth generation of self-management is more advanced than the third in five important ways. First, it’s principle-centered. More than giving lip service to Quadrant II, it creates the central paradigm that empowers you to see your time in the context of what is really important and effective. Second, it’s conscience-directed. It gives you the opportunity to organize your life to the best of your ability in harmony with your deepest values. But it also gives you the freedom to peacefully subordinate your schedule to higher values. Third, it defines your unique mission, including values and long-term goals. This gives direction and purpose to the way you spend each day. Fourth, it helps you balance your life by identifying roles, and by setting goals and scheduling activities in each key role every week. And fifth, it gives greater context through weekly organizing (with daily adaptation as needed), rising above the limiting perspective of a single day and putting you in touch with your deepest values through review of your key roles. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1077:Bitterblue took this information straight to the library. "Death?" she said. "Do we have birth records for the seven kingdoms for the year Leck would have been born? Will you review them for someone with a name that sounds like Eemkerr?"
"A name that sounds like Eemkerr," Death repeated, peering up at her from his new desk, which was covered with smelly, scorched papers.
"Lady Fire says that Leck told her that before his name was Leck, it was Eemkerr."
"Which is a name she remembers from almost fifty years ago," Death said sarcastically, "spoken to her, not spelled, presumably not a name from her own language, and conveyed to you mentally fifty years later. And I'm to recall every instance of a name of that nature in all the birth records available to me from the relevant year for all seven kingdoms, on the extremely slim chance that we have the name right and a record exists?"
"I know you're just as happy as I am," said Bitterblue.
Death's mouth twitched. Then he said, "Give me some time to remember, Lady Queen. ~ Kristin Cashore,#NFDB
1078:He lifted his gaze to hers. "I have a lot of other things I should be doing, but I'm here." He stared into her eyes for several heartbeats before he returned his attention to the big box. "I've tried to stay away. After you threw me out of the house, I thought it was probably for the best. You're a distraction, and I don't need a distraction right now." He handed the screwdriver back to her and ripped the box open with his big hands. "I've got tapes I need to review, and plays I need to go over in my head before today's practice, yet here I am. Putting baby furniture together for you because I can't get you out of my head. I plug in a tape, and all I do is think about you." He peeled back the cardboard and reached for the instruction sheet that had fallen to the floor. "But the thing is, Adele, I'm not really sure whether you want me to be here or not." His polo shirt pulled out of the waistband of his Levi's and slid up the tan muscles of his back. He straightened and looked at her over the top of the instructions. "I don't know what you want. ~ Rachel Gibson, #NFDB
1079:QUESTIONS TO IDENTIFY AND DIFFUSE DEAL-KILLING ISSUES Internal negotiating influence often sits with the people who are most comfortable with things as they are. Change may make them look as if they haven’t been doing their job. Your dilemma in such a negotiation is how to make them look good in the face of that change. You’ll be tempted to concentrate on money, but put that aside for now. A surprisingly high percentage of negotiations hinge on something outside dollars and cents. Often they have more to do with self-esteem, status, autonomy, and other nonfinancial needs. Think about their perceived losses. Never forget that a loss stings at least twice as much as an equivalent gain. For example, the guy across the table may be hesitating to install the new accounting system he needs (and you are selling) because he doesn’t want to screw anything up before his annual review in four months’ time. Instead of lowering your price, you can offer to help impress his boss, and do it safely, by promising to finish the installation in ninety days, guaranteed. ~ Chris Voss, #NFDB
1080:received his M.A. in English Literature from Delhi University, Delhi and taught for
short while at Calicut University before working as journalist in Mumbai for many
English newspaper including the Times of India , Times Sunday Review , Bombay
Times besides others. He was resident editor of the Times of India in Pune for
three years. He is now senior editor with the Times of India in Delhi.
A selection of his poems was included in Gemini II in 1994 . He published an
independent collection of poems Posthumous Poems in 2000.
His first novel An Iron Harvest, about the Naxalite uprising, was published by
Indiaink. He has also published three collections of poetry. He currently lives in
delhi.
A Friend In Need
He sits in a chair
Whose fourth leg’s his.
He loves this chair.
They used to make love in it.
That was when the chair
Had four plus two plus two,
Eight legs. Days with legs.
Since then there’s been a lot of walking out.
Now the chair’s short of a leg
And he’s lending his.
~ C. P. Surendran,#NFDB
1081:Building an airplane was nothing compared to shepherding research through Langley's grueling review process. "Present your case, build, sell it,= so they believe it" --- that was the Langley way. The author of a NACA document --- a technical report was the most comprehensive and exacting, a technical memorandum slightly less formal --- faced a firing squad of four or five people, chosen for their expertise in the topic. After a presentation of findings, the committee, which had read and analyzed the report in advance, let loose a barrage of questions and comments. The committee was brusque, thorough, and relentless in rooting out inaccuracies, inconsistencies, incomprehensible statements, and illogical conclusions obscured by technical gibberish. And that was before subjecting the report to the style, clarity, grammar, and presentation standards that were Pearl Young's legacy, before the addition of the charts and fancy graphics that reduced the data sheet to a coherent, visually persuasive point. A final report might be months, even years, in the making. ~ Margot Lee Shetterly, #NFDB
1082:I can’t help but think of one of my favorite moments in any Pixar movie, when Anton Ego, the jaded and much-feared food critic in Ratatouille, delivers his review of Gusteau’s, the restaurant run by our hero Remy, a rat. Voiced by the great Peter O’Toole, Ego says that Remy’s talents have “challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking … [and] have rocked me to my core.” His speech, written by Brad Bird, similarly rocked me—and, to this day, sticks with me as I think about my work. “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy,” Ego says. “We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1083:Miss Molyneux, what a treat!” smiled Sabretasche, who could say impudent things so gracefully, that every one liked them from his lips. “You have the candour to say what every other young lady thinks. We know you all like us very much, but none of you will ever admit it! You say you enjoyed the review? I thought no belle, after her first season, ever condescended to ‘enjoy’ anything.” “Don’t they!” laughed Violet; “how I pity them! I am an exception, then, for I enjoy an immense number of things; everything, indeed, except my presentation, where I was ironed quite flat, and very nearly crushed to death, and, finally, came before her Majesty in a state of collapse, like a maimed india-rubber ball. Not enjoy things! Why, I enjoy my morning gallop on Bonbon; I enjoy my flowers, and birds, and dogs. I delight in the opera, I adore waltzing, I perfectly idolise music, and the day when a really good book comes out, or a really good painting is exhibited, I am in a seventh heaven. Not enjoy things! Oh, Colonel Sabretasche, when I cease to enjoy life, I hope I shall cease to live! ~ Ouida, #NFDB
1084:Catherine was too wretched to be fearful. The journey in itself had no terrors for her; and she began it without either dreading its length or feeling its solitariness. Leaning back in one comer of the carriage, in a violent burst of tears, she was conveyed some miles beyond the walls of the abbey before she raised her head; and the highest point of ground within the park was almost closed from her view before she was capable of turning her eyes towards it. Unfortunately, the road she now travelled was the same which only ten days ago she had so happily passed along in going to and from Woodston; and, for fourteen miles, every bitter feeling was rendered more severe by the review of objects on which she had first looked under impressions so different. Every mile, as it brought her nearer Woodston, added to her sufferings, and when within the distance of five, she passed the turning which led to it, and thought of Henry, so near, yet so unconscious, her grief and agitation were excessive. The day which she had spent at that place had been one of the happiest of her life. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1085:But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and ajury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. ~ Harper Lee,#NFDB
1086:I think that there have been displays of an impoverished reading of the book. I get the distinct feeling at times that certain critics have not risen above a 10th grade level of reading and that they approached the book with expectations of preconceived notions that then drive a very boneheaded reading. In other words they don't allow the book's rules to establish themselves before applying their own aesthetic criteria to it which I think is a mistake. I think a careful and adult reader allows the book to establish its world and then evaluates it on how well it does so. I also think a smart critic does not drag behind him or her like a dead horse whatever presuppositions the first book might have indicated where the second book might be about or what kind of freedom the writer might be exploring as a writer. All of those things I find unfortunate when I read a review that seems misbegotten. But I'm not sure that this is not a new phenomenon and it would be a Sisyphean task to argue against a misreading because those misreadings are an inherent part of the critical apparatus. ~ Joshua Ferris, #NFDB
1087:The media suffer from an internalised as well as institutionalised Islamophilia. They could never broadcast, or print, during Ramadan, Eid or any other Muslim festival a programme or article explaining from the Christian – or any other – point of view why Islam’s founding story simply doesn’t stack up. It wouldn’t be hard to write or make it. Let any scholar loose on the materials and they could do it. Biblical or Torah scholars using the tools of criticism could use them on the Koran and have a wonderful and fascinating time of it. But would the nation’s broadcaster run it? Or the ‘paper of record’ print it? If during any day of the year – let alone a major Muslim festival – the main newspapers in Britain or America chose to commission a Christian scholar to review a book casting doubt on the likelihood of Mohammed’s existence, say, or his claims to be a prophet, I think everybody knows what would happen. The papers and broadcasters know what would happen too. Which is why they don’t do it. And which is why when it comes to Islam we begin by avoiding it, go on to treat it with kid gloves, ~ Douglas Murray, #NFDB
1088:Have you given any thought to the formula you would like me to run?"
Alex nearly lost his grip on the decanter. "I beg your pardon?"
"At least a few of your patrons will need to achieve moderate success, and the occasional player will need to achieve considerable success at the vingt-et-un table if you hope to attract those individuals whose pocket books match their greed and belief that the next hand will change their fortune. I will require instruction as to how you wish me to deal in order to maximize both prophets and popularity." She withdrew a small square of paper from a hidden pocket somewhere in the folds of her skirts and held it out to him.
"I've run some scenarios, allowing for a margin of error that I will not be able to avoid. It's all basic accounting worked into a matrix of probabilities, but I thought you might want to review it."
Alex very carefully replaced the heavy crystal on the surface of his desk struggling to draw a breath. This was not good at all. Forget his alarming charge into the fray on a white horse, he was rather afraid he had just fallen in love. ~ Kelly Bowen,#NFDB
1089:but at the Lychgate we may all pass our own conduct and our own judgments under a searching review. It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1090:The writer, without softening his vision, is obliged to capture or conjure readers. And this means any kind of reader. It means whatever is there. I used to think that it should be possible to write for some supposed elite, for the people who attend the universities and sometimes know how to read, but I have since found that though you may publish your stories in the Yale Review, if they are any good at all you are eventually going to get a letter from some old lady in California, or some inmate of the Federal Penitentiary, or the state in sane asylum, or the local poorhouse, telling you where you have failed to meet his needs. And his need of course is to be lifted up. There is something in us as story-tellers, and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance of restoration. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but he has forgotten the cost of it. His sense of evil is deluded or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. He has forgotten the price of truth, even in fiction. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1091:...It's not that she has not tried to improve her condition before acknowledging its hopelessness. (Oh, come on, let's get the hell out of this, and get into the first person.) I have sought, by study, to better my form and make myself Society's Darling. You see, I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock about a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen, but I thought that maybe I might be the girl to start the vogue. I would become brilliant. I would sparkle. I would hold whole dinner tables spellbound. I would have throngs fighting to come within hearing distance of me while the weakest, elbowed mercilessly to the outskirts, would cry "What did she say?" or "Oh, please ask her to tell it again." That's what I would do. Oh I could just hear myself."
-Review of the books, Favorite Jokes of Famous People, by Bruce Barton; The Technique of the Love Affair by "A Gentlewoman." (Actually by Doris Langley Moore.) Review title: Wallflower's Lament; November 17, 1928. ~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
1092:Couplets
I am for Cutting. I'm a blade
Designed for use at dress parade.
My gleaming length, when I display
Peace rules the land with gentle sway;
But when the war-dogs bare their teeth
Go seek me in the modest sheath.
I am for Cutting. Not for me
The task of setting nations free.
Let soulless blades take human life,
My softer metal shuns the strife.
The annual review is mine,
When gorgeous shopmen sweat and shine,
And Biddy, tip-toe on the pave,
Adores the cobble-trotting brave.
I am for Cutting. 'Tis not mine
To hew amain the hostile line;
Not mine all pitiless to spread
The plain with tumuli of dead.
My grander duty lies afar
From haunts of the insane hussar,
Where charging horse and struggling foot
Are grimed alike with cannon-soot.
When Loveliness and Valor meet
Beneath the trees to dance, and eat,
And sing, and much beside, behold
My golden glories all unfold!
There formidably are displayed
The useful horrors of my blade
In time of feast and dance and ballad,
I am for cutting chicken salad.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
1093:...I have read but little of Madame Glyn. I did not know that things like "It" were going on. I have misspent my days. When I think of all those hours I flung away in reading William James and Santayana, when I might have been reading of life, throbbing, beating, perfumed life, I practically break down. Where, I ask you, have I been, that no true word of Madame Glyn's literary feats has come to me?
But even those far, far better informed than I must work a bit over the opening sentence of Madame Glyn's foreword to her novel" "This is not," the says, drawing her emeralds warmly about her, "the story of the moving picture entitled It, but a full character study of the story It, which the people in the picture read and discuss." I could go mad, in a nice way, straining to figure that out.
...Well it turns out that Ava and John meet, and he begins promptly to "vibrate with passion." ...
...It goes on for nearly three hundred pages, with both of them vibrating away like steam launches."
-Review of the book, It, by Elinor Glyn. Review title: Madame Glyn Lectures on "It," with Illustrations; November 26, 1927. ~ Dorothy Parker,#NFDB
1094:In 1964 following a very stressful trip to Russia, [Cousins] was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (a degenerative disease causing the breakdown of collagen), which left him in almost constant pain and motivated his doctor to say he would die within a few months. He disagreed and reasoned that if stress had somehow contributed to his illness (he was not sick before the trip to Russia), then positive emotions should help him feel better. With his doctors’ consent, he checked himself out of the hospital and into a hotel across the street and began taking extremely high doses of vitamin C while exposing himself to a continuous stream of humorous films and similar “laughing matters.” He later claimed that 10 minutes of belly rippling laughter would give him two hours of pain-free sleep, when nothing else, not even morphine, could help him. His condition steadily improved and he slowly regained the use of his limbs. Within six months he was back on his feet, and within two years he was able to return to his full-time job at the Saturday Review. His story baffled the scientific community and inspired a number of research projects. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1095:As Cochran recalls in a blog post he wrote about his experiment for the Harvard Business Review, these simple statistics got him thinking about the rest of his company. Just how much time were employees of Atlantic Media spending moving around information instead of focusing on the specialized tasks they were hired to perform? Determined to answer this question, Cochran gathered company-wide statistics on e-mails sent per day and the average number of words per e-mail. He then combined these numbers with the employees’ average typing speed, reading speed, and salary. The result: He discovered that Atlantic Media was spending well over a million dollars a year to pay people to process e-mails, with every message sent or received tapping the company for around ninety-five cents of labor costs. “A ‘free and frictionless’ method of communication,” Cochran summarized, “had soft costs equivalent to procuring a small company Learjet.” Tom Cochran’s experiment yielded an interesting result about the literal cost of a seemingly harmless behavior. But the real importance of this story is the experiment itself, and in particular, its complexity. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1096:What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Scientific Man and the Bible'. By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to be divided into two insulated halves, one functioning normally, naturally and even brilliantly, and the other capable only of such ghastly balderdash which issues from the minds of Baptist evangelists? Such balderdash takes various forms, but it is at its worst when it is religious. Why should this be so? What is there in religion that completely flabbergasts the wits of those who believe in it? I see no logical necessity for that flabbergasting. Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. In other fields such hypotheses are common, and yet they do no apparent damage to those who incline to them. But in the religious field they quickly rush the believer to the intellectual Bad Lands. He not only becomes anaesthetic to objective fact; he becomes a violent enemy of objective fact. It annoys and irritates him. He sweeps it away as something somehow evil... ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
1097:Among the handful of companies that were trying to solve these problems, most embraced a culture of strictly enforced, even CIA-like secrecy. We were in a race, after all, to be the first to make a computer-animated feature film, so many who were pursuing this technology held their discoveries close to their vests. After talking about it, however, Alvy and I decided to do the opposite—to share our work with the outside world. My view was that we were all so far from achieving our goal that to hoard ideas only impeded our ability to get to the finish line. Instead, NYIT engaged with the computer graphics community, publishing everything we discovered, participating in committees to review papers written by all manner of researchers, and taking active roles at all the major academic conferences. The benefit of this transparency was not immediately felt (and, notably, when we decided upon it, we weren’t even counting on a payoff; it just seemed like the right thing to do). But the relationships and connections we formed, over time, proved far more valuable than we could have imagined, fueling our technical innovation and our understanding of creativity in general. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1098:Little crab-butt got a fantastic review last night and since then, she’s been going around telling all the promoters and directors that a certain dancer is past her prime. That your fears of being replaced are what led you to a mental breakdown and that, that is why you had to pull out of the show.” “I’ll kill her!” Kiara slammed her glass down on the table and started toward Elfa. Shera grabbed her arm. “Not now. There are too many promoters here for you to cause a scene. If you start something, she’ll tell them you’re too temperamental and impossible to work with. You’ll prove her points.” Kiara clenched her fists at her sides, wanting to jerk every strand of hair out of Elfa’s head. Shera patted her arm. “Let it go, little sister. Beat her where it counts most. On the street and at the box office. I promise you her paltry review was nothing compared to the ones you get.” Shera’s laugh returned. “Besides, think of this, I had to let your costume out two sizes to accommodate her fat ass.” In spite of herself and her anger, Kiara laughed. “Did you really?” Shera nodded. “She’s shaped like a pineapple, lumps and all. And red isn’t that girl’s color. Looks ghastly on her. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1099:I stayed, as always, at 37 Mapesbury, and on publication day my father came into my bedroom, pale and shaking, holding The Times in his hands. He said, fearfully, “You’re in the papers.” There was a very nice essay-review in the paper which called Migraine “balanced, authoritative, brilliant,” or something of the sort. But so far as my father was concerned, this made no difference; I had committed a grave impropriety, if not a criminal folly, by being in the papers. In those days, one might be struck off the Medical Register in England for any indulgence in “the four As”: alcoholism, addiction, adultery, or advertising; my father thought that a review of Migraine in the general press might be seen as advertising. I had gone public, made myself visible. He himself always had, or believed he had, a “low profile.” He was known to and beloved by his patients, family, and friends, but not to a wider world. I had crossed a boundary, transgressed, and he feared for me. This coincided with feelings I had had myself, and in those days I often misread the word “publish” as “punish.” I felt that I would be punished if I published anything, and yet I had to; this conflict almost tore me apart. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
1100:As you remember, we encountered parallel universes in Chapter 6 as well, but of a different kind. To avoid confusing ourselves with an overdose of parallel universes, let's review the terminology we agreed on in Chapter 6. By our Universe, we mean the spherical region of space from which light has had time to reach us during the 14 billion years since our Big Bang, with its classical observed properties (which galaxies are where, what the history books say, etc.). In Chapter 6, we called other such spherical regions far way in our large or infinite space Level I parallel universes or Level II parallel universes, depending on whether they had our effective laws of physics or not. Let's call the quantum parallel universes that Everett discovered Level III parallel universes, and the collection of all of them the Level III multiverse. Where are these parallel universes? Whereas the Level I and Level II kinds are far away in our good old three-dimensional space, the Level III ones can be right here as far as these three-dimensions are concerned, but separated from us in what mathematicians call Hilbert space, an abstract space with infinitely many dimensions where the wavefunction lives. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
1101:General Pershing
He isn't long on speeches. At the banquet table, he
Could name a dozen places where he would much rather be.
He's not one for fuss and feathers or for marching in review,
But he's busy every minute when he's got a job to do.
And you'll find him in the open, fighting hard and fighting square
For the glory of his country when his boys get over there.
He has listened to the cheering of the splendid folks of France,
And he knows that he's the leader of America's advance,
And he knows his task is mighty and that words will not avail,
So he's standing to his duty, for he isn't there to fail.
And you'll find him cool and steady when the guns begin to flare,
And he'll talk in deeds of glory when his boys get over there.
He has gone to face the fury of the Prussian hordes that sweep
O'er the fertile fields of Freedom, where the forms of heroes sleep,
And it seems no time for talking or for laughter or for cheers,
With the wounded all about him and their moaning in his ears.
He is waiting for to-morrow, waiting there to do his share,
And he'll strike a blow for freedom when his boys get over there.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
1102:On Editors:
"... The chief qualification of ninety-nine per cent of all editors is failure. They have failed as writers. Don't think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the slavery to their circulation and to the business manager to the joy of writing. They have tried to write, and they have failed. And right there is the cursed paradox of it. Every portal to success in literature is guarded by those watch-dogs, the failures of literature. The editors, the sub-editors, associate editors, most of them, and the manuscript readers for the magazines and book-publishers, most of them, nearly all of them, are men who wanted to write and failed. And yet they, of all creatures under the sun the most unfit, are the very creatures who decide what shall and what shall not find its way into print–they, who have proved themselves not original, who have demonstrated that they lack the divine fire, sit in judgment upon originality and genius. And after them comes the reviewers, just so many more failures. Don't tell me that they have not dreamed the dream and attempted to write poetry and fiction; for they have, and they have failed. Why, the average review is more nauseating than cod-liver oil.... ~ Jack London,#NFDB
1103:When you left
you left behind a field
of silent flowers
under a sky
full of unstirred clouds...you left
a million butterflies
mid-silky flutters
You left like midnight rain
against my dreaming ears
Oh and how you left
leaving my coffee scentless
and my couch comfortless
leaving upon my fingers
the melting snow of you
you left behind
a calendar full of empty days
and seasons full of aimless wanders
leaving me alone
with an armful of sunsets
your reflection behind
in every puddle
your whispers
upon every curtain
your fragrance
inside every petal
you left your echoes in between
the silence of my eyes
Oh and how you left
leaving my sands footless
and my shores songless
leaving me with windows full of
moistened moonlight
nights and nights
of only a half-warmed soul
and when you left...
you left behind a lifetime
of moments untouched
the light of a million stars
unshed
and when you left
you somehow
left my poem...unfinished.
(Published in Taj Mahal Review Vol.11
Number 1 June 2012) ~ Sanober Khan,#NFDB
1104:work on it for an hour of completely focused and undistracted effort (notice I haven’t opened e-mail yet). Then, every morning at 7 a.m., I have what I call my calibration appointment, a recurring appointment set in my calendar, where I take fifteen minutes to calibrate my day. This is where I brush over my top three one-year and five-year goals, my key quarterly objectives, and my top goal for the week and month. Then, for the most important part of the calibration appointment, I review (or set) my top three MVPs (Most Valuable Priorities) for that day, asking myself, “If I only did three things today, what are the actions that will produce the greatest results in moving me closer to my big goals?” Then, and only then, do I open e-mail and send out a flurry of tasks and delegations to get the rest of my team started on their day. I then quickly close down my e-mail and go to work on my MVPs. The rest of the day can take a million different shapes, but as long as I go through my morning routine, a majority of the key disciplines I need to be practicing are taken care of, and I’m properly grounded and prepared to perform at a much higher level than if I started each day erratically—or worse, with a set of bad habits. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
1105:Private sector networks in the United States, networks operated by civilian U.S. government agencies, and unclassified U.S. military and intelligence agency networks increasingly are experiencing cyber intrusions and attacks,” said a U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report to Congress that was published the same month Conficker appeared. “. . . Networks connected to the Internet are vulnerable even if protected with hardware and software firewalls and other security mechanisms. The government, military, businesses and economic institutions, key infrastructure elements, and the population at large of the United States are completely dependent on the Internet. Internet-connected networks operate the national electric grid and distribution systems for fuel. Municipal water treatment and waste treatment facilities are controlled through such systems. Other critical networks include the air traffic control system, the system linking the nation’s financial institutions, and the payment systems for Social Security and other government assistance on which many individuals and the overall economy depend. A successful attack on these Internet-connected networks could paralyze the United States [emphasis added]. ~ Mark Bowden, #NFDB
1106:The key to learning the fear of the Lord is to stay in Scripture. When you are in the Scripture, pray that God would teach you that he is the Holy One. 1. Review the creation psalms: Psalms 8; 19; 29; 65; 104. 2. Meditate on the enthronement psalms: e.g., Psalm 95-97; 99. 3. Memorize Psalm 139. It states that God’s providence is so extensive it goes into all the details of our lives. 4. Go through a hymn book and highlight songs that express God’s majesty and holiness. 5. Read the book of Habakkuk. It is similar to Job in that God directly addresses a man who had questions about what God was doing. All the questions were resolved when Habakkuk was schooled in the fear of the Lord. 6. Read The Holiness of God, by R. C. Sproul (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1985). 7. Review the New Testament passages on hell. Along with the ones mentioned in this chapter, you could consider 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10; 2 Peter 2:6; and Revelation 14:9-11. Be certain to talk with other people in your church about your meditations. Bless them with what God is teaching you, and listen to what God has taught them. 8. Begin a “fear of the Lord” or “knowing God” prayer group. 9. Take time to confess your fear of people and lack of fear of the Lord. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
1107:p.cm. Includes indexes.ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-6278-7 (soft cover) ISBN-10: 0-7360-6278-5 (soft cover) 1. Hatha yoga.2. Human anatomy.I.Title.RA781.7. K356 2007 613.7’046--dc22 2007010050 ISBN-10: 0-7360-6278-5 (print) ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-6278-7 (print) ISBN-10: 0-7360-8218-2 (Adobe PDF) ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-8218-1 (Adobe PDF) Copyright © 2007 by The Breathe Trust All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, and in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. Acquisitions Editor: Martin Barnard Developmental Editor: Leigh Keylock Assistant Editor: Christine Horger Copyeditor: Patsy Fortney Proofreader: Kathy Bennett Graphic Designer: Fred Starbird Graphic Artist: Tara Welsch Original Cover Designer: Lydia Mann Cover Revisions: Keith Blomberg Art Manager: Kelly Hendren Project Photographer: Lydia Mann Illustrator (cover and interior): Sharon Ellis Printer: United Graphics Human Kinetics books are available at special discounts for bulk purchase. Special editions or book excerpts ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1108:Next!’ The judgement issues summarily from the review panel before Sexecutioner has even a chance to drop his first motherfucker. For a moment, the boys remain rooted to the spot in ungangsta-like attitudes of woundedness, mocked by the drumbeat that is still thumping around them; then, unplugging the ghettoblaster, they clamber down and make the walk of shame to the exit.
‘What in God’s name was that?’ the Automator says as soon as they have left.
Trudy peers down at her clipboard. ‘ “Original material.” ’
‘Our old friend original material,’ the Automator says grimly. ‘I’ve had some plumbing mishaps that sounded a little like those guys.’
‘It did have a certain rough-hewn vitality,’ Father Laughton moderates.
‘I’ve said it before, Padre, this concert’s not about rough-hewn. It’s not about “doing your best”. I want professionalism. I want pizazz. I want this concert to put the Seabrook name out there, tell the world what we’re all about.’
‘Education?’
‘Quality, damn it. A brand right at the top of the upper end of the market. God knows that’s not going to be easy. I’ve given serious thought to bussing in other kids, talented kids, just so we don’t have to drop the curtain after half an hour – ~ Paul Murray,#NFDB
1109:I cannot have deceived myself," he said; "I must look upon the past in a false light. What!" he continued, "can I have been following a false path? — can the end which I proposed be a mistaken end? — can one hour have sufficed to prove to an architect that the work upon which he founded all his hopes was an impossible, if not a sacrilegious, undertaking? I cannot reconcile myself to this idea — it would madden me. The reason why I am now dissatisfied is that I have not a clear appreciation of the past. The past, like the country through which we walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. My position is like that of a person wounded in a dream; he feels the wound, though he cannot recollect when he received it. Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful visionary, thou invincible millionaire, — once again review thy past life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the scenes where fate and misfortune conducted, and where despair received thee. Too many diamonds, too much gold and splendor, are now reflected by the mirror in which Monte Cristo seeks to behold Dantes. Hide thy diamonds, bury thy gold, shroud thy splendor, exchange riches for poverty, liberty for a prison, a living body for a corpse! ~ Various, #NFDB
1110:Therefore, he sat before his dying fire, sorrowful to think upon
the way by which he had come to that night, yet not strewing poison
on the way by which other men had come to it. That he should have
missed so much, and at his time of life should look so far about
him for any staff to bear him company upon his downward journey and
cheer it, was a just regret. He looked at the fire from which the
blaze departed, from which the afterglow subsided, in which the
ashes turned grey, from which they dropped to dust, and thought,
'How soon I too shall pass through such changes, and be gone!'
To review his life was like descending a green tree in fruit and
flower, and seeing all the branches wither and drop off, one by
one, as he came down towards them.
'From the unhappy suppression of my youngest days, through the
rigid and unloving home that followed them, through my departure,
my long exile, my return, my mother's welcome, my intercourse with
her since, down to the afternoon of this day with poor Flora,' said
Arthur Clennam, 'what have I found!'
His door was softly opened, and these spoken words startled him,
and came as if they were an answer:
'Little Dorrit. ~ Charles Dickens,#NFDB
1111:The Day Of Days
A year is filled with glad events:
The best is Christmas day,
But every holiday presents
Its special round of play,
And looking back on boyhood now
And all the charms it knew,
One day, above the rest, somehow,
Seems brightest in review.
That day was finest, I believe;
Though many grown-ups scoff,
When mother said that we could leave
Our shoes and stockings off.
Through all the pleasant days of spring
We begged to know once more
The joy of barefoot wandering
And quit the shoes we wore;
But always mother shook her head
And answered with a smile:
'It is too soon, too soon,' she said.
'Wait just a little while.'
Then came that glorious day at last
When mother let us know
That fear of taking cold was past
And we could barefoot go.
Though Christmas day meant much to me,
And eagerly I'd try
The first boy on the street to be
The Fourth day of July,
I think: the summit of my joy
Was reached that happy day
Each year, when, as a barefoot boy,
I hastened out to play.
Could I return to childhood fair,
That day I think I'd choose
When mother said I needn't wear
My stockings and my shoes.
735
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
1112:Critics are also overwhelmingly male—one survey of film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes found only 22 percent of the critics afforded “top critic” status were female.14 More recently, of course, we have become accustomed to a second set of gatekeepers: our friends and family and even random strangers we’ve decided to follow on social media, as well as “peer” reviewers on sites like Goodreads and IMDb. But peer review sites are easily skewed by a motivated minority with a mission (see the Ghostbusters reboot and the handful of manbabies dedicated to its ruination) or by more stubborn and pervasive implicit biases, which most users aren’t even aware they have. (The data crunchers at FiveThirtyEight.com found that male peer reviewers regularly drag down aggregate review scores for TV shows aimed at women, but the reverse isn’t true.)15 As for the social networks we choose? They’re usually plagued by homophily, which is a fancy way to say that it’s human nature to want to hang out with people who make us feel comfortable, and usually those are people who remind us of us. Without active and careful intervention on our part, we can easily be left with an online life that tells us only things we already agree with and recommends media to us that doesn’t challenge our existing worldview. ~ Jaclyn Friedman, #NFDB
1113:Historically, infants and very young children were thought incapable of explicit memory. As a result of changes in theoretical perspective and methodological developments, this assumption was challenged in the latter part of the 20th century. Substantial progress was made in describing age-related changes in explicit memory in the first two years of life. These developments permitted the first steps toward construction of a neuro-developmental account of the changes. By considering the timing and course of development of the neural substrate responsible for explicit memory we are able to bring greater specificity to the question “what develops?” Thus far, behavioral and electrophysiological methods (event-related potentials: ERPs) have revealed both individual and age-related variability in encoding and in consolidation and storage processes; the variability is systematically related to variability in long-term explicit memory. Suggestions are made for additional research to further our understanding of relations between brain and behavioral development in the first years of life. ~ Bauer P.J. (2004). "Getting explicit memory off the ground: Steps toward construction of a neuro-developmental account of changes in the first two years of life". Developmental Review. 24 (4): 347–373. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2004.08.003., #NFDB
1114:
Sweet Mother, Just as there is a methodical progression of exercises for mental and physical education, isn't there a similar method to progress towards Sri Aurobindo's yoga?
It should vary with each individual.
Could you make a step-by-step programme for me to follow daily?
The mechanical regularity of a fixed programme is indispensable for physical, mental and vital development; but this mechanical rigidity has little or no effect on spiritual development where the spontaneity of an absolute sincerity is indispensable. Sri Aurobindo has written very clearly on this subject. And what he has written on it has appeared in The Synthesis Of Yoga.
However, as an initial help to set you on the path, I can tell you: (1) that on getting up, before starting the day, it is good to make an offering of this day to the Divine, an offering of all that one thinks, all that one is, all that one will do; (2) and at night, before going to sleep, it is good to review the day, taking note of all the times one has forgotten or neglected to make an offering of one's self or one's action, and to aspire or pray that these lapses do not recur. This is a minimum, a very small beginning - and it should increase with the sincerity of your consecration. 31 March 1965
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother, [T1],#NFDB
1115:How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with conveniently modern values?
The habit of authors writing Sexism Without Sexists in genre novels is seemingly pathological. Women are stuffed in the fridge under cover of "authenticity" by secondary characters and villains because too many authors flinch from the "authenticity" of sexist male protagonists. Which means the yardstick for "authenticity" in such novels almost always ends up being "how much do the women suffer", instead of - as might also be the case - "how sexist are the heroes".
And this bugs me; because if authors can stretch their imaginations far enough to envisage the presence of modern-minded men in the fake Middle Ages, then why can't they stretch them that little bit further to put in modern-minded women, or modern-minded social values? It strikes me as being extremely convenient that the one universally permitted exception to this species of "authenticity" is one that makes the male heroes look noble while still mandating that the women be downtrodden and in need of rescuing.
-Comment at Staffer's Book Review 4/18/2012 to "Michael J. Sullivan on Character Agency ~ Foz Meadows,#NFDB
1116:Storing Log Messages for Later Review With logging to the console and to terminals, an event happens, IOS sends the messages to the console and terminal sessions, and then IOS can discard the message. However, clearly, it would be useful to keep a copy of the log messages for later review, so IOS provides two primary means to keep a copy. IOS can store copies of the log messages in RAM by virtue of the logging buffered global configuration command. Then any user can come back later and see the old log messages by using the show logging EXEC command. As a second option—an option used frequently in production networks—all devices store their log messages centrally to a syslog server. RFC 5424 defines the Syslog protocol, which provides the means by which a device like a switch or router can use a UDP protocol to send messages to a syslog server for storage. All devices can send their log messages to the server. Later, a user can connect to the server (typically with a graphical user interface) and browse the log messages from various devices. To configure a router or switch to send log messages to a syslog server, add the logging {address|hostname} global command, referencing the IP address or hostname of the syslog server. Figure 33-2 shows the ideas behind the buffered logging and syslog logging. ~ Wendell Odom, #NFDB
1117:With regard to any such disquisition, review or introduction, trust yourself and your instincts; even if you go wrong in your judgement, the natural growth of your inner life will gradually, over time, lead you to other insights. Allow your verdicts their own quiet untroubled development which like all progress must come from deep within and cannot be forced or accelerated. Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, in what is unattainable to one’s own intellect, and to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a “new clarity is delivered: that alone is to live as an artist, in the understanding and in one’s creative work.
These things cannot be measured by time, a year has no meaning, and ten years are nothing. To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are simply there in their vast, quiet tranquillity, as if eternity lay before them. It is a lesson I learn every day amid hardships I am thankful for: patience is all!”
. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
1118:Dreading
SOMETIMES when they are tucked in bed the gentle mother comes to me
And talks about each curly head, and wonders what they're going to be.
She tells about the fun they've had while I was toiling far away,
Recalls the bright things that the lad and little girl have had to say.
Each morning is a pleasure new, and gladness overflows the cup,
And then she says: 'What will we do, what will we do when they're grown up?'
She looks about the room and sees the train of cars beneath the chair,
The soldiers resting at their ease, the wooly dog, the Teddy bear,
The china doll, the painted ball, the building blocks about the floor,
And then she smiles to see them all, and even wishes there were more;
The whole day passes in review, she stoops and strokes the wooly pup,
And says to me: 'What will we do, what will we do when they're grown up?'
I share with her that self-same dread, a house devoid of children's toys,
No little tots to put to bed, no romping little girls and boys;
No little lips to kiss at night, no broken skates or sleds to mend,
I fear to think that such delight the years will very quickly end.
Old Age, I dare not look at you, when we alone shall sit and sup,
I wonder, too, what will we do, what will we do when they're grown up?
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
1119:Remember and Share - The Investment Phase is the fourth step in the Hook Model. - Unlike the Action Phase, which delivers immediate gratification, the Investment Phase is about the anticipation of rewards in the future. - Investments in a product create preference because of our tendency to overvalue our work, be consistent with past behaviors, and avoid cognitive dissonance. - Investment comes after the variable reward phase when users are primed to reciprocate. - Investments increase the likelihood of users returning by improving the service the more it is used. They enable the accrual of stored value in the form of content, data, followers, reputation or skill. - Investments increase the likelihood of users passing through the Hook again by loading the next trigger to start the cycle all over again. *** Do This Now Refer to the answers you came up with in the last “Do This Now” section to complete the following exercises: - Review your flow. What “bit of work” are your users doing to increase their likelihood of returning? - Brainstorm three ways to add small investments into your product to: - Load the next trigger - Store value as data, content, followers, reputation and skill - Identify how long it takes for a “loaded trigger” to re-engage your users. How can you reduce the delay to shorten cycle-time through the Hook? ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
1120:Verses I
O'ERWHELM'D with sorrow, and sustaining long
'The proud man's contumely, th' oppressor's wrong,'
Languid despondency, and vain regret,
Must my exhausted spirit struggle yet?
Yes!--Robb'd myself of all that fortune gave,
Even of all hope--but shelter in the grave,
Still shall the plaintive lyre essay its powers
To dress the cave of Care with Fancy's flowers,
Maternal Love the fiend Despair withstand,
Still animate the heart and guide the hand.
--May you, dear objects of my anxious care,
Escape the evils I was born to bear!
Round my devoted head while tempests roll,
Yet there, where I have treasured up my soul,
May the soft rays of dawning hope impart
Reviving patience to my fainting heart;-And when its sharp solicitudes shall cease,
May I be conscious in the realms of peace
That every tear which swells my children's eyes,
From sorrows past, not present ills arise,
Then, with some friend who loves to share your pain,
For 'tis my boast that some such friends remain,
By filial grief, and fond remembrance prest,
You'll seek the spot where all my sorrows rest;
Recall my hapless days in sad review
The long calamities I bore for you,
And, with a happier fate, resolve to prove
How well you merited your mother's love.
~ Charlotte Smith,#NFDB
1121:Articles of Affirmation and Denial. (The Preamble and the Short Statement were also subjected to editorial revisions. The Exposition was left largely as received.) After considerable discussion, the Draft Committee's submission received a very substantial endorsement by the participants: 240 (out of a total of 268) affixed their signatures to the Nineteen Articles.
It was indicated that the Draft Committee would meet within the year to review and, if necessary, revise the statement. That meeting took place in the fall of 1979, with Drs. Geisler, Hoehner, Nicole, and Radmacher in attendance. It was the consensus of those present that we should not undertake to modify a statement that so many people had signed, both at the summit meeting and afterward. But
in order to ward off misunderstandings and to provide an exposition of the position advocated by the ICBI, it was thought desirable to provide a commentary on each of the articles. A draft commentary was prepared by Dr. Sproul and was submitted to the members of the Draft Committee. A number of editorial changes were made, and the final result is what is contained in this booklet.
Dr. Sproul is well qualified to write such a commentary. He had prepared the first draft of the Nineteen Articles, and although they underwent considerable change in the editing process, Dr. Sproul ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1122:prepare for them.12 It was not a spread-eagle speech, but it probably represented in its earnestness and the honesty of its convictions the highest pitch of eloquence Powell was capable of. His heart was still in the irrigation struggle, and the battle could still be won. While he was telling North Dakota what was good for it and urging it to make maximum use of its streams, the North American Review published a Powell article 13 (the source of Senator Stewart’s learning) pointing up the lessons of the Johnstown flood. It said what only an ethnologist might have been expected to know: that agriculture developed first in arid lands, that irrigation agriculture was historically the first agriculture worthy of the name, that on the Indus and the Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile, as well as in the American Southwest, stable civilizations had built themselves on the necessity of controlling streams for irrigation. The only truly agricultural American Indians were desert Indians living in areas where agriculture might have been thought impossible. There was the full hope and expectation, therefore, that the American West would become one of the great agricultural regions of the world, but the hope was predicated on wise use of water and control of the rivers. The Johnstown flood, which had told many Americans that it was fatally dangerous to dam ~ Wallace Stegner, #NFDB
1123:Harvard Business School professor and author Clay Christensen believes that you need to focus on the concept of the “job-to-be-done”; that is, when a customer buys a product, she is “hiring” it to do a particular job. Then there’s Brian Chesky of Airbnb, who said simply, “Build a product people love. Hire amazing people. What else is there to do? Everything else is fake work.” As Andrea Ovans aptly put it in her January 2015 Harvard Business Review article, “What Is a Business Model?”, it’s enough to make your head swim! For the purposes of this book, we’ll focus on the basic definition: a company’s business model describes how it generates financial returns by producing, selling, and supporting its products. What sets companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook apart, even from other successful high-tech companies, is that they have consistently been able to design and execute business models with characteristics that allow them to quickly achieve massive scale and sustainable competitive advantage. Of course, there isn’t a single perfect business model that works for every company, and trying to find one is a waste of time. But most great business models have certain characteristics in common. If you want to find your best business model, you should try to design one that maximizes four key growth factors and minimizes two key growth limiters. ~ Reid Hoffman, #NFDB
1124:Singing a New Song He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the LORD. PSALM 40:3 NLT For many, the New Year is a good time to reflect on the events of the past year, to review what God has done, to praise Him for deliverance and safety, and to thank Him for His provision—both individually and corporately. Some of the social networks online have software that will look at the posts and pictures an individual has made and put together a year in review, hitting the highlights and major events. But those “reviews” don’t always pick up on the praise and thanksgiving to God that should result from such an accounting. Take a moment to reflect on all that God has done in the previous months. Then proclaim the works of the Lord, be amazed at His outpouring of love, grace, and mercy. Break out in song, spontaneous and free. Praise God in hymns, praise songs, and scripture songs. Even those who can’t “carry a tune in a bucket,” as the saying goes, can praise God with a joyful noise. If God’s people don’t proclaim the glorious works of their God, how can they expect the world to ever have a right view of Him? Sing a new song of praise to God for His many and varied works, and renew your trust in Him for the new year ahead. Father, thank You for the new song of praise You have placed in my heart. ~ Various, #NFDB
1125:He knew no matter what he did while Jackson was President, his job was safe, for he was there for one specific task, one the American public could never know about, one that even his own wife knew nothing about. One that had been handed down to him by his own father. He pressed the talk button. “Masters.” “Sir, we have an Umbra Gamma Prime document here for immediate review.” “I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone and pressed the button to lower the glass partition separating him from the driver. “Jerry, turn us around, I need to get back to the office, fast.” His chauffeur of many years radioed the escort vehicles as he raised the partition, picked up his glass and gripped the overhead handhold. The mini-motorcade’s lead Lincoln Navigator cut left, jumped the median and blocked oncoming traffic. The Town Car limo locked up its brakes and followed, jostling its well-prepared VIP as the trailing Navigator cut across, assuming the role of lead vehicle. All three vehicles turned on their lights and sirens, leaving a trail of burnt rubber, smoke and a dozen confused drivers in their wake. Umbra Gamma Prime. It was one of the highest classifications of Top Secret there was in his business. In fact he had never had one cross his desk since he had taken the job, despite dealing with countless terrorist threats—both domestic and abroad—and having sent teams across the world in secret. ~ J Robert Kennedy, #NFDB
1126:Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to. Creative individuals don’t have to be dragged out of bed; they are eager to start the day. This is not because they are cheerful, enthusiastic types. Nor do they necessarily have something exciting to do. But they believe that there is something meaningful to accomplish each day, and they can’t wait to get started on it. Most of us don’t feel our actions are that meaningful. Yet everyone can discover at least one thing every day that is worth waking up for. It could be meeting a certain person, shopping for a special item, potting a plant, cleaning the office desk, writing a letter, trying on a new dress. It is easier if each night before falling asleep, you review the next day and choose a particular task that, compared to the rest of the day, should be relatively interesting and exciting. Then next morning, open your eyes and visualize the chosen event—play it out briefly in your mind, like an inner videotape, until you can hardly wait to get dressed and get going. It does not matter if at first the goals are trivial and not that interesting. The important thing is to take the easy first steps until you master the habit, and then slowly work up to more complex goals. Eventually most of the day should consist of tasks you look forward to, until you feel that getting up in the morning is a privilege, not a chore. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
1127:Tonight the President will bury himself, perhaps, in two volumes Mrs. Lodge has just sent him for review: Gissing’s Charles Dickens, A Critical Study, and The Greek View of Life, by Lowes Dickinson. He will be struck, as he peruses the latter, by interesting parallels between the Periclean attitude toward women and that of present-day Japan, and will make a mental note to write to Mrs. Lodge about it.122 He may also read, with alternate approval and disapproval, two articles on Mormonism in the latest issue of Outlook. A five-thousand-word essay on “The Ancient Irish Sagas” in this month’s Century magazine will not detain him long, since he is himself the author.123 His method of reading periodicals is somewhat unusual: each page, as he comes to the end of it, is torn out and thrown onto the floor.124 When both magazines have been thus reduced to a pile of crumpled paper, Roosevelt will leap from his rocking-chair and march down the corridor. Slowing his pace at the door of the presidential suite, he will tiptoe in, brush the famous teeth with only a moderate amount of noise, and pull on his blue-striped pajamas. Beside his pillow he will deposit a large, precautionary revolver.125 His last act, after turning down the lamp and climbing into bed, will be to unclip his pince-nez and rub the reddened bridge of his nose. Then, there being nothing further to do, Theodore Roosevelt will energetically fall asleep. ~ Edmund Morris, #NFDB
1128:Here are the benefits you can expect from using this style of pseudocode: Pseudocode makes reviews easier. You can review detailed designs without examining source code. Pseudocode makes low-level design reviews easier and reduces the need to review the code itself. Pseudocode supports the idea of iterative refinement. You start with a high-level design, refine the design to pseudocode, and then refine the pseudocode to source code. This successive refinement in small steps allows you to check your design as you drive it to lower levels of detail. The result is that you catch high-level errors at the highest level, mid-level errors at the middle level, and low-level errors at the lowest level—before any of them becomes a problem or contaminates work at more detailed levels. Pseudocode makes changes easier. A few lines of pseudocode are easier to change than a page of code. Would you rather change a line on a blueprint or rip out a wall and nail in the two-by-fours somewhere else? The effects aren't as physically dramatic in software, but the principle of changing the product when it's most malleable is the same. One of the keys to the success of a project is to catch errors at the "least-value stage," the stage at which the least effort has been invested. Much less has been invested at the pseudocode stage than after full coding, testing, and debugging, so it makes economic sense to catch the errors early. ~ Steve McConnell, #NFDB
1129:HEALING POINTS IN REVIEW • Remind yourself frequently that the healing power is in your subconscious mind. • Know that faith is like a seed planted in the ground; it grows after its kind. Plant the idea (seed) in your mind, water and fertilize it with expectancy, and it will become manifest. • The idea you have for a book, new invention, or play is real in your mind. This is why you can believe you have it now. Believe in the reality of your idea, plan, or invention, and as you do, it will become manifest. • In praying for another, know that your silent inner knowing of wholeness, beauty, and perfection can change the negative patterns of the other’s subconscious mind and bring about wonderful results. • The miraculous healings you hear about at various shrines are due to imagination and blind faith that act on the subconscious mind, releasing the healing power. • All disease originates in the mind. Nothing appears on the body unless there is a mental pattern corresponding to it. • The symptoms of almost any disease can be induced in you by hypnotic suggestion. This shows you the power of your thought. • There is only one process of healing and that is faith. There is only one healing power; namely, your subconscious mind. • Whether the object of your faith is real or false, you will get results. Your subconscious mind responds to the thought in your mind. Look upon faith as a thought in your mind, and that will suffice. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1130:So Easy
So easy to say what another should do,
So easy to settle his cares,
So easy to tell him what roads to pursue,
And dispose of the burdens he bears.
It is easy to bid him be brave and strong,
And to make all his shortcomings known;
But O, it's so hard when the care and the wrong
And the dangers we face are our own.
It is easy to stand in another man's place,
When our comforts of life are assured,
And the sting of the rain beating sharp in his face
By him must be bravely endured.
It is easy to tell him the path he should take
And to bid him to laugh at his care,
But O, it's so hard when it's our hearts that ache
And we have the burdens to bear.
We all know the things that another should do,
His faults are like books on our shelves,
We can ponder them over and read and review,
But we haven't a book on ourselves.
We can settle the other man's troubles each day,
His griefs we can calmly discuss,
It is easy to sweep all his troubles away,
But we can't do the same thing for us.
The need of another it's easy to see,
When our own wants are all satisfied,
And bold and courageous it's easy to be
When it isn't our souls that are tried.
But O, it's so hard when we're stumbling along
To keep ourselves steadfast and true;
It is easy to tell someone else to be strong,
It's easier to talk than to do.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
1131:I haven’t slept in two days so I feel tired now, lying on my sleeping bag. My feet are very cold but I am ok. In the long transition to sleep I entertain a complex paranoia about a group of people who will be assigned to review each action I have taken throughout my life. And once dead, I’ll meet them in council. There will be a group assigned to review my “thank-yous said” to “those not said.” There will be a group assigned to review every face I’ve made just after waking up. There will be a group assigned to review how I treated people who asked me for help. And a group assigned to review the times I felt bad but didn’t tell anyone. A group assigned to review the times I deliberately threw crayons into the small fan my third grade bus driver positioned by his face. And a group assigned to review bugs I needlessly stepped on. A group for this nap I’m taking too. And in the paranoia, I see myself getting dressed-up to go before them and answer questions. I’m very nervous before each council but I try to be brave. “This nap you took—” someone says. “Yes?” A mean-looking woman in the middle of the panel, she clasps her hands together and she says, “Tell us about this nap.” When I wake up, one of my legs is numb. And I remain awake in my sleeping bag, staring at the blinds until the black behind gets more blue, then lighter blue, then white. Sometimes I definitely feel a sense of accomplishment but it’s never after accomplishing something. ~ Sam Pink, #NFDB
1132:checklists to make sure we haven’t left out any critical step. These lists contain questions we ask when considering an investment or advising a new-growth innovation team. You can use them for the same purposes—or as a starting point for developing your own checklist. 1. Is innovation development being spearheaded by a small, focused team of people who have relevant experience or are prepared to learn as they go? 2. Has the team spent enough time directly with prospective customers to develop a deep understanding of them? 3. In considering novel ways to serve those customers, did the team review developments in other industries and countries? 4. Can the team clearly define the first customer and a path to reaching others? 5. Is the team’s idea consistent with a strategic opportunity area in which the company has a compelling advantage? 6. Is the idea’s proposed business model described in detail? 7. Does the team have a believable hypothesis about how the offering will make money? 8. Have the team members identified all the things that have to be true for this hypothesis to work? 9. Does the team have a plan for testing all those uncertainties, which tackles the most critical ones first? Does each test have a clear objective, a hypothesis, specific predictions, and a tactical execution plan? 10. Are fixed costs low enough to facilitate course corrections? 11. Has the team demonstrated a bias toward action by rapidly prototyping the idea? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1133:Why do we care about Lizzie Borden, or Judge Crater, or Lee Harvey Oswald, or the Little Big Horn?
Mystery!
Because of all that cannot be known. And what if we did know? What if it were proved—absolutely and purely—that Lizzie Borden took an ax? That Oswald acted alone? That Judge Crater fell into Sicilian hands? Nothing more would beckon, nothing would tantalize.
The thing about Custer is this: no survivors. Hence, eternal doubt, which both frustrates and fascinates. It’s a standoff.
The human desire for certainty collides with our love of enigma. And so I lose sleep over mute facts and frayed ends and missing witnesses.
God knows I’ve tried.
Reams of data, miles of magnetic tape, but none of it satisfies even my own primitive appetite for answers. So I toss and turn. I eat pints of ice cream at two in the morning.
Would it help to announce the problem early on? To plead for understanding? To argue that solutions only demean the grandeur of human ignorance? To point out that absolute knowledge is absolute closure? To issue a reminder that death itself dissolves into uncertainty, and that out of such uncertainty arise great temples and tales of salvation?
I prowl and smoke cigarettes.
I review my notes.
The truth is at once simple and baffling: John Wade was a pro. He did his magic, then walked away. Everything else is conjecture. No answers, yet mystery itself carries me on. ~ Tim O Brien,#NFDB
1134:INTENSITY A Summary Intensity is the driving force behind the strong reactions of the spirited child. It is the invisible punch that makes every response of the spirited child immediate and strong. Managed well, intensity allows spirited children a depth and delight of emotion rarely experienced by others. Its potential to create as well as wreak havoc, however, makes it one of the most challenging temperamental traits to learn to manage. Intense spirited kids need to hear: You do everything with zest, vim, vigor, and gusto. You are enthusiastic, expressive, and full of energy. Your intensity can make you a great athlete, leader, performer, etc. Things can frustrate you easily. Being intense does not mean being aggressive. Teaching tips: Help your child learn to notice her growing intensity before it overwhelms her. Provide activities that soothe and calm, such as warm baths, stories, and quiet imaginative play. Use humor to diffuse intense reactions. Protect her sleep. Make time for exercise. Teach your child that time-out is a way to calm herself. If you are intense too: Do not fear your child’s intensity. Diffuse your own intensity before you step in to help your child. Take deep breaths, step away from the situation, get the sleep you need, or ask for help to cope with your own intensity. Review in your own mind the messages you were given about intensity. Dump those that negate the value of intensity or leave you feeling powerless. ~ Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, #NFDB
1135:In 1984, Science published a study of almost 15,000 Danish adoptees age fifteen or older, their adoptive parents, and their birth parents. Thanks to Denmark’s careful record keeping, the researchers knew whether any of the people in their study had criminal convictions. Since few female adoptees had legal problems, the study focused on males—with striking results. As long as the adoptee’s biological parents were law abiding, their adoptive parents made little difference: 13.5 percent of adoptees with law-abiding biological and adoptive parents got convicted of something, versus 14.7 percent with law-abiding biological parents and criminal adoptive parents. If the adoptee’s biological parents were criminal, however, upbringing mattered: 20 percent of adoptees with law-breaking biological and law-abiding adoptive parents got convicted, versus 24.5 percent with law-breaking biological and adoptive parents. Criminal environments do bring out criminal tendencies. Still, as long as the biological parents were law abiding, family environment made little difference. In 2002, a study of antisocial behavior in almost 7,000 Virginian twins born since 1918 found a small nurture effect for adult males and no nurture effect for adult females. The same year, a major review of fifty-one twin and adoption studies reported small nurture effects for antisocial attitudes and behavior. For outright criminality, however, heredity was the sole cause of family resemblance. ~ Bryan Caplan, #NFDB
1136:In order to grasp these types of behavior, it’s important to review the nature of human emotions. E-motions are energy in motion. They are the energy that moves us—our human fuel. Our emotions are also like the red light oil gauge on our car signaling us about a need, a loss or a satiation. Our anger is our strength; our fear is our discernment; our sadness is our healing feeling; our guilt is our conscience former; our shame signals our essential limitation and is the source of our spirituality. When our emotions are shamed, they are repressed. Repression involves tensing muscles and shallow breathing. One set of muscles is mobilized to block the energy of the emotion we’re ashamed to feel. Sadness is commonly converted into a false smile (reactive formation). I have often smiled when I felt sad. Once the energy is blocked, we no longer feel it. However, it is still a form of energy. It is dynamic. I already gave you the example of how repressed anger intensifies. Our anger explodes because it cannot be repressed anymore. In reenactment, the emotional energy is “acted out” or “acted in.” The behavior that set up the shaming event is repeated with surrogates who reenact the original shaming scene, or a person shames himself in the way he was originally shamed. This can occur through destructive self-talk, or it can happen when a person cuts himself or drives himself mercilessly, refusing to take breaks, get proper rest or take legitimate vacations. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
1137:why do we talk about police brutality like it is about race? At its core, police brutality is about power and corruption. Police brutality is about the intersection of fear and guns. Police brutality is about accountability. And the power and corruption that enable police brutality put all citizens, of every race, at risk. But it does not put us at risk equally, and the numbers bear that out. My fear, as a black driver, is real. The fact is that black drivers are 23 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers1, between 1.5 and 5 times more likely to be searched (while shown to be less likely than whites to turn up contraband in these searches),2 and more likely to be ticketed3 and arrested4 in those stops. This increase in stops, searches, and arrests also leads to a 3.5–4 times higher probability that black people will be killed by cops (this increase is the same for Native Americans interacting with police, a shamefully underreported statistic). Even when we aren’t arrested or killed, we are still more likely to be abused and dehumanized in our stops. A 2016 review of a thirteen-month period showed that Oakland police handcuffed 1,466 black people in nonarrest traffic stops, and only 72 white people5, and a 2016 study by the Center for Policing Equity found that blacks were almost 4 times more likely to be subject to force from police—including force by hand (such as hitting and choking), pepper spray, tazer, and gun—than white people.6 ~ Ijeoma Oluo, #NFDB
1138:THE LADY.
IN the small and great world too,
What most charms a woman's heart?
It is doubtless what is new,
For its blossoms joy impart;
Nobler far is what is true,
For fresh blossoms it can shoot
Even in the time of fruit.
THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN.
With the Nymphs in wood and cave
Paris was acquainted well,
Till Zeus sent, to make him rave,
Three of those in Heav'n who dwell;
And the choice more trouble gave
Than e'er fell to mortal lot,
Whether in old times or not.
THE EXPERIENCED.
Tenderly a woman view,
And thoult win her, take my word;
He who's quick and saucy too,
Will of all men be preferr'd;
Who ne'er seems as if he knew
If he pleases, if he charms,--
He 'tis injures, he 'tis harms.
THE CONTENTED.
Manifold is human strife,
Human passion, human pain;
Many a blessing yet is rife,
Many pleasures still remain.
Yet the greatest bliss in life,
And the richest prize we find,
Is a good, contented mind.
THE MERRY COUNSEL.
He by whom man's foolish will
Is each day review'd and blamed,
Who, when others fools are still,
Is himself a fool proclaim'd,--
Ne'er at mill was beast's back press'd
With a heavier load than he.
What I feel within my breast
That in truth's the thing for me!
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Answers In A Game Of Questions
,#NFDB
1139:In the past decade, the historically consistent division in the United States between the share of total national income going to labor and that going to physical capital seems to have changed significantly. As the economists Susan Fleck, John Glaser, and Shawn Sprague noted in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Monthly Labor Review in 2011, “Labor share averaged 64.3 percent from 1947 to 2000. Labor share has declined over the past decade, falling to its lowest point in the third quarter of 2010, 57.8 percent.” Recent moves to “re-shore” production from overseas, including Apple’s decision to produce its new Mac Pro computer in Texas, will do little to reverse this trend. For in order to be economically viable, these new domestic manufacturing facilities will need to be highly automated. Other countries are witnessing similar trends. The economists Loukas Karabarbounis and Brent Neiman have documented significant declines in labor’s share of GDP in 42 of the 59 countries they studied, including China, India, and Mexico. In describing their findings, Karabarbounis and Neiman are explicit that progress in digital technologies is an important driver of this phenomenon: “The decrease in the relative price of investment goods, often attributed to advances in information technology and the computer age, induced firms to shift away from labor and toward capital. The lower price of investment goods explains roughly half of the observed decline in the labor share. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1140:Not long after this attempt, the issue arose again. A conference on November 8 instructed Joseph Smith to review the commandments and 'correct those errors or mistakes which he may discover by the holy Spirit.' Correcting 'errors' in language supposedly spoken by God again raised the question of authenticity. If from God, how could the language be corrected? Correction implied Joseph's human mind had introduced errors; if so, were the revelations really his productions?
The editing process uncovered Joseph's anomalous assumptions about the nature of revealed words. He never considered the wording infallible. God's language stood in an indefinite relationship to the human language coming through the Prophet. The revealed preface to the Book of Commandments specified that the language of the revelations was Joseph Smith's: 'These commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.' They were couched in language suitable to Joseph's time. The idioms, the grammar, even the tone had to be combrehensible to 1830s Americans. Recognizing the pliability of the revealed words, Joseph freely edited the revelations 'by the Holy Spirit,' making emendations with each new edition. He thought of his revelations as imprinted on his mind, not graven in stone. With each edition, he patched pieces together and altered the wording to clarify meaning. The words were both his and God's. ~ Richard L Bushman,#NFDB
1141:Lately, because computer technology has made self-publishing an easier and less expensive venture, I'm getting a lot of review copies of amateur books by writers who would be better advised to hone their craft before committing it to print. The best thing you can do as a beginning writer is to write, write, write - and read, read, read. Concentrating on publication prematurely is a mistake. You don't pick up a violin and expect to play Carnegie Hall within the year - yet somehow people forget that writing also requires technical skills that need to be learned, practiced, honed. If I had a dollar for every person I've met who thought, with no prior experience, they could sit down and write a novel and instantly win awards and make their living as a writer, I'd be a rich woman today. It's unrealistic, and it's also mildly insulting to professional writers who have worked hard to perfect their craft. Of course, then you hear stories about people like J.K. Rowling, who did sit down with no prior experience and write a worldwide best-seller...but such people are as rare as hen's teeth. Every day I work with talented, accomplished writers who have many novels in print and awards to their name and who are ‘still’ struggling to make a living. The thing I often find myself wanting to say to new writers is: Write because you love writing, learn your craft, be patient, and be realistic. Anais Nin said about writing, "It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing." ~ Terri Windling, #NFDB
1142:How should we, as Christians, react to this hour of transition? First of all, surely, by the entirely human reaction to which it summons us: by using this time of reflection to gain distance, perspective, inner freedom, and a patient readiness to move on. An ancient philosopher once commented that the essential difference between man and the animal is that the always has his head, as it were, above the waters of time. Like a swimming fish, on the other hand, the animal is carried along by the current of time; only man can see above it and so be master of it. But do we really do that? Are not we, too, like fish in the waters of the sea of time, carried along by its currents without seeing whence or whither? Are we not so submerged, from one day to the next, from one task to the next, in the details of daily living, in its endless demands and difficulties, that we have no time even for ourselves? If that is so, then this should be the hour when we rise above these things, the hour when we try for a moment to see the heavens above the waters and the stars that shine upon us, in order, at the same time, to comprehend ourselves. We should try to review and evaluate the way we have traveled. We should try to see where we have gone wrong, what has obstructed for us the way that leads to ourselves and to others. We should try to know this so that we can divorce ourselves interiorly from these obstacles, so that the way into the new year may truly be for us a way of progress, may truly be a step forward. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1143:His path was in some ways traditional—Stanford to Stanford Law to judicial clerkship to high-powered law firm—but it was also marked by bouts of rebellion. At Stanford he created and published a radical conservative journal called The Stanford Review, then he wrote a book that railed against multiculturalism and “militant homosexuals” on campus, despite being both gay and foreign born. His friends thought he might become a political pundit. Instead he became a lawyer. Then one day, surprising even himself, he walked out of one of the most prestigious securities law firms in the world, Sullivan & Cromwell, after seven months and three days on the job. Within a few short years, Thiel formed and then sold PayPal, an online payments company, to eBay for $ 1.5 billion in July 2002, the month that Nick Denton registered the domain for his first site, Gizmodo. With proceeds of some $ 55 million, Thiel assembled an empire. He retooled a hedge fund called Clarium into a vehicle to make large, counterintuitive bets on global macro trends, seeding it with $ 10 million of his own money. In 2003, Thiel registered a company called Palantir with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2004, he would found it in earnest. The company would take antifraud technology from PayPal and apply it to intelligence gathering—fighting terrorism, predicting crime, providing military insights. It would take money from the venture capital arm of the CIA and soon take on almost every other arm of the government as clients. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1144:The Art Of Drowning
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographsyou up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.
How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biographynothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.
Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,
a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.
~ Billy Collins,#NFDB
1145:The document, which would later be published by Monthly Review Press, first as a special summer issue of the magazine and then as a book,19 began by describing the death of the union because of its failure to grapple with the question of automation. It went on to say that the rapid development of the productive forces by capitalism and the diminishing number of workers resulting from high technology were forcing us to go beyond Marx because Marx’s analyses and projections had been made in the springtime of capitalism, a period of scarcity rather than of abundance. The document projected blacks replacing workers as the revolutionary social force in the 1960s. It concluded by insisting that no group is automatically revolutionary: People in every stratum [must] clash not only with the agents of the silent police state but with their own prejudices, their own outmoded ideas, their own fears which keep them from grappling with the new realities of our age. The American people must find a way to insist upon their own right and responsibility to make political decisions and to determine policy in all spheres of social existence—whether it is foreign policy, the work process, education, race relations, community life. The coming struggle is a political struggle to take political power out of the hands of the few and put it into the hands of the many. But in order to get this power into the hands of the many, it will be necessary for the many not only to fight the powerful few but to fight and clash among themselves as well.20 ~ Grace Lee Boggs, #NFDB
1146:I try not to hate anybody. "Hate is a four-letter word," like the bumper sticker says. But I hate book reviewers.
Book reviewers are the most despicable, loathsome order of swine that ever rooted about the earth. They are sniveling, revolting creatures who feed their own appetites for bile by gnawing apart other people's work. They are human garbage. They all deserve to be struck down by awful diseases described in the most obscure dermatology journals.
Book reviewers live in tiny studios that stink of mothballs and rotting paper. Their breath reeks of stale coffee. From time to time they put on too-tight shirts and pants with buckles and shuffle out of their lairs to shove heaping mayonnaise-laden sandwiches into their faces, which are worn in to permanent snarls. Then they go back to their computers and with fat stubby fingers they hammer out "reviews." Periodically they are halted as they burst into porcine squeals, gleefully rejoicing in their cruelty.
Even when being "kindly," book reviewers reveal their true nature as condescending jerks. "We look forward to hearing more from the author," a book reviewer might say. The prissy tones sound like a second-grade piano teacher, offering you a piece of years-old strawberry hard candy and telling you to practice more.
But a bad book review is just disgusting.
Ask yourself: of all the jobs available to literate people, what monster chooses the job of "telling people how bad different books are"? What twisted fetishist chooses such a life? ~ Steve Hely,#NFDB
1147:■Let what you know—your known knowns—guide you but not blind you. Every case is new, so remain flexible and adaptable. Remember the Griffin bank crisis: no hostage-taker had killed a hostage on deadline, until he did. ■Black Swans are leverage multipliers. Remember the three types of leverage: positive (the ability to give someone what they want); negative (the ability to hurt someone); and normative (using your counterpart’s norms to bring them around). ■Work to understand the other side’s “religion.” Digging into worldviews inherently implies moving beyond the negotiating table and into the life, emotional and otherwise, of your counterpart. That’s where Black Swans live. ■Review everything you hear from your counterpart. You will not hear everything the first time, so double-check. Compare notes with team members. Use backup listeners whose job is to listen between the lines. They will hear things you miss. ■Exploit the similarity principle. People are more apt to concede to someone they share a cultural similarity with, so dig for what makes them tick and show that you share common ground. ■When someone seems irrational or crazy, they most likely aren’t. Faced with this situation, search for constraints, hidden desires, and bad information. ■Get face time with your counterpart. Ten minutes of face time often reveals more than days of research. Pay special attention to your counterpart’s verbal and nonverbal communication at unguarded moments—at the beginning and the end of the session or when someone says something out of line. ~ Chris Voss, #NFDB
1148:The Power of Myth For screenwriting, Jon recommends The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler, which he used to determine if Swingers was structurally correct. He is also a big fan of The Power of Myth, a video interview of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers. “With The Jungle Book, I really am going back and doubling down on the old myths.” TF: We recorded our podcast during the shooting of The Jungle Book, in his production office next to set. Months later, The Jungle Book was the #1 movie in the world and currently has a staggering 95% review average on Rotten Tomatoes. Long-Term Impact Trumps Short-Term Gross “Thanks to video, and later DVD and laser disc, everybody had seen this film [Swingers], and it had become part of our culture. That’s when I learned that it’s not always the movie that does the best [financially] that has the most impact, or is the most rewarding, or does the most for your career, for that matter.” Another Reason to Meditate “In the middle of [a meditation session], the idea for Chef hit me, and I let myself stop, which I don’t usually do, and I took out a pad. I scribbled down like eight pages of ideas and thoughts, [and then I] left it alone. If I look back on it, and read those pages, it really had 80% of the heavy lifting done, as far as what [Chef] was about, who was in it, who the characters were, what other movies to look at, what the tone was, what music I would have in it, what type of food he was making, the idea of the food truck, the Cuban sandwiches, Cuban music . . . so it all sort of grew out from that. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1149:Back in America, Donald Trump had, as a candidate, preached the virtues of withdrawal. “We should leave Afghanistan immediately,” he had said. The war was “wasting our money,” “a total and complete disaster.” But, once in office, Donald Trump, and a national security team dominated by generals, pressed for escalation. Richard Holbrooke had spent his final days alarmed at the dominance of generals in Obama’s Afghanistan review, but Trump expanded this phenomenon almost to the point of parody. General Mattis as secretary of defense, General H. R. McMaster as national security advisor, and retired general John F. Kelly formed the backbone of the Trump administration’s Afghanistan review. In front of a room full of servicemen and women at Fort Myer Army Base, in Arlington, Virginia, backed by the flags of the branches of the US military, Trump announced that America would double down in Afghanistan. A month later, General Mattis ordered the first of thousands of new American troops into the country. It was a foregone conclusion: the year before Trump entered office, the military had already begun quietly testing public messaging, informing the public that America would be in Afghanistan for decades, not years. After the announcement, the same language cropped up again, this time from Trump surrogates who compared the commitment not to other counterterrorism operations, but to America’s troop commitments in Korea, Germany, and Japan. “We are with you in this fight,” the top general in Afghanistan, John Nicholson, Jr., told an audience of Afghans. “We will stay with you. ~ Ronan Farrow, #NFDB
1150:Every February, my classmates and I were herded into assemblies for a ritual review of the Civil Rights Movement. Our teachers urged us toward the example of freedom marchers, Freedom Riders, and Freedom Summers, and it seemed that the month could not pass without a series of films dedicated to the glories of being beaten on camera. The black people in these films seemed to love the worst things in life - love the dogs that rent their children apart, the tear gas that clawed at their lungs, the firehoses that tore off their clothes and tumbled them into the streets. They seemed to love the men who raped them, the women who cursed them, love the children who spat on them, the terrorists that bombed them. Why are they showing this to us? Why were only our heroes nonviolent? I speak not of the morality of nonviolence, but of the sense that blacks are in especial need of this morality. Back then all I could do was measure these freedom-lovers by what I knew. Which is to say, I measured them against children pulling out in the 7-Eleven parking lot, against parents wielding extension cords, and "Yeah, nigger, what's up now?" I judged them against the country I knew, which had acquired the land through murder and tamed it under slavery, against the country whose armies fanned out across the world to extend their dominion. The world, the real one, was civilization secured and ruled by savage means. How could the schools valorize men and women whose values society actively scorned? How could they send us out into the streets of Baltimore, knowing all that they were, and then speak of nonviolence? ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
1151:Shearing's Coming
There's a sound of many voices in the camp and on the track,
And letters coming up in shoals to stations at the back;
And every boat that crosses from the sunny 'other side'
Is bringing waves of shearers for the swelling of the tide.
For the shearing's coming round, boys, the shearing's coming round,
And the stations of the mountains have begun to hear the sound.
They'll be talking up at Laghmor of the tallies that were shore,
And the man who broke the record is remembered at Benmore;
And the yarns of strikes and barneys will be told till all is blue,
And the ringers and the bosses will be passed in long review.
For the shearing's coming round, boys, the shearing's coming round,
And the stations of the mountains have begun to hear the sound.
The great Orari muster and the drafting of the men
Like a mob of ewes and wethers will be surely told again;
And a lot of heathen places that will rhyme with kangaroo
Will be named along with ringers and the things that they can do.
For the shearing's coming round, boys, the shearing's coming round,
And the stations of the mountains have begun to hear the sound.
At last the crowds will gather for the morning of the start,
And the slowest of the jokers will be trying to look smart;
And a few will get the bullet, and high hopes will have a fall,
And the bloke that talks the loudest stands a show of looking small.
For the shearing's coming round, chaps, the shearing's coming round,
And the voices of the workers have begun to swell the sound.
~ David McKee Wright,#NFDB
1152:The effort of religions to inspire a sense of community does not stop at introducing us to one other. Religions have also been clever at solving some of what goes wrong inside groups once they are formed.
It has been the particular insight of Judaism to focus on anger: how easy it is to feel it, how hard it is to express it and how frightening and awkward it is to appease it in others. We can see this especially clearly in the Jewish Day of Atonement, one of the most psychologically effective mechanisms ever devised for the resolution of social conflict.
Falling on the tenth day of Tishrei, shortly after the beginning of the Jewish new year, the Day of Atonement (or Yom Kippur) is a solemn and critical event in the Hebrew calendar. Leviticus instructs that on this date, Jews must set aside their usual domestic and commercial activities and mentally review their actions over the preceding year, identifying all those whom they have hurt or behaved unjustly towards. Together in synagogue, they must repeat in prayer:
‘We have sinned, we have acted treacherously,
we have robbed, we have spoken slander.
We have acted perversely, we have acted wickedly,
we have acted presumptuously, we have been violent,
we have framed lies.’
They must then seek out those whom they have frustrated, angered, discarded casually or otherwise betrayed and offer them their fullest contrition. This is God’s will, and a rare opportunity for blanket forgiveness. ‘All the people are in fault,’ says the evening prayer, and so ‘may all the people of Israel be forgiven, including all the strangers who live in their midst’. ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
1153:The Guardian’s Paul Vallely has given a decent account of how Cardinal George Pell, appointed by Francis, began a review of the bank’s operations. Pell had successfully overhauled the Church’s finances in Sydney and Melbourne. The Australian son of a former heavyweight boxer, Pell is a political and doctrinal conservative who speaks aggressively and does not believe in man-made climate change. He is a cult hero among conservative Catholics. You can imagine what the Lavender Mafia think of him. Vallely notes grudgingly that, “For all his conservatism, Pell had for years been a vocal critic of the Roman Catholic bureaucracy and its corruption.” Pell moved quickly, and made enemies. A straight dealer to the point of unbearable bluntness, especially in the delicately perfumed and gold-embroidered world of the Holy See, Pell probably didn’t anticipate getting tripped up by dirty tactics: in this case, stories leaked to the media about—you guessed it—clerical abuse. The press reports were coincidentally timed, arriving just as Pell’s reforms of the bank began to take hold. It was alleged that Pell was soft on child abuse, thanks to offhand comments he had made years before, in typically ribald and direct Australian fashion. It was suggested that he may himself have some questions to answer about covering up abuse. Then the allegations widened, to direct accusations of historic sex abuse, at which point Pell had to put his work at the bank on hold. Now Pell is back in Australia, trying to clear his name, and his reforms are stalling, just as the intriguers intended. This is how efforts to clean up the Roman Catholic Church usually end. ~ Milo Yiannopoulos, #NFDB
1154:Here are a few of my favorite physical journals: Five Minute Journal (FiveMinuteJournal.com) has become very popular among top performers. It has a very specific format for each day, giving you prompts, such as “I am grateful for…” and “What would make today great?” It literally takes five minutes or less, and includes an “Evening” option, which allows you to review your day. The Miracle Morning Journal (available on Amazon or at MiracleMorningJournal.com) is designed specifically to enhance and support your Miracle Morning, and to keep you organized and accountable to keep track of your Life S.A.V.E.R.S. each day. You can also download a free sample of The Miracle Morning Journal today at TMMbook.com to make sure it’s right for you. BulletJournal.com. It’s not actually a journal you buy, it’s a journal system you incorporate into the journal of your choosing. If you prefer to use a digital journal, there are also many choices available. Here are a few of my favorites: Five Minute Journal (FiveMinuteJournal.com) also offers an iPhone app, which follows the same format as the physical version but also sends you helpful reminders to input your entries each morning and evening. It also allows you to upload photos to create visual memories. Day One (DayOneApp.com) is a popular journaling app, and it’s perfect if you don’t want any structure or any limits on how much you can write. Day One offers a blank page, so if you like to write lengthy journal entries, this may be the app for you. Pen Peen Peones Pinza (Penzu.com) is a very popular online journal, which doesn’t require an iPhone, iPad, or Android device. All you need is a computer. ~ Hal Elrod, #NFDB
1155:Play Fair You’re sure to elicit a threat response if you provide feedback the other person views as unfair or inaccurate. But how do you avoid that, given how subjective perceptions of fairness and accuracy are? David Bradford of the Stanford Graduate School of Business suggests “staying on our side of the net”—that is, focusing our feedback on our feelings about the behavior and avoiding references to the other person’s motives. We’re in safe territory on our side of the net; others may not like what we say when we describe how we feel, but they can’t dispute its accuracy. However, when we make guesses about their motives, we cross over to their side of the net, and even minor inaccuracies can provoke a defensive reaction. For example, when giving critical feedback to someone who’s habitually late, it’s tempting to say something like, “You don’t value my time, and it’s very disrespectful of you.” But these are guesses about the other person’s state of mind, not statements of fact. If we’re even slightly off base, the employee will feel misunderstood and be less receptive to the feedback. A more effective way to make the same point is to say, “When you’re late, I feel devalued and disrespected.” It’s a subtle distinction, but by focusing on the specific behavior and our internal response—by staying on our side of the net—we avoid making an inaccurate, disputable guess. Because motives are often unclear, we constantly cross the net in an effort to make sense of others’ behavior. While this is inevitable, it’s good practice to notice when we’re guessing someone’s motives and get back on our side of the net before offering feedback. ~ Harvard Business Review, #NFDB
1156:In 2010, the dominance of inclusive fitness theory was finally broken. After struggling as a member of the small but still muted contrarian school for a decade, I joined two Harvard mathematicians and theoretical biologists, Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita, for a top-to-bottom analysis of inclusive fitness. Nowak and Tarnita had independently discovered that the foundational assumptions of inclusive fitness theory were unsound, while I had demonstrated that the field data used to support the theory could be explained equally well, or better, with direct natural selection—as in the sex-allocation case of ants just described. Our joint report was published on August 26, 2010, as the cover article of the prestigious journal Nature. Knowing the controversy involved, the Nature editors had proceeded with unusual caution. One of them familiar with the subject and the mode of mathematical analysis came from London to Harvard to hold a special meeting with Nowak, Tarnita, and myself. He approved, and the manuscript was next examined by three anonymous experts. Its appearance, as we expected, caused a Vesuvian explosion of protest—the kind cherished by journalists. No fewer than 137 biologists committed to inclusive fitness theory in their research or teaching signed a protest in a Nature article published the following year. When I repeated part of my argument as a chapter in the 2012 book The Social Conquest of Earth, Richard Dawkins responded with the indignant fervor of a true believer. In his review for the British magazine Prospect, he urged others not to read what I had written, but instead to cast the entire book away, “with great force,” no less. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
1157:In the Buddhist teachings on compassion there’s a practice called “one at the beginning, and one at the end.” When I wake up in the morning, I do this practice. I make an aspiration for the day. For example, I might say, “Today, may I acknowledge whenever I get hooked.” Or, “May I not speak or act out of anger.” I try not to make it too grandiose, as in, “Today, may I be completely free of all neurosis.” I begin with a clear intention, and then I go about the day with this in mind. In the evening, I review what happened. This is the part that can be so loaded for Western people. We have an unfortunate tendency to emphasize our failures. But when Dzigar Kongtrül teaches about this, he says that for him, when he sees that he has connected with his aspiration even once briefly during the whole day, he feels a sense of rejoicing. He also says that when he recognizes he lost it completely, he rejoices that he has the capacity to see that. This way of viewing ourselves has been very inspiring for me. He encourages us to ask what it is in us, after all, that sees that we lost it. Isn’t it our own wisdom, our own insight, our own natural intelligence? Can we just have the aspiration, then, to identify with the wisdom that acknowledges that we hurt someone’s feelings, or that we smoked when we said we wouldn’t? Can we have the aspiration to identify more and more with our ability to recognize what we’re doing instead of always identifying with our mistakes? This is the spirit of delighting in what we see rather than despairing in what we see. It’s the spirit of letting compassionate self-reflection build confidence rather than becoming a cause for depression. Being ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
1158:Flauvic’s remark about scholarship, I decided before the day ended, was a kind of double-edged sword. When I discovered my ancestor Ardis was not so much prominent as notorious, my first reaction was a snort of laughter, followed by interest--and some indignation.
The queen’s memoir, which was replete with gossip, detailed Ardis’s numerous and colorful dalliances. Her ten-year career of flirtation came to a close not long after she became engaged to a Renselaeus prince. This engagement ended after a duel with the third Merindar son--no one knew the real reasons why--and though both men lived through the duel, neither talked of it afterward. Or to her. She wound up marrying into a minor house in the southwest and passed the rest of her days in obscurity.
She was beautiful, wealthy, and popular, yet it appeared, through the pages of this memoir anyway, that the main business of her life had been to issue forth in the newest and most shocking gown in order to shine down the other women of the Court, and to win away lovers from her rivals. There was no hint that she performed any kind of service whatever.
In short, she was a fool.
This made me drop the book and perform a fast and furious review of my conversations with Flauvic. Did he think I was a fool? Did he think that I would find Ardis in the records and admire her?
Or was this some kind of oblique challenge? Was he hinting that I ought to do more than my ancestor--such as get involved in a fight for the crown?
The answer seemed pretty obvious. I decided not to communicate with Flauvic about my foolish ancestor. Instead, I’d use his idea but find my own time period and historical personages. A much more elegant answer. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
1159:The purpose of this review is to evaluate the effects of chronic stress on hippocampal-dependent function, based primarily upon studies using young, adult male rodents and spatial navigation tasks. Despite this restriction, variability amongst the findings was evident and how or even whether chronic stress influenced spatial ability depended upon the type of task, the dependent variable measured and how the task was implemented, the type and duration of the stressors, housing conditions of the animals that include accessibility to food and cage mates, and duration from the end of the stress to the start of behavioral assessment. Nonetheless, patterns emerged as follows: For spatial memory, chronic stress impairs spatial reference memory and has transient effects on spatial working memory. For spatial learning, however, chronic stress effects appear to be task-specific: chronic stress impairs spatial learning on appetitively motivated tasks, such as the radial arm maze or holeboard, tasks that evoke relatively mild to low arousal components from fear. But under testing conditions that evoke moderate to strong arousal components from fear, such as during radial arm water maze testing, chronic stress appears to have minimal impairing effects or may even facilitate spatial learning. Chronic stress clearly impacts nearly every brain region and thus, how chronic stress alters hippocampal spatial ability likely depends upon the engagement of other brain structures during behavioral training and testing. ~ Conrad C.D. (2010). "A critical review of chronic stress effects on spatial learning and memory". Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry. 34 (5): 742–755. doi:10.1016/j.pnpbp.2009.11.003. PMID 19903505., #NFDB
1160:[986a] [1] they assumed the elements of numbers to be the elements of everything, and the whole universe to be a proportion1 or number. Whatever analogues to the processes and parts of the heavens and to the whole order of the universe they could exhibit in numbers and proportions, these they collected and correlated;and if there was any deficiency anywhere, they made haste to supply it, in order to make their system a connected whole. For example, since the decad is considered to be a complete thing and to comprise the whole essential nature of the numerical system, they assert that the bodies which revolve in the heavens are ten; and there being only nine2 that are visible, they make the "antichthon"3 the tenth.We have treated this subject in greater detail elsewhere4; but the object of our present review is to discover from these thinkers too what causes they assume and how these coincide with our list of causes.Well, it is obvious that these thinkers too consider number to be a first principle, both as the material5 of things and as constituting their properties and states.6 The elements of number, according to them, are the Even and the Odd. Of these the former is limited and the latter unlimited; Unity consists of both [20] (since it is both odd and even)7; number is derived from Unity; and numbers, as we have said, compose the whole sensible universe.Others8 of this same school hold that there are ten principles, which they enunciate in a series of corresponding pairs: (1.) Limit and the Unlimited; (2.) Odd and Even; (3.) Unity and Plurality; (4.) Right and Left; (5.) Male and Female; (6.) Rest and Motion; (7.) Straight and Crooked; (8.) Light and Darkness; (9.) Good and Evil; (10.) Square and Oblong. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1161:And I *know* I wrote in the above that I hate biographies and reviews that focus on the psychological, surface detail, especially when they pertain to women writers, because I think it’s really about the cult of the personality, which is essentially problematic, and I think simplistically psychologizing which biographies are so wont to do is really problematic, and dangerous, especially when dealing with complicated women who just by being writers at a certain time and age were labelled as nonconformist, or worse, hysterical or ill or crazy, and I think branding these women as femme fatales is all so often done. And I know in a way I’m contributing to this by posting their bad-ass photos, except hopefully I am humanizing them and thinking of them as complicated selves and intellects AND CELEBRATING THEM AS WRITERS as opposed to straight-up objectifying. One particular review long ago in Poetry that really got my goat was when Brian Phillips used Gertrude Stein’s line about Djuna Barnes having nice ankles as an opener in a review of her poetry, and to my mind it was meant to be entirely dismissive, as of course, Stein was being as well. Stein was many important revolutionary things to literature, but a champion of her fellow women writers she was not. They published my letter, but then let the guy write a reply and scurry to the library and actually read Nightwood, one of my all-time, all-times, and Francis Bacon’s too, there’s another anecdote. And it’s burned in my brain his response, which was as dismissive and bourgeois as the review. I don’t remember the exact wordage, but he concluded by summing up that Djuna Barnes was a minor writer. Well, fuck a duck, as Henry Miller would say. And that is how the canon gets made. ~ Kate Zambreno, #NFDB
1162:Pathways toward a New Shabbat Do 1. Stay at home. Spend quality time with family and real friends. 2. Celebrate with others: at the table, in the synagogue, with friends or community. 3. Study or read something that will edify, challenge, or make you grow. 4. Be alone. Take some time for yourself. Check in with yourself. Review your week. Ask yourself where you are in your life. 5. Mark the beginning and end of this sacred time by lighting candles and making kiddush on Friday night and saying havdalah on Saturday night. Don’t 6. Don’t do anything you have to do for your work life. This includes obligatory reading, homework for kids (even without writing!), unwanted social obligations, and preparing for work as well as doing your job itself. 7. Don’t spend money. Separate completely from the commercial culture that surrounds us so much. This includes doing business of all sorts. No calls to the broker, no following up on ads, no paying of bills. It can all wait. 8. Don’t use the computer. Turn off the iPhone or smartphone or whatever device has replaced it by the time you read this. Live and breathe for a day without checking messages. Declare your freedom from this new master of our minds and our time. Find the time for face-to-face conversations with people around you, without Facebook. 9. Don’t travel. Avoid especially commercial travel and places like airports, hotel check-ins, and similar depersonalizing encounters. Stay free of situations in which people are likely to tell you to “have a nice day” (Shabbat already is a nice day, thank you). 10. Don’t rely on commercial or canned video entertainment, including the TV as well as the computer screen. Discover what there is to do in life when you are not being entertained. ~ Arthur Green, #NFDB
1163:Ever since the 1960s, upon the urging of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton and the all-knowing Dr. Spock,* mothers have been encouraged to read to their children at a very early age. For toddlers and preschoolers who relish this early diet of literacy, libraries become a second home, story hour is never long enough, and parents can’t finish a book without hearing a little voice beg, “Again… again.” For most literary geek girls, it’s at this age that they discover their passion for reading. Whether it’s Harold and the Purple Crayon or Strega Nona, books provide the budding literary she-geek with a glimpse into an all-new world of magic and make-believe—and once she visits, she immediately wants to apply for full-time citizenship. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” —author Joan Didion, in The White Album While some children spend their summers sweating on community sports teams or learning Indigo Girls songs at sleep-away camp, our beloved bookworms are more interested in joining their local library’s summer reading program, completing twenty-five books during vacation, and earning a certificate of recognition signed by their city’s mayor. (Plus, that Sony Bloggie Touch the library is giving away to the person who logs the most hours reading isn’t the worst incentive, either. It’ll come in handy for that book review YouTube channel she’s been thinking about starting!) When school starts back up again, her friends will inevitably show off their tan lines and pony bead friendship bracelets, and our geek girl will politely oblige by oohing and aahing accordingly. But secretly she’s bursting with pride over her summer’s battle scars—the numerous paper cuts she got while feverishly turning the pages of all seven Harry Potter books. ~ Leslie Simon, #NFDB
1164:Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute in his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Misérables. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1165:In the words of Andy Grove: “To understand a company’s strategy, look at what they actually do rather than what they say they will do.”….
Here is a way to frame the investments that we make in the strategy that becomes our lives: we have resources – which include personal time, energy, talent and wealth – and we are using them to try to grow several “businesses” in our personal lives… How should we devote our resources to these pursuits?
Unless you manage it mindfully, your personal resource allocation process will decide investments for you according to the “default” criteria that essentially are wired into your brain and your heart. As is true in companies, your resources are not decided and deployed in a single meeting or when you review your calendar for the week ahead. It is a continuous process –and you have, in your brain, a filter for making choices about what to prioritize.
But it’s a messy process. People ask for your time and energy every day, and even if you are focused on what’s important to you, it’s still difficult to know which are the right choices. If you have an extra ounce of energy or a spare 30 minutes, there are a lot of people pushing you to spend them here rather than there. With so many people and projects wanting your time and attention, you can feel like you are not in charge of your own destiny. Sometimes that’s good: opportunities that you never anticipated emerge. But other times, those opportunities can take you far off course…
The danger for high-achieving people is that they’ll unconsciously allocate their resources to activities that yield the most immediate, tangible accomplishments…
How you allocate your own resources can make your life turn out to be exactly as you hope or very different from what you intend. ~ Clayton M Christensen,#NFDB
1166:Remember and Share - Variable Reward is the third phase of the Hook Model, and there are three types of variable rewards: tribe, hunt and self. - Rewards of the tribe is the search for social rewards fueled by connectedness with other people. - Rewards of the hunt is the search for material resources and information. - Rewards of the self is the search for intrinsic rewards of mastery, competence, and completion. - When our autonomy is threatened, we feel constrained by our lack of choices and often rebel against doing a new behavior. Psychologists call this “reactance.” Maintaining a sense of user autonomy is a requirement for repeat engagement. - Experiences with finite variability become increasingly predictable with use and lose their appeal over time. Experiences that maintain user interest by sustaining variability with use exhibit infinite variability. - Variable rewards must satisfy users’ needs, while leaving them wanting to re-engage with the product. *** Do This Now Refer to the answers you came up with in the last “Do This Now” section to complete the following exercises: - Speak with five of your customers in an open-ended interview to identify what they find enjoyable or encouraging about using your product. Are there any moments of delight or surprise? Is there anything they find particularly satisfying about using the product? - Review the steps your customer takes to use your product or service habitually. What outcome (reward) alleviates the user’s pain? Is the reward fulfilling, yet leaves the user wanting more? - Brainstorm three ways your product might heighten users’ search for variable rewards using: - Rewards of the Tribe - gratification from others - Rewards of the Hunt - things, money or information - Rewards of the Self - mastery, completion, competency or consistency ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
1167:The question to ask is this: Are all the “interpretations” listed here, not least the mutually contradictory ones, equally acceptable to God? An atheist will be uncomfortable with such a question; a Christian must ask it. Is it enough simply to hold the beliefs of one’s “Christian” community? How about the interpretive community of Jehovah’s Witnesses? Mormons? Or how about, say, Muslims? Buddhists? Materialist Marxists? I do not know how Smith would respond to such questions. If he draws the line somewhere, then of course I will ask him how he knows that is the place to draw it. At the very least he has then admitted the existence of objective truth, the denial of which is dangerous. If, in line with the central heritage of the Christian church, he ties that truth to the Bible, then one must push hard and ask which of the other interpretations can properly be justified and which must be ruled out by what the Bible says—or will he retreat again to some vague notion of equivalent value in all interpretations? If he denies that there is any way we can know that we are pleasing God, and that the best we can do is live in line with our interpretive communities, what possible excuse could he make for Luther breaking out of one community to start another? Was Luther right? How do we decide? If Smith hides behind the community in the face of such questions, then his interlocutor is basically right. And I would review with him the points I have already tried to make in this chapter and the previous one. In short, I agree that all our understanding is interpretive, and that the interpretive communities in which we find ourselves are extremely influential. But this does not mean, on the one hand, that we cannot articulate objective truth, and on the other that our interpretive communities bind us utterly. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1168:Having to amuse myself during those earlier years, I read voraciously and widely. Mythic matter and folklore made up much of that reading—retellings of the old stories (Mallory, White, Briggs), anecdotal collections and historical investigations of the stories' backgrounds—and then I stumbled upon the Tolkien books which took me back to Lord Dunsany, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, E.R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake and the like. I was in heaven when Lin Carter began the Unicorn imprint for Ballantine and scoured the other publishers for similar good finds, delighting when I discovered someone like Thomas Burnett Swann, who still remains a favourite.
This was before there was such a thing as a fantasy genre, when you'd be lucky to have one fantasy book published in a month, little say the hundreds per year we have now. I also found myself reading Robert E. Howard (the Cormac and Bran mac Morn books were my favourites), Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and finally started reading science fiction after coming across Andre Norton's Huon of the Horn. That book wasn't sf, but when I went to read more by her, I discovered everything else was. So I tried a few and that led me to Clifford Simak, Roger Zelazny and any number of other fine sf writers.
These days my reading tastes remain eclectic, as you might know if you've been following my monthly book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm as likely to read Basil Johnston as Stephen King, Jeanette Winterson as Harlan Ellison, Barbara Kingsolver as Patricia McKillip, Andrew Vachss as Parke Godwin—in short, my criteria is that the book must be good; what publisher's slot it fits into makes absolutely no difference to me. ~ Charles de Lint,#NFDB
1169:Quiller-Couch was all by himself my college education. I went down to the public library one day when I was seventeen looking for books on the art of writing, and found five books of lectures which Q had delivered to his students of writing at Cambridge. “Just what I need!” I congratulated myself. I hurried home with the first volume and started reading and got to page 3 and hit a snag: Q was lecturing to young men educated at Eton and Harrow. He therefore assumed that his students—including me—had read Paradise Lost as a matter of course and would understand his analysis of the “Invocation to Light” in Book 9. So I said, “Wait here,” and went down to the library and got Paradise Lost and took it home and started reading it and got to page 3, when I hit a snag: Milton assumed I’d read the Christian version of Isaiah and the New Testament and had learned all about Lucifer and the War in Heaven, and since I’d been reared in Judaism I hadn’t. So I said, “Wait here,” and borrowed a Christian Bible and read about Lucifer and so forth, and then went back to Milton and read Paradise Lost, and then finally got back to Q, page 3. On page 4 or 5, I discovered that the point of the sentence at the top of the page was in Latin and the long quotation at the bottom of the page was in Greek. So I advertised in the Saturday Review for somebody to teach me Latin and Greek, and went back to Q meanwhile, and discovered he assumed I not only knew all the plays of Shakespeare, and Boswell’s Johnson, but also the Second book of Esdras, which is not in the Old Testament and not in the New Testament, it’s in the Apocrypha, which is a set of books nobody had ever thought to tell me existed. So what with one thing and another and an average of three “Wait here’s” a week, it took me eleven years to get through Q’s five books of lectures. ~ Helene Hanff, #NFDB
1170:I keep finding myself confronted with the question, “What is the aim of man’s life?” and, no matter what result my reflections reach, no matter what I take to be life’s source, I invariably arrive at the conclusion that the purpose of our human existence is to afford a maximum of help towards the universal development of everything that exists.
If I meditate as I contemplate nature, I perceive everything in nature to be in constant process of development, and each of nature’s constituent portions to be unconsciously contributing towards the development of others. But man is, though a like portion of nature, a portion gifted with consciousness, and therefore bound, like the other portions, to make conscious use of his spiritual faculties in striving for the development of everything existent.
If I meditate as I contemplate history, I perceive the whole human race to be for ever aspiring towards the same end.
If I meditate on reason, if I pass in review man’s spiritual faculties, I find the soul of every man to have in it the same unconscious aspiration, the same imperative demand of the spirit.
If I meditate with an eye upon the history of philosophy, I find everywhere, and always, men to have arrived at the conclusion that the aim of human life is the universal development of humanity.
If I meditate with an eye upon theology, I find almost every nation to be cognizant of a perfect existence towards which it is the aim of mankind to aspire.
So I too shall be safe in taking for the aim of my existence a conscious striving for the universal development of everything existent. I should be the unhappiest of mortals if I could not find a purpose for my life, and a purpose at once universal and useful… Wherefore henceforth all my life must be a constant, active striving for that one purpose. ~ Leo Tolstoy,#NFDB
1171:Q (Quiller-Couch) was all by himself my college education. I went down to the public library one day when I was seventeen looking for books on the art of writing, and found five books of lectures which Q had delivered to his students of writing at Cambridge.
"Just what I need!" I congratulated myself. I hurried home with the first volume and started reading and got to page 3 and hit a snag:
Q was lecturing to young men educated at Eton and Harrow. He therefore assumed his students − including me − had read Paradise Lost as a matter of course and would understand his analysis of the "Invocation to Light" in Book 9. So I said, "Wait here," and went down to the library and got Paradise Lost and took it home and started reading it and got to page 3, when I hit a snag:
Milton assumed I'd read the Christian version of Isaiah and the New Testament and had learned all about Lucifer and the War in Heaven, and since I'd been reared in Judaism I hadn't. So I said, "Wait here," and borrowed a Christian Bible and read about Lucifer and so forth, and then went back to Milton and read Paradise Lost, and then finally got back to Q, page 3. On page 4 or 5, I discovered that the point of the sentence at the top of the page was in Latin and the long quotation at the bottom of the page was in Greek. So I advertised in the Saturday Review for somebody to teach me Latin and Greek, and went back to Q meanwhile, and discovered he assumed I not only knew all the plays by Shakespeare, and Boswell's Johnson, but also the Second books of Esdras, which is not in the Old Testament and not in the New Testament, it's in the Apocrypha, which is a set of books nobody had ever thought to tell me existed.
So what with one thing and another and an average of three "Wait here's" a week, it took me eleven years to get through Q's five books of lectures. ~ Helene Hanff,#NFDB
1172:THE FOUR FOUNDATIONAL PRACTICES
Changing the Karmic Traces
Throughout the day, continuously remain in the awareness that all experience is a dream. Encounter all things as objects in a dream, all events as events in a dream, all people as people in a dream.
Envision your own body as a transparent illusory body. Imagine you are in a lucid dream during the entire day. Do not allow these reminders to be merely empty repetition. Each time you tell yourself, "This is a dream," actually become more lucid. Involve your body and your senses in becoming more present.
Removing Grasping and Aversion
Encounter all things that create desire and attachment as the illusory empty, luminous phenomena of a dream. Recognize your reactions to phenomena as a dream; all emotions, judgments, and preferences are being dreamt up. You can be certain that you are doing this correctly if immediately upon remembering that your reaction is a dream, desire and attachment lessen.
Strengthening Intention
Before going to sleep, review the day and reflect on how the practice has been. Let memories of the day arise and recognize them as memories of dream. Develop a strong intention to be aware in the coming night's dreams. Put your whole heart into this intention and pray strongly for success.
Cultivating Memory and joyful Effort
Begin the day with the strong intention to maintain the practice. Review the night, developing happiness if you remembered or were lucid in your dreams. Recommit yourself to the practice, with the intention to become lucid if you were not, and to further develop lucidity if you were. At any time during the day or evening it is good to pray for success in practice. Generate as strong an intention as possible. This is the key to the practice, ~ Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep,#NFDB
1173:~ Emilie BarnesJw~ Emilie BarnesZc2til~ Emilie Barnes-t-Zvtl~ Emilie Barnes- ~ Emilie BarnesO-wti 71.LZwd~ Emilie Barnes-tL
A man of too many friends comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
-PROVERBS 18:24
A good paraphrase of this opening Scripture is, "A woman of too many friends will be broken in pieces." Indiscriminately chosen friends may bring trouble, but a genuine friend sticks with you through thick and thin.
Our friends have a positive or negative effect upon our lives. Many of us have told our children to be careful who they run with because people are known by the company they keep. There are certain areas in our lives where we have no choice about who we are around, such as work, church, neighbors, and social clubs. In these settings we are thrown together. How ever, in our family and private times we can be very discriminating about those with whom we associate. We must realize that our time and energy are among our most precious assets. Therefore it's important to make wise choices in the selection of people we will
spend time with. Are they people who build us up and encourage us to be better people than we would be by ourselves?
Why have you chosen the people who are closest to you? How do they contribute to who you are? It's not that you cast off those who don't contribute positively to your life, but I encourage you to reevaluate your relationships and see how you respond when you are around certain people. Do you respect them? Do they encourage you to grow? Do you have a kindred spirit? Do you share like values? If you can't answer in the affirmative, you might want to review how much time you spend with these people. Some changes might be in order.
You have a limited amount of time to spend with others, so select wisely; much of who you are-positive as well as negative-will be formed by the friends you keep. ~ Emilie Barnes,#NFDB
1174:As I write this, I’m sitting in a café in Paris overlooking the Luxembourg Garden, just off of Rue Saint-Jacques. Rue Saint-Jacques is likely the oldest road in Paris, and it has a rich literary history. Victor Hugo lived a few blocks from where I’m sitting. Gertrude Stein drank coffee and F. Scott Fitzgerald socialized within a stone’s throw. Hemingway wandered up and down the sidewalks, his books percolating in his mind, wine no doubt percolating in his blood. I came to France to take a break from everything. No social media, no email, no social commitments, no set plans . . . except one project. The month had been set aside to review all of the lessons I’d learned from nearly 200 world-class performers I’d interviewed on The Tim Ferriss Show, which recently passed 100,000,000 downloads. The guests included chess prodigies, movie stars, four-star generals, pro athletes, and hedge fund managers. It was a motley crew. More than a handful of them had since become collaborators in business and creative projects, spanning from investments to indie film. As a result, I’d absorbed a lot of their wisdom outside of our recordings, whether over workouts, wine-infused jam sessions, text message exchanges, dinners, or late-night phone calls. In every case, I’d gotten to know them well beyond the superficial headlines in the media. My life had already improved in every area as a result of the lessons I could remember. But that was the tip of the iceberg. The majority of the gems were still lodged in thousands of pages of transcripts and hand-scribbled notes. More than anything, I longed for the chance to distill everything into a playbook. So, I’d set aside an entire month for review (and, if I’m being honest, pain au chocolat), to put together the ultimate CliffsNotes for myself. It would be the notebook to end all notebooks. Something that could help me in minutes but be read for a lifetime. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1175:IN JANUARY 1959 Police Chief Herbert Jenkins found a poem tacked to a bulletin board at his departmental headquarters. Tellingly, the anonymous author had titled it “The Plan of Improvement,” in sarcastic tribute to Mayor Hartsfield’s 1952 program for the city’s expansion and economic progress. The poem looked back over a decade of racial change and spoke volumes about the rising tide of white resentment. It began with a brief review of the origins of residential transition and quickly linked the desegregation of working-class neighborhoods to the desegregation of the public spaces surrounding them: Look my children and you shall see, The Plan of Improvement by William B. On a great civic venture we’re about to embark And we’ll start this one off at old Mozeley Park. White folks won’t mind losing homes they hold dear; (If it doesn’t take place on an election year) Before they have time to get over the shock, We’ll have that whole section—every square block. I’ll try something different for plan number two This time the city’s golf courses will do. They’ll mix in the Club House and then on the green I might get a write up in Life Magazine. And now comes the schools for plan number three To mix them in classrooms just fills me with glee; For I have a Grandson who someday I pray Will thank me for sending this culture his way. And for my finale, to do it up right, The buses, theatres and night spots so bright; Pools and restaurants will be mixed up at last And my Plan of Improvement will be going full blast. The sarcasm in the poem is unmistakable, of course, but so are the ways in which the author—either a policeman himself or a friend of one—clearly linked the city’s pursuit of “progress” with a litany of white losses. In the mind of the author, and countless other white Atlantans like him, the politics of progress was a zero-sum game in which every advance for civil rights meant an equal loss for whites. ~ Kevin M Kruse, #NFDB
1176:1. Do you have a formal, consistent bedtime routine? 2. Is the hour prior to bedtime mostly peaceful, quiet, and dimly lit? 3. Does your bedtime routine help both you and your baby relax and get sleepy? 4. Any other observations about your current bedtime routine? Night-Waking Log Baby’s Name: Age: Date: Asleep time: Awake time: Total number of awakenings: Longest sleep span: Total hours of sleep: Sleep Questions 1. Review Table 2.1 on page 48: How many hours of nighttime sleep should your baby be getting? How many hours of nighttime sleep is your baby getting now? How many total hours of nighttime and naptime sleep should your baby be getting? How many total hours of nighttime and naptime sleep is your baby getting now? How do the suggested hours of sleep compare to your baby’s actual hours of sleep? Gets hours too little sleep Gets hours too much sleep 2. Is your baby’s bedtime consistent (within ½ hour) every night? 3. Do you “help” your baby to go back to sleep every time, or nearly every time he or she awakens? How do you do this? 4. What have you learned about your baby’s sleep by doing this log? 4 ~ Elizabeth Pantley, #NFDB
1177:Step 6. Ensure That Your Environment Supports Your Goals Some people subscribe to the philosophy that if the cure doesn’t hurt, it can’t be working. When it comes to permanent changes in diet and lifestyle, the opposite philosophy is the best: The less painful the program, the more likely it is to succeed. Take steps to make your new life easier. Modify your daily behavior so that your surroundings work for you, not against you. Have the right pots, pans, and utensils to cook with; have the right spices, herbs, and seasonings to make your meals delicious; have your cookbooks handy and review them often to make your dishes lively and appealing. Make sure you give yourself the time to shop for food and cook your meals. Change your life to support your health. Don’t sacrifice your health for worthless conveniences. Avoid temptation. Very few people could quit smoking without ridding their house of cigarettes. Alcoholics avoid bars to stop drinking. Protect yourself by protecting your environment. Decrease the time when you are exposed to rich foods to avoid testing your “willpower.” One of the best ways to do this is to throw all the rich foods out of the house. Just as important is to replace harmful foods with those used in the McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss. If many of your meals are eaten away from home, make the situations meet your needs. Go to restaurants that offer at least one delicious, nutritious item. Ask the waiter to remove the butter and olive oil from the table. Accept invitations to dinner from friends who eat and live healthfully. Bring healthful foods with you whenever possible. Keep those people close who support your efforts and do not try to sabotage you. Ask family and friends to stop giving you boxes of candy and cakes as gifts. Instead suggest flowers, a card, or a fruit basket. Tell your mother that if she really loves you she’ll feed you properly, forgoing her traditional beef stroganoff. ~ John A McDougall, #NFDB
1178:Ray Honeyford was an upright, conscientious teacher, who believed it to be his duty to prepare children for responsible life in society, and who was confronted with the question of how to do this, when the children are the offspring of Muslim peasants from Pakistan, and the society is that of England. Honeyford’s article honestly conveyed the problem, together with his proposed solution, which was to integrate the children into the surrounding secular culture, while protecting them from the punishments administered in their pre-school classes in the local madrasah, meanwhile opposing their parents’ plans to take them away whenever it suited them to Pakistan. He saw no sense in the doctrine of multiculturalism, and believed that the future of our country depends upon our ability to integrate its recently arrived minorities, through a shared curriculum in the schools and a secular rule of law that could protect women and girls from the kind of abuse to which he was a distressed witness. Everything Ray Honeyford said is now the official doctrine of our major political parties: too late, of course, to achieve the results that he hoped for, but nevertheless not too late to point out that those who persecuted him and who surrounded his school with their inane chants of ‘Ray-cist’ have never suffered, as he suffered, for their part in the conflict. Notwithstanding his frequently exasperated tone, Ray Honeyford was a profoundly gentle man, who was prepared to pay the price of truthfulness at a time of lies. But he was sacked from his job, and the teaching profession lost one of its most humane and public-spirited representatives. This was one example of a prolonged Stalinist purge by the educational establishment, designed to remove all signs of patriotism from our schools and to erase the memory of England from the cultural record. Henceforth the Salisbury Review was branded as a ‘racist’ publication, and my own academic career thrown into doubt. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1179:When personal gossip attains the dignity of print, and crowds the space available for matters of real interest to the community,” future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis wrote in the Harvard Law Review in 1890, in a piece which formed the basis for what we now know as the “right to privacy,” it “destroys at once robustness of thought and delicacy of feeling. No enthusiasm can flourish, no generous impulse can survive under its blighting influence.” Brandeis’s words reflected some of the darkness of Kierkegaard’s worries from fifty years earlier and foretold some of that sullying paranoia that was still to come fifty years in the future. Thiel had read this article at Stanford. Many law students do. Most regard it as another piece of the puzzle that makes up American constitutional legal theory. But Peter believed it. He venerated privacy, in creating space for weirdos and the politically incorrect to do what they do. Because he believed that’s where progress came from. Imagine for a second that you’re the kind of deranged individual who starts companies. You’ve created cryptocurrencies designed to replace the U.S. monetary system that somehow turned into a business that helps people sell Beanie Babies and laser pointers over the internet and ends up being worth billions of dollars. Where others saw science fiction, you’ve always seen opportunities—for real, legitimate business. You’re the kind of person who is a libertarian before that word had any kind of social respectability. You’re a conservative at Stanford. You’re the person who likes Ayn Rand and thinks she’s something more than an author teenage boys like to read. You were driven to entrepreneurship because it was a safe space from consensus, and from convention. How do you respond to social shaming? You hate it. How do you respond to petulant blogs implying there is something wrong with you for being a gay person who isn’t public about his sexuality? Well, that’s the question now, isn’t it? ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1180:WE sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, "To be born woman is to know
Although they do not talk of it at school
That we must labour to be beautiful.'
I said, "It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
First published on December 1902 in the Monthly review.
In 'A Servant of the Queen,' Maud Gonne claimed the poem was based on a conversation her sister, (Kathleen) and herself had with Yeats. Kathleen remarked that it was hard work being beautiful.
~ William Butler Yeats, Adams Curse
,#NFDB
1181:Thoughts for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review If you had been a security policy-maker in the world’s greatest power in 1900, you would have been a Brit, looking warily at your age-old enemy, France. By 1910, you would be allied with France and your enemy would be Germany. By 1920, World War I would have been fought and won, and you’d be engaged in a naval arms race with your erstwhile allies, the U.S. and Japan. By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said ‘no war for ten years.’ Nine years later World War II had begun. By 1950, Britain no longer was the world’s greatest power, the Atomic Age had dawned, and a ‘police action’ was underway in Korea. Ten years later the political focus was on the ‘missile gap,’ the strategic paradigm was shifting from massive retaliation to flexible response, and few people had heard of Vietnam. By 1970, the peak of our involvement in Vietnam had come and gone, we were beginning détente with the Soviets, and we were anointing the Shah as our protégé in the Gulf region. By 1980, the Soviets were in Afghanistan, Iran was in the throes of revolution, there was talk of our ‘hollow forces’ and a ‘window of vulnerability,’ and the U.S. was the greatest creditor nation the world had ever seen. By 1990, the Soviet Union was within a year of dissolution, American forces in the Desert were on the verge of showing they were anything but hollow, the U.S. had become the greatest debtor nation the world had ever known, and almost no one had heard of the internet. Ten years later, Warsaw was the capital of a NATO nation, asymmetric threats transcended geography, and the parallel revolutions of information, biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, and high density energy sources foreshadowed changes almost beyond forecasting. All of which is to say that I’m not sure what 2010 will look like, but I’m sure that it will be very little like we expect, so we should plan accordingly. Lin Wells ~ Philip E Tetlock, #NFDB
1182:One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cake than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men.
But there is one way in this country which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man equal of an Einstein, and an ignorant man equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human constitution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. ~ Harper Lee,#NFDB
1183:As I looked over this curious document, I was particularly struck by a band of text across the bottom. It bore the title “Paperwork Reduction Act Notice” and read: The time needed to complete and file this form will vary depending on individual circumstances. The estimated average time is: The text then cheerfully concluded with a note that if I had comments “concerning the accuracy of these time estimates or suggestions for making this form simpler” the IRS would be happy to hear from me. It provided an address in Washington, D.C., where I could send my comments. The Paperwork Reduction Act, passed in 1980 in the waning days of the Carter administration and amended in 1995, is a classic example of structural deepening gone awry. The law was supposed to improve the efficiency of the U.S. federal government and lighten the burden of paperwork on citizens. In Brian Arthur’s terms, the additional complexity introduced by the law was supposed to improve government performance. But it has not worked. Although the U.S. Office of Management and Budget hired a special staff to review and approve every form and information request of every agency of the federal government, the estimated total time that the U.S. public invested each year fulfilling federal paperwork requirements rose from 4.7 billion hours in 1980 to 6.7 billion hours in 1996.14 More perversely, Form 1001 showed how the law makes government more inefficient and confusing to the average person. My first reaction to the notice at the bottom was to add up the time allotments. Was I really supposed to spend over six and a half hours on this form? The suggested times seemed so precise, and the total amount so daunting, that Form 1001 practically leapt at me with self-importance. And what records, exactly, was I supposed to spend four hours and thirty-two minutes keeping? I hadn’t a clue. In its entirety, Form 1001 resembled the jumble of hoses and wiring under the hood of a modern car, and the “Paperwork Reduction Act Notice” at the bottom was a particularly forbidding clump of complexity. ~ Thomas Homer Dixon, #NFDB
1184:One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious — because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe — some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others — some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.
But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.
In the name of God, believe him. ~ Harper Lee,#NFDB
1185:back to the border with Belarus. Though he would have liked to have gotten some sleep, he kept his eyes open and his head on a swivel the entire way. When they met up with the Old Man’s smugglers and said their good-byes, he thanked her. She had taken a lot of risks on his behalf and he wanted her to know how much he appreciated it. Without her, this could have very well turned into a suicide operation. Climbing into the smuggler’s truck, he made himself comfortable for his next six hours of driving to the border with Poland. There, he’d at least be back in NATO territory, though he couldn’t let his guard down. At least not fully. It wasn’t until he was back on The Carlton Group jet and in the air that the weight of everything he had been under started to lift. Once he was in international airspace, he got up and poured himself a drink. Returning to his seat, he raised the glass and toasted the Old Man. He hoped that somewhere, up there, Reed was proud of him. As he sat there, sipping his bourbon, Harvath conducted a mental after-action report. He went over every single detail, contemplating what he could have done differently, and where appropriate, what he could have done better. Once his review was complete, he went through all of it again, looking for anything that might identify Alexandra, or tie her directly to him. Fortunately, there was nothing he could come up with to be worried about. From Josef’s hospital where she had avoided the cameras and had stayed bundled up, to the interaction with Minayev’s mistress where she had worn the balaclava, and finally to the security guards at Misha’s loft where she had been wearing a dark wig and heavy makeup while making sure to never face the cameras, she had been the perfect partner. Even outside on Moscow’s streets, she had made sure they stayed in the shadows. Alexandra, thinking of everything, had taken down the telephone number of the management company for the building where they had left the hospital worker tied up. She had promised to phone in either a noise complaint or some sort of anonymous tip, so that the man would be found and cut loose. He didn’t know how she planned to get the envelopes ~ Brad Thor, #NFDB
1186:In his book Real Presences, George Steiner asks us to "imagine a society in which all talk about the arts, music and literature is prohibited." In such a society there would be no more essays on whether Hamlet was mad or only pretending to be, no reviews of the latest exhibitions or novels, no profiles of writers or artists. There would be no secondary, or parasitic, discussion - let alone tertiary: commentary on commentary. We would have, instead, a "republic for writers and readers" with no cushion of professional opinion-makers to come between creators and audience. While the Sunday papers presently serve as a substitute for the experiencing of the actual exhibition or book, in Steiner's imagined republic the review pages would be turned into listings:catalogues and guides to what is about to open, be published, or be released.
What would this republic be like? Would the arts suffer from the obliteration of this ozone of comment? Certainly not, says Steiner, for each performance of a Mahler symphony is also a critique of that symphony. Unlike the reviewer, however, the performer "invests his own being in the process of interpretation." Such interpretation is automatically responsible because the performer is answerable to the work in a way that even the most scrupulous reviewer is not.
Although, most obviously, it is not only the case for drama and music; all art is also criticism. This is most clearly so when a writer or composer quotes or reworks material from another writer or composer. All literature, music, and art "embody an expository reflection which they pertain". In other words it is not only in their letters, essays, or conversation that writers like Henry James reveal themselves also to be the best critics; rather, The Portrait of a Lady is itself, among other things, a commentary on and a critique of Middlemarch. "The best readings of art are art."
No sooner has Steiner summoned this imaginary republic into existence than he sighs, "The fantasy I have sketched is only that." Well, it is not. It is a real place and for much of the century it has provided a global home for millions of people. It is a republic with a simple name: jazz. ~ Geoff Dyer,#NFDB
1187:There was Customer Service, a chirpy brunette with a permanent smile behind the desk. And there was someone waiting there, someone dressed in jeans and a sweater, devilishly normal in the twenty-first-century crowd. He saw her, and he straightened, his eyes hopeful. Apparently, Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s barrister hadn’t been in his office to assure her that being a magazine writer doesn’t nullify a confidentially agreement.
“Jane.”
“Martin. You whistled?” She laid the rancor on thick. No need to tap dance around.
“Jane, I’m sorry. I was going to tell you today. Or tonight. The point is, I was going to tell you, and then we could still see if you and I--”
“You’re an actor,” Jane said as though “actor” and “bastard” were synonymous.
“Yes, but, but…” He looked around as though for cue cards.
“But you’re desperately in love with me,” she prompted him. “I’m unbelievably beautiful, and I make you feel like yourself. Oh, and I remind you of your sister.”
The chirpy brunette behind the counter furiously refused to look up from her monitor.
“Jane, please.”
“And the suddenly passionate feelings that sent you running after me at the airport have nothing to do with Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s fear that I’ll write a negative review of Pembrook Park.”
“No! Listen, I know I was a cad, and I lied and was misleading, and I’ve never actually been an NBA fan--go United--but romances have bloomed on stonier ground.”
“Romances…stonier ground…Did Mrs. Wattlesbrook write that line?”
Martin exhaled in exasperation.
Thinking of Molly’s dead end on the background check, she asked, “Your name’s not really Martin Jasper, is it?”
“Well,” he looked at the brunette as though for help. “Well, it is Martin.”
The brunette smiled encouragement.
Then, impossibly, another figure ran toward her. The sideburns and stiff-collared jacket looked ridiculous out of the context of Pembrook Park, though he’d stuck on a baseball cap and trench coat, trying to blend. His face was flushed from running, and when he saw Jane, he sighed with relief.
Jane dropped her jaw. Literally. She had never, even in her most ridiculous daydreaming, imagined that Mr. Nobley would come after her. ~ Shannon Hale,#NFDB
1188:Absorbingly articulate and infinitely intelligent . . . There is nothing pop about Kahneman's psychology, no formulaic story arc, no beating you over the head with an artificial, buzzword -encrusted Big Idea. It's just the wisdom that comes from five decades of honest, rigorous scientific work, delivered humbly yet brilliantly, in a way that will forever change the way you think about thinking:' -MARIA POPOVA, The Atlantic "Kahneman's primer adds to recent challenges to economic orthodoxies about rational actors and efficient markets; more than that, it's a lucid, mar- velously readable guide to spotting-and correcting-our biased misunder- standings of the world:' -Publishers Weekly (starred review) "The ramifications of Kahneman's work are wide, extending into education, business, marketing, politics ... and even happiness research. Call his field 'psychonomics: the hidden reasoning behind our choices. Thinking, Fast and Slow is essential reading for anyone with a mind:' -KYLE SMITH,NewYorkPost "A stellar accomplishment, a book for everyone who likes to think and wants to do it better." - E. JAMES LIEBERMAN ,Libraryfournal "Daniel Kahneman demonstrates forcefully in his new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, how easy it is for humans to swerve away from rationality:' -CHRISTOPHER SHEA , The Washington Post "A tour de force .. . Kahneman's book is a must-read for anyone interested in either human behavior or investing. He clearly shows that while we like to think of ourselves as rational in our decision making, the truth is we are subject to many biases. At least being aware of them will give you a better chance of avoiding them, or at least making fewer of them:' -LARRY SWEDROE, CBS News "Brilliant .. . It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Daniel Kahne- man's contribution to the understanding of the way we think and choose. He stands among the giants, a weaver of the threads of Charles Darwin, Adam Smith and Sigmund Freud. Arguably the most important psycholo- gist in history, Kahneman has reshaped cognitive psychology, the analysis of rationality and reason, the understanding of risk and the study of hap pi- ness and well-being ... A magisterial work, stunning in its ambition, infused ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1189:questioning the lawfulness of a long-standing State Department policy specifying that the birthplace of an American citizen born in Jerusalem be given as “Jerusalem” rather than “Israel or Jordan” in his passport.43 The courts were asked to review this policy in light of a congressional statute requiring the State Department to describe the birthplace as “Israel” if the citizen so wished. Did the statute unconstitutionally interfere with the President’s power to conduct foreign affairs?44 The lower courts had decided that the case presented an unreviewable political question.45 But the Supreme Court held to the contrary. All the justices but one (and I was the one) considered the matter of deciding what the statute meant and whether it was constitutional to be “a familiar judicial exercise.”46 My colleagues believed the courts should not avoid the question by invoking the “political question” doctrine.47 They consequently sent the case back to the lower court for a decision on the merits.48 Though alone, I saw the case differently. “In the Middle East,” I wrote, “administrative matters can have implications that extend far beyond the purely administrative.”49 The secretary of state had argued that requiring her to stamp the word Israel on a passport would represent an “official decision by the United States to begin to treat Jerusalem as a city” under Israeli sovereignty.50 She maintained that upholding the statute would have significant foreign policy implications (a conclusion that others denied). Because of our inability to know the answer to this kind of dispute, I concluded that the merits of the case raised a political question, which the other two branches should resolve between themselves.51 What matters for our purposes, however, is that the other members of the Court disagreed with me. They thought that, even there, the doctrine did not prevent the Court from reviewing the merits of this foreign policy-related question. The upshot is that neither the classical view of Cicero nor the “political question” doctrine prevents today’s Court from reaching, and deciding the merits of, many questions in which security and civil liberties collide. But there are other doctrines, embodied in other cases, that have had much the same effect. ~ Stephen G Breyer, #NFDB
1190:You look terrible,” was Ron’s greeting as he entered the room to wake Harry.
“Not for long,” said Harry, yawning.
They found Hermione downstairs in the kitchen. She was being served coffee and hot rolls by Kreacher and wearing the slightly manic expression that Harry associated with exam review.
“Robes,” she said under her breath, acknowledging their presence with a nervous nod and continuing to poke around in her beaded bag, “Polyjuice Potion . . . Invisbility Cloak . . . Decoy Detonators . . . You should each take a couple just in case. . . . Puking Pastilles, Nosebleed Nougat, Extendable Ears . . .”
They gulped down their breakfast, then set off upstairs, Kreacher bowing them out and promising to have a steak-and-kidney pie ready for them when they returned.
“Bless him,” said Ron fondly, “and when you think I used to fantasize about cutting off his head and sticking it on the wall.”
They made their way onto the front step with immense caution: They could see a couple of puffy-eyed Death Eaters watching the house from across the misty square.
Hermione Disapparated with Ron first, then came back for Harry.
After the usual brief spell of darkness and near suffocation, Harry found himself in the tiny alleyway where the first phase of their plan was scheduled to take place. It was as yet deserted, except for a couple of large bins; the first Ministry workers did not usually appear here until at least eight o’clock.
“Right then,” said Hermione, checking her watch. “She ought to be here in about five minutes. When I’ve Stunned her—”
“Hermione, we know,” said Ron sternly. “And I thought we were supposed to open the door before she got here?”
Hermione squealed.
“I nearly forgot! Stand back—”
She pointed her wand at the padlocked and heavily graffitied fire door beside them, which burst open with a crash. The dark corridor behind it led, as they knew from their careful scouting trips, into an empty theater. Hermione pulled the door back toward her, to make it look as though it was still closed.
“And now,” she said, turning back to face the other two in the alleyway, “we put on the Cloak again—”
“—and we wait,” Ron finished, throwing it over Hermione’s head like a blanket over a birdcage and rolling his eyes at Harry. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
1191:From a nitty-gritty, practical standpoint, here is the drill that can get you there: Loose Papers Pull out all miscellaneous scraps of paper, business cards, receipts, and so on that have crept into the crevices of your desk, clothing, and accessories. Put it all into your in-basket for processing. Process Your Notes Review any journal entries, meeting notes, or miscellaneous notes scribbled on notebook paper. List action items, projects, waiting-fors, calendar events, and someday/ maybes, as appropriate. File any reference notes and materials. Stage your “Read/Review” material. Be ruthless with yourself, processing all notes and thoughts relative to interactions, projects, new initiatives, and input that have come your way since your last download, and purging those not needed. Previous Calendar Data Review past calendar dates in detail for remaining action items, reference information, and so on, and transfer that data into the active system. Be able to archive your last week’s calendar with nothing left uncaptured. Upcoming Calendar Look at future calendar events (long- and short-term). Capture actions about arrangements and preparations for any upcoming events. Empty Your Head Put in writing (in appropriate categories) any new projects, action items, waiting-fors, someday/maybes, and so forth that you haven’t yet captured. Review “Projects” (and Larger Outcome) Lists Evaluate the status of projects, goals, and outcomes one by one, ensuring that at least one current kick-start action for each is in your system. Review “Next Actions” Lists Mark off completed actions. Review for reminders of further action steps to capture. Review “Waiting For” List Record appropriate actions for any needed follow-up. Check off received items. Review Any Relevant Checklists Is there anything you haven’t done that you need to do? Review “Someday/Maybe” List Check for any projects that may have become active and transfer them to “Projects.” Delete items no longer of interest. Review “Pending” and Support Files Browse through all work-in-progress support material to trigger new actions, completions, and waiting-fors. Be Creative and Courageous Are there any new, wonderful, hare-brained, creative, thought-provoking, risk-taking ideas you can add to your system? ~ David Allen, #NFDB
1192:There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo’s rapier or Lucrezia’s poison vial. There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pal and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindemith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them. And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa-Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent-mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
1193:Consequently, when Muslims today say they revere Jesus and even that they recognize Christianity as a legitimate faith, they are being disingenuous. For the Christianity that the Koran recognizes is not Christianity as millions practice it around the world today. This is a key source of much of the enduring suspicion and mistrust between Muslims and Christians. The Saudi Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-Qadhi expatiated on the Koranic view of mainstream Christianity in a recent sermon, in which he also elaborated a contemptuous view of Christian charity: Today we will talk about one of the distorted religions, about a faith that deviates from the path of righteousness . . . about Christianity, this false faith, and about the people whom Allah described in his book as deviating from the path of righteousness. We will examine their faith, and we will review their history, full of hate, abomination, and wars against Islam and the Muslims. In this distorted and deformed religion, to which many of the inhabitants of the earth belong, we can see how the Christians deviate greatly from the path of righteousness by talking about the concept of the Trinity. As far as they are concerned, God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three who are one. . . . They see Jesus, peace be upon him, as the son of Allah. . . . It is the Christians who believe Jesus was crucified. According to them, he was hanged on the cross with nails pounded through his hands, and he cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” According to them, this was so that he would atone for the sins of mankind. . . . Regardless of all these deviations from the path of righteousness, it is possible to see many Muslims . . . who know about Christianity only what the Christians claim about love, tolerance, devoting life to serving the needy, and other distorted slogans. . . . After all this, we still find people who promote the idea of bringing our religion and theirs closer, as if the differences were miniscule and could be eliminated by arranging all those [interfaith] conferences, whose goal is political.18 The idea that Christianity is a “distorted, deformed religion” created by people who were bent on rejecting the prophet Muhammad fuels a great deal of Muslim hatred for Christianity, Christians, and the West to this day. ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
1194:In a section titled “Performance Factors,” Clint had been asked to indicate areas in which I’d exhibited significant strengths, as well as any areas needing development. There were only two areas in which he felt I needed development—organization (probably because he’d ridden in my car) and working more closely with third parties—but he had indicated six major strengths. The first three were creativity, achievement of objectives, and quality of work. No surprises there. The next three strengths—adaptability, communication, and autonomy—seemed a bit ironic. I scrolled down and saw my overall score: Very Good. By definition, this score meant that I had “exceeded objectives in several areas and required only occasional supervision.” I didn’t appreciate the real irony of Clint’s assessment until I looked at my stakeholder map and considered how I might have scored had Kristen conducted a similar evaluation at home. What score would I have received for adaptability? The review form defined this as “being open to change with new circumstances.” Going with the flow. We had just begun to work on my openness to change at home, and I was still learning how to adjust to this new mind-set. Meanwhile, at work, I presented myself as nothing if not adaptable. “Sure, I’ll take a new position on the marketing team.” “Of course I can stay until midnight tonight. Whatever it takes.” “Certainly, Clint, I’ll travel to customers every week. Anything else?” At home, Kristen asked me to help fold laundry and my head almost exploded. I guessed that I would receive Needs Development for that one. How about autonomy and initiative? Clint seemed to think that I was bursting with it, but Kristen would have offered a different opinion. “Initiative? Please. How is me having to remind you to turn off the television and play with the kids initiative? I’ll put you down for a Needs Development,” I imagined her saying. Achievement of objectives would have gotten me a high mark with Kristen, until I scrolled down farther and read the definition, which included the phrase “gets things done efficiently and in a timely manner.” I thought of the Christmas decorations drooping from our eaves. I thought of the countless times Kristen and I had been late for an engagement and she’d found me standing in my boxers in front of the mirror making faces. ~ David Finch, #NFDB
1195:About MC Steve Even when I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Stories always fascinated me. And I did not just see them in books and movies… I saw them everywhere - especially in video games. When I looked at the characters in the video games I loved, I always wondered: What is their story? What do they spend their time thinking about? What great adventures will they have? Now, as an adult, and living in the greatest city in the world, I still wonder the same things. Living in New York means that ten thousand times a day I pass by strangers, each with rich and complicated lives I know nothing about. But I want to know! And when I want to know, I write. There is a medium for stories that I think many people – especially adults – ignore: and that is video games. So long and complicated are the plots of video games that sometimes they are richer than movies, or even books! In fact, it was Minecraft that actually got me going in my writing career. I saw it as a channel where the audience could not only engage in the stories, but actively participate in them. Hence, my desire to write my first book - Diary of a Minecraft Wimpy Zombie. When I first published my story, I was terrified. What will people think of me? Will they like my stories? However, given some time, kids have come up to me and told me how much they loved my book. They were not only reading, but enjoying my book! It was this feeling - reaching and connecting with kids – that inspired me to write some more. And, as I continued to write, the more positive feedback I got! Before I knew it, Readers’ Favorite rated my book 5 Stars and I became a #1 Amazon best-selling author, all from following my passion and responding to the passion I saw in others. Wimpy Zombie says, “Because zombies can’t go out into the sun, most of them tend to be afraid of anything that can go into the sun and live to tell the tale.” Let me say this: in a writer’s sense, I used to be a zombie. I was afraid to display my work to the light of day, for fear of the scorching rays of ridicule, embarrassment, or failure. But, like Wimpy Zombie eventually learns, and I learned myself, everyone needs to, at some point in their lives, be brave enough to venture into the sun. If you’d like to post a review, click on the button below and it will take you to the reviews page straightaway: ~ M C Steve, #NFDB
1196:No Big Deal or the End of the World? Here’s something that should be obvious: People don’t like to have their grievances downplayed or dismissed. When that happens, even the smallest irritation can turn into an obsessive crusade. Imagine you’re staying at a hotel, and the air-conditioning isn’t working right. You call the front desk to mention it, and they say, oh yeah, they know about that, and someone is going to come fix that next week (after you’ve left). In the meantime, could you just open a window (down to that noisy, busy street)? Not a word of apology, no tone of contrition. Now what was a mild annoyance—that it’s 74F degrees when you like to sleep at 69F—is suddenly the end of the world! You swell with righteous fury, swear you’ll write a letter to management, and savage the hotel in your online review. Jean-Louis Gassée, who used to run Apple France, describes this situation as the choice between two tokens. When you deal with people who have trouble, you can either choose to take the token that says “It’s no big deal” or the token that says “It’s the end of the world.” Whichever token you pick, they’ll take the other. The hotel staff in the example above clearly took the “It’s no big deal” token and as a result forced you to take the “It’s the end of the world” token. But they could just as well have made the opposite choice. Imagine the staff answering something like this: “We’re so sorry. That’s clearly unacceptable! I can completely understand how it must be almost impossible to sleep when it’s so hot in your room. If I can’t fix this problem for you tonight, would you like me to refund your stay and help you find a different hotel room nearby? In any case, while we’re figuring out the solution, allow me to send up a bottle of ice water and some ice cream. We’re terribly sorry for this ordeal and we’ll do everything to make it right.” With an answer like that, you’re almost forced to pick the “It’s no big deal” token. Yeah, sure, some water and ice cream would be great! Everyone wants to be heard and respected. It usually doesn’t cost much to do, either. And it doesn’t really matter all that much whether you ultimately think you’re right and they’re wrong. Arguing with heated feelings will just increase the burn. Keep that in mind the next time you take a token. Which one are you leaving for the customer? ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
1197:One O'Clock In The Morning
At last! I am alone! Nothing can be heard but the rumbling of a few belated and
weary cabs. For a few hours at least silence will be ours, if not sleep. At last! The
tyranny of the human face has disappeared, and now there will be no one but
myself to make me suffer.
At last! I am allowed to relax in a bath of darkness! First a double turn of the key
in the lock. This turn of the key will, it seems to me, increase my solitude and
strengthen the barricades that, for the moment, separate me from the world.
Horrible life! Horrible city! Let us glance back over the events of the day: saw
several writers, one of them asking me if you could go to Russia by land (he
thought Russia was an island, I suppose); disagreed liberally with the editor of a
review who to all my objections kept saying: "Here we are on the side of
respectability," implying that all the other periodicals were run by rascals; bowed
to twenty or more persons of whom fifteen were unknown to me; distributed
hand shakes in about the same proportion without having first taken the
precaution of buying gloves; to kill time during a shower, dropped in on a dance
who asked me to design her a costume of Venustre; went to pay court to a
theatrical director who in dismissing me said; "Perhaps you would do well to see
Z....; he is the dullest, stupidest and most celebrated of our authors; with him
you might get somewhere. Consult him and then we'll see": boasted (why?) of
several ugly things I never did, and cravenly denied some other misdeeds that I
had accomplished with the greatest delight; offense of fanfaronnade, crime
against human dignity; refused a slight favor to a friend and gave a written
recommendation to a perfect rogue; Lord! let's hope that's all!
Dissatisfied with everything, dissatisfied with myself, I long to redeem myself
and to restore my pride in the silence and solitude of the night. Souls of those
whom I have loved, souls of those whom I have sung, strengthen me, sustain
me, keep me from the vanities of the world and its contaminating fumes; and
You, dear God! grant me grace to produce a few beautiful verses to prove to
myself that I am not the lowest of men, that I am not inferior to those whom I
despise.
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
1198:. Yes, my friends!that happier times have been
Than the present, none can contravene;
That a race once lived of nobler worth;
And if ancient chronicles were dumb,
Countless stones in witness forth would come
From the deepest entrails of the earth.
But this highly-favored race has gone,
Gone forever to the realms of night.
We, we live! The moments are our own,
And the living judge the right.
Brighter zones, my friends, no doubt excel
This, the land wherein we're doomed to dwell,
As the hardy travellers proclaim;
But if Nature has denied us much,
Art is yet responsive to our touch,
And our hearts can kindle at her flame.
If the laurel will not flourish here
If the myrtle is cold winter's prey,
Yet the vine, to crown us, year by year,
Still puts forth its foliage gay.
Of a busier life 'tis well to speak,
Where four worlds their wealth to barter seek,
On the world's great market, Thames' broad stream;
Ships in thousands go there and depart
There are seen the costliest works of art,
And the earth-god, Mammon, reigns supreme
But the sun his image only graves
On the silent streamlet's level plain,
Not upon the torrent's muddy waves,
Swollen by the heavy rain.
Far more blessed than we, in northern states
Dwells the beggar at the angel-gates,
For he sees the peerless cityRome!
Beauty's glorious charms around him lie,
And, a second heaven, up toward the sky
Mounts St. Peter's proud and wondrous dome.
But, with all the charms that splendor grants,
Rome is but the tomb of ages past;
Life but smiles upon the blooming plants
That the seasons round her cast.
Greater actions elsewhere may be rife
Than with us, in our contracted life
But beneath the sun there's naught that's new;
Yet we see the great of every age
Pass before us on the world's wide stage
Thoughtfully and calmly in review
All. in life repeats itself forever,
Young for ay is phantasy alone;
What has happened nowhere,happened never,
That has never older grown!
~ Friedrich Schiller, To My Friends
,#NFDB
1199:The Master
A flying word from here and there
Had sown the name at which we sneered,
But soon the name was everywhere,
To be reviled and then revered:
A presence to be loved and feared,
We cannot hide it, or deny
That we, the gentlemen who jeered,
May be forgotten by and by.
He came when days were perilous
And hearts of men were sore beguiled;
And having made his note of us,
He pondered and was reconciled.
Was ever master yet so mild
As he, and so untamable?
We doubted, even when he smiled,
Not knowing what he knew so well.
He knew that undeceiving fate
Would shame us whom he served unsought;
He knew that he must wince and wait —
The jest of those for whom he fought;
He knew devoutly what he thought
Of us and of our ridicule;
He knew that we must all be taught
Like little children in a school.
We gave a glamour to the task
That he encountered and saw through,
But little of us did he ask,
And little did we ever do.
And what appears if we review
The season when we railed and chaffed?
It is the face of one who knew
That we were learning while we laughed.
The face that in our vision feels
Again the venom that we flung,
Transfigured to the world reveals
326
The vigilance to which we clung.
Shrewd, hallowed, harassed, and among
The mysteries that are untold,
The face we see was never young,
Nor could it ever have been old.
For he, to whom we have applied
Our shopman's test of age and worth,
Was elemental when he died,
As he was ancient at his birth:
The saddest among kings of earth,
Bowed with a galling crown, this man
Met rancor with a cryptic mirth,
Laconic — and Olympian.
The love, the grandeur, and the fame
Are bounded by the world alone;
The calm, the smouldering, and the flame
Of awful patience were his own:
With him they are forever flown
Past all our fond self-shadowings,
Wherewith we cumber the Unknown
As with inept Icarian wings.
For we were not as other men:
'T was ours to soar and his to see.
But we are coming down again,
And we shall come down pleasantly;
Nor shall we longer disagree
On what it is to be sublime,
But flourish in our perigee
And have one Titan at a time.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
1200: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
1201:Clip This Article on Location 1397 | Added on Monday, September 1, 2014 4:10:39 PM REVIEW & OUTLOOK An $8.3 Billion Rebuke to the FDA Roche buys a drug approved in Europe but not in America. 359 words Amid this summer's M&A fever, Roche's agreement Monday to buy the San Francisco biotech InterMune deserves special notice. The tie-up is an $8.3 billion guided missile into the fortified bunker that is the Food and Drug Administration. InterMune has never turned a profit in 16 years of existence and other than its clinical expertise the company holds a single asset: an idea for treating a lethal lung disorder called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis with no known cause, cure or approved therapy—at least in the U.S. An InterMune drug called pirfenidone that slows the progression of irreversible lung scarring is on the market in Europe, Japan, Canada and even China. Bloomberg News But the FDA refused to approve pirfenidone in 2010, despite the 40,000 Americans who are killed annually by lung fibrosis and a positive recommendation from its outside scientific advisory committee. The agency brass claimed the evidence was statistically unsatisfactory, when one clinical trial was inconclusive but another showed strong benefits such as improved lung function. The results of the third trial the FDA ordered were reported earlier this year and confirmed that pirfenidone is even more of a treatment advance than it seemed in 2010, and may prolong life. The agency is expected, finally, to approve the medicine in November. Roche is paying a 38% premium over Friday's closing share price, and 63% over trading before the news of InterMune's corporate suitors broke a few weeks ago. The deal is a big vote of confidence in pirfenidone, not least because a rival lung fibrosis drug is awaiting U.S. approval. Then again, maybe that drug's maker, the German pharmaceutical consortium Boehringer Ingelheim, will have the same FDA experience as InterMune. The Roche deal is a tacit reprimand to the FDA's unscientific and uncompassionate—and wrong—2010 defenestration. Amid medical ambiguity about effectiveness, the humane option is to allow a drug to come to patients and follow on with more research, in particular for a drug with few side effects. Pulmonary fibrosis is a protracted death sentence of three to five years. The FDA denied tens of thousands of dying people better and possibly longer lives in the time they had left. ========== ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1202:At One O'Clock In The Morning
Alone, at last! Not a sound to be heard but the rumbling of some belated and
decrepit cabs. For a few hours
we shall have silence, if not repose. At last the tyranny of the human face has
disappeared, and I myself shall be the
only cause of my sufferings.
At last, then, I am allowed to refresh myself in a bath of darkness! First of all, a
double turn of the lock. It
seems to me that this twist of the key will increase my solitude and fortify the
barricades which at this instant
separate me from the world.
Horrible life! Horrible town! Let us recapitulate the day: seen several men of
letters, one of whom asked me
whether one could go to Russia by a land route (no doubt he took Russia to be
an island); disputed generously with
the editor of a review, who, to each of my objections, replied: 'We represent the
cause of decent people,' which
implies that all the other newspapers are edited by scoundrels; greeted some
twenty persons, with fifteen of whom I
am not acquainted; distributed handshakes in the same proportion, and this
without having taken the precaution of
buying gloves; to kill time, during a shower, went to see an acrobat, who asked
me to design for her the costume of a
Venustra; paid court to the director of a theatre, who, while dismissing me, said
to me: 'Perhaps you would do well to
apply to Z------; he is the clumsiest, the stupidest and the most celebrated of my
authors; together with him, perhaps,
you would get somewhere. Go to see him, and after that we'll see;' boasted
(why?) of several vile actions which I
have never committed, and faint-heartedly denied some other misdeeds which I
accomplished with joy, an error of
bravado, an offence against human respect; refused a friend an easy service,
and gave a written recommendation to a
perfect clown; oh, isn't that enough?
Discontented with everyone and discontented with myself, I would gladly redeem
myself and elate myself a
little in the silence and solitude of night. Souls of those I have loved, souls of
those I have sung, strengthen me,
support me, rid me of lies and the corrupting vapours of the world; and you, O
Lord God, grant me the grace to
25
produce a few good verses, which shall prove to myself that I am not the lowest
of men, that I am not inferior to
those whom I despise.
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
1203:Every entry, whether revised or reviewed, goes through multiple editing passes. The definer starts the job, then it’s passed to a copy editor who cleans up the definer’s work, then to a bunch of specialty editors: cross-reference editors, who make sure the definer hasn’t used any word in the entry that isn’t entered in that dictionary; etymologists, to review or write the word history; dating editors, who research and add the dates of first written use; pronunciation editors, who handle all the pronunciations in the book. Then eventually it’s back to a copy editor (usually a different one from the first round, just to be safe), who will make any additional changes to the entry that cross-reference turned up, then to the final reader, who is, as the name suggests, the last person who can make editorial changes to the entry, and then off to the proofreader (who ends up, again, being a different editor from the definer and the two previous copy editors). After the proofreaders are done slogging through two thousand pages of four-point type, the production editors send it off to the printer or the data preparation folks, and then we get another set of dictionary pages (called page proofs) to proofread. This process happens continuously as we work through a dictionary, so a definer may be working on batches in C, cross-reference might be in W, etymology in T, dating and pronunciation in the second half of S, copy editors in P (first pass) and Q and R (second pass), while the final reader is closing out batches in N and O, proofreaders are working on M, and production has given the second set of page proofs to another set of proofreaders for the letter L. We all stagger our way through the alphabet until the last batch, which is inevitably somewhere near G, is closed. By the time a word is put in print either on the page or online, it’s generally been seen by a minimum of ten editors. Now consider that when it came to writing the Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, we had a staff of about twenty editors working on it: twenty editors to review about 220,000 existing definitions, write about 10,000 new definitions, and make over 100,000 editorial changes (typos, new dates, revisions) for the new edition. Now remember that the 110,000-odd changes made were each reviewed about a dozen times and by a minimum of ten editors. The time given to us to complete the revision of the Tenth Edition into the Eleventh Edition so production could begin on the new book? Eighteen months. ~ Kory Stamper, #NFDB
1204:The most comprehensive studies of racial bias in the exercise of prosecutorial and judicial discretion involve the treatment of juveniles. These studies have shown that youth of color are more likely to be arrested, detained, formally charged, transferred to adult court, and confined to secure residential facilities than their white counterparts.65 A report in 2000 observed that among youth who have never been sent to a juvenile prison before, African Americans were more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes.66 A study sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department and several of the nation’s leading foundations, published in 2007, found that the impact of the biased treatment is magnified with each additional step into the criminal justice system. African American youth account for 16 percent of all youth, 28 percent of all juvenile arrests, 35 percent of the youth waived to adult criminal court, and 58 percent of youth admitted to state adult prison.67 A major reason for these disparities is unconscious and conscious racial biases infecting decision making. In the state of Washington, for example, a review of juvenile sentencing reports found that prosecutors routinely described black and white offenders differently.68 Blacks committed crimes because of internal personality flaws such as disrespect. Whites did so because of external conditions such as family conflict. The risk that prosecutorial discretion will be racially biased is especially acute in the drug enforcement context, where virtually identical behavior is susceptible to a wide variety of interpretations and responses and the media imagery and political discourse has been so thoroughly racialized. Whether a kid is perceived as a dangerous drug-dealing thug or instead is viewed as a good kid who was merely experimenting with drugs and selling to a few of his friends has to do with the ways in which information about illegal drug activity is processed and interpreted, in a social climate in which drug dealing is racially defined. As a former U.S. Attorney explained: I had an [assistant U.S. attorney who] wanted to drop the gun charge against the defendant [in a case in which] there were no extenuating circumstances. I asked, “Why do you want to drop the gun offense?” And he said, “‘He’s a rural guy and grew up on a farm. The gun he had with him was a rifle. He’s a good ol’ boy, and all good ol’ boys have rifles, and it’s not like he was a gun-toting drug dealer.” But he was a gun-toting drug dealer, exactly. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1205:What’s more, when Grant plotted total revenue over the three months against employees’ scores on the 1-to-7 scale, he found a distinct, and revealing, pattern. Indeed, revenue peaked between 4 and 4.5—and fell off as the personality moved toward either the introvert or extravert pole. Those highest in extraversion fared scarcely better than those highest in introversion, but both lagged behind their coworkers in the modulated middle.31 “These findings call into question the longstanding belief that the most productive salespeople are extraverted,” Grant writes.32 Instead, being too extraverted can actually impair performance, as other research has begun to confirm. For example, two recent Harvard Business Review studies of sales professionals found that top performers are less gregarious than below-average ones and that the most sociable salespeople are often the poorest performers of all.33 According to a large study of European and American customers, the “most destructive” behavior of salespeople wasn’t being ill-informed. It was an excess of assertiveness and zeal that led to contacting customers too frequently.34 Extraverts, in other words, often stumble over themselves. They can talk too much and listen too little, which dulls their understanding of others’ perspectives. They can fail to strike the proper balance between asserting and holding back, which can be read as pushy and drive people away.* The answer, though, isn’t to lurch to the opposite side of the spectrum. Introverts have their own, often reverse, challenges. They can be too shy to initiate and too timid to close. The best approach is for the people on the ends to emulate those in the center. As some have noted, introverts are “geared to inspect,” while extraverts are “geared to respond.”35 Selling of any sort—whether traditional sales or non-sales selling—requires a delicate balance of inspecting and responding. Ambiverts can find that balance. They know when to speak up and when to shut up. Their wider repertoires allow them to achieve harmony with a broader range of people and a more varied set of circumstances. Ambiverts are the best movers because they’re the most skilled attuners. For most of you, this should be welcome news. Look again at the shape of the curve in that second chart. That’s pretty much what the distribution of introverts and extraverts looks like in the wider population.36 A few of us are extraverts. A few of us are introverts. But most of us are ambiverts, sitting near the middle, not the edges, happily attuned to those around us. In some sense, we are born to sell. ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
1206:At the beginning of an address to an audience of 150 employees at their annual company retreat, I asked everyone to stand up. Then I asked everyone who did not have goals to sit down. A handful of people sat. I then asked everyone who did not have written goals to sit down. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, all but about twenty people sat. Next, I asked those remaining to sit down unless they had written goals for more than just their career or financial life. That eliminated another twelve, leaving only eight of 150 people who had written goals targeting more than finances or career. I asked the remaining eight to sit down unless they had a written plan that accompanied their goals. That question filtered out five more, leaving three of 150 who had written goals and a plan in more than just the financial area. I asked the remaining three (all senior management, including the company president) to sit down unless they reviewed their goals on a daily basis. Only one person remained standing (a vice president of sales). Only one in 150 had written goals in more areas than just financial, had a plan for accomplishing them, and reviewed the goals daily. This is consistently what I’ve found over the years as I’ve surveyed the attendees in my public events. Invariably, less than 3 percent have written goals, and even those who have written down their goals have often done so only regarding finances or career. You may have heard of the 1953 study of Yale graduates. The subjects were periodically interviewed and followed by researchers for more than twenty years. Eventually the graduates were again interviewed, tested, and surveyed. Results showed that 3 percent of the Yale graduates earned more money than all the other 97 percent put together! The only difference between them was the top 3 percent had written goals and a plan of action for those goals, which they reviewed daily. Harvard University later did a study of business-school graduates from the class of 1979. They found that, other than to “enjoy themselves,” 84 percent of the class had no goals at all. Thirteen percent had goals and plans but had not written them down. Only 3 percent of the Harvard class had written goals accompanied by a plan of action. In 1989, the class was resurveyed. The results showed that the 13 percent who at least had mental goals were earning twice as much as the 84 percent with no goals. However, the 3 percent who had written down their goals and drafted a plan of action were earning ten times as much as the other 97 percent combined! The point is clear: Having written goals will make you more successful, and having written, well-planned goals that you review daily will make you super successful. ~ Tommy Newberry, #NFDB
1207:(a) A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very ‘deep’ things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published.
(b) A writer has a duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation; convinced, as he is, that he has been born into an age of mediocrity, he believes that being understood would mean losing his chance of ever being considered a genius. A writer revises and rewrites each sentence many times. The vocabulary of the average man is made up of 3,000 words; a real writer never uses any of these, because there are another 189,000 in the dictionary, and he is not the average man.
(c) Only other writers can understand what a writer is trying to say. Even so, he secretly hates all other writers, because they are always jockeying for the same vacancies left by the history of literature over the centuries. And so the writer and his peers compete for the prize of ‘most complicated book’: the one who wins will be the one who has succeeded in being the most difficult to read.
(d) A writer understands about things with alarming names, like semiotics, epistemology, neoconcretism. When he wants to shock someone, he says things like: ‘Einstein is a fool’, or ‘Tolstoy was the clown of the bourgeoisie.’ Everyone is scandalized, but they nevertheless go and tell other people that the theory of relativity is bunk, and that Tolstoy was a defender of the Russian aristocracy.
(e) When trying to seduce a woman, a writer says: ‘I’m a writer’, and scribbles a poem on a napkin. It always works.
(f) Given his vast culture, a writer can always get work as a literary critic. In that role, he can show his generosity by writing about his friends’ books. Half of any such reviews are made up of quotations from foreign authors and the other half of analyses of sentences, always using expressions such as ‘the epistemological cut’, or ‘an integrated bi-dimensional vision of life’. Anyone reading the review will say: ‘What a cultivated person’, but he won’t buy the book because he’ll be afraid he might not know how to continue reading when the epistemological cut appears.
(g) When invited to say what he is reading at the moment, a writer always mentions a book no one has ever heard of.
(h) There is only one book that arouses the unanimous admiration of the writer and his peers: Ulysses by James Joyce. No writer will ever speak ill of this book, but when someone asks him what it’s about, he can’t quite explain, making one doubt that he has actually read it. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
1208:Speaking of gendered differences in reaction and action—you’ve talked of a certain “bullying reception” to your book here in New Zealand by a certain set of older male critics. The omniscient narrator, the idea that you “had to be everywhere,” seems to have affronted some male readers, as has the length of the book. Have you experienced this reaction in the UK, too, or in Canada? Has it been a peculiarly New Zealand response, perhaps because of the necessarily small pool of literary competition here? This is a point that has been perhaps overstated. There’s been a lot written about what I said, and in fact the way I think and feel about the reviewing culture we have in New Zealand has changed a lot through reading the responses and objections of others. Initially I used the word “bullying” only to remark that, as we all learn at school, more often than not someone’s objections are more to do with their own shortcomings or failures than with yours, and that’s something that you have to remember when you’re seeing your artistic efforts devalued or dismissed in print. I don’t feel bullied when I receive a negative review, but I do think that some of the early reviewers refused to engage with the book on its own terms, and that refusal seemed to me to have a lot to do with my gender and my age. To even things out, I called attention to the gender and age of those reviewers, which at the time seemed only fair. I feel that it’s very important to say that sexism is a hegemonic problem, written in to all kinds of cultural attitudes that are held by men and women alike. As a culture we are much more comfortable with the idea of the male thinker than the female thinker, simply because there are so many more examples, throughout history, of male thinkers; as an image and as an idea, the male thinker is familiar to us, and acts in most cases as a default. Consequently female thinkers are often unacknowledged and discouraged, sometimes tacitly, sometimes explicitly, sometimes by men, and sometimes by women. I am lucky, following the Man Booker announcement, that my work is now being read very seriously indeed; but that is a privilege conferred for the most part by the status of the prize, and I know that I am the exception rather than the rule. I’d like to see a paradigm shift, and I’m confident that one is on the way, but the first thing that needs to happen is a collective acknowledgment that reviewing culture is gendered—that everything is gendered—and that until each of us makes a conscious effort to address inequality, we will each remain a part of the problem, rather than a part of the solution. Protesting the fact of inequality is like protesting global warming or evolution: it’s a conservative blindness, born out of cowardice and hostility. ~ Eleanor Catton, #NFDB
1209:Sandys Ghost ; A Proper Ballad On The New Ovid's
Metamorphosis
Ye Lords and Commons, Men of Wit,
And Pleasure about Town;
Read this ere you translate one Bit
Of Books of high Renown.
Beware of Latin Authors all!
Nor think your Verses Sterling,
Though with a Golden Pen you scrawl,
And scribble in a Berlin:
For not the Desk with silver Nails,
Nor Bureau of Expense,
Nor standish well japann'd avails,
To writing of good Sense.
Hear how a Ghost in dead of Night,
With saucer Eyes of Fire,
In woeful wise did sore affright
A Wit and courtly 'Squire.
Rare Imp and Phoebus, hopeful Youth
Like Puppy tame that uses
To fetch and carry, in his Mouth,
The Works of all the Muses.
Ah! why did he write Poetry,
That hereto was so civil;
And sell his soul for vanity,
To Rhyming and the Devil?
A Desk he had of curious Work,
With glittering Studs about;
Within the same did Sandys lurk,
Though Ovid lay without.
Now as he scratch'd to fetch up Thought,
Forth popp'd the Sprite so thin;
143
And from the Key-hole bolted out,
All upright as a Pin.
With Whiskers, Band, and Pantaloon,
And Ruff composed most duly;
This 'Squire he dropp'd his Pen full soon,
While as the Light burnt bluely.
'Ho! Master Sam,' quoth Sandys' sprite,
'Write on, nor let me scare ye;
Forsooth, if Rhymes fall in not right,
To Budgell seek, or Carey.
'I hear the Beat of Jacob's Drums,
Poor Ovid finds no Quarter!
See first the merry Pembroke comes
In Haste, without his Garter.
'Then Lords and Lordlings, 'Squires and Knights,
Wits, Witlings, Prigs and Peers!
Garth at St. James's, and at White's,
Beats up for Volunteers.
'What Fenton will not do, nor Gay,
Nor Congreve, Rowe, nor Stanyan,
Tom Burnet or Tom D'Urfey may,
John Dunton, Steele, or any one.
'If Justice Philips' costive head
Some frigid Rhymes disburses;
They shall like Persian Tales be read,
And glad both Babes and Nurses.
'Let Warwick's Muse with Ashurst join,
And Ozell's with Lord Hervey's:
Tickell and Addison combine,
And P-pe translate with Jervas.
'Landsdowne himself, that lively Lord,
Who bows to every Lady,
Shall join with Frowde in one Accord,
And be like Tate and Brady.
144
'Ye Ladies too draw forth your pen,
I pray where can the hurt lie?
Since you have Brains as well as Men,
As witness Lady Wortley.
'Now, Tonson, list thy Forces all,
Review them, and tell Noses;
For to poor Ovid shall befal
A strange Metamorphosis.
'A Metamorphosis more strange
Than all his Books can vapour;'
'To what' (quoth 'squire) 'shall Ovid change?'
Quoth Sandys: 'To waste paper.'
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
1210:Every belief in the value and worthiness of life rests upon defective thinking; it is for this reason alone possible that sympathy with the general life and suffering of mankind is so imperfectly developed in the individual. Even exceptional men, who can think beyond their own personalities, do not have this general life in view, but isolated portions of it. If one is capable of fixing his observation upon exceptional cases, I mean upon highly endowed individuals and pure souled beings, if their development is taken as the true end of world-evolution and if joy be felt in their existence, then it is possible to believe in the value of life, because in that case the rest of humanity is overlooked: hence we have here defective thinking. So, too, it is even if all mankind be taken into consideration, and one species only of impulses (the less egoistic) brought under review and those, in consideration of the other impulses, exalted: then something could still be hoped of mankind in the mass and to that extent there could exist belief in the value of life: here, again, as a result of defective thinking. Whatever attitude, thus, one may assume, one is, as a result of this attitude, an exception among mankind. Now, the great majority of mankind endure life without any great protest, and believe, to this extent, in the value of existence, but that is because each individual decides and determines alone, and never comes out of his own personality like these exceptions: everything outside of the personal has no existence for them or at the utmost is observed as but a faint shadow. Consequently the value of life for the generality of mankind consists simply in the fact that the individual attaches more importance to himself than he does to the world. The great lack of imagination from which he suffers is responsible for his inability to enter into the feelings of beings other than himself, and hence his sympathy with their fate and suffering is of the slightest possible description. On the other hand, whosoever really could sympathise, necessarily doubts the value of life; were it possible for him to sum up and to feel in himself the total consciousness of mankind, he would collapse with a malediction against existence,—for mankind is, in the mass, without a goal, and hence man cannot find, in the contemplation of his whole course, anything to serve him as a mainstay and a comfort, but rather a reason to despair. If he looks beyond the things that immediately engage him to the final aimlessness of humanity, his own conduct assumes in his eyes the character of a frittering away. To feel oneself, however, as humanity (not alone as an individual) frittered away exactly as we see the stray leaves frittered away by nature, is a feeling transcending all feeling. But who is capable of it? Only a poet, certainly: and poets always know how to console themselves. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1211:The Supreme Court was beyond their constitutional power when they handed George W. Bush the victory in 2000 by ruling that if all the votes were counted in Florida, as that state’s supreme court had ordered, it would “cause irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush].” They were beyond their constitutional power every single time they struck down a law passed by Congress and signed by the president over the years. And most important, the Supreme Court was way beyond their constitutional authority every single time they created out of whole cloth new legal doctrines, such as “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, “privacy” in Roe v. Wade, or “corporations are people” in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. But in the fine tradition of John Marshall, today’s Supreme Court wants you to believe that they are the über-overlords of our nation. They can make George W. Bush president, without any appeal. They can make money into speech, they can turn corporations into people, and the rest of us have no say in it. And they’re wrong. It’s not what the Constitution says, and it’s not what most of our Founders said. Which raises the question: If the Supreme Court can’t decide what is and what isn’t constitutional, then what is its purpose? What’s it really supposed to be doing? The answer to that is laid out in the Constitution in plain black-and-white. It’s the first court where the nation goes for cases involving disputes about treaties, ambassadors, controversies between two or more states, between a state and citizen of another state, between citizens of different states, and between our country and foreign states. Read Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution—it’s all there. Not a word in there about “judicial supremacy” or “judicial review”—the supposed powers of the court to strike down (or write) laws by deciding what is and what isn’t constitutional. President Thomas Jefferson was pretty clear about that—as were most of the Founders—and the court didn’t start seriously deciding “constitutionality” until after all of them were dead. But back in the day, here’s what Jefferson had to say: The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves… When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity.177 Their elective capacity? That’s a fancy presidential-founder way of saying that the people can toss out on their butts any member of Congress or any president who behaves in a way that’s unconstitutional. The ultimate remedy is with the people—it’s the ballot box. If we don’t like the laws being passed, then we elect new legislators and a new president. It’s pretty simple. ~ Thom Hartmann, #NFDB
1212:To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place... It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses, whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. Now, there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewel was beaten - savagely, by someone who led exclusively with his left. And Tom Robinson now sits before you having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses... his RIGHT. I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man's life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say "guilt," gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She's committed no crime - she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now, what did she do? She tempted a *****. She was white, and she tempted a *****. She did something that, in our society, is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young ***** man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption... the evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all ***** men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is, in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable *****, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against TWO white people's! The defendant is not guilty - but somebody in this courtroom is. Now, gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system - that's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality! Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review, without passion, the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of GOD, do your duty. In the name of God, believe... Tom Robinson ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
1213:The forestland thickened at one point, and without warning it opened onto a road. Fading back behind a screen of ferns, I watched the traffic. It appeared I’d reached a major crossroads. A stone marker at the intersection indicated the Akaeriki road downhill, and to the north lay the town of Thoresk.
A town. Surely one anonymous female could lose herself in a town? And while she was at it, find some shelter?
Big raindrops started plopping in the leaves around me. The coming storm wouldn’t be warded by tree branches and leaves, that was for certain. Clutching my half-empty basket to my side, I started up the road, careful not to limp if anyone came into view from the opposite direction.
I saw a line of slow wagons up ahead, with a group of small children gamboling around them. I hurried my pace slightly so I would look like I belonged with them; I had nearly caught up when a deep thundering noise seemed to vibrate up from the ground.
“Cavalcade! Cavalcade!” a high childish voice shrieked.
The farmers clucked at their oxen and the wagons hulked and swung, metal frames creaking, over to one side. The children ran up the grassy bank beside the road, hopping and shrieking with excitement.
Feeling my knees go suddenly watery, I scrambled up the bank as well, then sat in the grass with my basket on my lap. I checked my kerchief surreptitiously and snatched my hand down as two banner-carrying outriders galloped into view around the bend I’d walked so shortly before.
Behind them a single rider cantered on a nervous white horse. The rider was short but strongly built. A gray beard, finicky mustache, and long hair marked him as a noble; his mouth and eyes were narrowed, whether in habit or in anger I didn’t know--but my instinctive reaction to him was fear.
He wore the plumed helm of a commander, and his battle tunic was brown velvet. He had passed by before I realized that I had very nearly come face-to-face with Baron Nenthar Debegri, Galdran Merindar’s former--and now present--commander.
Then behind him came row on row of soldiers, all formidably armed, riding three abreast. Dust and mud flew from the horses’ hooves, and the noise was enough to set the oxen bellowing in distress and pulling at their traces. Seven, eight, nine ridings--a full wing.
A full wing of warriors, all to search for me? I didn’t know whether to laugh or to faint in terror. So I just sat there numbly and watched them all ride by--a very strange kind of review.
As the end of the cavalcade at last drew nigh, the children were already skidding down the bank. My eyes, caught by a change in color, lifted. Instead of rows of brown-and-green battle gear, the last portion were in blue with black and white, their device three stars above a coronet. As my astonished mind registered that this was the Renselaeus device, my gaze was drawn to the single rider leading their formation.
A single rider on a dapple-gray. Tall in the saddle, long blond hair flying in the wind, hat so low it shadowed the upper portion of his face, the Marquis of Shevraeth rode by.
And as he drew abreast, his head lifted slightly, turned, and he stared straight into my eyes. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
1214:Studentdom, he felt, must pass its own Examinations and define its own Commencement--a slow, most painful process, made the more anguishing by bloody intelligences like the Bonifacists of Siegfrieder College. Yet however it seemed at times that men got nowhere, but only repeated class by class the mistakes of their predecessors, two crucial facts about them were at once their hope and the limitation of their possibility, so he believed. One was their historicity: the campus was young, the student race even younger, and by contrast with the whole of past time, the great collegiate cultures had been born only yesterday. The other had to do with comparative cyclology, a field of systematic speculation he could not review for me just then, but whose present relevance lay in the correspondency he held to obtain between the life-history of individuals and the history of studentdom in general. As the embryologists maintained that ontogeny repeats phylogeny, so, Max claimed, the race itself--and on a smaller scale, West-Campus culture--followed demonstrably--in capital letters, as it were, or slow motion--the life-pattern of its least new freshman. This was the basis of Spielman's Law--ontogeny repeats cosmogeny--and there was much more to it and to the science of cyclology whereof it was first principle. The important thing for now was that, by his calculations, West-Campus as a whole was in mid-adolescence...
'Look how we been acting,' he invited me, referring to intercollegiate political squabbles; 'the colleges are spoilt kids, and the whole University a mindless baby, ja? Okay: so weren't we all once, Enos Enoch too? And we got to admit that the University's a precocious kid. If the history of life on campus hadn't been so childish, we couldn't hope it'll reach maturity.' Studentdom had passed already, he asserted, from a disorganized, pre-literate infancy (of which Croaker was a modern representative, nothing ever being entirely lost) through a rather brilliant early childhood ('...ancient Lykeion, Remus, T'ang...') which formed its basic and somewhat contradictory character; it had undergone a period of naive general faith in parental authority (by which he meant early Founderism) and survived critical spells of disillusionment, skepticism, rationalism, willfulness, self-criticism, violence, disorientation, despair, and the like--all characteristic of pre-adolescence and adolescence, at least in their West-Campus form. I even recognized some of those stages in my own recent past; indeed, Max's description of the present state of West-Campus studentdom reminded me uncomfortably of my behavior in the Lady-Creamhair period: capricious, at odds with itself, perverse, hard to live with. Its schisms, as manifested in the Quiet Riot, had been aggravated and rendered dangerous by the access of unwonted power--as when, in the space of a few semesters, a boy finds himself suddenly muscular, deep-voiced, aware of his failings, proud of his strengths, capable of truly potent love and hatred--and on his own. What hope there was that such an adolescent would reach maturity (not to say Commencement) without destroying himself was precisely the hope of the University. ~ John Barth,#NFDB
1215:Study Guide for Chapter 1 The Way to Freedom Overview Everything around us operates on the principle of submission, and to the extent that submission is heeded, to the same extent that way is prospered. Submission is a choice toward life. Adam chose death, and we are born into this curse. Submission to God includes submission to delegated authority.* It is out of God’s love for us that He asks us to submit. Authority is and flows from God Himself, and the principle of submission to authority is eternal, sacred and foundational.* Where is your heart? Are you fighting, or are you surrendered? Adam’s curse is broken as we surrender and choose the way of the cross as Christ did.* Just as Christ manifests absolute submission and surrender, Satan manifests absolute rebellion.* God created us to depend on Him, and only what is done in His Spirit will last. Through the mystery of submission to authority, God is restoring creation back to innocence. When we submit, we become part of that work.* * These topics are developed more fully in later chapters. Reflection and Action 1. Reflect on your day. Write down some of the many different ways you saw the principle of submission to authority at work in nature, in society and in your personal life. How might your day have been different if the response in each of those cases was defying submission? What was the result of submission in each of those cases? 2. Note each time that the words “choice” or “choose” were used in this chapter. What are we choosing between? And what is the outcome of the choices made? In the Garden of Eden, what did the two trees represent? What was God’s purpose in allowing Adam and Eve to choose between them? Can you recall an incident recently in which you were faced with the same kind of choice? How did you respond? 3. Prayerfully review all of the Scripture passages related to submission within the Trinity itself. How does this glimpse into the very heart of God change the way you think about submission? Meditate on Isaiah 43:10–11. How would you explain to someone else the concept of God and authority? Why is this principle so important and holy? 4. It can be painful to admit, even to ourselves, that we may imitate Lucifer, rather than Christ, in our attitude toward authority. However, by allowing God to reveal truth to us, we are taking our first steps toward godliness. With that perspective, review these questions from the text and ask the Lord to speak to you through them in any way He chooses. 5. What are the reasons why we find it difficult to submit to authority? And how is it possible for us to remain in rebellion for years after having received Jesus as our Savior? Write down specific times you can look back and see how you remained in rebellion. How would you want to handle those times now? 6. The author writes: “Nothing will remain in eternity that is not of the Spirit.” Explain what this means to you and how it applies to your own ministry. 7. What does God want to accomplish through giving us the freedom to choose submission? Write down any changes in your thoughts and attitude toward submission as you’ve studied this chapter. Close your time by thanking God for His kindness to open your eyes to the things He showed you through this chapter. ~ K P Yohannan, #NFDB
1216:A Typical Description of an NDE (Near Death Experience)
I asked Ring to describe for me a typical NDE. He told me:
The first thing is a tremendous feeling of peace, like nothing else you have experienced. Most people say like never before and never again. People say [that it is] the peace that passes all understanding. Then there is the sense of bodily separation and sometimes the sense of actually being out of the body. There are studies that show that people can sometimes report veridically what is in their physical environment, e.g., the lint on the light fixtures above themselves. They could see in a three-hundred-sixty-degree panoramic vision. They had extraordinary acuity. Often when they went further into the experience, they went to a dark place that is sometimes described as a tunnel, but not always. They usually feel that there is a sense of motion; that they are moving through something that is vast almost beyond imagination. And yet they feel they don't have the freedom to go anywhere. They feel as if they were being propelled.
The extreme sense of motion often seems to be one of acceleration. Some describe that they have felt as if they were moving a the speed of light or faster. One NDEr described this as superluminal-moving beyond the speed of light with tremendous accelerated motion through a kind of cylindrical vortex, and then, in the distance, the person describes a dot of light that suddenly grows larger, more brilliant, and all encompassing.
Ring continued:
At this stage of the experience there is an encounter with light. It seems to be a living light exuding pure love, complete acceptance, and total understanding. The individual feels that he is made of that light, that he has always been there, and that he has stepped out of time and stepped into eternity. This feeling is accompanied by a sense of absolute perfection.
Being out of time introduces another aspect of the experience: a sense of destiny. Ring explained:
Then there is a panoramic light review in which you see everything that has ever happened to you in your life. Not [only] just what you have done but the effects of your actions on others, the effects of your thoughts on others. The whole thing is laid out for you without being judged but with a complete understanding of why things were the way they were in your life. The best metaphor I can suggest for this is: as if you were the character in someone else's novel. There would be one moment outside of time where you would have the perspective of the author of that novel, and you have a sense of omniscience about that character. Why he did the things that he did, why he had affected others, and so on. It is a profound moment outside of time when this realization occurs. You see the whole raison d'etre of your life. You may also see scenes or fragments of scenes of your life if you choose to go back to your body. In other words, it is not only that you have flashbacks but you also seem to have flash-forwards of events that will occur almost at though there is a kind of blueprint for your life. And it is up to you at that moment. You have free choice because it is often left to you whether to go back to your life or to leave it behind. The people we talk with of course always make the choice to go back or sometimes are sent back. ~ Fred Alan Wolf,#NFDB
1217:Speaking of debutantes,” Jake continued cautiously when Ian remained silent, “what about the one upstairs? Do you dislike her especially, or just on general principle?”
Ian walked over to the table and poured some Scotch into a glass. He took a swallow, shrugged, and said, “Miss Cameron was more inventive than some of her vapid little friends. She accosted me in a garden at a party.”
“I can see how bothersome that musta been,” Jake joked, “having someone like her, with a face that men dream about, tryin’ to seduce you, usin’ feminine wiles on you. Did they work?”
Slamming the glass down on the table, Ian said curtly, “They worked.” Coldly dismissing Elizabeth from his mind, he opened the deerskin case on the table, removed some papers he needed to review, and sat down in front of the fire.
Trying to suppress his avid curiosity, Jake waited a few minutes before asking, “Then what happened?”
Already engrossed in reading the documents in his hand, Ian said absently and without looking up, “I asked her to marry me; she sent me a note inviting me to meet her in the greenhouse; I went there; her brother barged in on us and informed me she was a countess, and that she was already betrothed.”
The topic thrust from his mind, Ian reached for the quill lying on the small table beside his chair and made a note in the margin of the contract.
“And?” Jake demanded avidly.
“And what?”
“And then what happened-after the brother barged in?”
“He took exception to my having contemplated marrying so far above myself and challenged me to a duel,” Ian replied in a preoccupied voice as he made another note on the contract.
“So what’s the girl doin’ here now?” Jake asked, scratching his head in bafflement over the doings of the Quality.
“Who the hell knows,” Ian murmured irritably. “Based on her behavior with me, my guess is she finally got caught in some sleezy affair or another, and her reputation’s beyond repair.”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
Ian expelled his breath in a long, irritated sigh and glanced at Jake with an expression that made it clear he was finished answering questions. “I assume,” he bit out, “that her family, recalling my absurd obsession with her two years ago, hoped I’d come up to scratch again and take her off their hands.”
“You think it’s got somethin’ to do with the old duke talking about you bein’ his natural grandson and wantin’ to make you his heir?” He waited expectantly, hoping for more information, but Ian ignored him, reading his documents. Left with no other choice and no prospect for further confidences, Jake picked up a candle, gathered up some blankets, and started for the barn. He paused at the door, struck by a sudden thought. “She said she didn’t send you any note about meetin’ her in the greenhouse.”
“She’s a liar and an excellent little actress,” Ian said icily, without taking his gaze from the papers. “Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get her out of here and off my hands.”
Something in Ian’s face made him ask, “Why the hurry? You afraid of fallin’ fer her wiles again?”
“Hardly.”
“Then you must be made of stone,” he teased. “That woman’s so beautiful she’d tempt any man who was alone with her for an hour-includin’ me, and you know I ain’t in the petticoat line at all.”
“Don’t let her catch you alone,” Ian replied mildly.
“I don’t think I’d mind.” Jake laughed as he left. ~ Judith McNaught,#NFDB
1218:A reflection on Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell knew I was not one of his devotees. I attended his famous “office hours” salon only a few times. Life Studies was not a book of central importance for me, though I respected it. I admired his writing, but not the way many of my Boston friends did. Among poets in his generation, poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Alan Dugan, and Allen Ginsberg meant more to me than Lowell’s. I think he probably sensed some of that.
To his credit, Lowell nevertheless was generous to me (as he was to many other young poets) just the same. In that generosity, and a kind of open, omnivorous curiosity, he was different from my dear teacher at Stanford, Yvor Winters. Like Lowell, Winters attracted followers—but Lowell seemed almost dismayed or a little bewildered by imitators; Winters seemed to want disciples: “Wintersians,” they were called.
A few years before I met Lowell, when I was still in California, I read his review of Winters’s Selected Poems. Lowell wrote that, for him, Winters’s poetry passed A. E. Housman’s test: he felt that if he recited it while he was shaving, he would cut himself. One thing Lowell and Winters shared, that I still revere in both of them, was a fiery devotion to the vocal essence of poetry: the work and interplay of sentences and lines, rhythm and pitch. The poetry in the sounds of the poetry, in a reader’s voice: neither page nor stage.
Winters criticizing the violence of Lowell’s enjambments, or Lowell admiring a poem in pentameter for its “drill-sergeant quality”: they shared that way of thinking, not matters of opinion but the matter itself, passionately engaged in the art and its vocal—call it “technical”—materials.
Lowell loved to talk about poetry and poems. His appetite for that kind of conversation seemed inexhaustible. It tended to be about historical poetry, mixed in with his contemporaries. When he asked you, what was Pope’s best work, it was as though he was talking about a living colleague . . . which in a way he was. He could be amusing about that same sort of thing. He described Julius Caesar’s entourage waiting in the street outside Cicero’s house while Caesar chatted up Cicero about writers.
“They talked about poetry,” said Lowell in his peculiar drawl. “Caesar asked Cicero what he thought of Jim Dickey.”
His considerable comic gift had to do with a humor of self and incongruity, rather than wit. More surreal than donnish. He had a memorable conversation with my daughter Caroline when she was six years old. A tall, bespectacled man with a fringe of long gray hair came into her living room, with a certain air.
“You look like somebody famous,” she said to him, “but I can’t remember who.”
“Do I?”
“Yes . . . now I remember!— Benjamin Franklin.”
“He was a terrible man, just awful.”
“Or no, I don’t mean Benjamin Franklin. I mean you look like a Christmas ornament my friend Heather made out of Play-Doh, that looked like Benjamin Franklin.”
That left Robert Lowell with nothing to do but repeat himself:
“Well, he was a terrible man.”
That silly conversation suggests the kind of social static or weirdness the man generated. It also happens to exemplify his peculiar largeness of mind . . . even, in a way, his engagement with the past. When he died, I realized that a large vacuum had appeared at the center of the world I knew. ~ Robert Pinsky,#NFDB
1219:It is a mistake to think of the expatriate as someone who abdicates, who withdraws and humbles himself, resigned to his miseries, his outcast state. On a closer look, he turns out to be ambitious, aggressive in his disappointments, his very acrimony qualified by his belligerence. The more we are dispossessed, the more intense our appetites and illusions become. I even discern some relation between misfortune and megalomania. The man who has lost everything preserves as a last resort the hope of glory, or of literary scandal. He consents to abandon everything, except his name. [ . . . ]
Let us say a man writes a novel which makes him, overnight, a celebrity. In it he recounts his sufferings. His compatriots in exile envy him: they too have suffered, perhaps more. And the man without a country becomes—or aspires to become—a novelist. The consequence: an accumulation of confusions, an inflation of horrors, of frissons that date. One cannot keep renewing Hell, whose very characteristic is monotony, or the face of exile either. Nothing in literature exasperates a reader so much as The Terrible; in life, it too is tainted with the obvious to rouse our interest. But our author persists; for the time being he buries his novel in a drawer and awaits his hour. The illusion of surprise, of a renown which eludes his grasp but on which he reckons, sustains him; he lives on unreality. Such, however, is the power of this illusion that if, for instance, he works in some factory, it is with the notion of being freed from it one day or another by a fame as sudden as it is inconceivable.
*
Equally tragic is the case of the poet. Walled up in his own language, he writes for his friends—for ten, for twenty persons at the most. His longing to be read is no less imperious than that of the impoverished novelist. At least he has the advantage over the latter of being able to get his verses published in the little émigré reviews which appear at the cost of almost indecent sacrifices and renunciations. Let us say such a man becomes—transforms himself—into an editor of such a review; to keep his publication alive he risks hunger, abstains from women, buries himself in a windowless room, imposes privations which confound and appall. Tuberculosis and masturbation, that is his fate.
No matter how scanty the number of émigrés, they form groups, not to protect their interests but to get up subscriptions, to bleed each other white in order to publish their regrets, their cries, their echoless appeals. One cannot conceive of a more heart rending form of the gratuitous.
That they are as good poets as they are bad prose writers is to be accounted for readily enough. Consider the literary production of any "minor" nation which has not been so childish as to make up a past for itself: the abundance of poetry is its most striking characteristic. Prose requires, for its development, a certain rigor, a differentiated social status, and a tradition: it is deliberate, constructed; poetry wells up: it is direct or else totally fabricated; the prerogative of cave men or aesthetes, it flourishes only on the near or far side of civilization, never at the center. Whereas prose demands a premeditated genius and a crystallized language, poetry is perfectly compatible with a barbarous genius and a formless language. To create a literature is to create a prose. ~ Emil M Cioran,#NFDB
1220:Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. In other words he is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasize this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kinds, he is there to influence people. He is not merely to influence a part of them; he is not only to influence their minds, not only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and to induce them to some kind of activity. He is there to deal with the whole person; and his preaching is meant to affect the whole person at the very centre of life. Preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again. Preaching, in other words, is a transaction between the preacher and the listener. It does something for the soul of man, for the whole of the person, the entire man; it deals with him in a vital and radical manner
I remember a remark made to me a few years back about some studies of mine on “The Sermon on the Mount.” I had deliberately published them in sermonic form. There were many who advised me not to do that on the grounds that people no longer like sermons. The days for sermons, I was told, were past, and I was pressed to turn my sermons into essays and to give them a different form. I was most interested therefore when this man to whom I was talking, and he is a very well-known Christian layman in Britain, said, "I like these studies of yours on “The Sermon on the Mount” because they speak to me.” Then he went on to say, “I have been recommended many books by learned preachers and professors but,” he said, “what I feel about those books is that it always seems to be professors writing to professors; they do not speak to me. But,” he said, “your stuff speaks to me.” Now he was an able man, and a man in a prominent position, but that is how he put it. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. He felt that so much that he had been recommended to read was very learned and very clever and scholarly, but as he put it, it was “professors writing to professors.” This is, I believe, is a most important point for us to bear in mind when we read sermons. I have referred already to the danger of giving the literary style too much prominence. I remember reading an article in a literary journal some five or six years ago which I thought was most illuminating because the writer was making the selfsame point in his own field. His case was that the trouble today is that far too often instead of getting true literature we tend to get “reviewers writing books for reviewers.” These men review one another's books, with the result that when they write, what they have in their mind too often is the reviewer and not the reading public to whom the book should be addressed, at any rate in the first instance. The same thing tends to happen in connection with preaching. This ruins preaching, which should always be a transaction between preacher and listener with something vital and living taking place. It is not the mere imparting of knowledge, there is something much bigger involved. The total person is engaged on both sides; and if we fail to realize this our preaching will be a failure. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones,#NFDB
1221:Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. In other words he is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasize this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kinds, he is there to influence people. He is not merely to influence a part of them; he is not only to influence their minds, not only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and to induce them to some kind of activity. He is there to deal with the whole person; and his preaching is meant to affect the whole person at the very centre of life. Preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again. Preaching, in other words, is a transaction between the preacher and the listener. It does something for the soul of man, for the whole of the person, the entire man; it deals with him in a vital and radical manner.
I remember a remark made to me a few years back about some studies of mine on “The Sermon on the Mount.” I had deliberately published them in sermonic form. There were many who advised me not to do that on the grounds that people no longer like sermons. The days for sermons, I was told, were past, and I was pressed to turn my sermons into essays and to give them a different form. I was most interested therefore when this man to whom I was talking, and he is a very well-known Christian layman in Britain, said, "I like these studies of yours on “The Sermon on the Mount” because they speak to me.” Then he went on to say, “I have been recommended many books by learned preachers and professors but,” he said, “what I feel about those books is that it always seems to be professors writing to professors; they do not speak to me. But,” he said, “your stuff speaks to me.” Now he was an able man, and a man in a prominent position, but that is how he put it. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. He felt that so much that he had been recommended to read was very learned and very clever and scholarly, but as he put it, it was “professors writing to professors.” This is, I believe, is a most important point for us to bear in mind when we read sermons. I have referred already to the danger of giving the literary style too much prominence. I remember reading an article in a literary journal some five or six years ago which I thought was most illuminating because the writer was making the selfsame point in his own field. His case was that the trouble today is that far too often instead of getting true literature we tend to get “reviewers writing books for reviewers.” These men review one another's books, with the result that when they write, what they have in their mind too often is the reviewer and not the reading public to whom the book should be addressed, at any rate in the first instance. The same thing tends to happen in connection with preaching. This ruins preaching, which should always be a transaction between preacher and listener with something vital and living taking place. It is not the mere imparting of knowledge, there is something much bigger involved. The total person is engaged on both sides; and if we fail to realize this our preaching will be a failure. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones,#NFDB
1222:AT 3:00 P.M. SHARP on August 23, 2012, Colonel Edgar escorted the two men into Mattis’s office on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. The sixty-one-year-old general was an intimidating figure in person: muscular and broad shouldered, with dark circles under his eyes that suggested a man who didn’t bother much with sleep. His office was decorated with the mementos of a long military career. Amid the flags, plaques, and coins, Shoemaker’s eyes rested briefly on a set of magnificent swords displayed in a glass cabinet. As they sat down in a wood-paneled conference room off to one side of the office, Mattis cut to the chase: “Guys, I’ve been trying to get this thing deployed for a year now. What’s going on?” Shoemaker had gone over everything again with Gutierrez and felt confident he was on solid ground. He spoke first, giving a brief overview of the issues raised by an in-theater test of the Theranos technology. Gutierrez took over from there and told the general his army colleague was correct in his interpretation of the law: the Theranos device was very much subject to regulation by the FDA. And since the agency hadn’t yet reviewed and approved it for commercial use, it could only be tested on human subjects under strict conditions set by an institutional review board. One of those conditions was that the test subjects give their informed consent—something that was notoriously hard to obtain in a war zone. Mattis was reluctant to give up. He wanted to know if they could suggest a way forward. As he’d put it to Elizabeth in an email a few months earlier, he was convinced her invention would be “a game-changer” for his men. Gutierrez and Shoemaker proposed a solution: a “limited objective experiment” using leftover de-identified blood samples from soldiers. It would obviate the need to obtain informed consent and it was the only type of study that could be put together as quickly as Mattis seemed to want to proceed. They agreed to pursue that course of action. Fifteen minutes after they’d walked in, Shoemaker and Gutierrez shook Mattis’s hand and walked out. Shoemaker was immensely relieved. All in all, Mattis had been gruff but reasonable and a workable compromise had been reached. The limited experiment agreed upon fell short of the more ambitious live field trial Mattis had had in mind. Theranos’s blood tests would not be used to inform the treatment of wounded soldiers. They would only be performed on leftover samples after the fact to see if their results matched the army’s regular testing methods. But it was something. Earlier in his career, Shoemaker had spent five years overseeing the development of diagnostic tests for biological threat agents and he would have given his left arm to get access to anonymized samples from service members in theater. The data generated from such testing could be very useful in supporting applications to the FDA. Yet, over the ensuing months, Theranos inexplicably failed to take advantage of the opportunity it was given. When General Mattis retired from the military in March 2013, the study using leftover de-identified samples hadn’t begun. When Colonel Edgar took on a new assignment as commander of the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases a few months later, it still hadn’t started. Theranos just couldn’t seem to get its act together. In July 2013, Lieutenant Colonel Shoemaker retired from the army. At his farewell ceremony, his Fort Detrick colleagues presented him with a “certificate of survival” for having the courage to stand up to Mattis in person and emerging from the encounter alive. They also gave him a T-shirt with the question, “What do you do after surviving a briefing with a 4 star?” written on the front. The answer could be found on the back: “Retire and sail off into the sunset. ~ John Carreyrou, #NFDB
1223:O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?
Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.
O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.
P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.
O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.
P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.
Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.
(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
1224:Se insta a los adventistas a que estudien el tema de la ordenación por su cuenta Ted N. C. Wilson, presidente de la Iglesia Adventista, hizo un llamado a los miembros para que estudien la Biblia en relación con la teología de la ordenación, mientras la iglesia sigue examinando el tema en el Concilio Anual del mes próximo y en el Congreso de la Asociación General del año próximo. [fotografía de archivo de ANN] El presidente Wilson y Stele, presidente de la comisión de investigación, piden que oren para que el Espíritu Santo guíe las deliberaciones September 24, 2014 | Silver Spring (Maryland, EstadosUnidos) | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review Ted N. C. Wilson, presidente de la Iglesia Adventista, hizo un llamado a los miembros de iglesia de todo el mundo para que lean con detenimiento lo que dice la Biblia sobre la ordenación de las mujeres y para que oren para que él y otros líderes de la iglesia sigan humildemente la conducción del Espíritu Santo respecto de ese tema. Los miembros de iglesia que desean comprender lo que enseña la Biblia sobre la ordenación de las mujeres no tienen razón de preocuparse por dónde empezar, dijo Artur A. Stele, quien coordinó un estudio sin precedentes de dos años sobre la ordenación de las mujeres, como presidente de la Comisión de Estudio sobre la Teología de la Ordenación establecida por la iglesia. Stele, quien se hizo eco del llamado de Wilson para que los miembros de iglesia lean la Biblia y oren sobre el tema, recomendó leer las tres breves declaraciones sobre el estado de la cuestión, que citan textos bíblicos y a Elena G. White, una de las fundadoras de la denominación, para apoyar cada una de las tres posiciones sobre la ordenación de las mujeres que surgieron durante la investigación de la comisión. Los resultados del estudio serán analizados en octubre próximo durante el Concilio Anual, uno de los principales encuentros de líderes de la iglesia. El Concilio Anual decidirá entonces si pedir o no a los casi 2600 delegados que voten sobre el tema en el Congreso de la Asociación General de julio del año próximo. Al hablar en una entrevista, Wilson instó a cada uno de los 18 millones de miembros de la iglesia a que lean con oración los materiales de estudio, disponibles en el sitio web de la Secretaría de Archivos, Estadísticas e Investigaciones de la iglesia. “Miren para ver de qué manera los trabajos y presentaciones se basaron en la comprensión de una clara lectura de las Escrituras”, dijo Wilson en su oficina de la sede central de la Iglesia Adventista en Silver Spring (Maryland, Estados Unidos). “El espíritu de profecía nos dice que tenemos que leer la Biblia simplemente como fue escrita”, dijo. “Animo a cada miembro y, por cierto, a cada representante al Concilio Anual y a los que serán delegados al Congreso de la Asociación General, a que revisen con oración esas presentaciones y entonces pidan al Espíritu Santo que les ayude a conocer la voluntad de Dios”. El espíritu de profecía se refiere a los escritos de Elena G. White, quien entre sus declaraciones sobre cómo leer la Biblia, escribió en El conflicto de los siglos (p. 584): “El lenguaje de la Biblia debe explicarse de acuerdo con su significado manifiesto, a no ser que se trate de un símbolo o figura”. “No tenemos el lujo de tener el Urim y el Tumim”, dijo Wilson, al referirse a las piedras que usaba el sumo sacerdote en Israel durante la era del Antiguo Testamento para conocer la voluntad de Dios. “Tampoco tenemos con nosotros un profeta vivo. Por ello, debemos apoyarnos en la conducción del Espíritu Santo en nuestro propio estudio de la Biblia al revisar las simples enseñanzas de las Escrituras”. Wilson dijo que los líderes de la iglesia mundial se habían comprometido a “un muy abierto, justo y cuidadoso proceso” sobre el tema de la ordenación de las mujeres. El presidente añadió que la pregunta fundamental que enfrenta la iglesia ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1225:Adventists urged to study women’s ordination for themselves Adventist Church President Ted N. C. Wilson appealed to members to study the Bible regarding the theology of ordination as the Church continues to examine the matter at Annual Council next month and at General Conference Session next year. Above, Wilson delivers the Sabbath sermon at Annual Council last year. [ANN file photo] President Wilson and TOSC chair Stele also ask for prayers for Holy Spirit to guide proceedings September 24, 2014 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review Ted N. C. Wilson, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, appealed to church members worldwide to earnestly read what the Bible says about women’s ordination and to pray that he and other church leaders humbly follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance on the matter. Church members wishing to understand what the Bible teaches on women’s ordination have no reason to worry about where to start, said Artur A. Stele, who oversaw an unprecedented, two-year study on women’s ordination as chair of the church-commissioned Theology of Ordination Study Committee. Stele, who echoed Wilson’s call for church members to read the Bible and pray on the issue, recommended reading the study’s three brief “Way Forward Statements,” which cite Bible texts and Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White to support each of the three positions on women’s ordination that emerged during the committee’s research. The results of the study will be discussed in October at the Annual Council, a major business meeting of church leaders. The Annual Council will then decide whether to ask the nearly 2,600 delegates of the world church to make a final call on women’s ordination in a vote at the General Conference Session next July. Wilson, speaking in an interview, urged each of the church’s 18 million members to prayerfully read the study materials, available on the website of the church’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research. "Look to see how the papers and presentations were based on an understanding of a clear reading of Scripture,” Wilson said in his office at General Conference headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. “The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that we are to take the Bible just as it reads,” he said. “And I would encourage each church member, and certainly each representative at the Annual Council and those who will be delegates to the General Conference Session, to prayerfully review those presentations and then ask the Holy Spirit to help them know God’s will.” The Spirit of Prophecy refers to the writings of White, who among her statements on how to read the Bible wrote in The Great Controversy (p. 598), “The language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning, unless a symbol or figure is employed.” “We don’t have the luxury of having the Urim and the Thummim,” Wilson said, in a nod to the stones that the Israelite high priest used in Old Testament times to learn God’s will. “Nor do we have a living prophet with us. So we must rely upon the Holy Spirit’s leading in our own Bible study as we review the plain teachings of Scripture.” He said world church leadership was committed to “a very open, fair, and careful process” on the issue of women’s ordination. Wilson added that the crucial question facing the church wasn’t whether women should be ordained but whether church members who disagreed with the final decision on ordination, whatever it might be, would be willing to set aside their differences to focus on the church’s 151-year mission: proclaiming Revelation 14 and the three angels’ messages that Jesus is coming soon. 3 Views on Women’s Ordination In an effort to better understand the Bible’s teaching on ordination, the church established the Theology of Ordination Study Committee, a group of 106 members commonly referred to by church leaders as TOSC. It was not organized ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1226:Dalla festa del nonno ai mulini ecco il catalogo delle spese folli Secondo Confcommercio si buttano 82 miliardi l’anno C’è chi ha uffici in Nicaragua e chi paga corsi di merletto Nella foto a sinistra le «mutande verdi» acquistate dall’ex governatore del Piemonte Cota. A destra Franco Fiorito, in passato capogruppo Pdl nel Lazio, condannato a 3 anni e 4 mesi di reclusione Mattia Feltri | 752 parole Nel cassetto è rimasto un vecchio servizio dell’Espresso, giugno 2000. Un po’ più di quattordici anni fa e comunque non era una primizia: vi si leggeva, già con un margine di scoramento, dei 410 milioni (di lire) spesi dal Molise per commissionare alla Pontificia fonderia Marinelli la campana col rintocco adatto alle celebrazioni giubilari, oppure dei 65 stanziati dal Lazio a sovvenzione della festa del nonno di Ariccia, dove qualche notorietà la si deve alla porchetta più che al vecchierello. Poi c’erano i dieci milioni della Calabria per la cipolla rossa di Tropea, e avanti così, ma non era soltanto un festival dello strano ma vero: la Sicilia tirò fuori quattro miliardi per la valorizzazione dei mulini a vento e sei per l’individuazione di spiagge libere. Da allora i quotidiani e i periodici e la tv d’inchiesta coprono gli spazi e i momenti di noia con servizi di questo tipo, che hanno il pregio di essere infallibili; in fondo sono il modo superpop di cogliere l’attimo carnevalesco e, attimo dopo attimo, di spiegare come le Regioni siano in grado di sprecare 82,3 miliardi di euro all’anno, secondo lo studio presentato a marzo da Confcommercio. Vi si dice, fra l’altro, che il Lazio ne butta oltre undici, la Campania dieci abbondanti e la Sicilia - record - è lì per toccare quota quattordici. Il mondo è pieno di resoconti di questa natura. Il sempreverde è l’articolo sulle sedi di rappresentanza delle Regioni, con l’aneddoto strepitoso delle ventuno sedi regionali a Bruxelles, tutte indispensabili a mantenere il filo diretto fra Bari e l’Ue, Cagliari e l’Ue, Genova e l’Ue; piccolo dettaglio: le Regioni sono ventuno, ma Trento e Bolzano ritennero doveroso farsi una sede per provincia. Ai tempi di Giulio Tremonti si venne a sapere, con molta fatica e qualche approssimazione, che queste sedi sono 178 sparse nel mondo, il Piemonte ne ha una in Nicaragua e un’altra a Minsk, il Veneto in India e in Vietnam, la Puglia in Albania, le Marche a Ekaterinburg, dove ci fu l’eccidio dei Romanov e altro non si sa. Ha provato a metterci mano anche Carlo Cottarelli, il commissario alla spending review, e gli raccontarono (ne scrisse il Fatto) di quel consigliere regionale della Basilicata che voleva aprire a Potenza un ufficio di rappresentanza della Regione, e nonostante la Regione Basilicata abbia sede a Potenza. Insomma, se c’era un affare su cui si raggiungeva l’unanimità della nazione, era questo: le Regioni sono il tombino dei nostri soldi. Eravamo andati a vedere le consulenze distribuite in splendida allegria, i consulenti piemontesi sulla qualità percepita dagli utenti delle reti ferroviarie, i consulenti friulani sulle biblioteche nel deserto della Mauritania e su un corso di merletto, quello umbro sul monitoraggio delle tv locali. Siamo andati a verificare che la Valle d’Aosta (Regione e altri enti locali) ancora lo scorso anno aveva 493 auto blu, una ogni 260 residenti, mentre il Molise ne aveva 368 (tre soltanto a Montenero di Bisaccia, il paese di Antonio Di Pietro) ed era l’unica Regione, insieme col Trentino, che nel 2013 aveva aumentato anziché diminuito il parco macchine. Nel settore, una specie di bibbia è il divertente libro di Mario Giordano (Spudorati, Mondadori) che al capitolo sulle Regioni racconta che la Lombardia ha tirato fuori 75 mila euro nell’osservazione degli scoiattoli e cifre varie nel sovvenzionamento della Fiera della Possenta di Ceresara, dell’International Melzo Film Festival, della festa Cià che gìrum, del gemellaggio Pero-Fuscaldo. E la Lomb ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1227:ahead of ICAO audit By Tarun Shukla | 527 words New Delhi: India's civil aviation regulator has decided to restructure its safety board and hire airline safety professionals ahead of an audit by the UN's aviation watchdog ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) announced its intent, and advertised the positions on its website. ICAO told the Indian regulator recently that it would come down to India to conduct an audit, its third in just over a decade, Mint reported on 12 February. Previous ICAO audits had highlighted the paucity of safety inspectors in DGCA. After its 2006 and 2012 audits, ICAO had placed the country in its list of 13 worst-performing nations. US regulator Federal Aviation Authority followed ICAO's 2012 audit with its own and downgraded India, effectively barring new flights to the US by Indian airlines. FAA is expected to visit India in the summer to review its downgrade. The result of the ICAO and FAA audits will have a bearing on the ability of existing Indian airlines to operate more flights to the US and some international destinations and on new airlines' ability to start flights to these destinations. The regulator plans to hire three directors of safety on short-term contracts to be part of the accident investigation board, according to the information on DGCA's website. This is first time the DGCA is hiring external staff for this board, which is critical to ascertain the reasoning for any crashes, misses or other safety related events in the country. These officers, the DGCA said on its website, must have at least 12 years of experience in aviation, specifically on the technical aspects, and have a degree in aeronautical engineering. DGCA has been asked by international regulators to hire at least 75 flight inspectors. It has only 51. India's private airlines offer better pay and perks to inspectors compared with DGCA. The aviation ministry told DGCA in January to speed up the recruitment and do whatever was necessary to get more inspectors on board, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. DGCA has also announced it will hire flight operations inspectors as consultants on a short-term basis for a period of one year with a fixed remuneration of `1.25 lakh per month. "There will be a review after six months and subsequent continuation will be decided on the basis of outcome of the review," DGCA said in its advertisement. The remuneration of `1.25 lakh is higher than the salary of many existing DGCA officers. In its 2006 audit, ICAO said it found that "a number of final reports of accident and serious incident investigations carried out by the DGCA were not sent to the (member) states concerned or to ICAO when it was applicable". DGCA had also "not established a voluntary incident reporting system to facilitate the collection of safety information that may not otherwise be captured by the state's mandatory incident reporting system". In response, DGCA "submitted a corrective action plan which was never implemented", said Mohan Ranganthan, an aviation safety analyst and former member of government appointed safety council, said of DGCA. He added that the regulator will be caught out this time. Restructuring DGCA is the key to better air safety, said former director general of civil aviation M.R. Sivaraman. Hotel industry growth is expected to strengthen to 9-11% in 2015-16: Icra By P.R. Sanjai | 304 words Mumbai: Rating agency Icra Ltd on Monday said Indian hotel industry revenue growth is expected to strengthen to 9-11% in 2015-16, driven by a modest increase in occupancy and small increase in rates. "Industry wide revenues are expected to grow by 5-8% in 2014-15. Over the next 12 months, Icra expects RevPAR (revenue per available room) to improve by 7-8% driven by up to 5% pickup in occupancies and 2-3% growth in average room rates (ARR)," Icra said. Further, margins are expected to remain largely flat for 2014-15 while ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1228:The Journey
Some of my friends (for friends I must suppose
All, who, not daring to appear my foes,
Feign great good-will, and not more full of spite
Than full of craft, under false colours fight)
Some of my friends (so lavishly I print)
As more in sorrow than in anger, hint
(Tho' that indeed will scarce admit a doubt)
That I shall run my stock of genius out,
My no great stock, and, publishing so fast,
Must needs become a bankrupt at the last.
Recover'd from the vanity of youth,
I feel, alas! this melancholy truth,
Thanks to each cordial, each advising friend,
And am, if not too late, resolv'd to mend,
Resolv'd to give some respite to my pen,
Apply myself once more to books and men,
View what is present, what is past review,
And my old stock exhausted, lay in new.
For twice six moons (let winds, turn'd porters, bear
This oath to Heav'n), for twice six moons, I swear,
No Muse shall tempt me with her siren lay,
Nor draw me from Improvement's thorny way;
Verse I abjure, nor will forgive that friend,
Who in my hearing shall a rhyme commend.
It cannot be--Whether I will, or no,
Such as they are, my thoughts in measure flow.
Convinc'd, determin'd, I in prose begin,
But ere I write one sentence, verse creeps in,
And taints me thro' and thro': by this good light,
In verse I talk by day, I dream by night;
If now and then I curse, my curses chime,
Nor can I pray, unless I pray in rhyme,
E'en now I err, in spite of common-sense,
And my confession doubles my offence.
Here is no lie, no gall, no art, no force;
Mean are the words, and such as come of course,
The subject not less simple than the lay;
A plain, unlabour'd Journey of a day.
Far from me now be ev'ry tuneful Maid,
241
I neither ask, nor can receive their aid.
Pegasus turn'd into a common hack,
Alone I jog, and keep the beaten track,
Nor would I have the Sisters of the Hill
Behold their bard in such a dishabille.
Absent, but only absent for a time,
Let them caress some dearer son of rhyme;
Let them, as far as decency permits,
Without suspicion, play the fool with wits,
'Gainst fools be guarded; 'tis a certain rule,
Wits are false things, there's danger in a fool.
Let them, tho' modest, Gray more modest woo;
Let them with Mason bleat, and bray, and coo;
Let them with Franklin, proud of some small Greek,
Make Sophocles disguis'd, in English speak;
Let them with Glover o'er Medea doze;
Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone's woes,
Whilst he, fine feeling creature, all in tears,
Melts, as they melt, and weeps with weeping peers;
Let them with simple Whitehead, taught to creep
Silent and soft, lay Fontenelle asleep;
Let them with Browne contrive, to vulgar trick,
To cure the dead, and make the living sick;
Let them in charity to Murphy give
Some old French piece, that he may steal and live;
Let them with antic Foote subscriptions get,
And advertise a Summer-house of Wit.
Thus, or in any better way they please,
With these great men, or with great men like these,
Let them their appetite for laughter feed;
I on my Journey all alone proceed.
If fashionable grown, and fond of pow'r,
With hum'rous Scots let them disport their hour:
Let them dance, fairy-like, round Ossian's tomb;
Let them forge lies, and histories for Hume;
Let them with Home, the very prince of verse,
Make something like a Tragedy in Erse;
Under dark Allegory's flimsy veil
Let them with Ogilvie spin out a tale
Of rueful length; Let them plain things obscure,
Debase what's truly rich, and what is poor
Make poorer still by jargon most uncouth;
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With ev'ry pert, prim prettiness of youth
Born of false Taste, with Fancy (like a child
Not knowing what it cries for) running wild,
With bloated style, by affectation taught,
With much false colouring, and little thought,
With phrases strange, and dialect decreed
By reason never to have pass'd the Tweed,
With words which Nature meant each other's foe,
Forc'd to compound whether they will or no;
With such materials let them, if they will,
To prove at once their pleasantry and skill,
Build up a bard to war 'gainst Common-Sense,
By way of compliment to Providence;
Let them with Armstrong, taking leave of Sense,
Read musty lectures on Benevolence,
Or con the pages of his gaping Day,
Where all his former fame was thrown away,
Where all but barren labour was forgot,
And the vain stiffness of a letter'd Scot;
Let them with Armstrong pass the term of light,
But not one hour of darkness; when the night
Suspends this mortal coil, when Memory wakes,
When for our past misdoings Conscience takes
A deep revenge, when by Reflection led,
She draws his curtain, and looks Comfort dead,
Let ev'ry Muse be gone; in vain he turns
And tries to pray for sleep; an Etna burns,
A more than Etna in his coward breast,
And Guilt, with vengeance arm'd, forbids him rest:
Tho' soft as plumage from young zephyr's wing,
His couch seems hard, and no relief can bring.
Ingratitude hath planted daggers there,
No good man can deserve, no brave man bear.
Thus, or in any better way they please,
With these great men, or with great men like these,
Let them their appetite for laughter feed
I on my Journey all alone proceed.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
1229:The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto Iii.
Preludes
I The Lover
He meets, by heavenly chance express,
The destined maid; some hidden hand
Unveils to him that loveliness
Which others cannot understand.
His merits in her presence grow,
To match the promise in her eyes,
And round her happy footsteps blow
The authentic airs of Paradise.
For joy of her he cannot sleep;
Her beauty haunts him all the night;
It melts his heart, it makes him weep
For wonder, worship, and delight.
O, paradox of love, he longs,
Most humble when he most aspires,
To suffer scorn and cruel wrongs
From her he honours and desires.
Her graces make him rich, and ask
No guerdon; this imperial style
Affronts him; he disdains to bask,
The pensioner of her priceless smile.
He prays for some hard thing to do,
Some work of fame and labour immense,
To stretch the languid bulk and thew
Of love's fresh-born magnipotence.
No smallest boon were bought too dear,
Though barter'd for his love-sick life;
Yet trusts he, with undaunted cheer,
To vanquish heaven, and call her Wife.
He notes how queens of sweetness still
Neglect their crowns, and stoop to mate;
How, self-consign'd with lavish will,
They ask but love proportionate;
How swift pursuit by small degrees,
Love's tactic, works like miracle;
How valour, clothed in courtesies,
Brings down the haughtiest citadel;
72
And therefore, though he merits not
To kiss the braid upon her skirt,
His hope, discouraged ne'er a jot,
Out-soars all possible desert.
II Love a Virtue
Strong passions mean weak will, and he
Who truly knows the strength and bliss
Which are in love, will own with me
No passion but a virtue 'tis.
Few hear my word; it soars above
The subtlest senses of the swarm
Of wretched things which know not love,
Their Psyche still a wingless worm.
Ice-cold seems heaven's noble glow
To spirits whose vital heat is hell;
And to corrupt hearts even so
The songs I sing, the tale I tell.
These cannot see the robes of white
In which I sing of love. Alack,
But darkness shows in heavenly light,
Though whiteness, in the dark, is black!
III Unthrift
Ah, wasteful woman, she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing man cannot choose but pay,
How has she cheapen'd paradise;
How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine,
Which, spent with due, respective thrift,
Had made brutes men, and men divine.
IV The Attainment
You love? That's high as you shall go;
For 'tis as true as Gospel text,
Not noble then is never so,
Either in this world or the next.
Honoria.
73
I
Grown weary with a week's exile
From those fair friends, I rode to see
The church-restorings; lounged awhile,
And met the Dean; was ask'd to tea,
And found their cousin, Frederick Graham,
At Honor's side. Was I concern'd,
If, when she sang, his colour came,
That mine, as with a buffet, burn'd?
A man to please a girl! thought I,
Retorting his forced smiles, the shrouds
Of wrath, so hid as she was by,
Sweet moon between her lighted clouds!
II
Whether this Cousin was the cause
I know not, but I seem'd to see,
The first time then, how fair she was,
How much the fairest of the three.
Each stopp'd to let the other go;
But, time-bound, he arose the first.
Stay'd he in Sarum long? If so
I hoped to see him at the Hurst.
No: he had call'd here, on his way
To Portsmouth, where the ‘Arrogant,’
His ship, was; he should leave next day,
For two years' cruise in the Levant.
II
Had love in her yet struck its germs?
I watch'd. Her farewell show'd me plain
She loved, on the majestic terms
That she should not be loved again.
And so her cousin, parting, felt.
Hope in his voice and eye was dead.
Compassion did my malice melt;
Then went I home to a restless bed.
I, who admired her too, could see
His infinite remorse at this
Great mystery, that she should be
So beautiful, yet not be his,
And, pitying, long'd to plead his part;
74
But scarce could tell, so strange my whim,
Whether the weight upon my heart
Was sorrow for myself or him.
IV
She was all mildness; yet 'twas writ
In all her grace, most legibly,
‘He that's for heaven itself unfit,
‘Let him not hope to merit me.’
And such a challenge, quite apart
From thoughts of love, humbled, and thus
To sweet repentance moved my heart,
And made me more magnanimous,
And led me to review my life,
Inquiring where in aught the least,
If question were of her for wife,
Ill might be mended, hope increas'd.
Not that I soar'd so far above
Myself, as this great hope to dare;
And yet I well foresaw that love
Might hope where reason must despair;
And, half-resenting the sweet pride
Which would not ask me to admire,
‘Oh,’ to my secret heart I sigh'd,
‘That I were worthy to desire!’
As drowsiness my brain reliev'd,
A shrill defiance of all to arms,
Shriek'd by the stable-cock, receiv'd
An angry answer from three farms.
And, then, I dream'd that I, her knight,
A clarion's haughty pathos heard,
And rode securely to the fight,
Cased in the scarf she had conferr'd;
And there, the bristling lists behind,
Saw many, and vanquish'd all I saw
Of her unnumber'd cousin-kind,
In Navy, Army, Church, and Law;
Smitten, the warriors somehow turn'd
To Sarum choristers, whose song,
75
Mix'd with celestial sorrow, yearn'd
With joy no memory can prolong;
And phantasms as absurd and sweet
Merged each in each in endless chace,
And everywhere I seem'd to meet
The haunting fairness of her face.
~ Coventry Patmore,#NFDB
1230:Can I, my friend, with thee condole?
Can I conceive the woes that try men,
When late repentance racks the soul
Ensnared into the toils of hymen?
Can I take part in such distress?
Poor martyr,most devoutly, "Yes!"
Thou weep'st because thy spouse has flown
To arms preferred before thine own;
A faithless wife,I grant the curse,
And yet, my friend, it might be worse!
Just hear another's tale of sorrow,
And, in comparing, comfort borrow!
What! dost thou think thyself undone,
Because thy rights are shared with one!
O, happy manbe more resigned,
My wife belongs to all mankind!
My wifeshe's found abroadat home;
But cross the Alps and she's at Rome;
Sail to the Balticthere you'll find her;
Lounge on the Boulevardskind and kinder:
In short, you've only just to drop
Where'er they sell the last new tale,
And, bound and lettered in the shop,
You'll find my lady up for sale!
She must her fair proportions render
To all whose praise can glory lend her;
Within the coach, on board the boat,
Let every pedant "take a note;"
Endure, for public approbation,
Each critic's "close investigation,"
And bravenay, court it as a flattery
Each spectacled Philistine's battery.
Just as it suits some scurvy carcase
In which she hails an Aristarchus,
Ready to fly with kindred souls,
O'er blooming flowers or burning coals,
To fame or shame, to shrine or gallows,
Let him but leadsublimely callous!
A Leipsic man(confound the wretch!)
Has made her topographic sketch,
A kind of map, as of a town,
Each point minutely dotted down;
Scarce to myself I dare to hint
What this dd fellow wants to print!
Thy wifehowe'er she slight the vows
Respects, at least, the name of spouse;
But mine to regions far too high
For that terrestrial name is carried;
My wife's "The famous Ninon!"I
"The gentleman that Ninon married!"
It galls you that you scarce are able
To stake a florin at the table
Confront the pit, or join the walk,
But straight all tongues begin to talk!
O that such luck could me befall,
Just to be talked about at all!
Behold me dwindling in my nook,
Edged at her left,and not a look!
A sort of rushlight of a life,
Put out by that great orbmy wife!
Scarce is the morning graybefore
Postman and porter crowd the door;
No premier has so dear a levee
She finds the mail-bag half its trade;
My Godthe parcels are so heavy!
And not a parcel carriage-paid!
But thenthe truth must be confessed
They're all so charmingly addressed:
Whate'er they cost, they well requite her
"To Madame Blank, the famous writer!"
Poor thing, she sleeps so soft! and yet
'Twere worth my life to spare her slumber;
"Madamefrom Jenathe Gazette
The Berlin Journalthe last number!"
Sudden she wakes; those eyes of blue
(Sweet eyes!) fall straighton the Review!
I by her sideall undetected,
While those cursed columns are inspected;
Loud squall the children overhead,
Still she reads on, till all is read:
At last she lays that darling by,
And asks"What makes the baby cry?"
Already now the toilet's care
Claims from her couch the restless fair;
The toilet's care!the glass has won
Just half a glance, and all is done!
A snappishpettish word or so
Warns the poor maid 'tis time to go:
Not at her toilet wait the Graces
Uncombed Erynnys takes their places;
So great a mind expands its scope
Far from the mean details ofsoap!
Now roll the coach-wheels to the muster
Now round my muse her votaries cluster;
Spruce Abbe MillefleursBaron Herman
The English Lord, who don't know German,
But all uncommonly well read
From matchless A to deathless Z!
Sneaks in the corner, shy and small,
A thing which men the husband call!
While every fop with flattery fires her,
Swears with what passion he admires her.
"'Passion!' 'admire!' and still you're dumb?"
Lord bless your soul, the worst's to come:
I'm forced to bow, as I'm a sinner,
And hopethe rogue will stay to dinner!
But oh, at dinner!there's the sting;
I see my cellar on the wing!
You know if Burgundy is dear?
Mine once emerged three times a year;
And now to wash these learned throttles,
In dozens disappear the bottles;
They well must drink who well do eat
(I've sunk a capital on meat).
Her immortality, I fear, a
Death-blow will prove to my Madeira;
It has given, alas! a mortal shock
To that old friendmy Steinberg hock!
If Faust had really any hand
In printing, I can understand
The fate which legends more than hint;
The devil take all hands that print!
And what my thanks for all?a pout
Sour looksdeep sighs; but what about?
About! O, that I well divine
That such a pearl should fall to swine
That such a literary ruby
Should grace the finger of a booby!
Spring comes;behold, sweet mead and lea
Nature's green splendor tapestries o'er;
Fresh blooms the flower, and buds the tree;
Larks singthe woodland wakes once more.
The woodland wakesbut not for her!
From Nature's self the charm has flown;
No more the Spring of earth can stir
The fond remembrance of our own!
The sweetest bird upon the bough
Has not one note of music now;
And, oh! how dull the grove's soft shade,
Where once(as lovers then)we strayed!
The nightingales have got no learning
Dull creatureshow can they inspire her?
The lilies are so undiscerning,
They never say"how they admire her!"
In all this jubilee of being,
Some subject for a point she's seeing
Some epigram(to be impartial,
Well turned)there may be worse in Martial!
But, hark! the goddess stoops to reason:
"The country now is quite in season,
I'll go!""What! to our country seat?"
"No!Travelling will be such a treat;
Pyrmont's extremely full, I hear;
But Carlsbad's quite the rage this year!"
Oh yes, she loves the rural Graces;
Nature is gayin watering-places!
Those pleasant spasour reigning passion
Where learned Dons meet folks of fashion;
Whereeach with each illustrious soul
Familiar as in Charon's boat,
All sorts of fame sit cheek-by-jowl,
Pearls in that stringthe table d'hote!
Where dames whom man has injuredfly,
To heal their wounds or to efface, them;
While others, with the waters, try
A course of flirting,just to brace them!
Well, there (O man, how light thy woes
Compared with minethou need'st must see!)
My wife, undaunted, greatly goes
And leaves the orphans (seven!!!) to me!
O, wherefore art thou flown so soon,
Thou first fair yearLove's honeymoon!
All, dream too exquisite for life!
Home's goddessin the name of wife!
Reared by each graceyet but to be
Man's household Anadyomene!
With mind from which the sunbeams fall,
Rejoice while pervading all;
Frank in the temper pleased to please
Soft in the feeling waked with ease.
So broke, as native of the skies,
The heart-enthraller on my eyes;
So saw I, like a morn of May,
The playmate given to glad my way;
With eyes that more than lips bespoke,
Eyes whencesweet words"I love thee!" broke!
SoAh, what transports then were mine!
I led the bride before the shrine!
And saw the future years revealed,
Glassed on my hopeone blooming field!
More wide, and widening more, were given
The angel-gates disclosing heaven;
Round us the lovely, mirthful troop
Of children cameyet still to me
The loveliestmerriest of the group
The happy mother seemed to be!
Mine, by the bonds that bind us more
Than all the oaths the priest before;
Mine, by the concord of content,
When heart with heart is music-blent;
When, as sweet sounds in unison,
Two lives harmonious melt in one!
Whensudden (O the villain!)came
Upon the scene a mind profound!
A bel esprit, who whispered "Fame,"
And shook my card-house to the ground.
What have I now instead of all
The Eden lost of hearth and hall?
What comforts for the heaven bereft?
What of the younger angel's left?
A sort of intellectual mule,
Man's stubborn mind in woman's shape,
Too hard to love, too frail to rule
A sage engrafted on an ape!
To what she calls the realm of mind,
She leaves that throne, her sex, to crawl,
The cestus and the charm resigned
A public gaping-show to all!
She blots from beauty's golden book
A name 'mid nature's choicest few,
To gain the glory of a nook
In Doctor Dunderhead's Review.
~ Friedrich Schiller, The Celebrated Woman - An Epistle By A Married Man
,#NFDB
1231:Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork
(This man's-flesh he hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
To coop up and keep down on earth a space
That puff of vapour from his mouth, man's soul)
To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,
Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,
Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks
Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,
Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip
Back and rejoin its source before the term,
And aptest in contrivance (under God)
To baffle it by deftly stopping such:
The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home
Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)
Three samples of true snakestonerarer still,
One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)
And writeth now the twenty-second time.
My journeyings were brought to Jericho;
Thus I resume. Who studious in our art
Shall count a little labour unrepaid?
I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone
On many a flinty furlong of this land.
Also, the country-side is all on fire
With rumours of a marching hitherward:
Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son.
A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;
Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:
I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.
Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,
And once a town declared me for a spy;
But at the end, I reach Jerusalem,
Since this poor covert where I pass the night,
This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence
A man with plague-sores at the third degree
Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!
'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,
To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip
And share with thee whatever Jewry yields
A viscid choler is observable
In tertians, I was nearly bold to say;
And falling-sickness hath a happier cure
Than our school wots of: there's a spider here
Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,
Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back;
Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind,
The Syrian runagate I trust this to?
His service payeth me a sublimate
Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.
Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn,
There set in order my experiences,
Gather what most deserves, and give thee all
Or I might add, Judea's gum-tragacanth
Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,
Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry,
In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease
Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy
Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar
But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.
Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully,
Protesteth his devotion is my price
Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?
I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,
What set me off a-writing first of all.
An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!
For, be it this town's barrennessor else
The Man had something in the look of him
His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth.
So, pardon if(lest presently I lose
In the great press of novelty at hand
The care and pains this somehow stole from me)
I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,
Almost in sightfor, wilt thou have the truth?
The very man is gone from me but now,
Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.
Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!
'Tis but a case of maniasubinduced
By epilepsy, at the turning-point
Of trance prolonged unduly some three days:
When, by the exhibition of some drug
Or spell, exorcization, stroke of art
Unknown to me and which 'twere well to know,
The evil thing out-breaking all at once
Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,
But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide,
Making a clear house of it too suddenly,
The first conceit that entered might inscribe
Whatever it was minded on the wall
So plainly at that vantage, as it were,
(First come, first served) that nothing subsequent
Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls
The just-returned and new-established soul
Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart
That henceforth she will read or these or none.
And firstthe man's own firm conviction rests
That he was dead (in fact they buried him)
That he was dead and then restored to life
By a Nazarene physician of his tribe:
'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise," and he did rise.
"Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry.
Not so this figment!not, that such a fume,
Instead of giving way to time and health,
Should eat itself into the life of life,
As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!
For see, how he takes up the after-life.
The manit is one Lazarus a Jew,
Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,
The body's habit wholly laudable,
As much, indeed, beyond the common health
As he were made and put aside to show.
Think, could we penetrate by any drug
And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,
And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep!
Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?
This grown man eyes the world now like a child.
Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,
Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,
To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,
Now sharply, now with sorrow,told the case,
He listened not except I spoke to him,
But folded his two hands and let them talk,
Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.
And that's a sample how his years must go.
Look, if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,
Should find a treasure,can he use the same
With straitened habits and with tastes starved small,
And take at once to his impoverished brain
The sudden element that changes things,
That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand
And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?
Is he not such an one as moves to mirth
Warily parsimonious, when no need,
Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?
All prudent counsel as to what befits
The golden mean, is lost on such an one
The man's fantastic will is the man's law.
So herewe call the treasure knowledge, say,
Increased beyond the fleshly faculty
Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,
Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven:
The man is witless of the size, the sum,
The value in proportion of all things,
Or whether it be little or be much.
Discourse to him of prodigious armaments
Assembled to besiege his city now,
And of the passing of a mule with gourds
'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,
Speak of some trifling facthe will gaze rapt
With stupor at its very littleness,
(Far as I see) as if in that indeed
He caught prodigious import, whole results;
And so will turn to us the bystanders
In ever the same stupor (note this point)
That we too see not with his opened eyes.
Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,
Preposterously, at cross purposes.
Should his child sicken unto death,why, look
For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,
Or pretermission of the daily craft!
While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child
At play or in the school or laid asleep,
Will startle him to an agony of fear,
Exasperation, just as like. Demand
The reason why" `tis but a word," object
"A gesture"he regards thee as our lord
Who lived there in the pyramid alone
Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,
We both would unadvisedly recite
Some charm's beginning, from that book of his,
Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst
All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.
Thou and the child have each a veil alike
Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both
Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match
Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know!
He holds on firmly to some thread of life
(It is the life to lead perforcedly)
Which runs across some vast distracting orb
Of glory on either side that meagre thread,
Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet
The spiritual life around the earthly life:
The law of that is known to him as this,
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.
So is the man perplext with impulses
Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,
Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,
And not along, this black thread through the blaze
"It should be" baulked by "here it cannot be."
And oft the man's soul springs into his face
As if he saw again and heard again
His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise.
Something, a word, a tick of the blood within
Admonishes: then back he sinks at once
To ashes, who was very fire before,
In sedulous recurrence to his trade
Whereby he earneth him the daily bread;
And studiously the humbler for that pride,
Professedly the faultier that he knows
God's secret, while he holds the thread of life.
Indeed the especial marking of the man
Is prone submission to the heavenly will
Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.
'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last
For that same death which must restore his being
To equilibrium, body loosening soul
Divorced even now by premature full growth:
He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live
So long as God please, and just how God please.
He even seeketh not to please God more
(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.
Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach
The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be,
Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do:
How can he give his neighbour the real ground,
His own conviction? Ardent as he is
Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old
"Be it as God please" reassureth him.
I probed the sore as thy disciple should:
"How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness
Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march
To stamp out like a little spark thy town,
Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?"
He merely looked with his large eyes on me.
The man is apathetic, you deduce?
Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,
Able and weak, affects the very brutes
And birdshow say I? flowers of the field
As a wise workman recognizes tools
In a master's workshop, loving what they make.
Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:
Only impatient, let him do his best,
At ignorance and carelessness and sin
An indignation which is promptly curbed:
As when in certain travels I have feigned
To be an ignoramus in our art
According to some preconceived design,
And happed to hear the land's practitioners,
Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,
Prattle fantastically on disease,
Its cause and cureand I must hold my peace!
Thou wilt objectwhy have I not ere this
Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,
Conferring with the frankness that befits?
Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech
Perished in a tumult many years ago,
Accused,our learning's fate,of wizardry,
Rebellion, to the setting up a rule
And creed prodigious as described to me.
His death, which happened when the earthquake fell
(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss
To occult learning in our lord the sage
Who lived there in the pyramid alone)
Was wrought by the mad peoplethat's their wont!
On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,
To his tried virtue, for miraculous help
How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way!
The other imputations must be lies:
But take one, though I loathe to give it thee,
In mere respect for any good man's fame.
(And after all, our patient Lazarus
Is stark mad; should we count on what he says?
Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech
'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.)
This man so cured regards the curer, then
AsGod forgive me! who but God himself,
Creator and sustainer of the world,
That came and dwelt in flesh on 't awhile!
'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,
Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,
Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,
And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat,
And must have so avouched himself, in fact,
In hearing of this very Lazarus
Who saithbut why all this of what he saith?
Why write of trivial matters, things of price
Calling at every moment for remark?
I noticed on the margin of a pool
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!
Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!
Nor I myself discern in what is writ
Good cause for the peculiar interest
And awe indeed this man has touched me with.
Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness
Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus:
I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills
Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came
A moon made like a face with certain spots
Multiform, manifold, and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware,
The man and I. I send thee what is writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous Syrianhe may lose,
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends
For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;
Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!
The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
The madman saith He said so: it is strange.
NOTES
Form:
unrhyming
1.
Karshish, the Arab physician, and his friend
Abib are the creatures of the poet's imagination\; the time
is some forty years after the raising of Lazarus (see note
on line 28 below). For the story of Lazarus, see John 11: 1--44.
The meaning of Karshish's name in Arabic is paraphrased
in "picker-up of learning's crumbs."
20-1.
Karshish numbers his regular letters to Abib to provide
a check on their arrival. This letter is the twenty-second\; in the
twenty-first he had brought the account of his journeyings up
to his arrival at Jericho.
28.
It was Titus who besieged and captured Jernsalem in
A.D. 70\; he was emperor, 79-81\; Vespasian, his father, was
emperor, 70-79 A.D.
36.
Bethany: "Bethany, the town of Mary and his sister Martha"
(John 11: 1).
42.
choler: in its original sense, bile. Browning has Karshish
think in terms of the old physiology of "humours." Karshish
hopes that he may have found a way of diagnosing fever from
the consistency of the blood when he phlebotomises the patient.
43.
tertians: fevers which recur every other day\; i.e. on every third
day in the inclusive Roman way of counting.
50.
sublimate: in old-fashioned chemistry, the name for compounds
made by heating bodies to a vapour and then allowing this to condense.
55.
gum-tragacanth: a gum produced by certain thorny shrubs in
Asia Minor and Persia.
57.
Porphyry: a sort of stone used for the manufacture of vases, etc.\;
here used by metonymy for the mortar made out of it.
58.
scalp-disease: undoubtedly alopicia (from which Chaucer's
Pardoner suffered), which has a connection with leprosy.
82.
Exhibition is the old term for "administration" of a remedy.
89.
conceit: here used in the early sense of "idea, concept, fancy."
96.
The whole passage from line 79 is Karshish's attempt to find an
explanation in terms of a mechanist psychology for the fixed idea in Lazarus' mind.
100.
Nazarene: Christ: see Matthew 2: 23.
103.
fume: used here as a derogatory term for Lazarus' idea that he has
been restored to life.
106.
saffron: a drug derived from a plant of the same name (Crocus
sativus), formerly much used both as a medicine and as a dye.
109.
sanguine: again part of the terminology of humours. The "sanguine"
type was not, like the "melancholic," given to delusions and attacks of
fancy--this makes Lazarus' case still more strange.
110.
laudable: another technical medical term here, suggesting perfect health.
146-47.
See lines 26-28 above and note.
177.
Greek fire: an explosive compound, the nearest approach to
gunpowder known to the ancients.
184.
To Lazarus, who now sees with a knowledge far beyond the human,
the spiritual or moral law is as clear and certain as the physical.
Compare A Death in the Desert, 251-298.
228.
affects: in the sense of "shows affection for."
251.
Karshish uses "prodigious" here in a derogatory sense.
252.
when the earthquake fell. "And behold the veil of the temple was
rent in twain from the top to the bottom\; and the earth did quake, and
the rocks were rent" (Matthew 27: 51).
265.
leech: old-fashioned word for physician.
304-11.
Compare the passage in Saul, 300-12.
~ Robert Browning, An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar
,#NFDB
1232:The Conference
Grace said in form, which sceptics must agree,
When they are told that grace was said by me;
The servants gone to break the scurvy jest
On the proud landlord, and his threadbare guest;
'The King' gone round, my lady too withdrawn;
My lord, in usual taste, began to yawn,
And, lolling backward in his elbow-chair,
With an insipid kind of stupid stare,
Picking his teeth, twirling his seals about-Churchill, you have a poem coming out:
You've my best wishes; but I really fear
Your Muse, in general, is too severe;
Her spirit seems her interest to oppose,
And where she makes one friend, makes twenty foes.
_C_. Your lordship's fears are just; I feel their force,
But only feel it as a thing of course.
The man whose hardy spirit shall engage
To lash, the vices of a guilty age,
At his first setting forward ought to know
That every rogue he meets must be his foe;
That the rude breath of satire will provoke
Many who feel, and more who fear the stroke.
But shall the partial rage of selfish men
From stubborn Justice wrench the righteous pen?
Or shall I not my settled course pursue,
Because my foes are foes to Virtue too?
_L_. What is this boasted Virtue, taught in schools,
And idly drawn from antiquated rules?
What is her use? Point out one wholesome end.
Will she hurt foes, or can she make a friend?
When from long fasts fierce appetites arise,
Can this same Virtue stifle Nature's cries?
Can she the pittance of a meal afford,
Or bid thee welcome to one great man's board?
When northern winds the rough December arm
With frost and snow, can Virtue keep thee warm?
Canst thou dismiss the hard unfeeling dun
Barely by saying, thou art Virtue's son?
Or by base blundering statesmen sent to jail,
128
Will Mansfield take this Virtue for thy bail?
Believe it not, the name is in disgrace;
Virtue and Temple now are out of place.
Quit then this meteor, whose delusive ray
Prom wealth and honour leads thee far astray.
True virtue means--let Reason use her eyes-Nothing with fools, and interest with the wise.
Wouldst thou be great, her patronage disclaim,
Nor madly triumph in so mean a name:
Let nobler wreaths thy happy brows adorn,
And leave to Virtue poverty and scorn.
Let Prudence be thy guide; who doth not know
How seldom Prudence can with Virtue go?
To be successful try thy utmost force,
And Virtue follows as a thing of course.
Hirco--who knows not Hirco?--stains the bed
Of that kind master who first gave him bread;
Scatters the seeds of discord through the land,
Breaks every public, every private band;
Beholds with joy a trusting friend undone;
Betrays a brother, and would cheat a son:
What mortal in his senses can endure
The name of Hirco? for the wretch is poor!
Let him hang, drown, starve, on a dunghill rot,
By all detested live, and die forgot;
Let him--a poor return--in every breath
Feel all Death's pains, yet be whole years in death,
Is now the general cry we all pursue.
Let Fortune change, and Prudence changes too;
Supple and pliant, a new system feels,
Throws up her cap, and spaniels at his heels:
Long live great Hirco, cries, by interest taught,
And let his foes, though I prove one, be nought.
_C_. Peace to such men, if such men can have peace;
Let their possessions, let their state increase;
Let their base services in courts strike root,
And in the season bring forth golden fruit.
I envy not; let those who have the will,
And, with so little spirit, so much skill,
With such vile instruments their fortunes carve;
Rogues may grow fat, an honest man dares starve.
_L_. These stale conceits thrown off, let us advance
129
For once to real life, and quit romance.
Starve! pretty talking! but I fain would view
That man, that honest man, would do it too.
Hence to yon mountain which outbraves the sky,
And dart from pole to pole thy strengthen'd eye,
Through all that space you shall not view one man,
Not one, who dares to act on such a plan.
Cowards in calms will say, what in a storm
The brave will tremble at, and not perform.
Thine be the proof, and, spite of all you've said,
You'd give your honour for a crust of bread.
_C_. What proof might do, what hunger might effect,
What famish'd Nature, looking with neglect
On all she once held dear; what fear, at strife
With fainting virtue for the means of life,
Might make this coward flesh, in love with breath,
Shuddering at pain, and shrinking back from death,
In treason to my soul, descend to boar,
Trusting to fate, I neither know nor care.
Once,--at this hour those wounds afresh I feel,
Which, nor prosperity, nor time, can heal;
Those wounds which Fate severely hath decreed,
Mention'd or thought of, must for ever bleed;
Those wounds which humbled all that pride of man,
Which brings such mighty aid to Virtue's plan-Once, awed by Fortune's most oppressive frown,
By legal rapine to the earth bow'd clown,
My credit at last gasp, my state undone,
Trembling to meet the shock I could not shun,
Virtue gave ground, and blank despair prevail'd;
Sinking beneath the storm, my spirits fail'd
Like Peter's faith, till one, a friend indeed-May all distress find such in time of need!-One kind good man, in act, in word, in thought,
By Virtue guided, and by Wisdom taught,
Image of Him whom Christians should adore,
Stretch'd forth his hand, and brought me safe to shore.
Since, by good fortune into notice raised,
And for some little merit largely praised,
Indulged in swerving from prudential rules,
Hated by rogues, and not beloved by fools;
Placed above want, shall abject thirst of wealth,
130
So fiercely war 'gainst my soul's dearest health,
That, as a boon, I should base shackles crave,
And, born to freedom, make myself a slave?
That I should in the train of those appear,
Whom Honour cannot love, nor Manhood fear?
That I no longer skulk from street to street,
Afraid lest duns assail, and bailiffs meet;
That I from place to place this carcase bear;
Walk forth at large, and wander free as air;
That I no longer dread the awkward friend.
Whose very obligations must offend;
Nor, all too froward, with impatience burn
At suffering favours which I can't return;
That, from dependence and from pride secure,
I am not placed so high to scorn the poor,
Nor yet so low that I my lord should fear,
Or hesitate to give him sneer for sneer;
That, whilst sage Prudence my pursuits confirms,
I can enjoy the world on equal terms;
That, kind to others, to myself most true,
Feeling no want, I comfort those who do,
And, with the will, have power to aid distress:
These, and what other blessings I possess,
From the indulgence of the public rise,
All private patronage my soul defies.
By candour more inclined to save, than damn,
A generous Public made me what I am.
All that I have, they gave; just Memory bears
The grateful stamp, and what I am is theirs.
_L_. To feign a red-hot zeal for Freedom's cause,
To mouth aloud for liberties and laws,
For public good to bellow all abroad,
Serves well the purposes of private fraud.
Prudence, by public good intends her own;
If you mean otherwise, you stand alone.
What do we mean by country and by court?
What is it to oppose? what to support?
Mere words of course; and what is more absurd
Than to pay homage to an empty word?
Majors and minors differ but in name;
Patriots and ministers are much the same;
The only difference, after all their rout,
131
Is, that the one is in, the other out.
Explore the dark recesses of the mind,
In the soul's honest volume read mankind,
And own, in wise and simple, great and small,
The same grand leading principle in all.
Whate'er we talk of wisdom to the wise,
Of goodness to the good, of public ties
Which to our country link, of private bands
Which claim most dear attention at our hands;
For parent and for child, for wife and friend,
Our first great mover, and our last great end
Is one, and, by whatever name we call
The ruling tyrant, Self is all in all.
This, which unwilling Faction shall admit,
Guided in different ways a Bute and Pitt;
Made tyrants break, made kings observe the law;
And gave the world a Stuart and Nassau.
Hath Nature (strange and wild conceit of pride!)
Distinguished thee from all her sons beside?
Doth virtue in thy bosom brighter glow,
Or from a spring more pure doth action flow?
Is not thy soul bound with those very chains
Which shackle us? or is that Self, which reigns
O'er kings and beggars, which in all we see
Most strong and sovereign, only weak in thee?
Fond man, believe it not; experience tells
'Tis not thy virtue, but thy pride rebels.
Think, (and for once lay by thy lawless pen)
Think, and confess thyself like other men;
Think but one hour, and, to thy conscience led
By Reason's hand, bow down and hang thy head:
Think on thy private life, recall thy youth,
View thyself now, and own, with strictest truth,
That Self hath drawn thee from fair Virtue's way
Farther than Folly would have dared to stray;
And that the talents liberal Nature gave,
To make thee free, have made thee more a slave.
Quit then, in prudence quit, that idle train
Of toys, which have so long abused thy brain.
And captive led thy powers; with boundless will
Let Self maintain her state and empire still;
But let her, with more worthy objects caught,
132
Strain all the faculties and force of thought
To things of higher daring; let her range
Through better pastures, and learn how to change;
Let her, no longer to weak Faction tied,
Wisely revolt, and join our stronger side.
_C_. Ah! what, my lord, hath private life to do
With things of public nature? Why to view
Would you thus cruelly those scenes unfold
Which, without pain and horror to behold,
Must speak me something more or less than man,
Which friends may pardon, but I never can?
Look back! a thought which borders on despair,
Which human nature must, yet cannot bear.
'Tis not the babbling of a busy world,
Where praise and censure are at random hurl'd,
Which can the meanest of my thoughts control,
Or shake one settled purpose of my soul;
Free and at large might their wild curses roam,
If all, if all, alas! were well at home.
No--'tis the tale which angry Conscience tells,
When she with more than tragic horror swells
Each circumstance of guilt; when, stern but true,
She brings bad actions forth into review;
And like the dread handwriting on the wall,
Bids late Remorse awake at Reason's call;
Arm'd at all points, bids scorpion Vengeance pass,
And to the mind holds up Reflection's glass,-The mind which, starting, heaves the heartfelt groan,
And hates that form she knows to be her own.
Enough of this,--let private sorrows rest,-As to the public, I dare stand the test;
Dare proudly boast, I feel no wish above
The good of England, and my country's love.
Stranger to party-rage, by Reason's voice,
Unerring guide! directed in my choice,
Not all the tyrant powers of earth combined,
No, nor of hell, shall make me change my mind.
What! herd with men my honest soul disdains,
Men who, with servile zeal, are forging chains
For Freedom's neck, and lend a helping hand
To spread destruction o'er my native land?
What! shall I not, e'en to my latest breath,
133
In the full face of danger and of death,
Exert that little strength which Nature gave,
And boldly stem, or perish in the wave?
_L_. When I look backward for some fifty years,
And see protesting patriots turn'd to peers;
Hear men, most loose, for decency declaim,
And talk of character, without a name;
See infidels assert the cause of God,
And meek divines wield Persecution's rod;
See men transferred to brutes, and brutes to men;
See Whitehead take a place, Ralph change his pen;
I mock the zeal, and deem the men in sport,
Who rail at ministers, and curse a court.
Thee, haughty as thou art, and proud in rhyme,
Shall some preferment, offer'd at a time
When Virtue sleeps, some sacrifice to Pride,
Or some fair victim, move to change thy side.
Thee shall these eyes behold, to health restored,
Using, as Prudence bids, bold Satire's sword,
Galling thy present friends, and praising those
Whom now thy frenzy holds thy greatest foes.
_C_. May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?)
Be born a Whitehead, and baptized a Paul;
May I (though to his service deeply tied
By sacred oaths, and now by will allied),
With false, feign'd zeal an injured God defend,
And use his name for some base private end;
May I (that thought bids double horrors roll
O'er my sick spirits, and unmans my soul)
Ruin the virtue which I held most dear,
And still must hold; may I, through abject fear,
Betray my friend; may to succeeding times,
Engraved on plates of adamant, my crimes
Stand blazing forth, whilst, mark'd with envious blot,
Each little act of virtue is forgot;
Of all those evils which, to stamp men cursed,
Hell keeps in store for vengeance, may the worst
Light on my head; and in my day of woe,
To make the cup of bitterness o'erflow,
May I be scorn'd by every man of worth,
Wander, like Cain, a vagabond on earth;
Bearing about a hell in my own mind,
134
Or be to Scotland for my life confined;
If I am one among the many known
Whom Shelburne fled, and Calcraft blush'd to own.
_L_. Do you reflect what men you make your foes?
_C_. I do, and that's the reason I oppose.
Friends I have made, whom Envy must commend,
But not one foe whom I would wish a friend.
What if ten thousand Butes and Hollands bawl?
One Wilkes had made a large amends for all.
'Tis not the title, whether handed down
From age to age, or flowing from the crown
In copious streams, on recent men, who came
From stems unknown, and sires without a name:
Tis not the star which our great Edward gave
To mark the virtuous, and reward the brave,
Blazing without, whilst a base heart within
Is rotten to the core with filth and sin;
'Tis not the tinsel grandeur, taught to wait,
At Custom's call, to mark a fool of state
From fools of lesser note, that soul can awe,
Whose pride is reason, whose defence is law.
_L_. Suppose, (a thing scarce possible in art,
Were it thy cue to play a common part)
Suppose thy writings so well fenced in law,
That Norton cannot find nor make a flaw-Hast thou not heard, that 'mongst our ancient tribes,
By party warp'd, or lull'd asleep by bribes,
Or trembling at the ruffian hand of Force,
Law hath suspended stood, or changed its course?
Art thou assured, that, for destruction ripe,
Thou may'st not smart beneath the self-same gripe?
What sanction hast thou, frantic in thy rhymes,
Thy life, thy freedom to secure?
_G_. The Times.
'Tis not on law, a system great and good,
By wisdom penn'd, and bought by noblest blood,
My faith relies; by wicked men and vain,
Law, once abused, may be abused again.
No; on our great Lawgiver I depend,
Who knows and guides her to her proper end;
135
Whose royalty of nature blazes out
So fierce, 'twere sin to entertain a doubt.
Did tyrant Stuarts now the law dispense,
(Bless'd be the hour and hand which sent them hence!)
For something, or for nothing, for a word
Or thought, I might be doom'd to death, unheard.
Life we might all resign to lawless power,
Nor think it worth the purchase of an hour;
But Envy ne'er shall fix so foul a stain
On the fair annals of a Brunswick's reign.
If, slave to party, to revenge, or pride;
If, by frail human error drawn aside,
I break the law, strict rigour let her wear;
'Tis hers to punish, and 'tis mine to bear;
Nor, by the voice of Justice doom'd to death
Would I ask mercy with my latest breath:
But, anxious only for my country's good,
In which my king's, of course, is understood;
Form'd on a plan with some few patriot friends,
Whilst by just means I aim at noblest ends,
My spirits cannot sink; though from the tomb
Stern Jeffries should be placed in Mansfield's room;
Though he should bring, his base designs to aid,
Some black attorney, for his purpose made,
And shove, whilst Decency and Law retreat,
The modest Norton from his maiden seat;
Though both, in ill confederates, should agree,
In damned league, to torture law and me,
Whilst George is king, I cannot fear endure;
Not to be guilty, is to be secure.
But when, in after-times, (be far removed
That day!) our monarch, glorious and beloved,
Sleeps with his fathers, should imperious Fate,
In vengeance, with fresh Stuarts curse our state;
Should they, o'erleaping every fence of law,
Butcher the brave to keep tame fools in awe;
Should they, by brutal and oppressive force,
Divert sweet Justice from her even course;
Should they, of every other means bereft,
Make my right hand a witness 'gainst my left;
Should they, abroad by inquisitions taught,
Search out my soul, and damn me for a thought;
136
Still would I keep my course, still speak, still write,
Till Death had plunged me in the shades of night.
Thou God of truth, thou great, all-searching eye,
To whom our thoughts, our spirits, open lie!
Grant me thy strength, and in that needful hour,
(Should it e'er come) when Law submits to Power,
With firm resolve my steady bosom steel,
Bravely to suffer, though I deeply feel.
Let me, as hitherto, still draw my breath,
In love with life, but not in fear of death;
And if Oppression brings me to the grave,
And marks me dead, she ne'er shall mark a slave.
Let no unworthy marks of grief be heard,
No wild laments, not one unseemly word;
Let sober triumphs wait upon my bier;
I won't forgive that friend who drops one tear.
Whether he's ravish'd in life's early morn,
Or in old age drops like an ear of corn,
Full ripe he falls, on Nature's noblest plan,
Who lives to Reason, and who dies a Man.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
1233:The Ghost - Book I
With eager search to dart the soul,
Curiously vain, from pole to pole,
And from the planets' wandering spheres
To extort the number of our years,
And whether all those years shall flow
Serenely smooth, and free from woe,
Or rude misfortune shall deform
Our life with one continual storm;
Or if the scene shall motley be.
Alternate joy and misery,
Is a desire which, more or less.
All men must feel, though few confess.
Hence, every place and every age
Affords subsistence to the sage,
Who, free from this world and its cares,
Holds an acquaintance with the stars,
From whom he gains intelligence
Of things to come some ages hence,
Which unto friends, at easy rates.
He readily communicates.
At its first rise, which all agree on,
This noble science was Chaldean;
That ancient people, as they fed
Their flocks upon the mountain's head,
Gazed on the stars, observed their motions,
And suck'd in astrologic notions,
Which they so eagerly pursue,
As folks are apt whate'er is new,
That things below at random rove,
Whilst they're consulting things above;
And when they now so poor were grown,
That they'd no houses of their own,
They made bold with their friends the stars,
And prudently made use of theirs.
To Egypt from Chaldee it travell'd,
And Fate at Memphis was unravell'd:
The exotic science soon struck root,
And flourish'd into high repute.
Each learned priest, oh strange to tell!
177
Could circles make, and cast a spell;
Could read and write, and taught the nation
The holy art of divination.
Nobles themselves, for at that time
Knowledge in nobles was no crime,
Could talk as learned as the priest,
And prophesy as much, at least.
Hence all the fortune-telling crew,
Whose crafty skill mars Nature's hue,
Who, in vile tatters, with smirch'd face,
Run up and down from place to place,
To gratify their friends' desires,
From Bampfield Carew, to Moll Squires,
Are rightly term'd Egyptians all;
Whom we, mistaking, Gypsies call.
The Grecian sages borrow'd this,
As they did other sciences,
From fertile Egypt, though the loan
They had not honesty to own.
Dodona's oaks, inspired by Jove,
A learned and prophetic grove,
Turn'd vegetable necromancers,
And to all comers gave their answers.
At Delphos, to Apollo dear,
All men the voice of Fate might hear;
Each subtle priest on three-legg'd stool,
To take in wise men, play'd the fool.
A mystery, so made for gain,
E'en now in fashion must remain;
Enthusiasts never will let drop
What brings such business to their shop;
And that great saint we Whitefield call,
Keeps up the humbug spiritual.
Among the Romans, not a bird
Without a prophecy was heard;
Fortunes of empires often hung
On the magician magpie's tongue,
And every crow was to the state
A sure interpreter of Fate.
Prophets, embodied in a college
(Time out of mind your seat of knowledge;
For genius never fruit can bear
178
Unless it first is planted there,
And solid learning never falls
Without the verge of college walls)
Infallible accounts would keep
When it was best to watch or sleep,
To eat or drink, to go or stay,
And when to fight or run away;
When matters were for action ripe,
By looking at a double tripe;
When emperors would live or die,
They in an ass's skull could spy;
When generals would their station keep,
Or turn their backs, in hearts of sheep.
In matters, whether small or great,
In private families or state
As amongst us, the holy seer
Officiously would interfere;
With pious arts and reverend skill
Would bend lay bigots to his will;
Would help or injure foes or friends,
Just as it served his private ends.
Whether in honest way of trade
Traps for virginity were laid;
Or if, to make their party great,
Designs were form'd against the state,
Regardless of the common weal,
By interest led, which they call zeal,
Into the scale was always thrown
The will of Heaven to back their own.
England--a happy land we know,
Where follies naturally grow,
Where without culture they arise
And tower above the common size;
England, a fortune-telling host,
As numerous as the stars, could boast,-Matrons, who toss the cup, and see
The grounds of Fate in grounds of tea,
Who, versed in every modest lore,
Can a lost maidenhead restore,
Or, if their pupils rather choose it,
Can show the readiest way to lose it;
Gypsies, who every ill can cure,
179
Except the ill of being poor,
Who charms 'gainst love and agues sell,
Who can in hen-roost set a spell,
Prepared by arts, to them best known,
To catch all feet except their own,
Who, as to fortune, can unlock it
As easily as pick a pocket;
Scotchmen, who, in their country's right,
Possess the gift of second-sight,
Who (when their barren heaths they quit,
Sure argument of prudent wit,
Which reputation to maintain,
They never venture back again)
By lies prophetic heap up riches,
And boast the luxury of breeches.
Amongst the rest, in former years,
Campbell (illustrious name!) appears,
Great hero of futurity,
Who, blind, could every thing foresee,
Who, dumb, could every thing foretell,
Who, Fate with equity to sell,
Always dealt out the will of Heaven
According to what price was given.
Of Scottish race, in Highlands born,
Possess'd with native pride and scorn,
He hither came, by custom led,
To curse the hands which gave him bread.
With want of truth, and want of sense,
Amply made up by impudence
(A succedaneum, which we find
In common use with all mankind);
Caress'd and favour'd too by those
Whose heart with patriot feelings glows,
Who foolishly, where'er dispersed,
Still place their native country first;
(For Englishmen alone have sense
To give a stranger preference,
Whilst modest merit of their own
Is left in poverty to groan)
Campbell foretold just what he would,
And left the stars to make it good,
On whom he had impress'd such awe,
180
His dictates current pass'd for law;
Submissive, all his empire own'd;
No star durst smile, when Campbell frown'd.
This sage deceased,--for all must die,
And Campbell's no more safe than I,
No more than I can guard the heart,
When Death shall hurl the fatal dart,-Succeeded, ripe in art and years,
Another favourite of the spheres;
Another and another came,
Of equal skill, and equal fame;
As white each wand, as black each gown,
As long each beard, as wise each frown,
In every thing so like, you'd swear
Campbell himself was sitting there:
To all the happy art was known,
To tell our fortunes, make their own.
Seated in garret,--for, you know,
The nearer to the stars we go
The greater we esteem his art,-Fools, curious, flock'd from every part;
The rich, the poor, the maid, the married,
And those who could not walk, were carried.
The butler, hanging down his head,
By chambermaid, or cookmaid led,
Inquires, if from his friend the Moon
He has advice of pilfer'd spoon.
The court-bred woman of condition,
(Who, to approve her disposition
As much superior as her birth
To those composed of common earth,
With double spirit must engage
In every folly of the age)
The honourable arts would buy,
To pack the cards, and cog a die.
The hero--who, for brawn and face,
May claim right honourable place
Amongst the chiefs of Butcher-row:
Who might, some thirty years ago,
If we may be allow'd to guess
At his employment by his dress,
Put medicines off from cart or stage,
181
The grand Toscano of the age;
Or might about the country go
High-steward of a puppet-show,-Steward and stewardship most meet,
For all know puppets never eat:
Who would be thought (though, save the mark!
That point is something in the dark)
The man of honour, one like those
Renown'd in story, who loved blows
Better than victuals, and would fight,
Merely for sport, from morn to night:
Who treads like Mavors firm, whose tongue
Is with the triple thunder hung,
Who cries to Fear, 'Stand off--aloof,'
And talks as he were cannon-proof;
Would be deem'd ready, when you list,
With sword and pistol, stick and fist,
Careless of points, balls, bruises, knocks,
At once to fence, fire, cudgel, box,
But at the same time bears about,
Within himself, some touch of doubt,
Of prudent doubt, which hints--that fame
Is nothing but an empty name;
That life is rightly understood
By all to be a real good;
That, even in a hero's heart,
Discretion is the better part;
That this same honour may be won,
And yet no kind of danger run-Like Drugger comes, that magic powers
May ascertain his lucky hours;
For at some hours the fickle dame,
Whom Fortune properly we name,
Who ne'er considers wrong or right,
When wanted most, plays least in sight,
And, like a modern court-bred jilt,
Leaves her chief favourites in a tilt.
Some hours there are, when from the heart
Courage into some other part,
No matter wherefore, makes retreat,
And Fear usurps the vacant seat;
Whence, planet-struck, we often find
182
Stuarts and Sackvilles of mankind.
Farther, he'd know (and by his art
A conjurer can that impart)
Whether politer it is reckon'd
To have, or not to have, a second;
To drag the friends in, or alone
To make the danger all their own;
Whether repletion is not bad,
And fighters with full stomachs mad;
Whether, before he seeks the plain,
It were not well to breathe a vein;
Whether a gentle salivation,
Consistently with reputation,
Might not of precious use be found,
Not to prevent, indeed, a wound,
But to prevent the consequence
Which oftentimes arises thence,
Those fevers, which the patient urge on
To gates of death, by help of surgeon;
Whether a wind at east or west
Is for green wounds accounted best;
Whether (was he to choose) his mouth
Should point towards the north or south;
Whether more safely he might use,
On these occasions, pumps or shoes;
Whether it better is to fight
By sunshine or by candlelight;
Or, lest a candle should appear
Too mean to shine in such a sphere,
For who could of a candle tell
To light a hero into hell;
And, lest the sun should partial rise
To dazzle one or t'other's eyes,
Or one or t'other's brains to scorch,
Might not Dame Luna hold a torch?
These points with dignity discuss'd,
And gravely fix'd,--a task which must
Require no little time and pains,
To make our hearts friends with our brains,-The man of war would next engage
The kind assistance of the sage,
Some previous method to direct,
183
Which should make these of none effect.
Could he not, from the mystic school
Of Art, produce some sacred rule,
By which a knowledge might be got
Whether men valiant were, or not;
So he that challenges might write
Only to those who would not fight?
Or could he not some way dispense
By help of which (without offence
To Honour, whose nice nature's such
She scarce endures the slightest touch)
When he, for want of t'other rule,
Mistakes his man, and, like a fool,
With some vain fighting blade gets in,
He fairly may get out again?
Or should some demon lay a scheme
To drive him to the last extreme,
So that he must confess his fears,
In mercy to his nose and ears,
And like a prudent recreant knight,
Rather do anything than fight,
Could he not some expedient buy
To keep his shame from public eye?
For well he held,--and, men review,
Nine in ten hold the maxim too,-That honour's like a maidenhead,
Which, if in private brought to bed,
Is none the worse, but walks the town,
Ne'er lost, until the loss be known.
The parson, too, (for now and then
Parsons are just like other men,
And here and there a grave divine
Has passions such as yours and mine)
Burning with holy lust to know
When Fate preferment will bestow,
'Fraid of detection, not of sin,
With circumspection sneaking in
To conjurer, as he does to whore,
Through some bye-alley or back-door,
With the same caution orthodox
Consults the stars, and gets a pox.
The citizen, in fraud grown old,
184
Who knows no deity but gold,
Worn out, and gasping now for breath,
A medicine wants to keep off death;
Would know, if that he cannot have,
What coins are current in the grave;
If, when the stocks (which, by his power,
Would rise or fall in half an hour;
For, though unthought of and unseen,
He work'd the springs behind the screen)
By his directions came about,
And rose to par, he should sell out;
Whether he safely might, or no,
Replace it in the funds below?
By all address'd, believed, and paid,
Many pursued the thriving trade,
And, great in reputation grown,
Successive held the magic throne.
Favour'd by every darling passion,
The love of novelty and fashion,
Ambition, avarice, lust, and pride,
Riches pour'd in on every side.
But when the prudent laws thought fit
To curb this insolence of wit;
When senates wisely had provided,
Decreed, enacted, and decided,
That no such vile and upstart elves
Should have more knowledge than themselves;
When fines and penalties were laid
To stop the progress of the trade,
And stars no longer could dispense,
With honour, further influence;
And wizards (which must be confess'd
Was of more force than all the rest)
No certain way to tell had got
Which were informers, and which not;
Affrighted sages were, perforce,
Obliged to steer some other course.
By various ways, these sons of Chance
Their fortunes labour'd to advance,
Well knowing, by unerring rules,
Knaves starve not in the land of fools.
Some, with high titles and degrees,
185
Which wise men borrow when they please,
Without or trouble, or expense,
Physicians instantly commence,
And proudly boast an Equal skill
With those who claim the right to kill.
Others about the country roam,
(For not one thought of going home)
With pistol and adopted leg,
Prepared at once to rob or beg.
Some, the more subtle of their race,
(Who felt some touch of coward grace,
Who Tyburn to avoid had wit,
But never fear'd deserving it)
Came to their brother Smollett's aid,
And carried on the critic trade.
Attach'd to letters and the Muse,
Some verses wrote, and some wrote news;
Those each revolving month are seen,
The heroes of a magazine;
These, every morning, great appear
In Ledger, or in Gazetteer,
Spreading the falsehoods of the day,
By turns for Faden and for Say.
Like Swiss, their force is always laid
On that side where they best are paid:
Hence mighty prodigies arise,
And daily monsters strike our eyes;
Wonders, to propagate the trade,
More strange than ever Baker made,
Are hawk'd about from street to street,
And fools believe, whilst liars eat.
Now armies in the air engage,
To fright a superstitious age;
Now comets through the ether range,
In governments portending change;
Now rivers to the ocean fly
So quick, they leave their channels dry;
Now monstrous whales on Lambeth shore
Drink the Thames dry, and thirst for more;
And every now and then appears
An Irish savage, numbering years
More than those happy sages could
186
Who drew their breath before the flood;
Now, to the wonder of all people,
A church is left without a steeple;
A steeple now is left in lurch,
And mourns departure of the church,
Which, borne on wings of mighty wind,
Removed a furlong off we find;
Now, wrath on cattle to discharge,
Hailstones as deadly fall, and large,
As those which were on Egypt sent,
At once their crime and punishment;
Or those which, as the prophet writes,
Fell on the necks of Amorites,
When, struck with wonder and amaze,
The sun, suspended, stay'd to gaze,
And, from her duty longer kept,
In Ajalon his sister slept.
But if such things no more engage
The taste of a politer age,
To help them out in time of need
Another Tofts must rabbits breed:
Each pregnant female trembling hears,
And, overcome with spleen and fears,
Consults her faithful glass no more,
But, madly bounding o'er the floor,
Feels hairs all o'er her body grow,
By Fancy turn'd into a doe.
Now, to promote their private ends,
Nature her usual course suspends,
And varies from the stated plan
Observed e'er since the world began.
Bodies--which foolishly we thought,
By Custom's servile maxims taught,
Needed a regular supply,
And without nourishment must die-With craving appetites, and sense
Of hunger easily dispense,
And, pliant to their wondrous skill,
Are taught, like watches, to stand still,
Uninjured, for a month or more,
Then go on as they did before.
The novel takes, the tale succeeds,
187
Amply supplies its author's needs,
And Betty Canning is at least,
With Gascoyne's help, a six months' feast.
Whilst, in contempt of all our pains,
The tyrant Superstition reigns
Imperious in the heart of man,
And warps his thoughts from Nature's plan;
Whilst fond Credulity, who ne'er
The weight of wholesome doubts could bear,
To Reason and herself unjust,
Takes all things blindly upon trust;
Whilst Curiosity, whose rage
No mercy shows to sex or age,
Must be indulged at the expense
Of judgment, truth, and common sense,
Impostures cannot but prevail;
And when old miracles grow stale,
Jugglers will still the art pursue,
And entertain the world with new.
For them, obedient to their will,
And trembling at their mighty skill,
Sad spirits, summon'd from the tomb,
Glide, glaring ghastly, through the gloom;
In all the usual pomp of storms,
In horrid customary forms,
A wolf, a bear, a horse, an ape,
As Fear and Fancy give them shape,
Tormented with despair and pain,
They roar, they yell, and clank the chain.
Folly and Guilt (for Guilt, howe'er
The face of Courage it may wear,
Is still a coward at the heart)
At fear-created phantoms start.
The priest--that very word implies
That he's both innocent and wise-Yet fears to travel in the dark,
Unless escorted by his clerk.
But let not every bungler deem
Too lightly of so deep a scheme;
For reputation of the art,
Each ghost must act a proper part,
Observe Decorum's needful grace,
188
And keep the laws of Time and Place;
Must change, with happy variation,
His manners with his situation;
What in the country might pass down,
Would be impertinent in town.
No spirit of discretion here
Can think of breeding awe and fear;
'Twill serve the purpose more by half
To make the congregation laugh.
We want no ensigns of surprise,
Locks stiff with gore, and saucer eyes;
Give us an entertaining sprite,
Gentle, familiar, and polite,
One who appears in such a form
As might an holy hermit warm,
Or who on former schemes refines,
And only talks by sounds and signs,
Who will not to the eye appear,
But pays her visits to the ear,
And knocks so gently, 't would not fright
A lady in the darkest night.
Such is our Fanny, whose good-will,
Which cannot in the grave lie still,
Brings her on earth to entertain
Her friends and lovers in Cock-lane.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
1234:Tamerton Church-Tower, Or, First Love
I.
We left the Church at Tamerton
In gloomy western air;
To greet the day we gallop'd on,
A merry-minded pair.
The hazy East hot noon did bode;
Our horses sniff'd the dawn;
We made ten Cornish miles of road
Before the dew was gone.
We clomb the hill where Lanson's Keep
Fronts Dartmoor's distant ridge;
Thence trotted South; walk'd down the steep
That slants to Gresson Bridge;
And paused awhile, where Tamar waits,
In many a shining coil,
And teeming Devon separates
From Cornwall's sorry soil.
II.
Our English skies contain'd, that Spring,
A Caribbean sun;
The singing birds forgot to sing,
The rivulets to run.
For three noons past, the skies had frown'd,
Obscured with blighting shades
That only mock'd the thirsty ground
And unrejoicing glades.
To-day, before the noon was nigh,
Bright-skirted vapours grew,
And on the sky hung languidly;
The sky was languid too.
Our horses dropp'd their necks, and nosed
The dusty wayside grass,
Whilst we beneath still boughs reposed
And watch'd the water pass.
We spoke of plighted Bertha: Frank
Shot pebbles in the stream;
And I lay by him on the bank,
43
But dreamt no lover's dream.
She was a blythe and bashful maid,
Much blushing in her glee;
Yet gracing all she did and said
With sweet sufficiency.
‘Is Blanche as fair?’ ask'd I, who yearn'd
To feel my life complete;
To taste unselfish pleasures earn'd
By service strict and sweet.
‘Well, some say fairer: she'll surprise
Your heart with crimson lips;
Fat underlids, that hold bright eyes
In laughing half-eclipse;
Alluring locks, done up with taste
Behind her dainty ears;
And manners full of wayward haste,
Tho' facile as the deer's.’
III.
‘You paint a leaflet, here and there;
And not the blossom: tell
What mysteries of good and fair
These blazon'd letters spell.’
IV.
‘Her mouth and teeth, by Cupid's bow!
Are letters spelling 'kiss;'
And, witchingly withdrawn below
Twin worlds of baby-bliss,
Her waist, so soft and small, may mean,
'O, when will some one come
To make me catch my breath between
His finger and his thumb!'’
V.
My life, 'twas like a land of dreams,
Where nothing noble throve:
Dull seem'd it as to maiden seems
The verse that's not of love.
44
‘See where,’ sigh'd I, ‘the water dim
Repeats, with leaden hue,
The fervid sun, the cloud's hot rim,
The gap of dazzling blue!’
Quoth Frank, ‘I do, and hence foresee
And all too plainly scan
Some sentimental homily
On Duty, Death, or Man.’
‘'Tis this;’ said I, ‘our senses mar,
Ev'n so, sweet Nature's face,
Unless by love revived they are,
Or lit by heavenly grace.
Below the hazel talks the rill;
My heart speaks not again;
The solemn cloud, the stately hill,
I look on each in vain.
Sure he for whom no Power shall strike
This darkness into day—’
‘Is damn'd,’ said Frank, who morall'd like
The Fool in an old Play.
‘That's true!’ cried I, ‘yet, as the worm
That sickens ere it change—’
‘Or as the pup that nears the term
At which pups have the mange—
Pooh! Come, Man, let us on,’ he said,
‘For now the storm is nigh!’
And whilst we rode quaint sense we read
Within the changing sky.
Above us bent a prophet wild,
Pointing to hidden harm;
Beyond, a magic woman smiled,
And wove some wondrous charm;
Past that, a censer jetted smoke:
Black convolutions roll'd
Sunwards, and caught the light, and broke
In crowns of shining gold.
VI.
The gaps of blue shrank fast in span;
The long-forgotten breeze,
45
By lazy starts and fits, began
To stir the higher trees.
At noon, we came to Tavistock;
And sunshine still was there,
But gloomy Dartmoor seem'd to mock
Its weak and yellow glare.
The swallows, in the wrathful light,
Were pitching up and down;
A string of rooks made rapid flight,
Due southward, o'er the town,
Where, baiting at the Tiger-Inn,
We talk'd by windows wide,
Of Blanche and all my unseen kin,
Who did our coming bide.
VII.
The heavy sign-board swung and shriek'd,
In dark air whirl'd the vane,
Blinds flapp'd, dust rose, and, straining, creak'd
The shaken window-pane;
And, just o'erhead, a huge cloud flung,
For earnest of its stores,
A few calm drops, that struck among
The light-leaved sycamores.
Hot to be gone, Frank rose and eyed
Dark cloud and swinging branch;
But less long'd he to greet his Bride
Than I to look on Blanche.
Her name, pair'd still with praise at home,
Would make my pulses start;
The hills between us were become
A weight upon my heart.
‘Behold,’ I cried, ‘the storm comes not;
The northern heavens grow fair.’
‘Look South,’ said Frank, ‘'tis one wide blot
Of thunder-threatening air.’
The string of rooks had travell'd on,
Against the southern shroud,
And, like some snaky skeleton,
Lay twisted in the cloud.
46
‘No storm to-day!’ said I, ‘for, see,
Yon black thing travels south.’
We follow'd soon; our spirits free,
Our bodies slaked from drouth.
I rode in silence; Frank, with tongue
Made lax by too much port,
Soliloquising, said or sung
After this tipsy sort:
‘Yea, nerves they are the Devil's mesh,
And pups begin quite blind,
And health is ofttimes in the flesh,
And measles in the mind!
‘Foolish and fair was Joan without;
Foolish and foul within;
High as a hunted pig his snout,
She carried a foolish chin.
‘The Boy beheld, and brisk rose he
At this badly painted fly:
That boys less wise than fish will be
Makes many a man to sigh.’
VIII.
On, on we toil'd, amidst the blaze
From Dartmoor's ridges bare;
Beneath the hush'd and scorching haze,
And through the twinkling air;
Along the endless mountain-side,
That seem'd with us to move;
Past dreary mine-mouths, far and wide;
Huge dross-heap, wheel, and groove;
Dark towns by disembowell'd hills,
Where swarthy tribes abode,
Who, in hard rocks with harder wills,
Pursued the crooked lode;
Up heights, that seem'd against us match'd;
Until, from table-land,
Before the teasing midge was hatch'd,
We hail'd the southern strand.
Then pleasantly, on level ground
And through the lighter air,
47
We paced along and breathed around,
A merry-minded pair.
A western night of even cloud
Suck'd in the sultry disk;
Bright racks look'd on, a fiery crowd,
To seamen boding risk;
The late crow wing'd his silent way
Across the shadowy East;
The gnat danced out his little day,
His ceaseless singing ceased;
Along the dim horizon round
Fled faint electric fires;
Blue glow-worms lit the fresher ground
By moisture-harbouring briers;
Far northward twinkled lonely lights,
The peopled vales among;
In front, between the gaping heights,
The mystic ocean hung.
IX.
Our weary spirits flagg'd beneath
The still and loaded air;
We left behind the freër heath,
A moody-minded pair.
With senses slack and sick of mirth,
Tho' near the happy goal,
I murmur'd, fearing nought on earth
Could quite content the soul:
‘Suppose your love prove such a light
As yonder glow-worm's lamp,
That gleams, at distance, strong and bright,
Approach'd, burns weak and damp.
Perchance, by much of bliss aroused,
Your heart will pant for more;
And then the worm of want lies housed
Within the sweet fruit's core!
Far worse, if, led by fancy blind,
But undeceiv'd by use—’
‘I dream,’ yawn'd Frank, ‘and wake to find
My Goddess a green goose!’
48
‘Vain, vain,’ said I, ‘is worldly weal:
We faint, within the heart,
For good which all we see and feel
Foreshadows but in part.’
Frank answer'd, ‘What you faint for, win!
Faint not, but forward press.
Heav'n proffers all: 'twere grievous sin
To live content in less.
The Sun rolls by us every day;
And it and all things speak
To the sinking heart of man, and say,
'Tis wicked to be weak.
We would not hear the hated sound;
But, by the Lord, we must:
If not, the heavy world goes round,
And grinds us into dust.’
With each a moral in his mouth,
We rein'd our sweating nags,
Where quiet Ocean, on the South,
Kiss'd Edgecumb's ruddy crags.
II
I.
So subtly love within me wrought,
So excellent she seem'd,
Daily of Blanche was all my thought,
Nightly of Blanche I dream'd;
And this was all my wish, and all
The work now left for life,
To make this Wonder mine, to call
This laughing Blanche my Wife.
II.
I courted her till hope grew bold;
Then sought her in her place,
And all my passion freely told,
Before her blushing face.
I kiss'd her twice, I kiss'd her thrice,
Thro' tresses and thro' tears;
I kiss'd her lips, I kiss'd her eyes,
49
And calm'd her joys and fears.
So woo'd I Blanche, and so I sped,
And so, with small delay,
I and the patient Frank were wed
Upon the self-same day.
And friends all round kiss'd either Bride,
I Frank's, Frank mine; and he
Laugh'd as for once we thus defied
Love's sweet monopoly.
And then we drove by garth and grove;
And soon forgot the place
Where all the world had look'd shy Love
So rudely in the face.
III
I.
The noon was hot and close and still,
When, steadying Blanche's hand,
I led her down the southern hill,
And row'd with her from land.
Ere summer's prime that year the wasp
Lay gorged within the peach;
The tide, as though the sea did gasp,
Fell lax upon the beach.
Quietly dipp'd the dripping scull,
And all beside was calm;
But o'er the strange and weary lull
No angel waved his palm.
The sun was rayless, pale the sky,
The distance thick with light:
We glided past the fort and by
The war-ship's sleeping might.
Her paddle stirr'd: without a breeze,
A mimic tempest boil'd:
The sailors on the silent seas
With storm-tuned voices toil'd.
I could not toil; I seldom pray'd:
What was to do or ask?
Love's purple glory round me play'd,
Unfed by prayer or task.
All perfect my contentment was,
50
For Blanche was all my care;
And heaven seem'd only heaven because
My goddess would be there.
No wafted breeze the ships did strike,
No wish unwon moved me;
The peace within my soul was like
The peace upon the sea.
At times, when action sleeps, unstirr'd
By any motive gale,
A mystic wind, with warning heard,
Ruffles life's idle sail.
The fancy, then, a fear divines,
And, borne on gloomy wings,
Sees threats and formidable signs
In simply natural things.
It smote my heart, how, yesternight,
The moon rose in eclipse,
And how her maim'd and shapeless light
O'erhung the senseless ships.
The passion pass'd, as, lightning-lit,
Red cloud-scenes shew and close;
And soon came wonder at the fit,
And smiles and full repose.
Again I turn'd me, all devote,
To my sweet Idol's shrine;
Again I gazed where, on the boat,
Her shadow mix'd with mine.
II.
Cried Frank, who, with his Wife, was there,
‘We dream! sing each a song.’
And he sang first an old, brave air,
And pull'd the boat along:
‘Sir Pelles woo'd, in scorn's despite;
He cherish'd love's sweet smart;
Ettarde proved light; then, like a Knight,
He turn'd her from his heart.
‘O, the remorse with which we pay
For duties done too well!
But conscience gay does grief allay;
As all true knights can tell.’
51
III.
‘Alas, poor Knight!’ cried Blanche, ‘Nay, hear,’
Said Frank, ‘the saddest half!’
And drearily he troll'd, while clear
Rose Blanche's puzzled laugh.
‘Sir Lob was drunk; the stars were bright.
Within an empty ditch,
Sir Lob all night lay right and tight
As a Saint within his niche.
‘Now, well, quoth he, goes life with me;
I've liquor and to spare;
I hate the herd that vulgar be;
And, O, the stars are fair!
‘The mill-dam burst: Sir Lob lay sunk
In that celestial swound:
The mill-stream found the knight dead drunk,
And the Jury found him drown'd.’
IV.
‘The tunes are good; the words,’ said I,
‘Are hard to understand.’
And soon I prefaced with a sigh
This pagan love-song grand:
‘When Love's bright Ichor fills the veins,
Love's Amaranth lights the brow,
The Past grows dark, the Future wanes,
Before the golden Now.
‘Marc Antony the war-flags furl'd,
For Egypt's Queen said, 'Stay:
He reck'd not of the worthless world,
Well lost by that delay.
‘Quoth Antony, Here set I up
My everlasting rest:
Leave me to drain Joy's magic cup,
To dream on Egypt's breast.’
V.
Frank smiled, and said my note was wrong;
52
'Twas neither Man's nor Boy's;
And Blanche sang next, some modern song,
Of ‘Flowers’ and ‘Fairy Joys.’
As bright disparted skies that break
To let a cherub through,
So seem'd her mouth: my sight did ache,
Glitt'ring with fiery dew;
And, in the laugh of her brown eye,
My heart, contented so,
Lay like the honey-thirsty fly
Drows'd in the cactus' glow.
Nor heeded I what sang my Saint,
Such magic had the sound.
The myrtle in her breath made faint
The air that hearken'd round.
VI.
‘Now, Wife,’ said Frank, ‘to shame our lays,
Try you in turn your power;
And sing your little song in praise
Of Love's selectest flower.’
Her hand felt his: thus sang she then,
Submitted to his rule,
Tho' shyer than the water-hen
On Tamar's shadiest pool.
‘The Myrtle sates with scent the air
That flows by Grecian hills;
Its fervid leaflets glisten fair
By warm Italian rills.
The North too has its Lover's-Flower,
The glad Forget-me-not;
Too bold thro' sunshine, wind, and shower,
Too blue to be forgot.’
VII.
Pointing far East, Frank said, ‘Do you see
Yon porpoise-droves at play?’
We gazed, and saw, with failing glee,
Bright lines of spotted spray.
Once more the boded terror shook
53
My heart, and made me dumb.
‘To land! to land!’ cried Frank, ‘for, look,
The storm, at last, is come!’
Above us, heated fields of mist
Precipitated cloud;
For shore we pull'd; the swift keel hiss'd;
Above us grew the shroud.
The pale gull flapp'd the stagnant air;
The thunder-drop fell straight;
The first wind lifted Blanche's hair;
Looking to me she sate.
Across the boundless mirror crept,
In dark'ning blasts, the squall;
And round our terror lightly leapt
Mad wavelets, many and small.
The oars cast by, convuls'd outflew
Our perilous hope the sail.
None spoke; all watch'd the waves, that grew
Under the splashing hail.
With urgent hearts and useless hands,
We sate and saw them rise,
Coursing to shore in gloomy bands,
Below the appalling skies.
The wrathful thunder scared the deeps,
And where, upon our wake,
The sea got up in ghastly heaps,
White lines of lightning strake.
On, on, with fainting hope we fled,
Hard-hunted by the grave;
Slow seem'd it, though like wind we sped
Over the shouldering wave;
In front swift rose the crags, where still
A storm of sunshine pour'd;
At last, beneath the southern hill,
The pitiless breakers roar'd.
O, bolt foreseen before it burst!
O, chastening hard to bear!
O, cup of sweetness quite revers'd,
And turn'd to void despair!
Blanche in fear swooning, I let go
The helm; we struck the ground;
The sea fell in from stern to prow,
54
And Blanche, my Bride, was drown'd.
What guilt was hers? But God is great,
And all that may be known
To each of any other's fate
Is, that it helps his own.
IV
I.
In a swift vortex go the years,
Each swifter than the last,
And seasons four their set careers
Pursued, and somehow pass'd.
The spirit of Spring, this year, was quench'd
With clouds and wind and rain;
All night the gust-blown torrent drench'd
The gloomy window-pane;
Against the pane the flapping blind
Flapp'd ever, dismally;
And ever, above the rain and wind,
Sounded the dismal sea.
The billows, like some guilty crew
Devour'd by vain remorse,
Dash'd up the beach, sighing withdrew,
And mix'd, with murmurs hoarse.
The morning was a cheerless sight,
Amongst the turbid skies;
But sweet was the relief of light
Within my restless eyes;
For then I rose to prayer and toil,
Forgat the ocean's moan,
Or faced the dizzy crash and coil
That drown'd its mournfuller tone.
But never, when the tide drew back,
Trod I the weltering strand;
For horribly my single track
Pursued me in the sand.
II.
One morn I watch'd the rain subside;
And then fared singly forth,
55
Below the clouds, till eve to ride
From Edgecumb to the North.
Once, only once, I paused upon
The sea-transcending height,
And turn'd to gaze: far breakers shone,
Slow gleams of silent light.
Into my horse I struck the spur;
Sad was the soul in me;
Sore were my lids with tears for her
Who slept beneath the sea.
But soon I sooth'd my startled horse,
And check'd that sudden grief,
And look'd abroad on crag and gorse
And Dartmoor's cloudy reef.
Far forth the air was dark and clear,
The crags acute and large,
The clouds uneven, black, and near,
And ragged at the marge.
The spider, in his rainy mesh,
Shook not, but, as I rode,
The opposing air, sweet, sharp, and fresh,
Against my hot lids flow'd.
Peat-cutters pass'd me, carrying tools;
Hawks glimmer'd on the wing;
The ground was glad with grassy pools,
And brooklets galloping;
And sparrows chirp'd, with feathers spread,
And dipp'd and drank their fill,
Where, down its sandy channel, fled
The lessening road-side rill.
III.
I cross'd the furze-grown table-land,
And near'd the northern vales,
That lay perspicuously plann'd
In lesser hills and dales.
Then rearward, in a slow review,
Fell Dartmoor's jagged lines;
Around were dross-heaps, red and blue,
Old shafts of gutted mines,
Impetuous currents copper-stain'd,
56
Wheels stream-urged with a roar,
Sluice-guiding grooves, strong works that strain'd
With freight of upheaved ore.
And then, the train, with shock on shock,
Swift rush and birth-scream dire,
Grew from the bosom of the rock,
And pass'd in noise and fire.
With brazen throb, with vital stroke,
It went, far heard, far seen,
Setting a track of shining smoke
Against the pastoral green.
Then, bright drops, lodged in budding trees,
Were loos'd in sudden showers,
Touch'd by the novel western breeze,
Friend of the backward flowers.
Then rose the Church at Tavistock,
The rain still falling there;
But sunny Dartmoor seem'd to mock
The gloom with cheerful glare.
About the West the gilt vane reel'd
And pois'd; and, with sweet art,
The sudden, jangling changes peal'd
Until, around my heart,
Conceits of brighter times, of times
The brighter for past storms,
Clung thick as bees, when brazen chimes
Call down the hiveless swarms.
IV.
I rested at the Tiger Inn,
There half-way on my ride,
And mused with joy of friends and kin
Who did my coming bide.
The Vicar, in his sombre wear
That shone about the knees,
Before me stood, his aspect fair
With godly memories.
I heard again his kind ‘Good-bye:
Christ speed and keep thee still
From frantic passions, for they die
And leave a frantic will.’
57
My fond, old Tutor, learn'd and meek!
A soul, in strangest truth,
As wide as Asia and as weak;
Not like his daughter Ruth.
A Girl of fullest heart she was;
Her spirit's lovely flame
Nor dazzled nor surprised, because
It always burn'd the same;
And in the maiden path she trod
Fair was the wife foreshown,
A Mary in the house of God,
A Martha in her own.
Charms for the sight she had; but these
Were tranquil, grave, and chaste,
And all too beautiful to please
A rash, untutor'd taste.
V.
In love with home, I rose and eyed
The rainy North; but there
The distant hill-top, in its pride,
Adorn'd the brilliant air:
And, as I pass'd from Tavistock,
The scatter'd dwellings white,
The Church, the golden weather-cock,
Were whelm'd in happy light;
The children 'gan the sun to greet,
With song and senseless shout;
The lambs to skip, their dams to bleat;
In Tavy leapt the trout;
Across a fleeting eastern cloud,
The splendid rainbow sprang,
And larks, invisible and loud,
Within its zenith sang.
VI.
So lay the Earth that saw the skies
Grow clear and bright above,
As the repentant spirit lies
In God's forgiving love.
58
The lark forsook the waning day,
And all loud songs did cease;
The Robin, from a wither'd spray,
Sang like a soul at peace.
Far to the South, in sunset glow'd
The peaks of Dartmoor ridge,
And Tamar, full and tranquil, flow'd
Beneath the Gresson Bridge.
There, conscious of the numerous noise
Of rain-awaken'd rills,
And gathering deep and sober joys
From the heart-enlarging hills,
I sat, until the first white star
Appear'd, with dewy rays,
And the fair moon began to bar
With shadows all the ways.
O, well is thee, whate'er thou art,
And happy shalt thou be,
If thou hast known, within thy heart,
The peace that came to me.
O, well is thee, if aught shall win
Thy spirit to confess,
God proffers all, 'twere grievous sin
To live content in less!
VII.
I mounted, now, my patient nag;
And scaled the easy steep;
And soon beheld the quiet flag
On Lanson's solemn Keep.
And now, whenas the waking lights
Bespake the valley'd Town,
A child o'ertook me, on the heights,
In cap and russet gown.
It was an alms-taught scholar trim,
Who, on her happy way,
Sang to herself the morrow's hymn;
For this was Saturday.
‘Saint Stephen, stoned, nor grieved nor groan'd:
'Twas all for his good gain;
59
For Christ him blest, till he confess'd
A sweet content in pain.
‘Then Christ His cross is no way loss,
But even a present boon:
Of His dear blood fair shines a flood
On heaven's eternal noon.’
VIII.
My sight, once more, was dim for her
Who slept beneath the sea,
As on I sped, without the spur,
By homestead, heath, and lea.
Beside my path the moon kept pace,
In meek and brilliant power,
And lit, ere long, the eastern face
Of Tamerton Church-tower.
~ Coventry Patmore,#NFDB
1235:Custer: Book Second
Oh, for the power to call to aid, of mine
Own humble Muse, the famed and sacred nine.
Then might she fitly sing, and only then,
Of those intrepid and unflinching men
Who knew no homes save ever moving tents,
And who 'twixt fierce unfriendly elements
And wild barbarians warred. Yet unfraid,
Since love impels thy strains, sing, sing, my modest maid.
II
Relate how Custer in midwinter sought
Far Washita's cold shores; tell why he fought
With savage nomads fortressed in deep snows.
Woman, thou source of half the sad world's woes
And all its joys, what sanguinary strife
Has vexed the earth and made contention rife
Because of thee! For, hidden in man's heart,
Ay, in his very soul, of his true self a part,
III
The natural impulse and the wish belongs
To win thy favor and redress thy wrongs.
Alas! for woman, and for man, alas!
If that dread hour should ever come to pass,
When, through her new-born passion for control,
She drives that beauteous impulse from his soul.
What were her vaunted independence worth
If to obtain she sells her sweetest rights of birth?
IV
God formed fair woman for her true estateMan's tender comrade, and his equal mate,
Not his competitor in toil and trade.
While coarser man, with greater strength was made
183
To fight her battles and her rights protect.
Ay! to protect the rights of earth's elect
(The virgin maiden and the spotless wife)
From immemorial time has man laid down his life.
And now brave Custer's valiant army pressed
Across the dangerous desert of the West,
To rescue fair white captives from the hands
Of brutal Cheyenne and Comanche bands,
On Washita's bleak banks. Nine hundred strong
It moved its slow determined way along,
Past frontier homes left dark and desolate
By the wild Indians' fierce and unrelenting hate;
VI
Past forts where ranchmen, strong of heart and bold,
Wept now like orphaned children as they told,
With quivering muscles and with anguished breath,
Of captured wives, whose fate was worse than death;
Past naked bodies whose disfiguring wounds
Spoke of the hellish hate of human hounds;
Past bleaching skeleton and rifled grave,
On pressed th' avenging host, to rescue and to save.
VII
Uncertain Nature, like a fickle friend,
(Worse than the foe on whom we may depend)
Turned on these dauntless souls a brow of wrath
And hurled her icy jav'lins in their path.
With treacherous quicksands, and with storms that blight,
Entrapped their footsteps and confused their sight.
'Yet on,' urged Custer, 'on at any cost,
No hour is there to waste, no moment to be lost.'
VIII
Determined, silent, on they rode, and on,
Like fabled Centaurs, men and steeds seemed one.
184
No bugle echoed and no voice spoke near,
Lest on some lurking Indian's list'ning ear
The sound might fall. Through swift descending snow
The stealthy guides crept, tracing out the foe;
No fire was lighted, and no halt was made
From haggard gray-lipped dawn till night lent friendly shade.
IX
Then, by the shelt'ring river's bank at last,
The weary warriors paused for their repast.
A couch of ice and falling shows for spread
Made many a suffering soldier's chilling bed.
They slept to dream of glory and delight,
While the pale fingers of the pitying night
Wove ghostly winding sheets for that doomed score
Who, ere another eve, should sleep to wake no more.
But those who slept not, saw with startled eyes
Far off, athwart dim unprotecting skies,
Ascending slowly with majestic grace,
A lustrous rocket, rising out of space.
'Behold the signal of the foe,' cried one,
The field is lost before the strife's begun.
Yet no! for see! yon rays spread near and far;
It is the day's first smile, the radiant morning star.
XI
The long hours counting till the daylight broke,
In whispered words the restless warriors spoke.
They talked of battles, but they thought of home
(For hearts are faithful though the feet may roam).
Brave Hamilton, all eager for the strife,
Mused o'er that two-fold mystery-death and life;
'And when I die,' quoth he, 'mine be the part
To fall upon the field, a bullet in my heart.'
XII
185
At break of dawn the scouts crept in to say
The foe was camped a rifle shot away.
The baying of a dog, an infant's cry
Pierced through the air; sleep fled from every eye.
To horse! to arms! the dead demand the dead!
Let the grand charge upon the lodge be led!
Let the Mosaic law, life for a life
Pay the long standing debt of blood. War to the knife!
XIII
So spake each heart in that unholy rage
Which fires the brain, when war the thoughts engage.
War, hideous war, appealing to the worst
In complex man, and waking that wild thirst
For human blood which blood alone can slake.
Yet for their country's safety, and the sake
Of tortured captives moaning in alarm
The Indian must be made to fear the law's strong arm.
XIV
A noble vengeance burned in Custer's breast,
But, as he led his army to the crest,
Above the wigwams, ready for the charge
He felt the heart within him, swelling large
With human pity, as an infant's wail
Shrilled once again above the wintry gale.
Then hosts of murdered children seemed to rise;
And shame his halting thought with sad accusing eyes,
XV
And urge him on to action. Stern of brow
The just avenger, and the General now,
He gives the silent signal to the band
Which, all impatient, waits for his command.
Cold lips to colder metal press; the air
Echoes those merry strains which mean despair
For sleeping chieftain and for toiling squaw,
But joy to those stern hearts which glory in the law
186
XVI
Of murder paying murder's awful debt.
And now four squadrons in one charge are met.
From east and west, from north and south they come,
At call of bugle and at roll of drum.
Their rifles rain hot hail upon the foe,
Who flee from danger in death's jaws to go.
The Indians fight like maddened bulls at bay,
And dying shriek and groan, wound the young ear of day.
XVII
A pallid captive and a white-browed boy
Add to the tumult piercing cries of joy,
As forth they fly, with high hope animate.
A hideous squaw pursues them with her hate;
Her knife descends with sickening force and sound;
Their bloody entrails stain the snow-clad ground.
She shouts with glee, then yells with rage and falls
Dead by her victims' side, pierced by avenging balls.
XVIII
Now war runs riot, carnage reigns supreme.
All thoughts of mercy fade from Custer's scheme.
Inhuman methods for inhuman foes,
Who feed on horrors and exult in woes.
To conquer and subdue alone remains
In dealing with the red man on the plains.
The breast that knows no conscience yields to fear,
Strike! let the Indian meet his master now and here.
XIX
With thoughts like these was Custer's mind engaged.
The gentlest are the sternest when enraged.
All felt the swift contagion of his ire,
For he was one who could arouse and fire
The coldest heart, so ardent was his own.
His fearless eye, his calm intrepid tone,
Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power,
187
Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower.
XX
Again they charge! and now among the killed
Lies Hamilton, his wish so soon fulfilled,
Brave Elliott pursues across the field
The flying foe, his own young life to yield.
But like the leaves in some autumnal gale
The red men fall in Washita's wild vale.
Each painted face and black befeathered head
Still more repulsive seems with death's grim pallor wed.
XXI
New forces gather on surrounding knolls,
And fierce and fiercer war's red river rolls.
With bright-hued pennants flying from each lance
The gayly costumed Kiowas advance.
And bold Comanches (Bedouins of the land)
Infuse fresh spirit in the Cheyenne band.
While from the ambush of some dark ravine
Flash arrows aimed by hands, unerring and unseen.
XXIII
The hours advance; the storm clouds roll away;
Still furious and more furious grows the fray.
The yellow sun makes ghastlier still the sight
Of painted corpses, staring in its light.
No longer slaves, but comrades of their griefs,
The squaws augment the forces of their chiefs.
They chant weird dirges in a minor key,
While from the narrow door of wigwam and tepee
XXIII
Cold glittering eyes above cold glittering steel
Their deadly purpose and their hate reveal.
The click of pistols and the crack of guns
Proclaim war's daughters dangerous as her sons.
She who would wield the soldier's sword and lance
188
Must be prepared to take the soldier's chance.
She who would shoot must serve as target, too;
The battle-frenzied men, infuriate now pursue.
XXIV
And blood of warrior, woman and papoose,
Flow free as waters when some dam breaks loose;
Consuming fire, the wanton friend of war
(Whom allies worship and whom foes abhor)
Now trails her crimson garments through the street,
And ruin marks the passing of her feet.
Full three-score lodges smoke upon the plain,
And all the vale is strewn with bodies of the slain.
XXV
And those who are not numbered with the dead
Before all-conquering Custer now are led.
To soothe their woes, and calm their fears he seeks;
An Osage guide interprets while he speaks.
The vanquished captives, humbled, cowed and spent
Read in the victor's eye his kind intent.
The modern victor is as kind as brave;
His captive is his guest, not his insulted slave.
XXVI
Mahwissa, sister of the slaughtered chief
Of all the Cheyennes, listens; and her grief
Yields now to hope; and o'er her withered face
There flits the stealthy cunning of her race.
Then forth she steps, and thus begins to speak:
'To aid the fallen and support the weak
Is man's true province; and to ease the pain
Of those o'er whom it is his purpose now to reign.
XXVII
'Let the strong chief unite with theirs his life,
And take this black-eyed maiden for a wife.'
Then, moving with an air of proud command,
189
She leads a dusky damsel by the hand,
And places her at wondering Custer's side,
Invoking choicest blessings on the bride
And all unwilling groom, who thus replies.
'Fair is the Indian maid, with bright bewildering eyes,
XXVIII
'But fairer still is one who, year on year,
Has borne man's burdens, conquered woman's fear;
And at my side rode mile on weary mile,
And faced all deaths, all dangers, with a smile,
Wise as Minerva, as Diana brave,
Is she whom generous gods in kindness gave
To share the hardships of my wandering life,
Companion, comrade, friend, my loved and loyal wife.
XXIX
'The white chief weds but one. Take back thy maid.'
He ceased, and o'er Mahwissa's face a shade
Of mingled scorn and pity and surprise
Sweeps as she slow retreats, and thus replies:
'Rich is the pale-faced chief in battle fame,
But poor is he who but one wife may claim.
Wives are the red-skinned heroes' rightful spoil;
In war they prove his strength, in times of peace they toil.'
XXX
But hark! The bugle echoes o'er the plains
And sounds again those merry Celtic strains
Which oft have called light feet to lilting dance,
But now they mean the order to advance.
Along the river's bank, beyond the hill
Two thousand foemen lodge, unconquered still.
Ere falls night's curtain on this bloody play,
The army must proceed, with feint of further fray.
XXXI
The weary warriors mount their foam-flecked steeds,
190
With flags unfurled the dauntless host proceeds.
What though the foe outnumbers two to one?
Boldness achieves what strength oft leaves undone;
A daring mein will cause brute force to cower,
And courage is the secret source of power.
As Custer's column wheels upon their sight
The frightened red men yield the untried field by flight.
XXXII
Yet when these conquering heroes sink to rest,
Dissatisfaction gnaws the leader's breast,
For far away across vast seas of snows
Held prisoners still by hostile Arapahoes
And Cheyennes unsubdued, two captives wait.
On God and Custer hangs their future fate.
May the Great Spirit nerve the mortal's arm
To rescue suffering souls from worse than death's alarm.
XXXIII
But ere they seek to rescue the oppressed,
The valiant dead, in state, are laid to rest.
Mourned Hamilton, the faithful and the brave,
Nine hundred comrades follow to the grave;
And close behind the banner-hidden corse
All draped in black, walks mournfully his horse;
While tears of sound drip through the sunlit day.
A soldier may not weep, but drums and bugles may.
XXXIV
Now, Muse, recount, how after long delays
And dangerous marches through untrodden ways,
Where cold and hunger on each hour attend,
At last the army gains the journey's end.
An Indian village bursts upon the eye;
Two hundred lodges, sleep-encompassed lie,
There captives moan their anguished prayers through tears,
While in the silent dawn the armied answer nears.
XXXV
191
To snatch two fragile victims from the foe
Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow.
Each woe they suffered in a hostile land
The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned.
They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait
To wrest the captives from their horrid fate.
Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls,
Each savage soldier's heart for awful bloodshed calls.
XXXVI
And one, in years a youth, in woe a man,
Sad Brewster, scarred by sorrow's blighting ban,
Looks, panting, where his captive sister sleeps,
And o'er his face the shade of murder creeps.
His nostrils quiver like a hungry beast
Who scents anear the bloody carnal feast.
He longs to leap down in that slumbering vale
And leave no foe alive to tell the awful tale.
XXXVII
Not so, calm Custer. Sick of gory strife,
He hopes for rescue with no loss of life;
And plans that bloodless battle of the plains
Where reasoning mind outwits mere savage brains.
The sullen soldiers follow where he leads;
No gun is emptied, and no foeman bleeds.
Fierce for the fight and eager for the fray
They look upon their Chief in undisguised dismay.
XXXVIII
He hears the murmur of their discontent,
But sneers can never change a strong mind's bent.
He knows his purpose and he does not swerve.
And with a quiet mien and steady nerve
He meets dark looks where'er his steps may go,
And silence that is bruising as a blow,
Where late were smiles and words of ardent praise.
So pass the lagging weeks of wearying delays.
192
XXXIX
Inaction is not always what it seems,
And Custer's mind with plan and project teems.
Fixed in his peaceful purpose he abides
With none takes counsel and in none confides;
But slowly weaves about the foe a net
Which leaves them wholly at his mercy, yet
He strikes no fateful blow; he takes no life,
And holds in check his men, who pant for bloody strife.
XL
Intrepid warrior and skilled diplomate,
In his strong hands he holds the red man's fate.
The craftiest plot he checks with counterplot,
Till tribe by tribe the tricky foe is brought
To fear his vengeance and to know his power.
As man's fixed gaze will make a wild beast cower,
So these crude souls feel that unflinching will
Which draws them by its force, yet does not deign to kill.
XLI
And one by one the hostile Indians send
Their chiefs to seek a peaceful treaty's end.
Great councils follow; skill with cunning copes
And conquers it; and Custer sees his hopes
So long delayed, like stars storm hidden, rise
To radiate with splendor all his skies.
The stubborn Cheyennes, cowed at last by fear,
Leading the captive pair, o'er spring-touched hills appear.
XLII
With breath suspended, now the whole command
Waits the approach of that equestrian band.
Nearer it comes, still nearer, then a cry,
Half sob, half shriek, goes piercing God's blue sky,
And Brewster, like a nimble-footed doe,
Or like an arrow hurrying from a bow,
193
Shoots swiftly through the intervening space
And that lost sister clasps, in sorrowing love's embrace.
XLIII
And men who leaned o'er Hamilton's rude bier
And saw his dead dear face without a tear,
Strong souls who early learned the manly art
Of keeping from the eye what's in the heart,
Soldiers who look unmoved on death's pale brow,
Avert their eyes, to hide their moisture now.
The briny flood forced back from shores of woe,
Needs but to touch the strands of joy to overflow.
XLIV
About the captives welcoming warriors crowd,
All eyes are wet, and Brewster sobs aloud.
Alas, the ravage wrought by toil and woe
On faces that were fair twelve moons ago.
Bronzed by exposure to the heat and cold,
Still young in years, yet prematurely old,
By insults humbled and by labor worn,
They stand in youth's bright hour, of all youth's graces shorn.
XLV
A scanty garment rudely made of sacks
Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs;
About their necks are twisted tangled strings
Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings
Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow.
Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe
The cunning Indians decked the captive pair
Who in one year have known a lifetime of despair.
XLVI
But love can resurrect from sorrow's tomb
The vanished beauty and the faded bloom,
As sunlight lifts the bruised flower from the sod,
Can lift crushed hearts to hope, for love is God.
194
Already now in freedom's glad release
The hunted look of fear gives place to peace,
And in their eyes at thought of home appears
That rainbow light of joy which brightest shines through tears.
XLVII
About the leader thick the warriors crowd;
Late loud in censure, now in praises loud,
They laud the tactics, and the skill extol
Which gained a bloodless yet a glorious goal.
Alone and lonely in the path of right
Full many a brave soul walks. When gods requite
And crown his actions as their worth demands,
Among admiring throngs the hero always stands.
XLVIII
Back to the East the valorous squadrons sweep;
The earth, arousing from her long, cold sleep,
Throws from her breast the coverlet of snow,
Revealing Spring's soft charms which lie below.
Suppressed emotions in each heart arise,
The wooer wakens and the warrior dies.
The bird of prey is vanquished by the dove,
And thoughts of bloody strife give place to thoughts of love.
XLIX
The mighty plains, devoid of whispering trees,
Guard well the secrets of departed seas.
Where once great tides swept by with ebb and flow
The scorching sun looks down in tearless woe.
And fierce tornadoes in ungoverned pain
Mourn still the loss of that mysterious main.
Across this ocean bed the soldiers flyHome is the gleaming goal that lures each eager eye.
Like some elixir which the gods prepare,
195
They drink the viewless tonic of the air,
Sweet with the breath of startled antelopes
Which speed before them over swelling slopes.
Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor,
The column curves and makes a slight detour,
As Custer leads a thousand men away
To save a ground bird's nest which in the footpath lay.
LI
Mile following mile, against the leaning skies
Far off they see a dull dark cloud arise.
The hunter's instinct in each heart is stirred,
Beholding there in one stupendous herd
A hundred thousand buffaloes. Oh great
Unwieldy proof of Nature's cruder state,
Rough remnant of a prehistoric day,
Thou, with the red man, too, must shortly pass away.
LII
Upon those spreading plains is there not room
For man and bison, that he seals its doom?
What pleasure lies and what seductive charm
In slaying with no purpose but to harm?
Alas, that man, unable to create,
Should thirst forever to exterminate,
And in destruction find his fiercest joy.
The gods alone create, gods only should destroy.
LIII
The flying hosts a straggling bull pursue;
Unerring aim, the skillful Custer drew.
The wounded beast turns madly in despair
And man and horse are lifted high in air.
The conscious steed needs not the guiding rein;
Back with a bound and one quick cry of pain
He springs, and halts, well knowing where must fall
In that protected frame, the sure death dealing ball.
LIV
196
With minds intent upon the morrow's feast,
The men surround the carcass of the beast.
Rolled on his back, he lies with lolling tongue,
Soon to the saddle savory steaks are hung.
And from his mighty head, great tufts of hair
Are cut as trophies for some lady fair.
To vultures then they leave the torn remains
Of what an hour ago was monarch of the plains.
LV
Far off, two bulls in jealous war engage,
Their blood-shot eye balls roll in furious rage;
With maddened hoofs they mutilate the ground
And loud their angry bellowings resound;
With shaggy heads bent low they plunge and roar,
Till both broad bellies drip with purple gore.
Meanwhile, the heifer, whom the twain desire,
Stands browsing near the pair, indifferent to their ire.
LVI
At last she lifts her lazy head and heeds
The clattering hoofs of swift advancing steeds.
Off to the herd with cumb'rous gait she runs
And leaves the bulls to face the threatening guns.
No more for them the free life of the plains,
Its mating pleasures and its warring pains.
Their quivering flesh shall feed unnumbered foes,
Their tufted tails adorn the soldiers' saddle bows.
LVII
Now into camp the conquering hosts advance;
On burnished arms the brilliant sunbeams glance.
Brave Custer leads, blonde as the gods of old;
Back from his brow blow clustering locks of gold,
And, like a jewel in a brook, there lies,
Far in the depths of his blue guarded eyes,
The thought of one whose smiling lips upcurled,
Mean more of joy to him than plaudits of the world.
197
LVIII
The troops in columns of platoons appear
Close to the leader following. Ah, here
The poetry of war is fully seen,
Its prose forgotten; as against the green
Of Mother Nature, uniformed in blue,
The soldiers pass for Sheridan's review.
The motion-music of the moving throng,
Is like a silent tune, set to a wordless song.
LIX
The guides and trailers, weird in war's array,
Precede the troops along the grassy way.
They chant wild songs, and with loud noise and stress,
In savage manner savage joy express.
The Indian captives, blanketed in red,
On ponies mounted, by the scouts are led.
Like sumach bushes, etched on evening skies,
Against the blue-clad troops, this patch of color lies.
LX
High o'er the scene vast music billows bound,
And all the air is liquid with the sound
Of those invisible compelling waves.
Perchance they reach the low and lonely graves
Where sleep brave Elliott and Hamilton,
And whisper there the tale of victory won;
Or do the souls of soldiers tried and true
Come at the bugle call, and march in grand review?
LXI
The pleased Commander watches in surprise
This splendid pageant surge before his eyes.
Not in those mighty battle days of old
Did scenes like this upon his sight unfold.
But now it passes. Drums and bugles cease
To dash war billows on the shores of Peace.
198
The victors smile on fair broad bosomed Sleep
While in her soothing arms, the vanquished cease to weep
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
1236:I.
Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!
Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye!
They could not in the self-same mansion dwell
Without some stir of heart, some malady;
They could not sit at meals but feel how well
It soothed each to be the other by;
They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep
But to each other dream, and nightly weep.
II.
With every morn their love grew tenderer,
With every eve deeper and tenderer still;
He might not in house, field, or garden stir,
But her full shape would all his seeing fill;
And his continual voice was pleasanter
To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;
Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,
She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.
III.
He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch,
Before the door had given her to his eyes;
And from her chamber-window he would catch
Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;
And constant as her vespers would he watch,
Because her face was turn'd to the same skies;
And with sick longing all the night outwear,
To hear her morning-step upon the stair.
IV.
A whole long month of May in this sad plight
Made their cheeks paler by the break of June:
"To morrow will I bow to my delight,
"To-morrow will I ask my lady's boon."
"O may I never see another night,
"Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love's tune."
So spake they to their pillows; but, alas,
Honeyless days and days did he let pass;
V.
Until sweet Isabella's untouch'd cheek
Fell sick within the rose's just domain,
Fell thin as a young mother's, who doth seek
By every lull to cool her infant's pain:
"How ill she is," said he, "I may not speak,
"And yet I will, and tell my love all plain:
"If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears,
"And at the least 'twill startle off her cares."
VI.
So said he one fair morning, and all day
His heart beat awfully against his side;
And to his heart he inwardly did pray
For power to speak; but still the ruddy tide
Stifled his voice, and puls'd resolve away
Fever'd his high conceit of such a bride,
Yet brought him to the meekness of a child:
Alas! when passion is both meek and wild!
VII.
So once more he had wak'd and anguished
A dreary night of love and misery,
If Isabel's quick eye had not been wed
To every symbol on his forehead high;
She saw it waxing very pale and dead,
And straight all flush'd; so, lisped tenderly,
"Lorenzo!"here she ceas'd her timid quest,
But in her tone and look he read the rest.
VIII.
"O Isabella, I can half perceive
"That I may speak my grief into thine ear;
"If thou didst ever any thing believe,
"Believe how I love thee, believe how near
"My soul is to its doom: I would not grieve
"Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear
"Thine eyes by gazing; but I cannot live
"Another night, and not my passion shrive.
IX.
"Love! thou art leading me from wintry cold,
"Lady! thou leadest me to summer clime,
"And I must taste the blossoms that unfold
"In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time."
So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,
And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme:
Great bliss was with them, and great happiness
Grew, like a lusty flower in June's caress.
X.
Parting they seem'd to tread upon the air,
Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart
Only to meet again more close, and share
The inward fragrance of each other's heart.
She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair
Sang, of delicious love and honey'd dart;
He with light steps went up a western hill,
And bade the sun farewell, and joy'd his fill.
XI.
All close they met again, before the dusk
Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,
All close they met, all eves, before the dusk
Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil,
Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk,
Unknown of any, free from whispering tale.
Ah! better had it been for ever so,
Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe.
XII.
Were they unhappy then?It cannot be
Too many tears for lovers have been shed,
Too many sighs give we to them in fee,
Too much of pity after they are dead,
Too many doleful stories do we see,
Whose matter in bright gold were best be read;
Except in such a page where Theseus' spouse
Over the pathless waves towards him bows.
XIII.
But, for the general award of love,
The little sweet doth kill much bitterness;
Though Dido silent is in under-grove,
And Isabella's was a great distress,
Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove
Was not embalm'd, this truth is not the less
Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers,
Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.
XIV.
With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,
Enriched from ancestral merchandize,
And for them many a weary hand did swelt
In torched mines and noisy factories,
And many once proud-quiver'd loins did melt
In blood from stinging whip;with hollow eyes
Many all day in dazzling river stood,
To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.
XV.
For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gush'd blood; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark
Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe
A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:
Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,
That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.
XVI.
Why were they proud? Because their marble founts
Gush'd with more pride than do a wretch's tears?
Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts
Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs?
Why were they proud? Because red-lin'd accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?
Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,
Why in the name of Glory were they proud?
XVII.
Yet were these Florentines as self-retired
In hungry pride and gainful cowardice,
As two close Hebrews in that land inspired,
Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies,
The hawks of ship-mast foreststhe untired
And pannier'd mules for ducats and old lies
Quick cat's-paws on the generous stray-away,
Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay.
XVIII.
How was it these same ledger-men could spy
Fair Isabella in her downy nest?
How could they find out in Lorenzo's eye
A straying from his toil? Hot Egypt's pest
Into their vision covetous and sly!
How could these money-bags see east and west?
Yet so they didand every dealer fair
Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare.
XIX.
O eloquent and famed Boccaccio!
Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon,
And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow,
And of thy roses amorous of the moon,
And of thy lilies, that do paler grow
Now they can no more hear thy ghittern's tune,
For venturing syllables that ill beseem
The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme.
XX.
Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale
Shall move on soberly, as it is meet;
There is no other crime, no mad assail
To make old prose in modern rhyme more sweet:
But it is donesucceed the verse or fail
To honour thee, and thy gone spirit greet;
To stead thee as a verse in English tongue,
An echo of thee in the north-wind sung.
XXI.
These brethren having found by many signs
What love Lorenzo for their sister had,
And how she lov'd him too, each unconfines
His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad
That he, the servant of their trade designs,
Should in their sister's love be blithe and glad,
When 'twas their plan to coax her by degrees
To some high noble and his olive-trees.
XXII.
And many a jealous conference had they,
And many times they bit their lips alone,
Before they fix'd upon a surest way
To make the youngster for his crime atone;
And at the last, these men of cruel clay
Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone;
For they resolved in some forest dim
To kill Lorenzo, and there bury him.
XXIII.
So on a pleasant morning, as he leant
Into the sun-rise, o'er the balustrade
Of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent
Their footing through the dews; and to him said,
"You seem there in the quiet of content,
"Lorenzo, and we are most loth to invade
"Calm speculation; but if you are wise,
"Bestride your steed while cold is in the skies.
XXIV.
"To-day we purpose, ay, this hour we mount
"To spur three leagues towards the Apennine;
"Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count
"His dewy rosary on the eglantine."
Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont,
Bow'd a fair greeting to these serpents' whine;
And went in haste, to get in readiness,
With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman's dress.
XXV.
And as he to the court-yard pass'd along,
Each third step did he pause, and listen'd oft
If he could hear his lady's matin-song,
Or the light whisper of her footstep soft;
And as he thus over his passion hung,
He heard a laugh full musical aloft;
When, looking up, he saw her features bright
Smile through an in-door lattice, all delight.
XXVI.
"Love, Isabel!" said he, "I was in pain
"Lest I should miss to bid thee a good morrow:
"Ah! what if I should lose thee, when so fain
"I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow
"Of a poor three hours' absence? but we'll gain
"Out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow.
"Good bye! I'll soon be back.""Good bye!" said she:
And as he went she chanted merrily.
XXVII.
So the two brothers and their murder'd man
Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream
Gurgles through straiten'd banks, and still doth fan
Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream
Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan
The brothers' faces in the ford did seem,
Lorenzo's flush with love.They pass'd the water
Into a forest quiet for the slaughter.
XXVIII.
There was Lorenzo slain and buried in,
There in that forest did his great love cease;
Ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win,
It aches in lonelinessis ill at peace
As the break-covert blood-hounds of such sin:
They dipp'd their swords in the water, and did tease
Their horses homeward, with convulsed spur,
Each richer by his being a murderer.
XXIX.
They told their sister how, with sudden speed,
Lorenzo had ta'en ship for foreign lands,
Because of some great urgency and need
In their affairs, requiring trusty hands.
Poor Girl! put on thy stifling widow's weed,
And 'scape at once from Hope's accursed bands;
To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow,
And the next day will be a day of sorrow.
XXX.
She weeps alone for pleasures not to be;
Sorely she wept until the night came on,
And then, instead of love, O misery!
She brooded o'er the luxury alone:
His image in the dusk she seem'd to see,
And to the silence made a gentle moan,
Spreading her perfect arms upon the air,
And on her couch low murmuring, "Where? O where?"
XXXI.
But Selfishness, Love's cousin, held not long
Its fiery vigil in her single breast;
She fretted for the golden hour, and hung
Upon the time with feverish unrest
Not longfor soon into her heart a throng
Of higher occupants, a richer zest,
Came tragic; passion not to be subdued,
And sorrow for her love in travels rude.
XXXII.
In the mid days of autumn, on their eves
The breath of Winter comes from far away,
And the sick west continually bereaves
Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay
Of death among the bushes and the leaves,
To make all bare before he dares to stray
From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel
By gradual decay from beauty fell,
XXXIII.
Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes
She ask'd her brothers, with an eye all pale,
Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes
Could keep him off so long? They spake a tale
Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes
Came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom's vale;
And every night in dreams they groan'd aloud,
To see their sister in her snowy shroud.
XXXIV.
And she had died in drowsy ignorance,
But for a thing more deadly dark than all;
It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,
Which saves a sick man from the feather'd pall
For some few gasping moments; like a lance,
Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall
With cruel pierce, and bringing him again
Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.
XXXV.
It was a vision.In the drowsy gloom,
The dull of midnight, at her couch's foot
Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb
Had marr'd his glossy hair which once could shoot
Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom
Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute
From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears
Had made a miry channel for his tears.
XXXVI.
Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake;
For there was striving, in its piteous tongue,
To speak as when on earth it was awake,
And Isabella on its music hung:
Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake,
As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung;
And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song,
Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among.
XXXVII.
Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright
With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof
From the poor girl by magic of their light,
The while it did unthread the horrid woof
Of the late darken'd time,the murderous spite
Of pride and avarice,the dark pine roof
In the forest,and the sodden turfed dell,
Where, without any word, from stabs he fell.
XXXVIII.
Saying moreover, "Isabel, my sweet!
"Red whortle-berries droop above my head,
"And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;
"Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed
"Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat
"Comes from beyond the river to my bed:
"Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,
"And it shall comfort me within the tomb.
XXXIX.
"I am a shadow now, alas! alas!
"Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling
"Alone: I chant alone the holy mass,
"While little sounds of life are round me knelling,
"And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,
"And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,
"Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me,
"And thou art distant in Humanity.
XL.
"I know what was, I feel full well what is,
"And I should rage, if spirits could go mad;
"Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss,
"That paleness warms my grave, as though I had
"A Seraph chosen from the bright abyss
"To be my spouse: thy paleness makes me glad;
"Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel
"A greater love through all my essence steal."
XLI.
The Spirit mourn'd "Adieu!"dissolv'd, and left
The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;
As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,
Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,
We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,
And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:
It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache,
And in the dawn she started up awake;
XLII.
"Ha! ha!" said she, "I knew not this hard life,
"I thought the worst was simple misery;
"I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife
"Portion'd ushappy days, or else to die;
"But there is crimea brother's bloody knife!
"Sweet Spirit, thou hast school'd my infancy:
"I'll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes,
"And greet thee morn and even in the skies."
XLIII.
When the full morning came, she had devised
How she might secret to the forest hie;
How she might find the clay, so dearly prized,
And sing to it one latest lullaby;
How her short absence might be unsurmised,
While she the inmost of the dream would try.
Resolv'd, she took with her an aged nurse,
And went into that dismal forest-hearse.
XLIV.
See, as they creep along the river side,
How she doth whisper to that aged Dame,
And, after looking round the champaign wide,
Shows her a knife."What feverous hectic flame
"Burns in thee, child?What good can thee betide,
"That thou should'st smile again?"The evening came,
And they had found Lorenzo's earthy bed;
The flint was there, the berries at his head.
XLV.
Who hath not loiter'd in a green church-yard,
And let his spirit, like a demon-mole,
Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard,
To see skull, coffin'd bones, and funeral stole;
Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr'd,
And filling it once more with human soul?
Ah! this is holiday to what was felt
When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt.
XLVI.
She gaz'd into the fresh-thrown mould, as though
One glance did fully all its secrets tell;
Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know
Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;
Upon the murderous spot she seem'd to grow,
Like to a native lily of the dell:
Then with her knife, all sudden, she began
To dig more fervently than misers can.
XLVII.
Soon she turn'd up a soiled glove, whereon
Her silk had play'd in purple phantasies,
She kiss'd it with a lip more chill than stone,
And put it in her bosom, where it dries
And freezes utterly unto the bone
Those dainties made to still an infant's cries:
Then 'gan she work again; nor stay'd her care,
But to throw back at times her veiling hair.
XLVIII.
That old nurse stood beside her wondering,
Until her heart felt pity to the core
At sight of such a dismal labouring,
And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,
And put her lean hands to the horrid thing:
Three hours they labour'd at this travail sore;
At last they felt the kernel of the grave,
And Isabella did not stamp and rave.
XLIX.
Ah! wherefore all this wormy circumstance?
Why linger at the yawning tomb so long?
O for the gentleness of old Romance,
The simple plaining of a minstrel's song!
Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance,
For here, in truth, it doth not well belong
To speak:O turn thee to the very tale,
And taste the music of that vision pale.
L.
With duller steel than the Persan sword
They cut away no formless monster's head,
But one, whose gentleness did well accord
With death, as life. The ancient harps have said,
Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord:
If Love impersonate was ever dead,
Pale Isabella kiss'd it, and low moan'd.
'Twas love; cold,dead indeed, but not dethroned.
LI.
In anxious secrecy they took it home,
And then the prize was all for Isabel:
She calm'd its wild hair with a golden comb,
And all around each eye's sepulchral cell
Pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam
With tears, as chilly as a dripping well,
She drench'd away:and still she comb'd, and kept
Sighing all dayand still she kiss'd, and wept.
LII.
Then in a silken scarf,sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully,
She wrapp'd it up; and for its tomb did choose
A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by,
And cover'd it with mould, and o'er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.
LIII.
And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten'd it with tears unto the core.
LIV.
And so she ever fed it with thin tears,
Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew,
So that it smelt more balmy than its peers
Of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew
Nurture besides, and life, from human fears,
From the fast mouldering head there shut from view:
So that the jewel, safely casketed,
Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread.
LV.
O Melancholy, linger here awhile!
O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!
O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,
Unknown, Lethean, sigh to usO sigh!
Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile;
Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily,
And make a pale light in your cypress glooms,
Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs.
LVI.
Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe,
From the deep throat of sad Melpomene!
Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go,
And touch the strings into a mystery;
Sound mournfully upon the winds and low;
For simple Isabel is soon to be
Among the dead: She withers, like a palm
Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm.
LVII.
O leave the palm to wither by itself;
Let not quick Winter chill its dying hour!
It may not bethose Baalites of pelf,
Her brethren, noted the continual shower
From her dead eyes; and many a curious elf,
Among her kindred, wonder'd that such dower
Of youth and beauty should be thrown aside
By one mark'd out to be a Noble's bride.
LVIII.
And, furthermore, her brethren wonder'd much
Why she sat drooping by the Basil green,
And why it flourish'd, as by magic touch;
Greatly they wonder'd what the thing might mean:
They could not surely give belief, that such
A very nothing would have power to wean
Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay,
And even remembrance of her love's delay.
LIX.
Therefore they watch'd a time when they might sift
This hidden whim; and long they watch'd in vain;
For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift,
And seldom felt she any hunger-pain;
And when she left, she hurried back, as swift
As bird on wing to breast its eggs again;
And, patient as a hen-bird, sat her there
Beside her Basil, weeping through her hair.
LX.
Yet they contriv'd to steal the Basil-pot,
And to examine it in secret place:
The thing was vile with green and livid spot,
And yet they knew it was Lorenzo's face:
The guerdon of their murder they had got,
And so left Florence in a moment's space,
Never to turn again.Away they went,
With blood upon their heads, to banishment.
LXI.
O Melancholy, turn thine eyes away!
O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!
O Echo, Echo, on some other day,
From isles Lethean, sigh to usO sigh!
Spirits of grief, sing not your "Well-a-way!"
For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die;
Will die a death too lone and incomplete,
Now they have ta'en away her Basil sweet.
LXII.
Piteous she look'd on dead and senseless things,
Asking for her lost Basil amorously:
And with melodious chuckle in the strings
Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry
After the Pilgrim in his wanderings,
To ask him where her Basil was; and why
'Twas hid from her: "For cruel 'tis," said she,
"To steal my Basil-pot away from me."
LXIII.
And so she pined, and so she died forlorn,
Imploring for her Basil to the last.
No heart was there in Florence but did mourn
In pity of her love, so overcast.
And a sad ditty of this story born
From mouth to mouth through all the country pass'd:
Still is the burthen sung"O cruelty,
"To steal my Basil-pot away from me!"
(stanza XXIV): Leigh Hunt cites the "exquisite metaphor" of lines 3 and 4 as an instance in which Keats "over-informs the occasion or the speaker." But I doubt whether it is fair to class this kind of "over-informing" as an error. If poeple of this kind are to be denied one element of poetry, they must be denied another; and it is scarcely more strange to find the vile brethren of Isabella talking in metaphor than to find them talking in rhyme and metre. For the rest, a common-place Italian, even a villainous Italian, feels so intensely the sunlight of his land, that we need not object to the metaphor even on dramatic grounds.
(stanza XXXIII): For Hinnom's Vale see Second Book of Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, Chapter XXVIII, verse 3: "Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel."
(stanza XLVII): The sixth line has been a topic of censure; but I think wrongly. Taken in itself apart from the poem, it might be held to be an inopportune description; but in the context of this most tragic and pathetic story, it has to me a surpassing fitness -- a fitness astonishing in the work of a youth of Keats's age in 1818. The idea of maternity thus connected as it were by chance with the image of this widowed girl on the borders of insanity emphasizes in the most beautiful way the helpless misery of a life wrecked by the wickedness of others, and throws into ghastly contrast the joy of what should have been and the agony of what was.
(stanza XLVIII): Hunt observes here - "It is curious to see how the simple pathos of Boccaccio, or (which is the same thing) the simple intensity of the heroine's feelings, suffices our author more and more, as he gets to the end of his story. And he has related it as happily, as if he had never written any poetry but that of the heart."
(stanza LIV): Whether the "savage and tartarly" assailants of Keats's day availed themselves of the word "leafits" in the 8th line for an accusation of word-coining, I do not know; but as far as I have been able to ascertain this diminutive of "leaf" is peculiar to the present passage.
(stanza LXII): Hunt says - "The passage about the tone of her voice, -- the poor lost-witted coaxing, -- the 'chuckle,' in which she asks after her Pilgrim and her Basil,-- is as true and touching an instance of the effect of a happy familiar word, as any in all poetry." It is difficult to imagine that these sentences of Hunt's were not somehow misprinted; but, as the review occurs only in the original issue of The Indicator, one has no means of testing this passage by comparison with later editions. It can hardly be supposed that Hunt really thought the Pilgrim meant Lorenzo; and it ought not to be necessary to explain that the poor lost girl called after any pilgrim whom chance sent her way, enquiring of him where her Basil was.
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Isabella; Or, The Pot Of Basil - A Story From Boccaccio
,#NFDB
1237:Scene. Constantinople; the house of a Greek Conjurer. 1521.
Paracelsus.
Paracelsus.
Over the waters in the vaporous West
The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold
Behind the arm of the city, which between,
With all that length of domes and minarets,
Athwart the splendour, black and crooked runs
Like a Turk verse along a scimitar.
There lie, sullen memorial, and no more
Possess my aching sight! 'T is done at last.
Strangeand the juggles of a sallow cheat
Have won me to this act! 'T is as yon cloud
Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a mountain-top
And break upon a molehill. I have dared
Come to a pause with knowledge; scan for once
The heights already reached, without regard
To the extent above; fairly compute
All I have clearly gained; for once excluding
A brilliant future to supply and perfect
All half-gains and conjectures and crude hopes:
And all because a fortune-teller wills
His credulous seekers should inscribe thus much
Their previous life's attainment, in his roll,
Before his promised secret, as he vaunts,
Make up the sum: and here amid the scrawled
Uncouth recordings of the dupes of this
Old arch-genethliac, lie my life's results!
A few blurred characters suffice to note
A stranger wandered long through many lands
And reaped the fruit he coveted in a few
Discoveries, as appended here and there,
The fragmentary produce of much toil,
In a dim heap, fact and surmise together
Confusedly massed as when acquired; he was
Intent on gain to come too much to stay
And scrutinize the little gained: the whole
Slipt in the blank space 'twixt an idiot's gibber
And a mad lover's dittythere it lies.
And yet those blottings chronicle a life
A whole life, and my life! Nothing to do,
No problem for the fancy, but a life
Spent and decided, wasted past retrieve
Or worthy beyond peer. Stay, what does this
Remembrancer set down concerning "life"?
"'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream,'
"It is the echo of time; and he whose heart
"Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech
"Was copied from a human tongue, can never
"Recall when he was living yet knew not this.
"Nevertheless long seasons pass o'er him
"Till some one hour's experience shows what nothing,
"It seemed, could clearer show; and ever after,
"An altered brow and eye and gait and speech
"Attest that now he knows the adage true
"'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.'"
Ay, my brave chronicler, and this same hour
As well as any: now, let my time be!
Now! I can go no farther; well or ill,
'T is done. I must desist and take my chance.
I cannot keep on the stretch: 't is no back-shrinking
For let but some assurance beam, some close
To my toil grow visible, and I proceed
At any price, though closing it, I die.
Else, here I pause. The old Greek's prophecy
Is like to turn out true: "I shall not quit
"His chamber till I know what I desire!"
Was it the light wind sang it o'er the sea?
An end, a rest! strange how the notion, once
Encountered, gathers strength by moments! Rest!
Where has it kept so long? this throbbing brow
To cease, this beating heart to cease, all cruel
And gnawing thoughts to cease! To dare let down
My strung, so high-strung brain, to dare unnerve
My harassed o'ertasked frame, to know my place,
My portion, my reward, even my failure,
Assigned, made sure for ever! To lose myself
Among the common creatures of the world,
To draw some gain from having been a man,
Neither to hope nor fear, to live at length!
Even in failure, rest! But rest in truth
And power and recompense . . . I hoped that once!
What, sunk insensibly so deep? Has all
Been undergone for this? This the request
My labour qualified me to present
With no fear of refusal? Had I gone
Slightingly through my task, and so judged fit
To moderate my hopes; nay, were it now
My sole concern to exculpate myself,
End things or mend them,why, I could not choose
A humbler mood to wait for the event!
No, no, there needs not this; no, after all,
At worst I have performed my share of the task
The rest is God's concern; mine, merely this,
To know that I have obstinately held
By my own work. The mortal whose brave foot
Has trod, unscathed, the temple-court so far
That he descries at length the shrine of shrines,
Must let no sneering of the demons' eyes,
Whom he could pass unquailing, fasten now
Upon him, fairly past their power; no, no
He must not stagger, faint, fall down at last,
Having a charm to baffle them; behold,
He bares his front: a mortal ventures thus
Serene amid the echoes, beams and glooms!
If he be priest henceforth, if he wake up
The god of the place to ban and blast him there,
Both well! What's failure or success to me?
I have subdued my life to the one purpose
Whereto I ordained it; there alone I spy,
No doubt, that way I may be satisfied.
Yes, well have I subdued my life! beyond
The obligation of my strictest vow,
The contemplation of my wildest bond,
Which gave my nature freely up, in truth,
But in its actual state, consenting fully
All passionate impulses its soil was formed
To rear, should wither; but foreseeing not
The tract, doomed to perpetual barrenness,
Would seem one day, remembered as it was,
Beside the parched sand-waste which now it is,
Already strewn with faint blooms, viewless then.
I ne'er engaged to root up loves so frail
I felt them not; yet now, 't is very plain
Some soft spots had their birth in me at first,
If not love, say, like love: there was a time
When yet this wolfish hunger after knowledge
Set not remorselessly love's claims aside.
This heart was human once, or why recall
Einsiedeln, now, and Wrzburg which the Mayne
Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm?
And Festusmy poor Festus, with his praise
And counsel and grave fearswhere is he now
With the sweet maiden, long ago his bride?
I surely loved themthat last night, at least,
When we . . . gone! gone! the better. I am saved
The sad review of an ambitious youth
Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth,
But let grow up and wind around a will
Till action was destroyed. No, I have gone
Purging my path successively of aught
Wearing the distant likeness of such lusts.
I have made life consist of one idea:
Ere that was master, up till that was born,
I bear a memory of a pleasant life
Whose small events I treasure; till one morn
I ran o'er the seven little grassy fields,
Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to tell
Poor Festus, leaping all the while for joy,
To leave all trouble for my future plans,
Since I had just determined to become
The greatest and most glorious man on earth.
And since that morn all life has been forgotten;
All is one day, one only step between
The outset and the end: one tyrant all-
Absorbing aim fills up the interspace,
One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up
Through a career apparently adverse
To its existence: life, death, light and shadow,
The shows of the world, were bare receptacles
Or indices of truth to be wrung thence,
Not ministers of sorrow or delight:
A wondrous natural robe in which she went.
For some one truth would dimly beacon me
From mountains rough with pines, and flit and wink
O'er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and tremble
Into assured light in some branching mine
Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold
And all the beauty, all the wonder fell
On either side the truth, as its mere robe;
I see the robe nowthen I saw the form.
So far, then, I have voyaged with success,
So much is good, then, in this working sea
Which parts me from that happy strip of land:
But o'er that happy strip a sun shone, too!
And fainter gleams it as the waves grow rough,
And still more faint as the sea widens; last
I sicken on a dead gulf streaked with light
From its own putrefying depths alone.
Then, God was pledged to take me by the hand;
Now, any miserable juggle can bid
My pride depart. All is alike at length:
God may take pleasure in confounding pride
By hiding secrets with the scorned and base
I am here, in short: so little have I paused
Throughout! I never glanced behind to know
If I had kept my primal light from wane,
And thus insensibly amwhat I am!
Oh, bitter; very bitter!
And more bitter,
To fear a deeper curse, an inner ruin,
Plague beneath plague, the last turning the first
To light beside its darkness. Let me weep
My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone,
In tears which burn! Would I were sure to win
Some startling secret in their stead, a tincture
Of force to flush old age with youth, or breed
Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they change
To opal shafts!only that, hurling it
Indignant back, I might convince myself
My aims remained supreme and pure as ever!
Even now, why not desire, for mankind's sake,
That if I fail, some fault may be the cause,
That, though I sink, another may succeed?
O God, the despicable heart of us!
Shut out this hideous mockery from my heart!
'T was politic in you, Aureole, to reject
Single rewards, and ask them in the lump;
At all events, once launched, to hold straight on:
For now' t is all or nothing. Mighty profit
Your gains will bring if they stop short of such
Full consummation! As a man, you had
A certain share of strength; and that is gone
Already in the getting these you boast.
Do not they seem to laugh, as who should say
"Great master, we are here indeed, dragged forth
"To light; this hast thou done: be glad! Now, seek
"The strength to use which thou hast spent in getting!"
And yet't is much, surely't is very much,
Thus to have emptied youth of all its gifts,
To feed a fire meant to hold out till morn
Arrived with inexhaustible light; and lo,
I have heaped up my last, and day dawns not!
And I am left with grey hair, faded hands,
And furrowed brow. Ha, have I, after all,
Mistaken the wild nursling of my breast?
Knowledge it seemed, and power, and recompense!
Was she who glided through my room of nights,
Who laid my head on her soft knees and smoothed
The damp locks,whose sly soothings just began
When my sick spirit craved repose awhile
God! was I fighting sleep off for death's sake?
God! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind
Mind should be precious. Spare my mind alone!
All else I will endure; if, as I stand
Here, with my gains, thy thunder smite me down,
I bow me; 't is thy will, thy righteous will;
I o'erpass life's restrictions, and I die;
And if no trace of my career remain
Save a thin corpse at pleasure of the wind
In these bright chambers level with the air,
See thou to it! But if my spirit fail,
My once proud spirit forsake me at the last,
Hast thou done well by me? So do not thou!
Crush not my mind, dear God, though I be crushed!
Hold me before the frequence of thy seraphs
And say"I crushed him, lest he should disturb
"My law. Men must not know their strength: behold
"Weak and alone, how he had raised himself!"
But if delusions trouble me, and thou,
Not seldom felt with rapture in thy help
Throughout my toils and wanderings, dost intend
To work man's welfare through my weak endeavour,
To crown my mortal forehead with a beam
From thine own blinding crown, to smile, and guide
This puny hand and let the work so wrought
Be styled my work,hear me! I covet not
An influx of new power, an angel's soul:
It were no marvel thenbut I have reached
Thus far, a man; let me conclude, a man!
Give but one hour of my first energy,
Of that invincible faith, but only one!
That I may cover with an eagle-glance
The truths I have, and spy some certain way
To mould them, and completing them, possess!
Yet God is good: I started sure of that,
And why dispute it now? I'll not believe
But some undoubted warning long ere this
Had reached me: a fire-labarum was not deemed
Too much for the old founder of these walls.
Then, if my life has not been natural,
It has been monstrous: yet, till late, my course
So ardently engrossed me, that delight,
A pausing and reflecting joy,'t is plain,
Could find no place in it. True, I am worn;
But who clothes summer, who is life itself?
God, that created all things, can renew!
And then, though after-life to please me now
Must have no likeness to the past, what hinders
Reward from springing out of toil, as changed
As bursts the flower from earth and root and stalk?
What use were punishment, unless some sin
Be first detected? let me know that first!
No man could ever offend as I have done . . .
[A voice from within.]
I hear a voice, perchance I heard
Long ago, but all too low,
So that scarce a care it stirred
If the voice were real or no:
I heard it in my youth when first
The waters of my life outburst:
But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear
That voice, still low, but fatal-clear
As if all poets, God ever meant
Should save the world, and therefore lent
Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused
To do his work, or lightly used
Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,
So, mourn cast off by him for ever,
As if these leaned in airy ring
To take me; this the song they sing.
"Lost, lost! yet come,
With our wan troop make thy home.
Come, come! for we
Will not breathe, so much as breathe
Reproach to thee,
Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.
So sank we in those old years,
We who bid thee, come! thou last
Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast.
And altogether we, thy peers,
Will pardon crave for thee, the last
Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast
With those who watch but work no more,
Who gaze on life but live no more.
Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak
The message which our lips, too weak,
Refused to utter,shouldst redeem
Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!
Yet we chose thee a birthplace
Where the richness ran to flowers:
Couldst not sing one song for grace?
Not make one blossom man's and ours?
Must one more recreant to his race
Die with unexerted powers,
And join us, leaving as he found
The world, he was to loosen, bound?
Anguish! ever and for ever;
Still beginning, ending never.
Yet, lost and last one, come!
How couldst understand, alas,
What our pale ghosts strove to say,
As their shades did glance and pass
Before thee night and day?
Thou wast blind as we were dumb:
Once more, therefore, come, O come!
How should we clothe, how arm the spirit
Shall next thy post of life inherit
How guard him from thy speedy ruin?
Tell us of thy sad undoing
Here, where we sit, ever pursuing
Our weary task, ever renewing
Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave
Our powers, and man they could not save!"
Aprile enters.
Aprile.
Ha, ha! our king that wouldst be, here at last?
Art thou the poet who shall save the world?
Thy hand to mine! Stay, fix thine eyes on mine!
Thou wouldst be king? Still fix thine eyes on mine!
Paracelsus.
Ha, ha! why crouchest not? Am I not king?
So torture is not wholly unavailing!
Have my fierce spasms compelled thee from thy lair?
Art thou the sage I only seemed to be,
Myself of after-time, my very self
With sight a little clearer, strength more firm,
Who robes him in my robe and grasps my crown
For just a fault, a weakness, a neglect?
I scarcely trusted God with the surmise
That such might come, and thou didst hear the while!
Aprile.
Thine eyes are lustreless to mine; my hair
Is soft, nay silken soft: to talk with thee
Flushes my cheek, and thou art ashy-pale.
Truly, thou hast laboured, hast withstood her lips,
The siren's! Yes, 't is like thou hast attained!
Tell me, dear master, wherefore now thou comest?
I thought thy solemn songs would have their meed
In after-time; that I should hear the earth
Exult in thee and echo with thy praise,
While I was laid forgotten in my grave.
Paracelsus.
Ah fiend, I know thee, I am not thy dupe!
Thou art ordained to follow in my track,
Reaping my sowing, as I scorned to reap
The harvest sown by sages passed away.
Thou art the sober searcher, cautious striver,
As if, except through me, thou hast searched or striven!
Ay, tell the world! Degrade me after all,
To an aspirant after fame, not truth
To all but envy of thy fate, be sure!
Aprile.
Nay, sing them to me; I shall envy not:
Thou shalt be king! Sing thou, and I will sit
Beside, and call deep silence for thy songs,
And worship thee, as I had ne'er been meant
To fill thy throne: but none shall ever know!
Sing to me; for already thy wild eyes
Unlock my heart-strings, as some crystal-shaft
Reveals by some chance blaze its parent fount
After long time: so thou reveal'st my soul.
All will flash forth at last, with thee to hear!
Paracelsus.
(His secret! I shall get his secretfool!)
I am he that aspired to know: and thou?
Aprile.
I would love infinitely, and be loved!
Paracelsus.
Poor slave! I am thy king indeed.
Aprile.
Thou deem'st
Thatborn a spirit, dowered even as thou,
Born for thy fatebecause I could not curb
My yearnings to possess at once the full
Enjoyment, but neglected all the means
Of realizing even the frailest joy,
Gathering no fragments to appease my want,
Yet nursing up that want till thus I die
Thou deem'st I cannot trace thy safe sure march
O'er perils that o'erwhelm me, triumphing,
Neglecting nought below for aught above,
Despising nothing and ensuring all
Nor that I could (my time to come again)
Lead thus my spirit securely as thine own.
Listen, and thou shalt see I know thee well.
I would love infinitely . . . Ah, lost! lost!
Oh ye who armed me at such cost,
How shall I look on all of ye
With your gifts even yet on me?
Paracelsus.
(Ah, 't is some moonstruck creature after all!
Such fond fools as are like to haunt this den:
They spread contagion, doubtless: yet he seemed
To echo one foreboding of my heart
So truly, that . . . no matter! How he stands
With eve's last sunbeam staying on his hair
Which turns to it as if they were akin:
And those clear smiling eyes of saddest blue
Nearly set free, so far they rise above
The painful fruitless striving of the brow
And enforced knowledge of the lips, firm-set
In slow despondency's eternal sigh!
Has he, too, missed life's end, and learned the cause?)
I charge thee, by thy fealty, be calm!
Tell me what thou wouldst be, and what I am.
Aprile.
I would love infinitely, and be loved.
First: I would carve in stone, or cast in brass,
The forms of earth. No ancient hunter lifted
Up to the gods by his renown, no nymph
Supposed the sweet soul of a woodland tree
Or sapphirine spirit of a twilight star,
Should be too hard for me; no shepherd-king
Regal for his white locks; no youth who stands
Silent and very calm amid the throng,
His right hand ever hid beneath his robe
Until the tyrant pass; no lawgiver,
No swan-soft woman rubbed with lucid oils
Given by a god for love of hertoo hard!
Every passion sprung from man, conceived by man,
Would I express and clothe it in its right form,
Or blend with others struggling in one form,
Or show repressed by an ungainly form.
Oh, if you marvelled at some mighty spirit
With a fit frame to execute its will
Even unconsciously to work its will
You should be moved no less beside some strong
Rare spirit, fettered to a stubborn body,
Endeavouring to subdue it and inform it
With its own splendour! All this I would do:
And I would say, this done, "His sprites created,
"God grants to each a sphere to be its world,
"Appointed with the various objects needed
"To satisfy its own peculiar want;
"So, I create a world for these my shapes
"Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength!"
And, at the word, I would contrive and paint
Woods, valleys, rocks and plains, dells, sands and wastes,
Lakes which, when morn breaks on their quivering bed,
Blaze like a wyvern flying round the sun,
And ocean isles so small, the dog-fish tracking
A dead whale, who should find them, would swim thrice
Around them, and fare onwardall to hold
The offspring of my brain. Nor these alone:
Bronze labyrinth, palace, pyramid and crypt,
Baths, galleries, courts, temples and terraces,
Marts, theatres and wharfsall filled with men,
Men everywhere! And this performed in turn,
When those who looked on, pined to hear the hopes
And fears and hates and loves which moved the crowd,
I would throw down the pencil as the chisel,
And I would speak; no thought which ever stirred
A human breast should be untold; all passions,
All soft emotions, from the turbulent stir
Within a heart fed with desires like mine,
To the last comfort shutting the tired lids
Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away
Beneath the tent-tree by the wayside well:
And this in language as the need should be,
Now poured at once forth in a burning flow,
Now piled up in a grand array of words.
This done, to perfect and consummate all,
Even as a luminous haze links star to star,
I would supply all chasms with music, breathing
Mysterious motions of the soul, no way
To be defined save in strange melodies.
Last, having thus revealed all I could love,
Having received all love bestowed on it,
I would die: preserving so throughout my course
God full on me, as I was full on men:
He would approve my prayer, "I have gone through
"The loveliness of life; create for me
"If not for men, or take me to thyself,
"Eternal, infinite love!"
If thou hast ne'er
Conceived this mighty aim, this full desire,
Thou hast not passed my trial, and thou art
No king of mine.
Paracelsus.
Ah me!
Aprile.
But thou art here!
Thou didst not gaze like me upon that end
Till thine own powers for compassing the bliss
Were blind with glory; nor grow mad to grasp
At once the prize long patient toil should claim,
Nor spurn all granted short of that. And I
Would do as thou, a second time: nay, listen!
Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great,
Our time so brief, 't is clear if we refuse
The means so limited, the tools so rude
To execute our purpose, life will fleet,
And we shall fade, and leave our task undone.
We will be wise in time: what though our work
Be fashioned in despite of their ill-service,
Be crippled every way? 'T were little praise
Did full resources wait on our goodwill
At every turn. Let all be as it is.
Some say the earth is even so contrived
That tree and flower, a vesture gay, conceal
A bare and skeleton framework. Had we means
Answering to our mind! But now I seem
Wrecked on a savage isle: how rear thereon
My palace? Branching palms the props shall be,
Fruit glossy mingling; gems are for the East;
Who heeds them? I can pass them. Serpents' scales,
And painted birds' down, furs and fishes' skins
Must help me; and a little here and there
Is all I can aspire to: still my art
Shall show its birth was in a gentler clime.
"Had I green jars of malachite, this way
"I'd range them: where those sea-shells glisten above,
"Cressets should hang, by right: this way we set
"The purple carpets, as these mats are laid,
"Woven of fern and rush and blossoming flag."
Or if, by fortune, some completer grace
Be spared to me, some fragment, some slight sample
Of the prouder workmanship my own home boasts,
Some trifle little heeded there, but here
The place's one perfectionwith what joy
Would I enshrine the relic, cheerfully
Foregoing all the marvels out of reach!
Could I retain one strain of all the psalm
Of the angels, one word of the fiat of God,
To let my followers know what such things are!
I would adventure nobly for their sakes:
When nights were still, and still the moaning sea
And far away I could descry the land
Whence I departed, whither I return,
I would dispart the waves, and stand once more
At home, and load my bark, and hasten back,
And fling my gains to them, worthless or true.
"Friends," I would say, "I went far, far for them,
"Past the high rocks the haunt of doves, the mounds
"Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out,
"Past tracts of milk-white minute blinding sand,
"Till, by a mighty moon, I tremblingly
"Gathered these magic herbs, berry and bud,
"In haste, not pausing to reject the weeds,
"But happy plucking them at any price.
"To me, who have seen them bloom in their own soil,
"They are scarce lovely: plait and wear them, you!
"And guess, from what they are, the springs that fed them,
"The stars that sparkled o'er them, night by night,
"The snakes that travelled far to sip their dew!"
Thus for my higher loves; and thus even weakness
Would win me honour. But not these alone
Should claim my care; for common life, its wants
And ways, would I set forth in beauteous hues:
The lowest hind should not possess a hope,
A fear, but I'd be by him, saying better
Than he his own heart's language. I would live
For ever in the thoughts I thus explored,
As a discoverer's memory is attached
To all he finds; they should be mine henceforth,
Imbued with me, though free to all before:
For clay, once cast into my soul's rich mine,
Should come up crusted o'er with gems. Nor this
Would need a meaner spirit, than the first;
Nay, 't would be but the selfsame spirit, clothed
In humbler guise, but still the selfsame spirit:
As one spring wind unbinds the mountain snow
And comforts violets in their hermitage.
But, master, poet, who hast done all this,
How didst thou'scape the ruin whelming me?
Didst thou, when nerving thee to this attempt,
Ne'er range thy mind's extent, as some wide hall,
Dazzled by shapes that filled its length with light,
Shapes clustered there to rule thee, not obey,
That will not wait thy summons, will not rise
Singly, nor when thy practised eye and hand
Can well transfer their loveliness, but crowd
By thee for ever, bright to thy despair?
Didst thou ne'er gaze on each by turns, and ne'er
Resolve to single out one, though the rest
Should vanish, and to give that one, entire
In beauty, to the world; forgetting, so,
Its peers, whose number baffles mortal power?
And, this determined, wast thou ne'er seduced
By memories and regrets and passionate love,
To glance once more farewell? and did their eyes
Fasten thee, brighter and more bright, until
Thou couldst but stagger back unto their feet,
And laugh that man's applause or welfare ever
Could tempt thee to forsake them? Or when years
Had passed and still their love possessed thee wholly,
When from without some murmur startled thee
Of darkling mortals famished for one ray
Of thy so-hoarded luxury of light,
Didst thou ne'er strive even yet to break those spells
And prove thou couldst recover and fulfil
Thy early mission, long ago renounced,
And to that end, select some shape once more?
And did not mist-like influences, thick films,
Faint memories of the rest that charmed so long
Thine eyes, float fast, confuse thee, bear thee off,
As whirling snow-drifts blind a man who treads
A mountain ridge, with guiding spear, through storm?
Say, though I fell, I had excuse to fall;
Say, I was tempted sorely: say but this,
Dear lord, Aprile's lord!
Paracelsus.
Clasp me not thus,
Aprile! That the truth should reach me thus!
We are weak dust. Nay, clasp not or I faint!
Aprile.
My king! and envious thoughts could outrage thee?
Lo, I forget my ruin, and rejoice
In thy success, as thou! Let our God's praise
Go bravely through the world at last! What care
Through me or thee? I feel thy breath. Why, tears?
Tears in the darkness, and from thee to me?
Paracelsus.
Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I learn
To love; and, merciful God, forgive us both!
We wake at length from weary dreams; but both
Have slept in fairy-land: though dark and drear
Appears the world before us, we no less
Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still.
I too have sought to know as thou to love
Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.
Still thou hast beauty and I, power. We wake:
What penance canst devise for both of us?
Aprile.
I hear thee faintly. The thick darkness! Even
Thine eyes are hid. 'T is as I knew: I speak,
And now I die. But I have seen thy face!
O poet, think of me, and sing of me!
But to have seen thee and to die so soon!
Paracelsus.
Die not, Aprile! We must never part.
Are we not halves of one dissevered world,
Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? never!
Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
Loveuntil both are saved. Aprile, hear!
We will accept our gains, and use themnow!
God, he will die upon my breast! Aprile!
Aprile.
To speak but once, and die! yet by his side.
Hush! hush!
Ha! go you ever girt about
With phantoms, powers? I have created such,
But these seem real as I.
Paracelsus.
Whom can you see
Through the accursed darkness?
Aprile.
Stay; I know,
I know them: who should know them well as I?
White brows, lit up with glory; poets all!
Paracelsus.
Let him but live, and I have my reward!
Aprile.
Yes; I see now. God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.
Had you but told me this at first! Hush! hush!
Paracelsus.
Live! for my sake, because of my great sin,
To help my brain, oppressed by these wild words
And their deep import. Live! 't is not too late.
I have a quiet home for us, and friends.
Michal shall smile on you. Hear you? Lean thus,
And breathe my breath. I shall not lose one word
Of all your speech, one little word, Aprile!
Aprile.
No, no. Crown me? I am not one of you!
'T is he, the king, you seek. I am not one.
Paracelsus.
Thy spirit, at least, Aprile! Let me love!
I have attained, and now I may depart.
~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus - Part II - Paracelsus Attains
,#NFDB
1238:BY MICHING MALLECHO, Esq.
Is it a party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,
Some sipping punchsome sipping tea;
But, as you by their faces see,
All silent, and alldamned!
Peter Bell, by W. Wordsworth.
Ophelia.What means this, my lord?
Hamlet.Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief. ~Shakespeare.
PROLOGUE
Peter Bells, one, two and three,
O'er the wide world wandering be.
First, the antenatal Peter,
Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,
The so-long-predestined raiment
Clothed in which to walk his way meant
The second Peter; whose ambition
Is to link the proposition,
As the mean of two extremes
(This was learned from Aldric's themes)
Shielding from the guilt of schism
The orthodoxal syllogism;
The First Peterhe who was
Like the shadow in the glass
Of the second, yet unripe,
His substantial antitype.
Then came Peter Bell the Second,
Who henceforward must be reckoned
The body of a double soul,
And that portion of the whole
Without which the rest would seem
Ends of a disjointed dream.
And the Third is he who has
O'er the grave been forced to pass
To the other side, which is,
Go and try else,just like this.
Peter Bell the First was Peter
Smugger, milder, softer, neater,
Like the soul before it is
Born from that world into this.
The next Peter Bell was he,
Predevote, like you and me,
To good or evil as may come;
His was the severer doom,
For he was an evil Cotter,
And a polygamic Potter.
And the last is Peter Bell,
Damned since our first parents fell,
Damned eternally to Hell
Surely he deserves it well!
PART THE FIRST
DEATH
And Peter Bell, when he had been
With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed,
Grew seriousfrom his dress and mien
'Twas very plainly to be seen
Peter was quite reformed.
His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;
His accent caught a nasal twang;
He oiled his hair; there might be heard
The grace of God in every word
Which Peter said or sang.
But Peter now grew old, and had
An ill no doctor could unravel;
His torments almost drove him mad;
Some said it was a fever bad
Some swore it was the gravel.
His holy friends then came about,
And with long preaching and persuasion
Convinced the patient that, without
The smallest shadow of a doubt,
He was predestined to damnation.
They said'Thy name is Peter Bell;
Thy skin is of a brimstone hue;
Alive or deaday, sick or well
The one God made to rhyme with hell;
The other, I think, rhymes with you.'
Then Peter set up such a yell!
The nurse, who with some water gruel
Was climbing up the stairs, as well
As her old legs could climb themfell,
And broke them boththe fall was cruel.
The Parson from the casement lept
Into the lake of Windermere
And many an eelthough no adept
In God's right reason for itkept
Gnawing his kidneys half a year.
And all the rest rushed through the door,
And tumbled over one another,
And broke their skulls.Upon the floor
Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore,
And cursed his father and his mother;
And raved of God, and sin, and death,
Blaspheming like an infidel;
And said, that with his clenchd teeth
He'd seize the earth from underneath,
And drag it with him down to hell.
As he was speaking came a spasm,
And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder;
Like one who sees a strange phantasm
He lay,there was a silent chasm
Between his upper jaw and under.
And yellow death lay on his face;
And a fixed smile that was not human
Told, as I understand the case,
That he was gone to the wrong place:
I heard all this from the old woman.
Then there came down from Langdale Pike
A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail;
It swept over the mountains like
An ocean,and I heard it strike
The woods and crags of Grasmere vale.
And I saw the black storm come
Nearer, minute after minute;
Its thunder made the cataracts dumb;
With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum,
It neared as if the Devil was in it.
The Devil was in it:he had bought
Peter for half-a-crown; and when
The storm which bore him vanished, nought
That in the house that storm had caught
Was ever seen again.
The gaping neighbours came next day
They found all vanished from the shore:
The Bible, whence he used to pray,
Half scorched under a hen-coop lay;
Smashed glassand nothing more!
PART THE SECOND
THE DEVIL
The Devil, I safely can aver,
Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;
Nor is he, as some sages swear,
A spirit, neither here nor there,
In nothingyet in everything.
He iswhat we are; for sometimes
The Devil is a gentleman;
At others a bard bartering rhymes
For sack; a statesman spinning crimes;
A swindler, living as he can;
A thief, who cometh in the night,
With whole boots and net pantaloons,
Like some one whom it were not right
To mention;or the luckless wight
From whom he steals nine silver spoons.
But in this case he did appear
Like a slop-merchant from Wapping,
And with smug face, and eye severe,
On every side did perk and peer
Till he saw Peter dead or napping.
He had on an upper Benjamin
(For he was of the driving schism)
In the which he wrapped his skin
From the storm he travelled in,
For fear of rheumatism.
He called the ghost out of the corse;
It was exceedingly like Peter,
Only its voice was hollow and hoarse
It had a queerish look of course
Its dress too was a little neater.
The Devil knew not his name and lot;
Peter knew not that he was Bell:
Each had an upper stream of thought,
Which made all seem as it was not;
Fitting itself to all things well.
Peter thought he had parents dear,
Brothers, sisters, cousins, cronies,
In the fens of Lincolnshire;
He perhaps had found them there
Had he gone and boldly shown his
Solemn phiz in his own village;
Where he thought oft when a boy
He'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage
The produce of his neighbour's tillage,
With marvellous pride and joy.
And the Devil thought he had,
'Mid the misery and confusion
Of an unjust war, just made
A fortune by the gainful trade
Of giving soldiers rations bad
The world is full of strange delusion
That he had a mansion planned
In a square like Grosvenor Square,
That he was aping fashion, and
That he now came to Westmoreland
To see what was romantic there.
And all this, though quite ideal,
Ready at a breath to vanish,
Was a state not more unreal
Than the peace he could not feel,
Or the care he could not banish.
After a little conversation,
The Devil told Peter, if he chose,
He'd bring him to the world of fashion
By giving him a situation
In his own serviceand new clothes.
And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud,
And after waiting some few days
For a new liverydirty yellow
Turned up with blackthe wretched fellow
Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise.
PART THE THIRD
HELL
Hell is a city much like London
A populous and a smoky city;
There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity.
There is a Castles, and a Canning,
A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;
All sorts of caitiff corpses planning
All sorts of cozening for trepanning
Corpses less corrupt than they.
There is a -, who has lost
His wits, or sold them, none knows which;
He walks about a double ghost,
And though as thin as Fraud almost
Ever grows more grim and rich.
There is a Chancery Court; a King;
A manufacturing mob; a set
Of thieves who by themselves are sent
Similar thieves to represent;
An army; and a public debt.
Which last is a scheme of paper money,
And meansbeing interpreted
'Bees, keep your waxgive us the honey,
And we will plant, while skies are sunny,
Flowers, which in winter serve instead.'
There is a great talk of revolution
And a great chance of despotism
German soldierscampsconfusion
Tumultslotteriesragedelusion
Ginsuicideand methodism;
Taxes too, on wine and bread,
And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,
From which those patriots pure are fed,
Who gorge before they reel to bed
The tenfold essence of all these.
There are mincing women, mewing,
(Like cats, who amant miser,)
Of their own virtue, and pursuing
Their gentler sisters to that ruin,
Without whichwhat were chastity?
Lawyersjudgesold hobnobbers
Are therebailiffschancellors
Bishopsgreat and little robbers
Rhymesterspamphleteersstock-jobbers
Men of glory in the wars,
Things whose trade is, over ladies
To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper,
Till all that is divine in woman
Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,
Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper.
Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,
Frowning, preachingsuch a riot!
Each with never-ceasing labour,
Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour,
Cheating his own heart of quiet.
And all these meet at levees;
Dinners convivial and political;
Suppers of epic poets;teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies;
Breakfasts professional and critical;
Lunches and snacks so aldermanic
That one would furnish forth ten dinners,
Where reigns a Cretan-tongud panic,
Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic
Should make some losers, and some winners;
At conversazioniballs
Conventiclesand drawing-rooms
Courts of lawcommitteescalls
Of a morningclubsbook-stalls
Churchesmasqueradesand tombs.
And this is Helland in this smother
All are damnable and damned;
Each one damning, damns the other
They are damned by one another,
By none other are they damned.
'Tis a lie to say, 'God damns!'
Where was Heaven's Attorney General
When they first gave out such flams?
Let there be an end of shams,
They are mines of poisonous mineral.
Statesmen damn themselves to be
Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls
To the auction of a fee;
Churchmen damn themselves to see
God's sweet love in burning coals.
The rich are damned, beyond all cure,
To taunt, and starve, and trample on
The weak and wretched; and the poor
Damn their broken hearts to endure
Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.
Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,not means for being blessed,
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
From which the worms that it doth feed
Squeeze less than they before possessed.
And some few, like we know who,
Damnedbut God alone knows why
To believe their minds are given
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven;
In which faith they live and die.
Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
Each man be he sound or no
Must indifferently sicken;
As when day begins to thicken,
None knows a pigeon from a crow,
So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon their brothers;
Lovers, haters, worst and best;
All are damnedthey breathe an air,
Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:
Each pursues what seems most fair,
Mining like moles, through mind, and there
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
In thrond state is ever dwelling.
PART THE FOURTH
SIN
Lo, Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square,
A footman in the Devil's service!
And the misjudging world would swear
That every man in service there
To virtue would prefer vice.
But Peter, though now damned, was not
What Peter was before damnation.
Men oftentimes prepare a lot
Which ere it finds them, is not what
Suits with their genuine station.
All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And when they came within the belt
Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.
And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became
Considerably uninviting
To those who, meditation slighting,
Were moulded in a different frame.
And he scorned them, and they scorned him;
And he scorned all they did; and they
Did all that men of their own trim
Are wont to do to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.
Such were his fellow-servants; thus
His virtue, like our own, was built
Too much on that indignant fuss
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us
To bully one another's guilt.
He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumference and centre
Of all he might or feel or know;
Nothing went ever out, although
Something did ever enter.
He had as much imagination
As a pint-pot;he never could
Fancy another situation,
From which to dart his contemplation,
Than that wherein he stood.
Yet his was individual mind,
And new created all he saw
In a new manner, and refined
Those new creations, and combined
Them, by a master-spirit's law.
Thusthough unimaginative
An apprehension clear, intense,
Of his mind's work, had made alive
The things it wrought on; I believe
Wakening a sort of thought in sense.
But from the first 'twas Peter's drift
To be a kind of moral eunuch,
He touched the hem of Nature's shift,
Felt faintand never dared uplift
The closest, all-concealing tunic.
She laughed the while, with an arch smile,
And kissed him with a sister's kiss,
And said'My best Diogenes,
I love you wellbut, if you please,
Tempt not again my deepest bliss.
''Tis you are coldfor I, not coy,
Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true;
And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy
His errors prove itknew my joy
More, learnd friend, than you.
'Bocca bacciata non perde ventura,
Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:
So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a
Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a
Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.'
Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe,
And smoothed his spacious forehead down
With his broad palm;'twixt love and fear,
He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,
And in his dream sate down.
The Devil was no uncommon creature;
A leaden-witted thiefjust huddled
Out of the dross and scum of nature;
A toad-like lump of limb and feature,
With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.
He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,
The spirit of evil well may be:
A drone too base to have a sting;
Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing,
And calls lust, luxury.
Now he was quite the kind of wight
Round whom collect, at a fixed aera,
Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,
Good cheerand those who come to share it
And best East Indian madeira!
It was his fancy to invite
Men of science, wit, and learning,
Who came to lend each other light;
He proudly thought that his gold's might
Had set those spirits burning.
And men of learning, science, wit,
Considered him as you and I
Think of some rotten tree, and sit
Lounging and dining under it,
Exposed to the wide sky.
And all the while, with loose fat smile,
The willing wretch sat winking there,
Believing 'twas his power that made
That jovial sceneand that all paid
Homage to his unnoticed chair.
Though to be sure this place was Hell;
He was the Deviland all they
What though the claret circled well,
And wit, like ocean, rose and fell?
Were damned eternally.
PART THE FIFTH
GRACE
Among the guests who often stayed
Till the Devil's petits-soupers,
A man there came, fair as a maid,
And Peter noted what he said,
Standing behind his master's chair.
He was a mighty poetand
A subtle-souled psychologist;
All things he seemed to understand,
Of old or newof sea or land
But his own mindwhich was a mist.
This was a man who might have turned
Hell into Heavenand so in gladness
A Heaven unto himself have earned;
But he in shadows undiscerned
Trusted,and damned himself to madness.
He spoke of poetry, and how
'Divine it wasa lighta love
A spirit which like wind doth blow
As it listeth, to and fro;
A dew rained down from God above;
'A power which comes and goes like dream,
And which none can ever trace
Heaven's light on earthTruth's brightest beam.'
And when he ceased there lay the gleam
Of those words upon his face.
Now Peter, when he heard such talk,
Would, heedless of a broken pate,
Stand like a man asleep, or balk
Some wishing guest of knife or fork,
Or drop and break his master's plate.
At night he oft would start and wake
Like a lover, and began
In a wild measure songs to make
On moor, and glen, and rocky lake,
And on the heart of man
And on the universal sky
And the wide earth's bosom green,
And the sweet, strange mystery
Of what beyond these things may lie,
And yet remain unseen.
For in his thought he visited
The spots in which, ere dead and damned,
He his wayward life had led;
Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed
Which thus his fancy crammed.
And these obscure remembrances
Stirred such harmony in Peter,
That, whensoever he should please,
He could speak of rocks and trees
In poetic metre.
For though it was without a sense
Of memory, yet he remembered well
Many a ditch and quick-set fence;
Of lakes he had intelligence,
He knew something of heath and fell.
He had also dim recollections
Of pedlars tramping on their rounds;
Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections
Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections
Old parsons make in burying-grounds.
But Peter's verse was clear, and came
Announcing from the frozen hearth
Of a cold age, that none might tame
The soul of that diviner flame
It augured to the Earth:
Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,
Making that green which late was gray,
Or like the sudden moon, that stains
Some gloomy chamber's window-panes
With a broad light like day.
For language was in Peter's hand
Like clay while he was yet a potter;
And he made songs for all the land,
Sweet both to feel and understand,
As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.
And Mr. -, the bookseller,
Gave twenty pounds for some;then scorning
A footman's yellow coat to wear,
Peter, too proud of heart, I fear,
Instantly gave the Devil warning.
Whereat the Devil took offence,
And swore in his soul a great oath then,
'That for his damned impertinence
He'd bring him to a proper sense
Of what was due to gentlemen!'
PART THE SIXTH
DAMNATION
'O that mine enemy had written
A book!'cried Job:a fearful curse,
If to the Arab, as the Briton,
'Twas galling to be critic-bitten:
The Devil to Peter wished no worse.
When Peter's next new book found vent,
The Devil to all the first Reviews
A copy of it slyly sent,
With five-pound note as compliment,
And this short notice'Pray abuse.'
Then seriatim, month and quarter,
Appeared such mad tirades.One said
'Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter,
Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,
The last thing as he went to bed.'
Another'Let him shave his head!
Where's Dr. Willis?Or is he joking?
What does the rascal mean or hope,
No longer imitating Pope,
In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?'
One more, 'Is incest not enough?
And must there be adultery too?
Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar!
Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire
Is twenty times too good for you.
'By that last book of yours we think
You've double damned yourself to scorn;
We warned you whilst yet on the brink
You stood. From your black name will shrink
The babe that is unborn.'
All these Reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
Safely to Peter's house conveyed.
For carriage, tenpence Peter paid
Untied themread themwent half mad.
'What!' cried he, 'this is my reward
For nights of thought, and days of toil?
Do poets, but to be abhorred
By men of whom they never heard,
Consume their spirits' oil?
'What have I done to them?and who
Is Mrs. Foy? 'Tis very cruel
To speak of me and Betty so!
Adultery! God defend me! Oh!
I've half a mind to fight a duel.
'Or,' cried he, a grave look collecting,
'Is it my genius, like the moon,
Sets those who stand her face inspecting,
That face within their brain reflecting,
Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?'
For Peter did not know the town,
But thought, as country readers do,
For half a guinea or a crown,
He bought oblivion or renown
From God's own voice in a review.
All Peter did on this occasion
Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
It is a dangerous invasion
When poets criticize; their station
Is to delight, not pose.
The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair
For Born's translation of Kant's book;
A world of words, tail foremost, where
Rightwrongfalsetrueand fouland fair
As in a lottery-wheel are shook.
Five thousand crammed octavo pages
Of German psychologics,he
Who his furor verborum assuages
Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages
More than will e'er be due to me.
I looked on them nine several days,
And then I saw that they were bad;
A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,
He never read them;with amaze
I found Sir William Drummond had.
When the book came, the Devil sent
It to P. Verbovale, Esquire,
With a brief note of compliment,
By that night's Carlisle mail. It went,
And set his soul on fire.
Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,
Made him beyond the bottom see
Of truth's clear wellwhen I and you, Ma'am,
Go, as we shall do, subter humum,
We may know more than he.
Now Peter ran to seed in soul
Into a walking paradox;
For he was neither part nor whole,
Nor good, nor badnor knave nor fool;
Among the woods and rocks
Furious he rode, where late he ran,
Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;
Turned to a formal puritan,
A solemn and unsexual man,
He half believed White Obi.
This steed in vision he would ride,
High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,
Mocking and mowing by his side
A mad-brained goblin for a guide
Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.
After these ghastly rides, he came
Home to his heart, and found from thence
Much stolen of its accustomed flame;
His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame
Of their intelligence.
To Peter's view, all seemed one hue;
He was no Whig, he was no Tory;
No Deist and no Christian he;
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.
One single point in his belief
From his organization sprung,
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,
That 'Happiness is wrong';
So thought Calvin and Dominic;
So think their fierce successors, who
Even now would neither stint nor stick
Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
If they might 'do their do.'
His morals thus were undermined:
The old Peterthe hard, old Potter
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter.
In the death hues of agony
Lambently flashing from a fish,
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish.
So in his Country's dying face
He lookedand, lovely as she lay,
Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,
With hardened sneer he turned away:
And coolly to his own soul said;
'Do you not think that we might make
A poem on her when she's dead:
Or, noa thought is in my head
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:
'My wife wants one.Let who will bury
This mangled corpse! And I and you,
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,'
'Ayand at last desert me too.'
And so his Soul would not be gay,
But moaned within him; like a fawn
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.
As troubled skies stain waters clear,
The storm in Peter's heart and mind
Now made his verses dark and queer:
They were the ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.
For he now raved enormous folly,
Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves,
'Twould make George Colman melancholy
To have heard him, like a male Molly,
Chanting those stupid staves.
Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
On Peter while he wrote for freedom,
So soon as in his song they spy
The folly which soothes tyranny,
Praise him, for those who feed 'em.
'He was a man, too great to scan;
A planet lost in truth's keen rays:
His virtue, awful and prodigious;
He was the most sublime, religious,
Pure-minded Poet of these days.'
As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
'Eureka! I have found the way
To make a better thing of metre
Than e'er was made by living creature
Up to this blessd day.'
Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;
In one of which he meekly said:
'May Carnage and Slaughter,
Thy niece and thy daughter,
May Rapine and Famine,
Thy gorge ever cramming,
Glut thee with living and dead!
'May Death and Damnation,
And Consternation,
Flit up from Hell with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,
Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester;
Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.
'Let thy body-guard yeomen
Hew down babes and women,
And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!
When Moloch in Jewry
Munched children with fury,
It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent.'
PART THE SEVENTH
DOUBLE DAMNATION
The Devil now knew his proper cue.
Soon as he read the ode, he drove
To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's,
A man of interest in both houses,
And said:'For money or for love,
'Pray find some cure or sinecure;
To feed from the superfluous taxes
A friend of oursa poetfewer
Have fluttered tamer to the lure
Than he.' His lordship stands and racks his
Stupid brains, while one might count
As many beads as he had boroughs,
At length replies; from his mean front,
Like one who rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:
'It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
I can. I hope I need require
No pledge from you, that he will stir
In our affairs;like Oliver,
That he'll be worthy of his hire.'
These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter, home the Devil hied,
Took to his bed; he had no cough,
No doctor,meat and drink enough,
Yet that same night he died.
The Devil's corpse was leaded down;
His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,
Mourning-coaches, many a one,
Followed his hearse along the town:
Where was the Devil himself?
When Peter heard of his promotion,
His eyes grew like two stars for bliss:
There was a bow of sleek devotion
Engendering in his back; each motion
Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.
He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to his door,
With sifted gravel neatly laid,
As if defying all who said,
Peter was ever poor.
But a disease soon struck into
The very life and soul of Peter
He walked aboutslepthad the hue
Of health upon his cheeksand few
Dug betternone a heartier eater.
And yet a strange and horrid curse
Clung upon Peter, night and day;
Month after month the thing grew worse,
And deadlier than in this my verse
I can find strength to say.
Peter was dullhe was at first
Dulloh, so dullso very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed
Still with this dulness was he cursed
Dullbeyond all conceptiondull.
No one could read his booksno mortal,
But a few natural friends, would hear him;
The parson came not near his portal;
His state was like that of the immortal
Described by Swiftno man could bear him.
His sister, wife, and children yawned,
With a long, slow, and drear ennui,
All human patience far beyond;
Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned,
Anywhere else to be.
But in his verse, and in his prose,
The essence of his dulness was
Concentred and compressed so close,
'Twould have made Guatimozin doze
On his red gridiron of brass.
A printer's boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumbrously upon one side;
Like those famed Seven who slept three ages.
To wakeful frenzy's vigil-rages,
As opiates, were the same applied.
Even the Reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
With adamantine nerves, grew tired;
Gaping and torpid they retired,
To dream of what they should be doing.
And worse and worse, the drowsy curse
Yawned in him, till it grew a pest
A wide contagious atmosphere,
Creeping like cold through all things near;
A power to infect and to infest.
His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;
His kitten, late a sportive elf;
The woods and lakes, so beautiful,
Of dim stupidity were full,
All grew dull as Peter's self.
The earth under his feetthe springs,
Which lived within it a quick life,
The air, the winds of many wings,
That fan it with new murmurings,
Were dead to their harmonious strife.
The birds and beasts within the wood,
The insects, and each creeping thing,
Were now a silent multitude;
Love's work was left unwroughtno brood
Near Peter's house took wing.
And every neighbouring cottager
Stupidly yawned upon the other:
No jackass brayed; no little cur
Cocked up his ears;no man would stir
To save a dying mother.
Yet all from that charmed district went
But some half-idiot and half-knave,
Who rather than pay any rent,
Would live with marvellous content,
Over his father's grave.
No bailiff dared within that space,
For fear of the dull charm, to enter;
A man would bear upon his face,
For fifteen months in any case,
The yawn of such a venture.
Seven miles abovebelowaround
This pest of dulness holds its sway;
A ghastly life without a sound;
To Peter's soul the spell is bound
How should it ever pass away?
'Composed at Florence, October 1819, and forwarded to Hunt (Nov. 2) to be published by C. & J. Ollier without the author's name; ultimately printed by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of the Poetical Works, 1839. A skit by John Hamilton Reynolds, Peter Bell, A Lyrical Ballad, had already appeared (April, 1819), a few days before the publication of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, A Tale. These productions were reviewed in Leigh Hunt's Examiner (April 26, May 3, 1819); and to the entertainment derived from his perusal of Hunt's criticisms the composition of Shelley's Peter Bell the Third is chiefly owing.' ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Peter Bell The Third
,#NFDB
1239:Gotham - Book Iii
Can the fond mother from herself depart?
Can she forget the darling of her heart,
The little darling whom she bore and bred,
Nursed on her knees, and at her bosom fed;
To whom she seem'd her every thought to give,
And in whose life alone she seem'd to live?
Yes, from herself the mother may depart,
She may forget the darling of her heart,
The little darling whom she bore and bred,
Nursed on her knees, and at her bosom fed,
To whom she seem'd her every thought to give,
And in whose life alone she seem'd to live;
But I cannot forget, whilst life remains,
And pours her current through these swelling veins,
Whilst Memory offers up at Reason's shrine;
But I cannot forget that Gotham's mine.
Can the stern mother, than the brutes more wild,
From her disnatured breast tear her young child,
Flesh of her flesh, and of her bone the bone,
And dash the smiling babe against a stone?
Yes, the stern mother, than the brutes more wild,
From her disnatured breast may tear her child,
Flesh of her flesh, and of her bone the bone,
And dash the smiling babe against a stone;
But I, (forbid it, Heaven!) but I can ne'er
The love of Gotham from this bosom tear;
Can ne'er so far true royalty pervert
From its fair course, to do my people hurt.
With how much ease, with how much confidence-As if, superior to each grosser sense,
Reason had only, in full power array'd,
To manifest her will, and be obey'd-Men make resolves, and pass into decrees
The motions of the mind! with how much ease,
In such resolves, doth passion make a flaw,
And bring to nothing what was raised to law!
In empire young, scarce warm on Gotham's throne,
The dangers and the sweets of power unknown,
Pleased, though I scarce know why, like some young child,
55
Whose little senses each new toy turns wild,
How do I hold sweet dalliance with my crown,
And wanton with dominion, how lay down,
Without the sanction of a precedent,
Rules of most large and absolute extent;
Rules, which from sense of public virtue spring,
And all at once commence a Patriot King!
But, for the day of trial is at hand,
And the whole fortunes of a mighty land
Are staked on me, and all their weal or woe
Must from my good or evil conduct flow,
Will I, or can I, on a fair review,
As I assume that name, deserve it too?
Have I well weigh'd the great, the noble part
I'm now to play? have I explored my heart,
That labyrinth of fraud, that deep dark cell,
Where, unsuspected e'en by me, may dwell
Ten thousand follies? have I found out there
What I am fit to do, and what to bear?
Have I traced every passion to its rise,
Nor spared one lurking seed of treacherous vice?
Have I familiar with my nature grown?
And am I fairly to myself made known?
A Patriot King!--why, 'tis a name which bears
The more immediate stamp of Heaven; which wears
The nearest, best resemblance we can show
Of God above, through all his works below.
To still the voice of Discord in the land;
To make weak Faction's discontented band,
Detected, weak, and crumbling to decay,
With hunger pinch'd, on their own vitals prey;
Like brethren, in the self-same interests warm'd,
Like different bodies, with one soul inform'd;
To make a nation, nobly raised above
All meaner thought, grow up in common love;
To give the laws due vigour, and to hold
That secret balance, temperate, yet bold,
With such an equal hand, that those who fear
May yet approve, and own my justice clear;
To be a common father, to secure
The weak from violence, from pride the poor;
Vice and her sons to banish in disgrace,
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To make Corruption dread to show her face;
To bid afflicted Virtue take new state,
And be at last acquainted with the great;
Of all religions to elect the best,
Nor let her priests be made a standing jest;
Rewards for worth with liberal hand to carve,
To love the arts, nor let the artists starve;
To make fair Plenty through the realm increase,
Give fame in war, and happiness in peace;
To see my people virtuous, great, and free,
And know that all those blessings flow from me;
Oh! 'tis a joy too exquisite, a thought
Which flatters Nature more than flattery ought;
'Tis a great, glorious task, for man too hard;
But no less great, less glorious the reward,
The best reward which here to man is given,
'Tis more than earth, and little short of heaven;
A task (if such comparison may be)
The same in Nature, differing in degree,
Like that which God, on whom for aid I call,
Performs with ease, and yet performs to all.
How much do they mistake, how little know
Of kings, of kingdoms, and the pains which flow
From royalty, who fancy that a crown,
Because it glistens, must be lined with down!
With outside show, and vain appearance caught,
They look no further, and, by Folly taught,
Prize high the toys of thrones, but never find
One of the many cares which lurk behind.
The gem they worship which a crown adorns,
Nor once suspect that crown is lined with thorns.
Oh, might Reflection Folly's place supply,
Would we one moment use her piercing eye,
Then should we find what woe from grandeur springs,
And learn to pity, not to envy kings!
The villager, born humbly and bred hard,
Content his wealth, and Poverty his guard,
In action simply just, in conscience clear,
By guilt untainted, undisturb'd by fear,
His means but scanty, and his wants but few,
Labour his business, and his pleasure too,
Enjoys more comforts in a single hour
57
Than ages give the wretch condemn'd to power.
Call'd up by health, he rises with the day,
And goes to work, as if he went to play,
Whistling off toils, one half of which might make
The stoutest Atlas of a palace quake;
'Gainst heat and cold, which make us cowards faint,
Harden'd by constant use, without complaint
He bears what we should think it death to bear;
Short are his meals, and homely is his fare;
His thirst he slakes at some pure neighbouring brook,
Nor asks for sauce where appetite stands cook.
When the dews fall, and when the sun retires
Behind the mountains, when the village fires,
Which, waken'd all at once, speak supper nigh,
At distance catch, and fix his longing eye,
Homeward he hies, and with his manly brood
Of raw-boned cubs enjoys that clean, coarse food,
Which, season'd with good-humour, his fond bride
'Gainst his return is happy to provide;
Then, free from care, and free from thought, he creeps
Into his straw, and till the morning sleeps.
Not so the king--with anxious cares oppress'd
His bosom labours, and admits not rest:
A glorious wretch, he sweats beneath the weight
Of majesty, and gives up ease for state.
E'en when his smiles, which, by the fools of pride,
Are treasured and preserved from side to side,
Fly round the court, e'en when, compell'd by form,
He seems most calm, his soul is in a storm.
Care, like a spectre, seen by him alone,
With all her nest of vipers, round his throne
By day crawls full in view; when Night bids sleep,
Sweet nurse of Nature! o'er the senses creep;
When Misery herself no more complains,
And slaves, if possible, forget their chains;
Though his sense weakens, though his eyes grow dim,
That rest which comes to all, comes not to him.
E'en at that hour, Care, tyrant Care, forbids
The dew of sleep to fall upon his lids;
From night to night she watches at his bed;
Now, as one moped, sits brooding o'er his head;
Anon she starts, and, borne on raven's wings,
58
Croaks forth aloud--'Sleep was not made for kings!'
Thrice hath the moon, who governs this vast ball,
Who rules most absolute o'er me and all;
To whom, by full conviction taught to bow,
At new, at full, I pay the duteous vow;
Thrice hath the moon her wonted course pursued,
Thrice hath she lost her form, and thrice renew'd,
Since, (bless'd be that season, for before
I was a mere, mere mortal, and no more,
One of the herd, a lump of common clay,
Inform'd with life, to die and pass away)
Since I became a king, and Gotham's throne,
With full and ample power, became my own;
Thrice hath the moon her wonted course pursued,
Thrice hath she lost her form, and thrice renew'd,
Since sleep, kind sleep! who like a friend supplies
New vigour for new toil, hath closed these eyes.
Nor, if my toils are answer'd with success,
And I am made an instrument to bless
The people whom I love, shall I repine;
Theirs be the benefit, the labour mine.
Mindful of that high rank in which I stand,
Of millions lord, sole ruler in the land,
Let me,--and Reason shall her aid afford,-Rule my own spirit, of myself be lord.
With an ill grace that monarch wears his crown,
Who, stern and hard of nature, wears a frown
'Gainst faults in other men, yet all the while
Meets his own vices with a partial smile.
How can a king (yet on record we find
Such kings have been, such curses of mankind)
Enforce that law 'gainst some poor subject elf
Which conscience tells him he hath broke himself?
Can he some petty rogue to justice call
For robbing one, when he himself robs all?
Must not, unless extinguish'd, Conscience fly
Into his cheek, and blast his fading eye,
To scourge the oppressor, when the State, distress'd
And sunk to ruin, is by him oppress'd?
Against himself doth he not sentence give;
If one must die, t' other's not fit to live.
Weak is that throne, and in itself unsound,
59
Which takes not solid virtue for its ground.
All envy power in others, and complain
Of that which they would perish to obtain.
Nor can those spirits, turbulent and bold,
Not to be awed by threats, nor bought with gold,
Be hush'd to peace, but when fair legal sway
Makes it their real interest to obey;
When kings, and none but fools can then rebel,
Not less in virtue, than in power, excel.
Be that my object, that my constant care,
And may my soul's best wishes centre there;
Be it my task to seek, nor seek in vain,
Not only how to live, but how to reign;
And to those virtues which from Reason spring,
And grace the man, join those which grace the king.
First, (for strict duty bids my care extend
And reach to all who on that care depend,
Bids me with servants keep a steady hand,
And watch o'er all my proxies in the land)
First, (and that method Reason shall support)
Before I look into, and purge my court,
Before I cleanse the stable of the State,
Let me fix things which to myself relate.
That done, and all accounts well settled here,
In resolution firm, in honour clear,
Tremble, ye slaves! who dare abuse your trust,
Who dare be villains, when your king is just.
Are there, amongst those officers of state,
To whom our sacred power we delegate,
Who hold our place and office in the realm,
Who, in our name commission'd, guide the helm;
Are there, who, trusting to our love of ease,
Oppress our subjects, wrest our just decrees,
And make the laws, warp'd from their fair intent,
To speak a language which they never meant;
Are there such men, and can the fools depend
On holding out in safety to their end?
Can they so much, from thoughts of danger free,
Deceive themselves, so much misdeem of me,
To think that I will prove a statesman's tool,
And live a stranger where I ought to rule?
What! to myself and to my state unjust,
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Shall I from ministers take things on trust,
And, sinking low the credit of my throne,
Depend upon dependants of my own?
Shall I,--most certain source of future cares,-Not use my judgment, but depend on theirs?
Shall I, true puppet-like, be mock'd with state,
Have nothing but the name of being great;
Attend at councils which I must not weigh;
Do what they bid, and what they dictate, say;
Enrobed, and hoisted up into my chair,
Only to be a royal cipher there?
Perish the thought--'tis treason to my throne-And who but thinks it, could his thoughts be known
Insults me more than he, who, leagued with Hell,
Shall rise in arms, and 'gainst my crown rebel.
The wicked statesman, whose false heart pursues
A train of guilt; who acts with double views,
And wears a double face; whose base designs
Strike at his monarch's throne; who undermines
E'en whilst he seems his wishes to support;
Who seizes all departments; packs a court;
Maintains an agent on the judgment-seat,
To screen his crimes, and make his frauds complete;
New-models armies, and around the throne
Will suffer none but creatures of his own,
Conscious of such his baseness, well may try,
Against the light to shut his master's eye,
To keep him coop'd, and far removed from those
Who, brave and honest, dare his crimes disclose,
Nor ever let him in one place appear,
Where truth, unwelcome truth, may wound his ear.
Attempts like these, well weigh'd, themselves proclaim,
And, whilst they publish, balk their author's aim.
Kings must be blind into such snares to run,
Or, worse, with open eyes must be undone.
The minister of honesty and worth
Demands the day to bring his actions forth;
Calls on the sun to shine with fiercer rays,
And braves that trial which must end in praise.
None fly the day, and seek the shades of night,
But those whose actions cannot bear the light;
None wish their king in ignorance to hold
61
But those who feel that knowledge must unfold
Their hidden guilt; and, that dark mist dispell'd
By which their places and their lives are held,
Confusion wait them, and, by Justice led,
In vengeance fall on every traitor's head.
Aware of this, and caution'd 'gainst the pit
Where kings have oft been lost, shall I submit,
And rust in chains like these? shall I give way,
And whilst my helpless subjects fall a prey
To power abused, in ignorance sit down,
Nor dare assert the honour of my crown?
When stern Rebellion, (if that odious name
Justly belongs to those whose only aim,
Is to preserve their country; who oppose,
In honour leagued, none but their country's foes;
Who only seek their own, and found their cause
In due regard for violated laws)
When stern Rebellion, who no longer feels
Nor fears rebuke, a nation at her heels,
A nation up in arms, though strong not proud,
Knocks at the palace gate, and, calling loud
For due redress, presents, from Truth's fair pen,
A list of wrongs, not to be borne by men:
How must that king be humbled, how disgrace
All that is royal in his name and place,
Who, thus call'd forth to answer, can advance
No other plea but that of ignorance!
A vile defence, which, was his all at stake,
The meanest subject well might blush to make;
A filthy source, from whence shame ever springs;
A stain to all, but most a stain to kings.
The soul with great and manly feelings warm'd,
Panting for knowledge, rests not till inform'd;
And shall not I, fired with the glorious zeal,
Feel those brave passions which my subjects feel?
Or can a just excuse from ignorance flow
To me, whose first great duty is--to know?
Hence, Ignorance!--thy settled, dull, blank eye
Would hurt me, though I knew no reason why.
Hence, Ignorance!--thy slavish shackles bind
The free-born soul, and lethargise the mind.
Of thee, begot by Pride, who look'd with scorn
62
On every meaner match, of thee was born
That grave inflexibility of soul,
Which Reason can't convince, nor Fear control;
Which neither arguments nor prayers can reach,
And nothing less than utter ruin teach.
Hence, Ignorance!--hence to that depth of night
Where thou wast born, where not one gleam of light
May wound thine eye--hence to some dreary cell
Where monks with superstition love to dwell;
Or in some college soothe thy lazy pride,
And with the heads of colleges reside;
Fit mate for Royalty thou canst not be,
And if no mate for kings, no mate for me.
Come, Study! like a torrent swell'd with rains,
Which, rushing down the mountains, o'er the plains
Spreads horror wide, and yet, in horror kind,
Leaves seeds of future fruitfulness behind;
Come, Study!--painful though thy course, and slow,
Thy real worth by thy effects we know-Parent of Knowledge, come!--Not thee I call,
Who, grave and dull, in college or in hall
Dost sit, all solemn sad, and moping weigh
Things which, when found, thy labours can't repay-Nor, in one hand, fit emblem of thy trade,
A rod; in t' other, gaudily array'd,
A hornbook gilt and letter'd, call I thee,
Who dost in form preside o'er A, B, C:
Nor (siren though thou art, and thy strange charms,
As 'twere by magic, lure men to thine arms)
Do I call thee, who, through a winding maze,
A labyrinth of puzzling, pleasing ways,
Dost lead us at the last to those rich plains,
Where, in full glory, real Science reigns;
Fair though thou art, and lovely to mine eye,
Though full rewards in thy possession lie
To crown man's wish, and do thy favourites grace;
Though (was I station'd in an humbler place)
I could be ever happy in thy sight,
Toil with thee all the day, and through the night,
Toil on from watch to watch, bidding my eye,
Fast rivetted on Science, sleep defy;
Yet (such the hardships which from empire flow)
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Must I thy sweet society forego,
And to some happy rival's arms resign
Those charms which can, alas! no more be mine!
No more from hour to hour, from day to day,
Shall I pursue thy steps, and urge my way
Where eager love of science calls; no more
Attempt those paths which man ne'er trod before;
No more, the mountain scaled, the desert cross'd,
Losing myself, nor knowing I was lost,
Travel through woods, through wilds, from morn to night,
From night to morn, yet travel with delight,
And having found thee, lay me down content,
Own all my toil well paid, my time well spent.
Farewell, ye Muses too!--for such mean things
Must not presume to dwell with mighty kings-Farewell, ye Muses! though it cuts my heart
E'en to the quick, we must for ever part.
When the fresh morn bade lusty Nature wake;
When the birds, sweetly twittering through the brake,
Tune their soft pipes; when, from the neighbouring bloom
Sipping the dew, each zephyr stole perfume;
When all things with new vigour were inspired,
And seem'd to say they never could be tired;
How often have we stray'd, whilst sportive rhyme
Deceived the way and clipp'd the wings of Time,
O'er hill, o'er dale; how often laugh'd to see,
Yourselves made visible to none but me,
The clown, his works suspended, gape and stare,
And seem to think that I conversed with air!
When the sun, beating on the parched soil,
Seem'd to proclaim an interval of toil;
When a faint langour crept through every breast,
And things most used to labour wish'd for rest,
How often, underneath a reverend oak,
Where safe, and fearless of the impious stroke,
Some sacred Dryad lived; or in some grove,
Where, with capricious fingers, Fancy wove
Her fairy bower, whilst Nature all the while
Look'd on, and view'd her mockeries with a smile,
Have we held converse sweet! How often laid,
Fast by the Thames, in Ham's inspiring shade,
Amongst those poets which make up your train,
64
And, after death, pour forth the sacred strain,
Have I, at your command, in verse grown gray,
But not impair'd, heard Dryden tune that lay
Which might have drawn an angel from his sphere,
And kept him from his office listening here!
When dreary Night, with Morpheus in her train,
Led on by Silence to resume her reign,
With darkness covering, as with a robe,
The scene of levity, blank'd half the globe;
How oft, enchanted with your heavenly strains,
Which stole me from myself; which in soft chains
Of music bound my soul; how oft have I,
Sounds more than human floating through the sky,
Attentive sat, whilst Night, against her will,
Transported with the harmony, stood still!
How oft in raptures, which man scarce could bear,
Have I, when gone, still thought the Muses there;
Still heard their music, and, as mute as death,
Sat all attention, drew in every breath,
Lest, breathing all too rudely, I should wound,
And mar that magic excellence of sound;
Then, Sense returning with return of day,
Have chid the Night, which fled so fast away!
Such my pursuits, and such my joys of yore,
Such were my mates, but now my mates no more.
Placed out of Envy's walk, (for Envy, sure,
Would never haunt the cottage of the poor,
Would never stoop to wound my homespun lays)
With some few friends, and some small share of praise,
Beneath oppression, undisturb'd by strife,
In peace I trod the humble vale of life.
Farewell, these scenes of ease, this tranquil state;
Welcome the troubles which on empire wait!
Light toys from this day forth I disavow;
They pleased me once, but cannot suit me now:
To common men all common things are free,
What honours them, might fix disgrace on me.
Call'd to a throne, and o'er a mighty land
Ordain'd to rule, my head, my heart, my hand,
Are all engross'd; each private view withstood,
And task'd to labour for the public good:
Be this my study; to this one great end
65
May every thought, may every action tend!
Let me the page of History turn o'er,
The instructive page, and needfully explore
What faithful pens of former times have wrote
Of former kings; what they did worthy note,
What worthy blame; and from the sacred tomb
Where righteous monarchs sleep, where laurels bloom,
Unhurt by Time, let me a garland twine,
Which, robbing not their fame, may add to mine.
Nor let me with a vain and idle eye
Glance o'er those scenes, and in a hurry fly,
Quick as the post, which travels day and night;
Nor let me dwell there, lured by false delight;
And, into barren theory betray'd,
Forget that monarchs are for action made.
When amorous Spring, repairing all his charms,
Calls Nature forth from hoary Winter's arms,
Where, like a virgin to some lecher sold,
Three wretched months she lay benumb'd, and cold;
When the weak flower, which, shrinking from the breath
Of the rude North, and timorous of death,
To its kind mother earth for shelter fled,
And on her bosom hid its tender head,
Peeps forth afresh, and, cheer'd by milder sties,
Bids in full splendour all her beauties rise;
The hive is up in arms--expert to teach,
Nor, proudly, to be taught unwilling, each
Seems from her fellow a new zeal to catch;
Strength in her limbs, and on her wings dispatch,
The bee goes forth; from herb to herb she flies,
From flower to flower, and loads her labouring thighs
With treasured sweets, robbing those flowers, which, left,
Find not themselves made poorer by the theft,
Their scents as lively, and their looks as fair,
As if the pillager had not been there.
Ne'er doth she flit on Pleasure's silken wing;
Ne'er doth she, loitering, let the bloom of Spring
Unrifled pass, and on the downy breast
Of some fair flower indulge untimely rest;
Ne'er doth she, drinking deep of those rich dews
Which chemist Night prepared, that faith abuse
Due to the hive, and, selfish in her toils,
66
To her own private use convert the spoils.
Love of the stock first call'd her forth to roam,
And to the stock she brings her booty home.
Be this my pattern--as becomes a king,
Let me fly all abroad on Reason's wing;
Let mine eye, like the lightning, through the earth
Run to and fro, nor let one deed of worth,
In any place and time, nor let one man,
Whose actions may enrich dominion's plan,
Escape my note; be all, from the first day
Of Nature to this hour, be all my prey.
From those whom Time, at the desire of Fame,
Hath spared, let Virtue catch an equal flame;
From those who, not in mercy, but in rage,
Time hath reprieved, to damn from age to age,
Let me take warning, lesson'd to distil,
And, imitating Heaven, draw good from ill.
Nor let these great researches, in my breast
A monument of useless labour rest;
No--let them spread--the effects let Gotham share,
And reap the harvest of their monarch's care:
Be other times, and other countries known,
Only to give fresh blessings to my own.
Let me, (and may that God to whom I fly,
On whom for needful succour I rely
In this great hour, that glorious God of truth,
Through whom I reign, in mercy to my youth,
Assist my weakness, and direct me right;
From every speck which hangs upon the sight
Purge my mind's eye, nor let one cloud remain
To spread the shades of Error o'er my brain!)
Let me, impartial, with unwearied thought,
Try men and things; let me, as monarchs ought,
Examine well on what my power depends;
What are the general principles and ends
Of government; how empire first began;
And wherefore man was raised to reign o'er man.
Let me consider, as from one great source
We see a thousand rivers take their course,
Dispersed, and into different channels led,
Yet by their parent still supplied and fed,
That Government, (though branch'd out far and wide,
67
In various modes to various lands applied)
Howe'er it differs in its outward frame,
In the main groundwork's every where the same;
The same her view, though different her plan,
Her grand and general view--the good of man.
Let me find out, by Reason's sacred beams,
What system in itself most perfect seems,
Most worthy man, most likely to conduce
To all the purposes of general use;
Let me find, too, where, by fair Reason tried,
It fails, when to particulars applied;
Why in that mode all nations do not join,
And, chiefly, why it cannot suit with mine.
Let me the gradual rise of empires trace,
Till they seem founded on Perfection's base;
Then (for when human things have made their way
To excellence, they hasten to decay)
Let me, whilst Observation lends her clue
Step after step to their decline pursue,
Enabled by a chain of facts to tell
Not only how they rose, but why they fell.
Let me not only the distempers know
Which in all states from common causes grow,
But likewise those, which, by the will of Fate,
On each peculiar mode of empire wait;
Which in its very constitution lurk,
Too sure at last to do its destined work:
Let me, forewarn'd, each sign, each symptom learn,
That I my people's danger may discern,
Ere 'tis too late wish'd health to reassure,
And, if it can be found, find out a cure.
Let me, (though great, grave brethren of the gown
Preach all Faith up, and preach all Reason down,
Making those jar whom Reason meant to join,
And vesting in themselves a right divine),
Let me, through Reason's glass, with searching eye,
Into the depth of that religion pry
Which law hath sanction'd; let me find out there
What's form, what's essence; what, like vagrant air,
We well may change; and what, without a crime,
Cannot be changed to the last hour of time.
Nor let me suffer that outrageous zeal
68
Which, without knowledge, furious bigots feel,
Fair in pretence, though at the heart unsound,
These separate points at random to confound.
The times have been when priests have dared to tread,
Proud and insulting, on their monarch's head;
When, whilst they made religion a pretence,
Out of the world they banish'd common-sense;
When some soft king, too open to deceit,
Easy and unsuspecting join'd the cheat,
Duped by mock piety, and gave his name
To serve the vilest purposes of shame.
Pear not, my people! where no cause of fear
Can justly rise--your king secures you here;
Your king, who scorns the haughty prelate's nod,
Nor deems the voice of priests the voice of God.
Let me, (though lawyers may perhaps forbid
Their monarch to behold what they wish hid,
And for the purposes of knavish gain,
Would have their trade a mystery remain)
Let me, disdaining all such slavish awe,
Dive to the very bottom of the law;
Let me (the weak, dead letter left behind)
Search out the principles, the spirit find,
Till, from the parts, made master of the whole,
I see the Constitution's very soul.
Let me, (though statesmen will no doubt resist,
And to my eyes present a fearful list
Of men, whose wills are opposite to mine,
Of men, great men, determined to resign)
Let me, (with firmness, which becomes a king.
Conscious from what a source my actions spring,
Determined not by worlds to be withstood,
When my grand object is my country's good)
Unravel all low ministerial scenes,
Destroy their jobs, lay bare their ways and means,
And track them step by step; let me well know
How places, pensions, and preferments go;
Why Guilt's provided for when Worth is not,
And why one man of merit is forgot;
Let me in peace, in war, supreme preside,
And dare to know my way without a guide.
Let me, (though Dignity, by nature proud,
69
Retires from view, and swells behind a cloud,-As if the sun shone with less powerful ray,
Less grace, less glory, shining every day,-Though when she comes forth into public sight,
Unbending as a ghost, she stalks upright,
With such an air as we have often seen,
And often laugh'd at, in a tragic queen,
Nor, at her presence, though base myriads crook
The supple knee, vouchsafes a single look)
Let me, (all vain parade, all empty pride,
All terrors of dominion laid aside,
All ornament, and needless helps of art,
All those big looks, which speak a little heart)
Know (which few kings, alas! have ever known)
How Affability becomes a throne,
Destroys all fear, bids Love with Reverence live,
And gives those graces Pride can never give.
Let the stern tyrant keep a distant state,
And, hating all men, fear return of hate,
Conscious of guilt, retreat behind his throne,
Secure from all upbraidings but his own:
Let all my subjects have access to me,
Be my ears open, as my heart is free;
In full fair tide let information flow;
That evil is half cured, whose cause we know.
And thou, where'er thou art, thou wretched thing,
Who art afraid to look up to a king,
Lay by thy fears; make but thy grievance plain,
And, if I not redress thee, may my reign
Close up that very moment. To prevent
The course of Justice from her vain intent,
In vain my nearest, dearest friend shall plead,
In vain my mother kneel; my soul may bleed,
But must not change. When Justice draws the dart,
Though it is doom'd to pierce a favourite's heart,
'Tis mine to give it force, to give it aim-I know it duty, and I feel it fame.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
1240:Scene. Colmar in Alsatia: an Inn. 1528.
Paracelsus, Festus.
Paracelsus
[to Johannes Oporinus, his Secretary].
Sic itur ad astra! Dear Von Visenburg
Is scandalized, and poor Torinus paralysed,
And every honest soul that Basil holds
Aghast; and yet we live, as one may say,
Just as though Liechtenfels had never set
So true a value on his sorry carcass,
And learned Ptter had not frowned us dumb.
We live; and shall as surely start to morrow
For Nuremberg, as we drink speedy scathe
To Basil in this mantling wine, suffused
A delicate blush, no fainter tinge is born
I' the shut heart of a bud. Pledge me, good John
"Basil; a hot plague ravage it, and Ptter
"Oppose the plague!" Even so? Do you too share
Their panic, the reptiles? Ha, ha; faint through these,
Desist for these! They manage matters so
At Basil, 't is like: but others may find means
To bring the stoutest braggart of the tribe
Once more to crouch in silencemeans to breed
A stupid wonder in each fool again,
Now big with admiration at the skill
Which stript a vain pretender of his plumes:
And, that done,means to brand each slavish brow
So deeply, surely, ineffaceably,
That henceforth flattery shall not pucker it
Out of the furrow; there that stamp shall stay
To show the next they fawn on, what they are,
This Basil with its magnates,fill my cup,
Whom I curse soul and limb. And now despatch,
Despatch, my trusty John; and what remains
To do, whate'er arrangements for our trip
Are yet to be completed, see you hasten
This night; we'll weather the storm at least: to-morrow
For Nuremberg! Now leave us; this grave clerk
Has divers weighty matters for my ear:
[Oporinus goes out.
And spare my lungs. At last, my gallant Festus,
I am rid of this arch-knave that dogs my heels
As a gaunt crow a gasping sheep; at last
May give a loose to my delight. How kind,
How very kind, my first best only friend!
Why, this looks like fidelity. Embrace me!
Not a hair silvered yet? Right! you shall live
Till I am worth your love; you shall be pround,
And Ibut let time show! Did you not wonder?
I sent to you because our compact weighed
Upon my conscience(you recall the night
At Basil, which the gods confound!)because
Once more I aspire. I call you to my side:
You come. You thought my message strange?
Festus.
So strange
That I must hope, indeed, your messenger
Has mingled his own fancies with the words
Purporting to be yours.
Paracelsus.
He said no more,
'T is probable, than the precious folk I leave
Said fiftyfold more roughly. Well-a-day,
'T is true! poor Paracelsus is exposed
At last; a most egregious quack he proves:
And those he overreached must spit their hate
On one who, utterly beneath contempt,
Could yet deceive their topping wits. You heard
Bare truth; and at my bidding you come here
To speed me on my enterprise, as once
Your lavish wishes sped me, my own friend!
Festus.
What is your purpose, Aureole?
Paracelsus.
Oh, for purpose,
There is no lack of precedents in a case
Like mine; at least, if not precisely mine,
The case of men cast off by those they sought
To benefit.
Festus.
They really cast you off?
I only heard a vague tale of some priest,
Cured by your skill, who wrangled at your claim,
Knowing his life's worth best; and how the judge
The matter was referred to, saw no cause
To interfere, nor you to hide your full
Contempt of him; nor he, again, to smother
His wrath thereat, which raised so fierce a flame
That Basil soon was made no place for you.
Paracelsus.
The affair of Liechtenfels? the shallowest fable,
The last and silliest outragemere pretence!
I knew it, I foretold it from the first,
How soon the stupid wonder you mistook
For genuine loyaltya cheering promise
Of better things to comewould pall and pass;
And every word comes true. Saul is among
The prophets! Just so long as I was pleased
To play off the mere antics of my art,
Fantastic gambols leading to no end,
I got huge praise: but one can ne'er keep down
Our foolish nature's weakness. There they flocked,
Poor devils, jostling, swearing and perspiring,
Till the walls rang again; and all for me!
I had a kindness for them, which was right;
But then I stopped not till I tacked to that
A trust in them and a respecta sort
Of sympathy for them; I must needs begin
To teach them, not amaze them, "to impart
"The spirit which should instigate the search
"Of truth," just what you bade me! I spoke out.
Forthwith a mighty squadron, in disgust,
Filed off"the sifted chaff of the sack," I said,
Redoubling my endeavours to secure
The rest. When lo! one man had tarried so long
Only to ascertain if I supported
This tenet of his, or that; another loved
To hear impartially before he judged,
And having heard, now judged; this bland disciple
Passed for my dupe, but all along, it seems,
Spied error where his neighbours marvelled most;
That fiery doctor who had hailed me friend,
Did it because my by-paths, once proved wrong
And beaconed properly, would commend again
The good old ways our sires jogged safely o'er,
Though not their squeamish sons; the other worthy
Discovered divers verses of St. John,
Which, read successively, refreshed the soul,
But, muttered backwards, cured the gout, the stone,
The colic and what not. Quid multa? The end
Was a clear class-room, and a quiet leer
From grave folk, and a sour reproachful glance
From those in chief who, cap in hand, installed
The new professor scarce a year before;
And a vast flourish about patient merit
Obscured awhile by flashy tricks, but sure
Sooner or later to emerge in splendour
Of which the example was some luckless wight
Whom my arrival had discomfited,
But now, it seems, the general voice recalled
To fill my chair and so efface the stain
Basil had long incurred. I sought no better,
Only a quiet dismissal from my post,
And from my heart I wished them better suited
And better served. Good night to Basil, then!
But fast as I proposed to rid the tribe
Of my obnoxious back, I could not spare them
The pleasure of a parting kick.
Festus.
You smile:
Despise them as they merit!
Paracelsus.
If I smile,
'T is with as very contempt as ever turned
Flesh into stone. This courteous recompense,
This grateful . . . Festus, were your nature fit
To be defiled, your eyes the eyes to ache
At gangrene-blotches, eating poison-blains,
The ulcerous barky scurf of leprosy
Which findsa man, and leavesa hideous thing
That cannot but be mended by hell fire,
I would lay bare to you the human heart
Which God cursed long ago, and devils make since
Their pet nest and their never-tiring home.
Oh, sages have discovered we are born
For various endsto love, to know: has ever
One stumbled, in his search, on any signs
Of a nature in us formed to hate? To hate?
If that be our true object which evokes
Our powers in fullest strength, be sure 't is hate!
Yet men have doubted if the best and bravest
Of spirits can nourish him with hate alone.
I had not the monopoly of fools,
It seems, at Basil.
Festus.
But your plans, your plans!
I have yet to learn your purpose, Aureole!
Paracelsus.
Whether to sink beneath such ponderous shame,
To shrink up like a crushed snail, undergo
In silence and desist from further toil,
and so subside into a monument
Of one their censure blasted? or to bow
Cheerfully as submissively, to lower
My old pretensions even as Basil dictates,
To drop into the rank her wits assign me
And live as they prescribe, and make that use
Of my poor knowledge which their rules allow,
Proud to be patted now and then, and careful
To practise the true posture for receiving
The amplest benefit from their hoofs' appliance
When they shall condescend to tutor me?
Then, one may feel resentment like a flame
Within, and deck false systems in truth's garb,
And tangle and entwine mankind with error,
And give them darkness for a dower and falsehood
For a possession, ages: or one may mope
Into a shade through thinking, or else drowse
Into a dreamless sleep and so die off.
But I,now Festus shall divine!but I
Am merely setting out once more, embracing
My earliest aims again! What thinks he now?
Festus.
Your aims? the aims?to Know? and where is found
The early trust . . .
Paracelsus.
Nay, not so fast; I say,
The aimsnot the old means. You know they made me
A laughing-stock; I was a fool; you know
The when and the how: hardly those means again!
Not but they had their beauty; who should know
Their passing beauty, if not I? Still, dreams
They were, so let them vanish, yet in beauty
If that may be. Stay: thus they pass in song!
[He sings.
Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair: such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.
And strew faint sweetness from some old
Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud
Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;
Or shredded perfume, like a cloud
From closet long to quiet vowed,
With mothed and dropping arras hung,
Mouldering her lute and books among,
As when a queen, long dead, was young.
Mine, every word! And on such pile shall die
My lovely fancies, with fair perished things,
Themselves fair and forgotten; yes, forgotten,
Or why abjure them? So, I made this rhyme
That fitting dignity might be preserved;
No little proud was I; though the list of drugs
Smacks of my old vocation, and the verse
Halts like the best of Luther's psalms.
Festus.
But, Aureole,
Talk not thus wildly and madly. I am here
Did you know all! I have travelled far, indeed,
To learn your wishes. Be yourself again!
For in this mood I recognize you less
Than in the horrible despondency
I witnessed last. You may account this, joy;
But rather let me gaze on that despair
Than hear these incoherent words and see
This flushed cheek and intensely-sparkling eye.
Paracelsus.
Why, man, I was light-hearted in my prime
I am light-hearted now; what would you have?
Aprile was a poet, I make songs
'T is the very augury of success I want!
Why should I not be joyous now as then?
Festus.
Joyous! and how? and what remains for joy?
You have declared the ends (which I am sick
Of naming) are impracticable.
Paracelsus.
Ay,
Pursued as I pursued themthe arch-fool!
Listen: my plan will please you not, 't is like,
But you are little versed in the world's ways.
This is my plan(first drinking its good luck)
I will accept all helps; all I despised
So rashly at the outset, equally
With early impulses, late years have quenched:
I have tried each way singly: now for both!
All helps! no one sort shall exclude the rest.
I seek to know and to enjoy at once,
Not one without the other as before.
Suppose my labour should seem God's own cause
Once more, as first I dreamed,it shall not baulk me
Of the meanest earthliest sensualest delight
That may be snatched; for every joy is gain,
And gain is gain, however small. My soul
Can die then, nor be taunted"what was gained?"
Nor, on the other hand, should pleasure follow
As though I had not spurned her hitherto,
Shall she o'ercloud my spirit's rapt communion
With the tumultuous past, the teeming future,
Glorious with visions of a full success.
Festus.
Success!
Paracelsus.
And wherefore not? Why not prefer
Results obtained in my best state of being,
To those derived alone from seasons dark
As the thoughts they bred? When I was best, my youth
Unwasted, seemed success not surest too?
It is the nature of darkness to obscure.
I am a wanderer: I remember well
One journey, how I feared the track was missed,
So long the city I desired to reach
Lay hid; when suddenly its spires afar
Flashed through the circling clouds; you may conceive
My transport. Soon the vapours closed again,
But I had seen the city, and one such glance
No darkness could obscure: nor shall the present
A few dull hours, a passing shame or two,
Destroy the vivid memories of the past.
I will fight the battle out; a little spent
Perhaps, but still an able combatant.
You look at my grey hair and furrowed brow?
But I can turn even weakness to account:
Of many tricks I know, 't is not the least
To push the ruins of my frame, whereon
The fire of vigour trembles scarce alive,
Into a heap, and send the flame aloft.
What should I do with age? So, sickness lends
An aid; it being, I fear, the source of all
We boast of: mind is nothing but disease,
And natural health is ignorance.
Festus.
I see
But one good symptom in this notable scheme.
I feared your sudden journey had in view
To wreak immediate vengeance on your foes
'T is not so: I am glad.
Paracelsus.
And if I please
To spit on them, to trample them, what then?
'T is sorry warfare truly, but the fools
Provoke it. I would spare their self-conceit
But if they must provoke me, cannot suffer
Forbearance on my part, if I may keep
No quality in the shade, must needs put forth
Power to match power, my strength against their strength,
And teach them their own game with their own arms
Why, be it so and let them take their chance!
I am above them like a god, there's no
Hiding the fact: what idle scruples, then,
Were those that ever bade me soften it,
Communicate it gently to the world,
Instead of proving my supremacy,
Taking my natural station o'er their head,
Then owning all the glory was a man's!
And in my elevation man's would be.
But live and learn, though life's short, learning, hard!
And therefore, though the wreck of my past self,
I fear, dear Ptter, that your lecture-room
Must wait awhile for its best ornament,
The penitent empiric, who set up
For somebody, but soon was taught his place;
Now, but too happy to be let confess
His error, snuff the candles, and illustrate
(Fiat experientia corpore vili)
Your medicine's soundness in his person. Wait,
Good Ptter!
Festus.
He who sneers thus, is a god!
Paracelsus.
Ay, ay, laugh at me! I am very glad
You are not gulled by all this swaggering; you
Can see the root of the matter!how I strive
To put a good face on the overthrow
I have experienced, and to bury and hide
My degradation in its length and breadth;
How the mean motives I would make you think
Just mingle as is due with nobler aims,
The appetites I modestly allow
May influence me as being mortal still
Do goad me, drive me on, and fast supplant
My youth's desires. You are no stupid dupe:
You find me out! Yes, I had sent for you
To palm these childish lies upon you, Festus!
Laughyou shall laugh at me!
Festus.
The past, then, Aureole,
Proves nothing? Is our interchange of love
Yet to begin? Have I to swear I mean
No flattery in this speech or that? For you,
Whate'er you say, there is no degradation;
These low thoughts are no inmates of your mind,
Or wherefore this disorder? You are vexed
As much by the intrusion of base views,
Familiar to your adversaries, as they
Were troubled should your qualities alight
Amid their murky souls; not otherwise,
A stray wolf which the winter forces down
From our bleak hills, suffices to affright
A village in the valeswhile foresters
Sleep calm, though all night long the famished troop
Snuff round and scratch against their crazy huts.
These evil thoughts are monsters, and will flee.
Paracelsus.
May you be happy, Festus, my own friend!
Festus.
Nay, further; the delights you fain would think
The superseders of your nobler aims,
Though ordinary and harmless stimulants,
Will ne'er content you. . . .
Paracelsus.
Hush! I once despised them,
But that soon passes. We are high at first
In our demand, nor will abate a jot
Of toil's strict value; but time passes o'er,
And humbler spirits accept what we refuse:
In short, when some such comfort is doled out
As these delights, we cannot long retain
Bitter contempt which urges us at first
To hurl it back, but hug it to our breast
And thankfully retire. This life of mine
Must be lived out and a grave thoroughly earned:
I am just fit for that and nought beside.
I told you once, I cannot now enjoy,
Unless I deem my knowledge gains through joy;
Nor can I know, but straight warm tears reveal
My need of linking also joy to knowledge:
So, on I drive, enjoying all I can,
And knowing all I can. I speak, of course,
Confusedly; this will better explainfeel here!
Quick beating, is it not?a fire of the heart
To work off some way, this as well as any.
So, Festus sees me fairly launched; his calm
Compassionate look might have disturbed me once,
But now, far from rejecting, I invite
What bids me press the closer, lay myself
Open before him, and be soothed with pity;
I hope, if he command hope, and believe
As he directs mesatiating myself
With his enduring love. And Festus quits me
To give place to some credulous disciple
Who holds that God is wise, but Paracelsus
Has his peculiar merits: I suck in
That homage, chuckle o'er that admiration,
And then dismiss the fool; for night is come.
And I betake myself to study again,
Till patient searchings after hidden lore
Half wring some bright truth from its prison; my frame
Trembles, my forehead's veins swell out, my hair
Tingles for triumph. Slow and sure the morn
Shall break on my pent room and dwindling lamp
And furnace dead, and scattered earths and ores;
When, with a failing heart and throbbing brow,
I must review my captured truth, sum up
Its value, trace what ends to what begins,
Its present power with its eventual bearings,
Latent affinities, the views it opens,
And its full length in perfecting my scheme.
I view it sternly circumscribed, cast down
From the high place my fond hopes yielded it,
Proved worthlesswhich, in getting, yet had cost
Another wrench to this fast-falling frame.
Then, quick, the cup to quaff, that chases sorrow!
I lapse back into youth, and take again
My fluttering pulse for evidence that God
Means good to me, will make my cause his own.
See! I have cast off this remorseless care
Which clogged a spirit born to soar so free,
And my dim chamber has become a tent,
Festus is sitting by me, and his Michal . . .
Why do you start? I say, she listening here,
(For yonderWrzburg through the orchard-bough!)
Motions as though such ardent words should find
No echo in a maiden's quiet soul,
But her pure bosom heaves, her eyes fill fast
With tears, her sweet lips tremble all the while!
Ha, ha!
Festus.
It seems, then, you expect to reap
No unreal joy from this your present course,
But rather . . .
Paracelsus.
Death! To die! I owe that much
To what, at least, I was. I should be sad
To live contented after such a fall,
To thrive and fatten after such reverse!
The whole plan is a makeshift, but will last
My time.
Festus.
And you have never mused and said,
"I had a noble purpose, and the strength
"To compass it; but I have stopped half-way,
"And wrongly given the first-fruits of my toil
"To objects little worthy of the gift.
"Why linger round them still? why clench my fault?
"Why seek for consolation in defeat,
"In vain endeavours to derive a beauty
"From ugliness? why seek to make the most
"Of what no power can change, nor strive instead
"With mighty effort to redeem the past
"And, gathering up the treasures thus cast down,
"To hold a steadfast course till I arrive
"At their fit destination and my own?"
You have never pondered thus?
Paracelsus.
Have I, you ask?
Often at midnight, when most fancies come,
Would some such airy project visit me:
But ever at the end . . . or will you hear
The same thing in a tale, a parable?
You and I, wandering over the world wide,
Chance to set foot upon a desert coast.
Just as we cry, "No human voice before
"Broke the inveterate silence of these rocks!"
Their querulous echo startles us; we turn:
What ravaged structure still looks o'er the sea?
Some characters remain, too! While we read,
The sharp salt wind, impatient for the last
Of even this record, wistfully comes and goes,
Or sings what we recover, mocking it.
This is the record; and my voice, the wind's.
[He sings.
Over the sea our galleys went,
With cleaving prows in order brave
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave,
A gallant armament:
Each bark built out of a forest-tree
Left leafy and rough as first it grew,
And nailed all over the gaping sides,
Within and without, with black bull-hides,
Seethed in fat and suppled in flame,
To bear the playful billows' game:
So, each good ship was rude to see,
Rude and bare to the outward view,
But each upbore a stately tent
Where cedar pales in scented row
Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine,
And an awning drooped the mast below,
In fold on fold of the purple fine,
That neither noontide nor starshine
Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad,
Might pierce the regal tenement.
When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad
We set the sail and plied the oar;
But when the night-wind blew like breath,
For joy of one day's voyage more,
We sang together on the wide sea,
Like men at peace on a peaceful shore;
Each sail was loosed to the wind so free,
Each helm made sure by the twilight star,
And in a sleep as calm as death,
We, the voyagers from afar,
Lay stretched along, each weary crew
In a circle round its wondrous tent
Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich scent,
And with light and perfume, music too:
So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness past,
And at morn we started beside the mast,
And still each ship was sailing fast.
Now, one morn, land appeareda speck
Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky:
"Avoid it," cried our pilot, "check
"The shout, restrain the eager eye!"
But the heaving sea was black behind
For many a night and many a day,
And land, though but a rock, drew nigh;
So, we broke the cedar pales away,
Let the purple awning flap in the wind,
And a statute bright was on every deck!
We shouted, every man of us,
And steered right into the harbour thus,
With pomp and pan glorious.
A hundred shapes of lucid stone!
All day we built its shrine for each,
A shrine of rock for every one,
Nor paused till in the westering sun
We sat together on the beach
To sing because our task was done.
When lo! what shouts and merry songs!
What laughter all the distance stirs!
A loaded raft with happy throngs
Of gentle islanders!
"Our isles are just at hand," they cried,
"Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping
"Our temple-gates are opened wide,
"Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping
"For these majestic forms"they cried.
Oh, then we awoke with sudden start
From our deep dream, and knew, too late,
How bare the rock, how desolate,
Which had received our precious freight:
Yet we called out"Depart!
"Our gifts, once given, must here abide.
"Our work is done; we have no heart
"To mar our work,"we cried.
Festus.
In truth?
Paracelsus.
Nay, wait: all this in tracings faint
On rugged stones strewn here and there, but piled
In order once: then followsmark what follows!
"The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung
"To their first fault, and withered in their pride."
Festus.
Come back then, Aureole; as you fear God, come!
This is foul sin; come back! Renounce the past,
Forswear the future; look for joy no more,
But wait death's summons amid holy sights,
And trust me for the eventpeace, if not joy.
Return with me to Einsiedeln, dear Aureole!
Paracelsus.
No way, no way! it would not turn to good.
A spotless child sleeps on the flowering moss
'T is well for him; but when a sinful man,
Envying such slumber, may desire to put
His guilt away, shall he return at once
To rest by lying there? Our sires knew well
(Spite of the grave discoveries of their sons)
The fitting course for such: dark cells, dim lamps,
A stone floor one may writhe on like a worm:
No mossy pillow blue with violets!
Festus.
I see no symptom of these absolute
And tyrannous passions. You are calmer now.
This verse-making can purge you well enough
Without the terrible penance you describe.
You love me still: the lusts you fear will never
Outrage your friend. To Einsiedeln, once more!
Say but the word!
Paracelsus.
No, no; those lusts forbid:
They crouch, I know, cowering with half-shut eye
Beside you; 't is their nature. Thrust yourself
Between them and their prey; let some fool style me
Or king or quack, it matters notthen try
Your wisdom, urge them to forego their treat!
No, no; learn better and look deeper, Festus!
If you knew how a devil sneers within me
While you are talking now of this, now that,
As though we differed scarcely save in trifles!
Festus.
Do we so differ? True, change must proceed,
Whether for good or ill; keep from me, which!
Do not confide all secrets: I was born
To hope, and you . . .
Paracelsus.
To trust: you know the fruits!
Festus.
Listen: I do believe, what you call trust
Was self-delusion at the best: for, see!
So long as God would kindly pioneer
A path for you, and screen you from the world,
Procure you full exemption from man's lot,
Man's common hopes and fears, on the mere pretext
Of your engagement in his serviceyield you
A limitless licence, make you God, in fact,
And turn your slaveyou were content to say
Most courtly praises! What is it, at last,
But selfishness without example? None
Could trace God's will so plain as you, while yours
Remained implied in it; but now you fail,
And we, who prate about that will, are fools!
In short, God's service is established here
As he determines fit, and not your way,
And this you cannot brook. Such discontent
Is weak. Renounce all creatureship at once!
Affirm an absolute right to have and use
Your energies; as though the rivers should say
"We rush to the ocean; what have we to do
"With feeding streamlets, lingering in the vales,
"Sleeping in lazy pools?" Set up that plea,
That will be bold at least!
Paracelsus.
'T is like enough.
The serviceable spirits are those, no doubt,
The East produces: lo, the master bids,
They wake, raise terraces and garden-grounds
In one night's space; and, this done, straight begin
Another century's sleep, to the great praise
Of him that framed them wise and beautiful,
Till a lamp's rubbing, or some chance akin,
Wake them again. I am of different mould.
I would have soothed my lord, and slaved for him
And done him service past my narrow bond,
And thus I get rewarded for my pains!
Beside, 't is vain to talk of forwarding
God's glory otherwise; this is alone
The sphere of its increase, as far as men
Increase it; why, then, look beyond this sphere?
We are his glory; and if we be glorious,
Is not the thing achieved?
Festus.
Shall one like me
Judge hearts like yours? Though years have changed you much,
And you have left your first love, and retain
Its empty shade to veil your crooked ways,
Yet I still hold that you have honoured God.
And who shall call your course without reward?
For, wherefore this repining at defeat
Had triumph ne'er inured you to high hopes?
I urge you to forsake the life you curse,
And what success attends me?simply talk
Of passion, weakness and remorse; in short,
Anything but the naked truthyou choose
This so-despised career, and cheaply hold
My happiness, or rather other men's.
Once more, return!
Paracelsus.
And quickly. John the thief
Has pilfered half my secrets by this time:
And we depart by daybreak. I am weary,
I know not how; not even the wine-cup soothes
My brain to-night . . .
Do you not thoroughly despise me, Festus?
No flattery! One like you needs not be told
We live and breathe deceiving and deceived.
Do you not scorn me from your heart of hearts,
Me and my cant, each petty subterfuge,
My rhymes and all this frothy shower of words,
My glozing self-deceit, my outward crust
Of lies which wrap, as tetter, morphew, furfair
Wrapt the sound flesh?so, see you flatter not!
Even God flatters: but my friend, at least,
Is true. I would depart, secure henceforth
Against all further insult, hate and wrong
From puny foes; my one friend's scorn shall brand me:
No fear of sinking deeper!
Festus.
No, dear Aureole!
No, no; I came to counsel faithfully.
There are old rules, made long ere we were born,
By which I judge you. I, so fallible,
So infinitely low beside your mighty
Majestic spirit!even I can see
You own some higher law than ours which call
Sin, what is no sinweakness, what is strength.
But I have only these, such as they are,
To guide me; and I blame you where they bid,
Only so long as blaming promises
To win peace for your soul: the more, that sorrow
Has fallen on me of late, and they have helped me
So that I faint not under my distress.
But wherefore should I scruple to avow
In spite of all, as brother judging brother,
Your fate is most inexplicable to me?
And should you perish without recompense
And satisfaction yettoo hastily
I have relied on love: you may have sinned,
But you have loved. As a mere human matter
As I would have God deal with fragile men
In the endI say that you will triumph yet!
Paracelsus.
Have you felt sorrow, Festus?'t is because
You love me. Sorrow, and sweet Michal yours!
Well thought on: never let her know this last
Dull winding-up of all: these miscreants dared
Insult meme she loved:so, grieve her not!
Festus.
Your ill success can little grieve her now.
Paracelsus.
Michal is dead! pray Christ we do not craze!
Festus.
Aureole, dear Aureole, look not on me thus!
Fool, fool! this is the heart grown sorrow-proof
I cannot bear those eyes.
Paracelsus.
Nay, really dead?
Festus.
'T is scarce a month.
Paracelsus.
Stone dead!then you have laid her
Among the flowers ere this. Now, do you know,
I can reveal a secret which shall comfort
Even you. I have no julep, as men think,
To cheat the grave; but a far better secret.
Know, then, you did not ill to trust your love
To the cold earth: I have thought much of it:
For I believe we do not wholly die.
Festus.
Aureole!
Paracelsus.
Nay, do not laugh; there is a reason
For what I say: I think the soul can never
Taste death. I am, just now, as you may see,
Very unfit to put so strange a thought
In an intelligible dress of words;
But take it as my trust, she is not dead.
Festus.
But not on this account alone? you surely,
Aureole, you have believed this all along?
Paracelsus.
And Michal sleeps among the roots and dews,
While I am moved at Basil, and full of schemes
For Nuremberg, and hoping and despairing,
As though it mattered how the farce plays out,
So it be quickly played. Away, away!
Have your will, rabble! while we fight the prize,
Troop you in safety to the snug back-seats
And leave a clear arena for the brave
About to perish for your sport!Behold!
~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus - Part IV - Paracelsus Aspires
,#NFDB
1241:TO MARY
(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST)
I.
How, my dear Mary, -- are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
II.
What hand would crush the silken-wingd fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.
III.
To thy fair feet a wingd Vision came,
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display;
The watery bow burned in the evening flame,
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way
And that is dead.O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!
IV.
Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.
V.
My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsonsbut she matches Peter,
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness.'
VI.
If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.
If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
Can shrive you of that sin, -- if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.
THE WITCH OF ATLAS.
I.
Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth
The pains of putting into learnd rhyme,
A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain
Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.
II.
Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden
In the warm shadow of her loveliness;--
He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
The chamber of gray rock in which she lay--
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
III.
'Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,
And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
Like splendour-wingd moths about a taper,
Round the red west when the sun dies in it:
And then into a meteor, such as caper
On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:
Then, into one of those mysterious stars
Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.
IV.
Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden
With that bright sign the billows to indent
The sea-deserted sand -- like children chidden,
At her command they ever came and went--
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden
Took shape and motion: with the living form
Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.
V.
A lovely lady garmented in light
From her own beauty -- deep her eyes, as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a Temple's cloven roof -- her hair
Darkthe dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,
Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things towards this wonder new.
VI.
And first the spotted cameleopard came,
And then the wise and fearless elephant;
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
Of his own volumes intervolved -- all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
And every beast of beating heart grew bold,
Such gentleness and power even to behold.
VII.
The brinded lioness led forth her young,
That she might teach them how they should forego
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
His sinews at her feet, and sought to know
With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue
How he might be as gentle as the doe.
The magic circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise.
VIII.
And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:
And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
Teasing the God to sing them something new;
Till in this cave they found the lady lone,
Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.
IX.
And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there,
And though none saw him,through the adamant
Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air,
And through those living spirits, like a want,
He passed out of his everlasting lair
Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,
And felt that wondrous lady all alone,
And she felt him, upon her emerald throne.
X.
And every nymph of stream and spreading tree,
And every shepherdess of Ocean's flocks,
Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
And Ocean with the brine on his gray locks,
And quaint Priapus with his company,
All came, much wondering how the enwombd rocks
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.
XI.
The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs, and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
Wet clefts,and lumps neither alive nor dead,
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.
XII.
For she was beautifulher beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
No thought of living spirit could abide,
Which to her looks had ever been betrayed,
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.
XIII.
Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds and waves and mountains with; and she
As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle
In the belated moon, wound skilfully;
And with these threads a subtle veil she wove
A shadow for the splendour of her love.
XIV.
The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
Were stored with magic treasuressounds of air,
Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
Folded in cells of crystal silence there;
Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never dieyet ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
And the regret they leave remains alone.
XV.
And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis,
Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss
It was its work to bear to many a saint
Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
Even Love's -- and others white, green, gray, and black,
And of all shapesand each was at her beck.
XVI.
And odours in a kind of aviary
Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,
Clipped in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy
Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept;
As bats at the wired window of a dairy.
They beat their vans; and each was an adept,
When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,
To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.
XVII.
And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
And change eternal death into a night
Of glorious dreamsor if eyes needs must weep,
Could make their tears all wonder and delight,
She in her crystal vials did closely keep:
If men could drink of those clear vials, 'tis said
The living were not envied of the dead.
XVIII.
Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,
The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the Gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
And which might quench the Earth-consuming rage
Of gold and bloodtill men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above;
XIX.
And how all things that seem untameable,
Not to be checked and not to be confined,
Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill;
Time, earth, and firethe ocean and the wind,
And all their shapes -- and man's imperial will;
And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
The inmost lore of Lovelet the profane
Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.
XX.
And wondrous works of substances unknown,
To which the enchantment of her father's power
Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
Carved lamps and chalices, and vials which shone
In their own golden beams -- each like a flower,
Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a starless night.
XXI.
At first she lived alone in this wild home,
And her own thoughts were each a minister,
Clothing themselves, or with the ocean foam,
Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
To work whatever purposes might come
Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire
Had girt them with, whether to fly or run,
Through all the regions which he shines upon.
XXII.
The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,
Oreads and Naiads, with long weedy locks,
Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks,
And far beneath the matted roots of trees,
And in the gnarld heart of stubborn oaks,
So they might live for ever in the light
Of her sweet presence -- each a satellite.
XXIII.
'This may not be,' the wizard maid replied;
'The fountains where the Naiades bedew
Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried;
The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;
The boundless ocean like a drop of dew
Will be consumedthe stubborn centre must
Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.
XXIV.
'And ye with them will perish, one by one;
If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
If I must weep when the surviving Sun
Shall smile on your decay -- oh, ask not me
To love you till your little race is run;
I cannot die as ye must -- over me
Your leaves shall glance -- the streams in which ye dwell
Shall be my paths henceforth, and so -- farewell!'--
XXV.
She spoke and wept:the dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
And intertangled lines of light:a knell
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing Forms, o'er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.
XXVI.
All day the wizard lady sate aloof,
Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity,
Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof;
Or broidering the pictured poesy
Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
In hues outshining heavenand ever she
Added some grace to the wrought poesy.
XXVII.
While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece
Of sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon;
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is
Each flame of it is as a precious stone
Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this
Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.
The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand
She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.
XXVIII.
This lady never slept, but lay in trance
All night within the fountain -- as in sleep.
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance;
Through the green splendour of the water deep
She saw the constellations reel and dance
Like fire-flies -- and withal did ever keep
The tenour of her contemplations calm,
With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm.
XXIX.
And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended
From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,
She passed at dewfall to a space extended,
Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel
Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended,
There yawned an inextinguishable well
Of crimson firefull even to the brim,
And overflowing all the margin trim.
XXX.
Within the which she lay when the fierce war
Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor
In many a mimic moon and bearded star
O'er woods and lawns -- the serpent heard it flicker
In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar--
And when the windless snow descended thicker
Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came
Melt on the surface of the level flame.
XXXI.
She had a boat, which some say Vulcan wrought
For Venus, as the chariot of her star;
But it was found too feeble to be fraught
With all the ardours in that sphere which are,
And so she sold it, and Apollo bought
And gave it to this daughter: from a car
Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat
Which ever upon mortal stream did float.
XXXII.
And others say, that, when but three hours old,
The first-born Love out of his cradle lept,
And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,
And like an horticultural adept,
Stole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould,
And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept
Watering it all the summer with sweet dew,
And with his wings fanning it as it grew.
XXXIII.
The plant grew strong and green, the snowy flower
Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began
To turn the light and dew by inward power
To its own substance; woven tracery ran
Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er
The solid rind, like a leaf's veind fan--
Of which Love scooped this boat -- and with soft motion
Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.
XXXIV.
This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit
A living spirit within all its frame,
Breathing the soul of swiftness into it.
Couched on the fountain like a panther tame,
One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit--
Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame--
Or on blind Homer's heart a wingd thought,--
In joyous expectation lay the boat.
XXXV.
Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow
Together, tempering the repugnant mass
With liquid love -- all things together grow
Through which the harmony of love can pass;
And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow--
A living Image, which did far surpass
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.
XXXVI.
A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
It seemed to have developed no defect
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both,--
In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;
The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,
The countenance was such as might select
Some artist that his skill should never die,
Imaging forth such perfect purity.
XXXVII.
From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,
Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,
Tipped with the speed of liquid lightenings,
Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere:
She led her creature to the boiling springs
Where the light boat was moored, and said: 'Sit here!'
And pointed to the prow, and took her seat
Beside the rudder, with opposing feet.
XXXVIII.
And down the streams which clove those mountains vast,
Around their inland islets, and amid
The panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast
Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid
In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed;
By many a star-surrounded pyramid
Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,
And caverns yawning round unfathomably.
XXXIX.
The silver noon into that winding dell,
With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,
Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell;
A green and glowing light, like that which drops
From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell,
When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps;
Between the severed mountains lay on high,
Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky.
XL.
And ever as she went, the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
And o'er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
They had aroused from that full heart and brain.
XLI.
And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:
Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
The calm and darkness of the deep content
In which they paused; now o'er the shallow road
Of white and dancing waters, all besprent
With sand and polished pebbles:mortal boat
In such a shallow rapid could not float.
XLII.
And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver
Their snow-like waters into golden air,
Or under chasms unfathomable ever
Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear
A subterranean portal for the river,
It fledthe circling sunbows did upbear
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
Lighting it far upon its lampless way.
XLIII.
And when the wizard lady would ascend
The labyrinths of some many-winding vale,
Which to the inmost mountain upward tend
She called 'Hermaphroditus!'and the pale
And heavy hue which slumber could extend
Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale
A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,
Into the darkness of the stream did pass.
XLIV.
And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,
With stars of fire spotting the stream below;
And from above into the Sun's dominions
Flinging a glory, like the golden glow
In which Spring clothes her emerald-wingd minions,
All interwoven with fine feathery snow
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime,
With which frost paints the pines in winter time.
XLV.
And then it winnowed the Elysian air
Which ever hung about that lady bright,
With its aethereal vansand speeding there,
Like a star up the torrent of the night,
Or a swift eagle in the morning glare
Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.
XLVI.
The water flashed, like sunlight by the prow
Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven;
The still air seemed as if its waves did flow
In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven
The lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro:
Beneath, the billows having vainly striven
Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel
The swift and steady motion of the keel.
XLVII.
Or, when the weary moon was in the wane,
Or in the noon of interlunar night,
The lady-witch in visions could not chain
Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain
Its storm-outspeeding wings, the Hermaphrodite;
She to the Austral waters took her way,
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana,
XLVIII.
Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven,
Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake,
With the Antarctic constellations paven,
Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake
There she would build herself a windless haven
Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make
The bastions of the storm, when through the sky
The spirits of the tempest thundered by:
XLIX.
A haven beneath whose translucent floor
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
And around which the solid vapours hoar,
Based on the level waters, to the sky
Lifted their dreadful crags, and like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed in with rifts and precipices gray,
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.
L.
And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a wounded thing,
And the incessant hail with stony clash
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash
Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke -- this haven
Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven,--
LI.
On which that lady played her many pranks,
Circling the image of a shooting star,
Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks
Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are,
In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
She played upon the water, till the car
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan,
To journey from the misty east began.
LII.
And then she called out of the hollow turrets
Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,
The armies of her ministering spirits
In mighty legions, million after million,
They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere
They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.
LIII.
They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen
Of woven exhalations, underlaid
With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen
A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid
With crimson silk -- cressets from the serene
Hung there, and on the water for her tread
A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,
Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.
LIV.
And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught
Upon those wandering isles of ary dew,
Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not,
She sate, and heard all that had happened new
Between the earth and moon, since they had brought
The last intelligence -- and now she grew
Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night--
And now she wept, and now she laughed outright.
LV.
These were tame pleasures; she would often climb
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack
Up to some beakd cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the dolphin's back
Ride singing through the shoreless air; -- oft-time
Following the serpent lightning's winding track,
She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind.
LVI.
And sometimes to those streams of upper air
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round,
She would ascend, and win the spirits there
To let her join their chorus. Mortals found
That on those days the sky was calm and fair,
And mystic snatches of harmonious sound
Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed,
And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.
LVII.
But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,
To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads
Egypt and Aethiopia, from the steep
Of utmost Axum, until he spreads,
Like a calm flock of silver-fleecd sheep,
His waters on the plain: and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid.
LVIII.
By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes,
Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors,
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
Of those huge forms -- within the brazen doors
Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.
LIX.
And where within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
And never are erased -- but tremble ever
Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever
The works of man pierced that serenest sky
With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight
To wander in the shadow of the night.
LX.
With motion like the spirit of that wind
Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind,
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,
Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined
With many a dark and subterranean street
Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.
LXI.
A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.
Here lay two sister twins in infancy;
There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
Within, two lovers linkd innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
Like ivy from one stem;and there lay calm
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.
LXII.
But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song--
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
And pale imaginings of visioned wrong;
And all the code of Custom's lawless law
Written upon the brows of old and young:
'This,' said the wizard maiden, 'is the strife
Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life.'
LXIII.
And little did the sight disturb her soul.--
We, the weak mariners of that wide lake
Where'er its shores extend or billows roll,
Our course unpiloted and starless make
O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal:--
But she in the calm depths her way could take,
Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide
Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.
LXIV.
And she saw princes couched under the glow
Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
In dormitories ranged, row after row,
She saw the priests asleepall of one sort--
For all were educated to be so.
The peasants in their huts, and in the port
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,
And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.
LXV.
And all the forms in which those spirits lay
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array
Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us
Only their scorn of all concealment: they
Move in the light of their own beauty thus.
But these and all now lay with sleep upon them,
And little thought a Witch was looking on them.
LXVI.
She, all those human figures breathing there,
Beheld as living spirits -- to her eyes
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,
And often through a rude and worn disguise
She saw the inner form most bright and fair--
And then she had a charm of strange device,
Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone,
Could make that spirit mingle with her own.
LXVII.
Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given
For such a charm when Tithon became gray?
Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven
Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina
Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,
To any witch who would have taught you it?
The Heliad doth not know its value yet.
LXVIII.
'Tis said in after times her spirit free
Knew what love was, and felt itself alone--
But holy Dian could not chaster be
Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,
Than now this lady -- like a sexless bee
Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none,
Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.
LXIX.
To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:--
They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,
And lived thenceforward as if some control,
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.
LXX.
For on the night when they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery
Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.
LXXI.
And there the body lay, age after age,
Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arraying
In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind
And fleeting generations of mankind.
LXXII.
And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake
Which the sand coversall his evil gain
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar's lap;the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.
LXXIII.
The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the God Apis really was a bull,
And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull
The old cant down; they licensed all to speak
What'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.
LXXIV.
The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey.Every one
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,
And kissed -- alas, how many kiss the same!
LXXV.
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares; -- in a band
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.
LXXVI.
And timid lovers who had been so coy,
They hardly knew whether they loved or not,
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And when next day the maiden and the boy
Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
Blushed at the thing which each believed was done
Only in fancy -- till the tenth moon shone;
LXXVII.
And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one,and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart -- a wide wound, mind from mind!--
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
LXXVIII.
These were the pranks she played among the cities
Of mortal men, and what she did to Sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
I will declare another time; for it is
A tale more fit for the weird winter nights
Than for these garish summer days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.
Composed at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 14-16, 1820; published in Posthumous Poems, ed. Mrs. Shelley, 1824. The dedication To Mary first appeared in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st ed.
Note by Mrs. Shelley: 'We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood. The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino -- a mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the object, during certain days of the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lsasitude and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the Witch of Atlas.
This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes -- wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested.'
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Witch Of Atlas
,#NFDB
1242:A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS
Translated from the Original Doric
'Choose Reform or Civil War,
When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs,
Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR.'
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Tyrant Swellfoot, King of Thebes.
Iona Taurina, his Queen.
Mammon, Arch-Priest of Famine.
Purganax Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot.
Dakry Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot.
Laoctonos Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot.
The Gadfly.
The Leech.
The Rat.
Moses, the Sow-gelder.
Solomon, the Porkman.
Zephaniah, Pig-butcher.
The Minotaur.
Chorus of the Swinish Multitude.
Guards, Attendants, Priests, etc., etc.
SCENE.--THEBES
ACT I.
Scene I.-- A magnificent Temple, built of thigh-bones and death's-heads, and tiled with scalps. Over the Altar the statue of Famine, veiled; a number of Boars, Sows, and Sucking-Pigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging round the Altar of the Temple.
Enter Swellfoot, in his Royal robes, without perceiving the Pigs.
Swellfoot.
Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine
These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array [He contemplates himself with satisfaction.
Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch
Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze,
And these most sacred nether promontories
Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these
Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid,
(Nor with less toil were their foundations laid)[1],
Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain,
That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing!
Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors,
Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers,
Bishops and Deacons, and the entire army
Of those fat martyrs to the persecution
Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils,
Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres
Of their Eleusis, hail!
The Swine.
Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!
Swellfoot.
Ha! what are ye,
Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies,
Cling round this sacred shrine?
Swine.
Aigh! aigh! aigh!
Swellfoot.
What! ye that are
The very beasts that, offered at her altar
With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards,
Ever propitiate her reluctant will
When taxes are withheld?
Swine.
Ugh! ugh! ugh!
Swellfoot.
What! ye who grub
With filthy snouts my red potatoes up
In Allan's rushy bog? Who eat the oats
Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?
Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest
From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather,
Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?
The Swine.Semichorus I.
The same, alas! the same;
Though only now the name
Of Pig remains to me.
Semichorus II.
If 'twere your kingly will
Us wretched Swine to kill,
What should we yield to thee?
Swellfoot.
Why, skin and bones, and some few hairs for mortar.
Chorus of Swine.
I have heard your Laureate sing,
That pity was a royal thing;
Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs
Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs,
Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,
And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too;
But now our sties are fallen in, we catch
The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;
Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,
And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;
Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none
Has yet been ours since your reign begun.
First Sow.
My Pigs, 'tis in vain to tug.
Second Sow.
I could almost eat my litter.
First Pig.
I suck, but no milk will come from the dug.
Second Pig.
Our skin and our bones would be bitter.
The Boars.
We fight for this rag of greasy rug,
Though a trough of wash would be fitter.
Semichorus.
Happier Swine were they than we,
Drowned in the Gadarean sea
I wish that pity would drive out the devils,
Which in your royal bosom hold their revels,
And sink us in the waves of thy compassion!
Alas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation!
Now if your Majesty would have our bristles
To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons
With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles,
In policyask else your royal Solons
You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw,
And sties well thatched; besides it is the law!
Swellfoot.
This is sedition, and rank blasphemy!
Ho! there, my guards!
Enter a Guard.
Guard.
Your sacred Majesty.
Swellfoot.
Call in the Jews, Solomon the court porkman,
Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah
The hog-butcher.
Guard.
They are in waiting, Sire.
Enter Solomon, Moses, and Zephaniah.
Swellfoot.
Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those Sows [The Pigs run about in consternation.
That load the earth with Pigs; cut close and deep.
Moral restraint I see has no effect,
Nor prostitution, nor our own example,
Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison
This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine
Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy
Cut close and deep, good Moses.
Moses.
Let your Majesty
Keep the Boars quiet, else
Swellfoot.
Zephaniah, cut
That fat Hog's throat, the brute seems overfed;
Seditious hunks! to whine for want of grains.
Zephaniah.
Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy;
We shall find pints of hydatids in's liver,
He has not half an inch of wholesome fat
Upon his carious ribs
Swellfoot.
'Tis all the same,
He'll serve instead of riot money, when
Our murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes' streets;
And January winds, after a day
Of butchering, will make them relish carrion.
Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump
The whole kit of them.
Solomon.
Why, your Majesty,
I could not give
Swellfoot.
Kill them out of the way,
That shall be price enough, and let me hear
Their everlasting grunts and whines no more!
[Exeunt, driving in the Swine.
Enter Mammon, the Arch-Priest; and Purganax, Chief of the Council of Wizards.
Purganax.
The future looks as black as death, a cloud,
Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it
The troops grow mutinousthe revenue fails
There's something rotten in usfor the level
Of the State slopes, its very bases topple,
The boldest turn their backs upon themselves!
Mammon.
Why what's the matter, my dear fellow, now?
Do the troops mutiny?decimate some regiments;
Does money fail?come to my mintcoin paper,
Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed
To show his bilious face, go purge himself,
In emulation of her vestal whiteness.
Purganax.
Oh, would that this were all! The oracle!!
Mammon.
Why it was I who spoke that oracle,
And whether I was dead drunk or inspired,
I cannot well remember; nor, in truth,
The oracle itself!
Purganax.
The words went thus:
'Boeotia, choose reform or civil war!
When through the streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs,
Riding on the Ionian Minotaur.'
Mammon.
Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold
This sad alternative, it must arrive,
Or not, and so it must now that it has;
And whether I was urged by grace divine
Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,
Which must, as all words must, be false or true,
It matters not: for the same Power made all,
Oracle, wine, and me and youor none
'Tis the same thing. If you knew as much
Of oracles as I do
Purganax.
You arch-priests
Believe in nothing; if you were to dream
Of a particular number in the Lottery,
You would not buy the ticket?
Mammon.
Yet our tickets
Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken?
For prophecies, when once they get abroad,
Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends,
Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue,
Do the same actions that the virtuous do,
Contrive their own fulfilment. This Iona
Wellyou know what the chaste Pasiphae did,
Wife to that most religious King of Crete,
And still how popular the tale is here;
And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent
From the free Minotaur. You know they still
Call themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate,
And everything relating to a Bull
Is popular and respectable in Thebes.
Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules;
They think their strength consists in eating beef,
Now there were danger in the precedent
If Queen Iona
Purganax.
I have taken good care
That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth
With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare!
And from a cavern full of ugly shapes
I chose a Leech, a Gadfly, and a Rat.
The Gadfly was the same which Juno sent
To agitate Io[2], and which Ezekiel[3] mentions
That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains
Of utmost Aethiopia, to torment
Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast
Has a loud trumpet like the scarabee,
His crookd tail is barbed with many stings,
Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each
Immedicable; from his convex eyes
He sees fair things in many hideous shapes,
And trumpets all his falsehood to the world.
Like other beetles he is fed on dung
He has eleven feet with which he crawls,
Trailing a blistering slime, and this foul beast
Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits,
From isle to isle, from city unto city,
Urging her flight from the far Chersonese
To fabulous Solyma, and the Aetnean Isle,
Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso's Rock,
And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez,
Aeolia and Elysium, and thy shores,
Parthenope, which now, alas! are free!
And through the fortunate Saturnian land,
Into the darkness of the West.
Mammon.
But if
This Gadfly should drive Iona hither?
Purganax.
Gods! what an if! but there is my gray Rat:
So thin with want, he can crawl in and out
Of any narrow chink and filthy hole,
And he shall creep into her dressing-room,
And
Mammon.
My dear friend, where are your wits? as if
She does not always toast a piece of cheese
And bait the trap? and rats, when lean enough
To crawl through such chinks
Purganax.
But my Leecha leech
Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings,
Capaciously expatiative, which make
His little body like a red balloon,
As full of blood as that of hydrogen,
Sucked from men's hearts; insatiably he sucks
And clings and pullsa horse-leech, whose deep maw
The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill,
And who, till full, will cling for ever.
Mammon.
This
For Queen Iona would suffice, and less;
But 'tis the Swinish multitude I fear,
And in that fear I have
Purganax.
Done what?
Mammon.
Disinherited
My eldest son Chrysaor, because he
Attended public meetings, and would always
Stand prating there of commerce, public faith,
Economy, and unadulterate coin,
And other topics, ultra-radical;
And have entailed my estate, called the Fool's Paradise,
And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills,
Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina,
And married her to the gallows[4].
Purganax.
A good match!
Mammon.
A high connexion, Purganax. The bridegroom
Is of a very ancient family,
Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop,
And has great influence in both Houses;oh!
He makes the fondest husband; nay, too fond,
New-married people should not kiss in public;
But the poor souls love one another so!
And then my little grandchildren, the gibbets,
Promising children as you ever saw,
The young playing at hanging, the elder learning
How to hold radicals. They are well taught too,
For every gibbet says its catechism
And reads a select chapter in the Bible
Before it goes to play.
[A most tremendous humming is heard.
Purganax.
Ha! what do I hear?
Enter the Gadfly.
Mammon.
Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding.
Gadfly.
Hum! hum! hum!
From the lakes of the Alps, and the cold gray scalps
Of the mountains, I come!
Hum! hum! hum!
From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces
Of golden Byzantium;
From the temples divine of old Palestine,
From Athens and Rome,
With a ha! and a hum!
I come! I come!
All inn-doors and windows
Were open to me:
I saw all that sin does,
Which lamps hardly see
That burn in the night by the curtained bed,
The impudent lamps! for they blushed not red,
Dinging and singing,
From slumber I rung her,
Loud as the clank of an ironmonger;
Hum! hum! hum!
Far, far, far!
With the trump of my lips, and the sting at my hips,
I drove herafar!
Far, far, far!
From city to city, abandoned of pity,
A ship without needle or star;
Homeless she passed, like a cloud on the blast,
Seeking peace, finding war;
She is here in her car,
From afar, and afar;
Hum! hum!
I have stung her and wrung her,
The venom is working;
And if you had hung her
With canting and quirking,
She could not be deader than she will be soon;
I have driven her close to you, under the moon,
Night and day, hum! hum! ha!
I have hummed her and drummed her
From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her,
Hum! hum! hum!
Enter the Leech and the Rat.
Leech.
I will suck
Blood or muck!
The disease of the state is a plethory,
Who so fit to reduce it as I?
Rat.
I'll slily seize and
Let blood from her weasand,
Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny,
With my snaky tail, and my sides so scranny.
Purganax.
Aroint ye! thou unprofitable worm! [To the Leech.
And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell! [To the Gadfly.
To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings,
And the ox-headed Io
Swine
(within).
Ugh, ugh, ugh!
Hail! Iona the divine,
We will be no longer Swine,
But Bulls with horns and dewlaps.
Rat.
For,
You know, my lord, the Minotaur
Purganax
(fiercely).
Be silent! get to hell! or I will call
The cat out of the kitchen. Well, Lord Mammon,
This is a pretty business.
[Exit the Rat.
Mammon.
I will go
And spell some scheme to make it ugly then.
[Exit.
Enter Swellfoot.
Swellfoot.
She is returned! Taurina is in Thebes,
When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell!
Oh, Hymen, clothed in yellow jealousy,
And waving o'er the couch of wedded kings
The torch of Discord with its fiery hair;
This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens!
Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea,
The very name of wife had conjugal rights;
Her cursd image ate, drank, slept with me,
And in the arms of Adiposa oft
Her memory has received a husband's
[A loud tumult, and cries of 'Iona for ever!No Swellfoot!'!
Hark!
How the Swine cry Iona Taurina;
I suffer the real presence; Purganax,
Off with her head!
Purganax.
But I must first impanel
A jury of the Pigs.
Swellfoot.
Pack them then.
Purganax.
Or fattening some few in two separate sties,
And giving them clean straw, tying some bits
Of ribbon round their legsgiving their Sows
Some tawdry lace, and bits of lustre glass,
And their young Boars white and red rags, and tails
Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers
Between the ears of the old ones; and when
They are persuaded, that by the inherent virtue
Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs,
Good Lord! they'd rip each other's bellies up,
Not to say, help us in destroying her.
Swellfoot.
This plan might be tried too;where's General
Laoctonos?
Enter Laoctonos and Dakry.
It is my royal pleasure
That you, Lord General, bring the head and body,
If separate it would please me better, hither
Of Queen Iona.
Laoctonos.
That pleasure I well knew,
And made a charge with those battalions bold,
Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes,
Upon the Swine, who in a hollow square
Enclosed her, and received the first attack
Like so many rhinoceroses, and then
Retreating in good order, with bare tusks
And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe,
Bore her in triumph to the public sty.
What is still worse, some Sows upon the ground
Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin,
And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry,
'Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!'
Purganax.
Hark!
The Swine
(without).
Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!
Dakry.
I
Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower,
Which overlooks the sty, and made a long
Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine,
Of delicacy, mercy, judgement, law,
Morals, and precedents, and purity,
Adultery, destitution, and divorce,
Piety, faith, and state necessity,
And how I loved the Queen!and then I wept
With the pathos of my own eloquence,
And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which
Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made
A slough of blood and brains upon the place,
Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round
The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up,
And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air,
With dust and stones.
Enter Mammon.
Mammon.
I wonder that gray wizards
Like you should be so beardless in their schemes;
It had been but a point of policy
To keep Iona and the Swine apart.
Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction
Between two parties who will govern you
But for my art.Behold this BAG! it is
The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge,
On which our spies skulked in ovation through
The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead:
A bane so much the deadlier fills it now
As calumny is worse than death,for here
The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled,
Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech,
In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which
That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant,
Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;
All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud,
Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor,
And over it the Primate of all Hell
Murmured this pious baptism:'Be thou called
The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine:
That thy contents, on whomsoever poured,
Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks
To savage, foul, and fierce deformity.
Let all baptized by thy infernal dew
Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch!
No name left out which orthodoxy loves,
Court Journal or legitimate Review!
Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover
Of other wives and husbands than their own
The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps!
Wither they to a ghastly caricature
Of what was human!let not man or beast
Behold their face with unaverted eyes!
Or hear their names with ears that tingle not
With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!'
This is a perilous liquor;good my Lords. [Swellfoot approaches to touch the GREEN BAG.
Beware! for God's sake, beware!if you should break
The seal, and touch the fatal liquor
Purganax.
There,
Give it to me. I have been used to handle
All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty
Only desires to see the colour of it.
Mammon.
Now, with a little common sense, my Lords,
Only undoing all that has been done
(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it),
Our victory is assured. We must entice
Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs
Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG
Are the true test of guilt or innocence.
And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her
To manifest deformity like guilt.
If innocent, she will become transfigured
Into an angel, such as they say she is;
And they will see her flying through the air,
So bright that she will dim the noonday sun;
Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits.
This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing
Swine will believe. I'll wager you will see them
Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties,
With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail
Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps
Of one another's ears between their teeth,
To catch the coming hail of comfits in.
You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab,
Make them a solemn speech to this effect:
I go to put in readiness the feast
Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine,
Where, for more glory, let the ceremony
Take place of the uglification of the Queen.
Dakry
(to Swellfoot).
I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience,
Humbly remind your Majesty that the care
Of your high office, as Man-milliner
To red Bellona, should not be deferred.
Purganax.
All part, in happier plight to meet again.
[Exeunt.
END OF THE FIRST ACT.
ACT II
Scene I.
The Public Sty. The Boars in full Assembly.
Enter Purganax.
Purganax.
Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars,
Ye, by whose patience under public burthens
The glorious constitution of these sties
Subsists, and shall subsist. The Lean-Pig rates
Grow with the growing populace of Swine,
The taxes, that true source of Piggishness
(How can I find a more appropriate term
To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty,
And all that fit Boeotia as a nation
To teach the other nations how to live?),
Increase with Piggishness itself; and still
Does the revenue, that great spring of all
The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments,
Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes,
Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps,
All the land's produce will be merged in taxes,
And the revenue will amount tonothing!
The failure of a foreign market for
Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,
And such home manufactures, is but partial;
And, that the population of the Pigs,
Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw
And water, is a fact which isyou know
That isit is a state-necessity
Temporary, of course. Those impious Pigs,
Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn
The settled Swellfoot system, or to make
Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions
Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipped
Into a loyal and an orthodox whine.
Things being in this happy state, the Queen
Iona
[A loud cry from the Pigs.
She is innocent! most innocent!
Purganax.
That is the very thing that I was saying,
Gentlemen Swine; the Queen Iona being
Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes,
And the lean Sows and Boars collect about her,
Wishing to make her think that we believe
(I mean those more substantial Pigs, who swill
Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw)
That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig faction
Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been
Your immemorial right, and which I will
Maintain you in to the last drop of
A Boar
(interrupting him).
What
Does any one accuse her of?
Purganax.
Why, no one
Makes any positive accusation;but
There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards
Conceived that it became them to advise
His Majesty to investigate their truth;
Not for his own sake; he could be content
To let his wife play any pranks she pleased,
If, by that sufferance, he could please the Pigs;
But then he fears the morals of the Swine,
The Sows especially, and what effect
It might produce upon the purity and
Religion of the rising generation
Of Sucking-Pigs, if it could be suspected
That Queen Iona
[A pause.
First Boar.
Well, go on; we long
To hear what she can possibly have done.
Purganax.
Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull
Thus much is known:the milk-white Bulls that feed
Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes
Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews
Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel
Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath
Loading the morning winds until they faint
With living fragrance, are so beautiful!
Well, I say nothing;but Europa rode
On such a one from Asia into Crete,
And the enamoured sea grew calm beneath
His gliding beauty. And Pasiphae,
Iona's grandmother,but she is innocent!
And that both you and I, and all assert.
First Boar.
Most innocent!
Purganax.
Behold this BAG; a bag
Second Boar.
Oh! no GREEN BAGS!! Jealousy's eyes are green,
Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts,
And verdigris, and
Purganax.
Honourable Swine,
In Piggish souls can prepossessions reign?
Allow me to remind you, grass is green
All flesh is grass;no bacon but is flesh
Ye are but bacon. This divining BAG
(Which is not green, but only bacon colour)
Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er
A woman guilty ofwe all know what
Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind
She never can commit the like again.
If innocent, she will turn into an angel,
And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits
As she flies up to heaven. Now, my proposal
Is to convert her sacred Majesty
Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do),
By pouring on her head this mystic water.[Showing the Bag.
I know that she is innocent; I wish
Only to prove her so to all the world.
First Boar.
Excellent, just, and noble Purganax.
Second Boar.
How glorious it will be to see her Majesty
Flying above our heads, her petticoats
Streaming likelikelike
Third Boar.
Anything.
Purganax.
Oh no!
But like a standard of an admiral's ship,
Or like the banner of a conquering host,
Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day,
Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain;
Or like a meteor, or a war-steed's mane,
Or waterfall from a dizzy precipice
Scattered upon the wind.
First Boar.
Or a cow's tail.
Second Boar.
Or anything, as the learned Boar observed.
Purganax.
Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution,
That her most sacred Majesty should be
Invited to attend the feast of Famine,
And to receive upon her chaste white body
Dews of Apotheosis from this BAG.
[A great confusion is heard of the Pigs out of Doors, which communicates itself to those within. During the first Strophe, the doors of the Sty are staved in, and a number of exceedingly leanPigs and Sows and Boars rush in.
Semichorus I.
No! Yes!
Semichorus II.
Yes! No!
Semichorus I.
A law!
Semichorus II.
A flaw!
Semichorus I.
Porkers, we shall lose our wash,
Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs!
First Boar.
Order! order! be not rash!
Was there ever such a scene, Pigs!
An old Sow
(rushing in).
I never saw so fine a dash
Since I first began to wean Pigs.
Second Boar
(solemnly).
The Queen will be an angel time enough.
I vote, in form of an amendment, that
Purganax rub a little of that stuff
Upon his face.
Purganax
(his heart is seen to beat through his waistcoat).
Gods! What would ye be at?
Semichorus I.
Purganax has plainly shown a
Cloven foot and jackdaw feather.
Semichorus II.
I vote Swellfoot and Iona
Try the magic test together;
Whenever royal spouses bicker,
Both should try the magic liquor.
An old Boar
(aside).
A miserable state is that of Pigs,
For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs,
The Swine must bite each other's ear therefore.
An old Sow
(aside).
A wretched lot Jove has assigned to Swine,
Squabbling makes Pig-herds hungry, and they dine
On bacon, and whip Sucking-Pigs the more.
Chorus.
Hog-wash has been ta'en away:
If the Bull-Queen is divested,
We shall be in every way
Hunted, stripped, exposed, molested;
Let us do whate'er we may,
That she shall not be arrested.
Queen, we entrench you with walls of brawn,
And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet:
Place your most sacred person here. We pawn
Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it.
Those who wrong you, wrong us;
Those who hate you, hate us;
Those who sting you, sting us;
Those who bait you, bait us;
The oracle is now about to be
Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny;
Which says: 'Thebes, choose reform or civil war,
When through your streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs,
Riding upon the IONIAN MINOTAUR.'
Enter Iona Taurina.
Iona Taurina
(coming forward).
Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady-Pigs,
The tender heart of every Boar acquits
Their Queen, of any act incongruous
With native Piggishness, and she, reposing
With confidence upon the grunting nation,
Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all,
Her innocence, into their Hoggish arms;
Nor has the expectation been deceived
Of finding shelter there. Yet know, great Boars,
(For such whoever lives among you finds you,
And so do I), the innocent are proud!
I have accepted your protection only
In compliment of your kind love and care,
Not for necessity. The innocent
Are safest there where trials and dangers wait;
Innocent Queens o'er white-hot ploughshares tread
Unsinged, and ladies, Erin's laureate sings it[5],
Decked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still,
Walked from Killarney to the Giant's Causeway,
Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry,
White-boys and Orange-boys, and constables,
Tithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured!
Thus I!
Lord Purganax, I do commit myself
Into your custody, and am prepared
To stand the test, whatever it may be!
Purganax.
This magnanimity in your sacred Majesty
Must please the Pigs. You cannot fail of being
A heavenly angel. Smoke your bits of glass,
Ye loyal Swine, or her transfiguration
Will blind your wondering eyes.
An old Boar
(aside).
Take care, my Lord,
They do not smoke you first.
Purganax.
At the approaching feast
Of Famine, let the expiation be.
Swine.
Content! content!
Iona Taurina
(aside).
I, most content of all,
Know that my foes even thus prepare their fall!
[Exeunt omnes.
Scene II.
The interior of the Temple of Famine. The statue of the Goddess, a skeleton clothed in parti-coloured rags, seated upon a heap of skulls and loaves intermingled. A number of exceedingly fat Priests in black garments arrayed on each side, with marrow-bones and cleavers in their hands. [Solomon, the Court Porkman.] A flourish of trumpets.
Enter Mammon as arch-priest, Swellfoot, Dakry, Purganax, Laoctonos, followed by Iona Taurina guarded. On the other side enter the Swine.
Chorus of Priests, accompanied by the Court Porkman on marrow-bones and cleavers.
Goddess bare, and gaunt, and pale,
Empress of the world, all hail!
What though Cretans old called thee
City-crested Cybele?
We call thee Famine!
Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming!
Through thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and lords,
Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words,
The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits,
Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots
Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat,
Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean,
Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that!
And let things be as they have ever been;
At least while we remain thy priests,
And proclaim thy fasts and feasts.
Through thee the sacred Swellfoot dynasty
Is based upon a rock amid that sea
Whose waves are Swineso let it ever be!
[Swellfoot, etc., seat themselves at a table magnificently covered at the upper end of the Temple. Attendants pass over the stage with hog-wash in pails. A number of Pigs, exceedingly lean, follow them licking up the wash.
Mammon.
I fear your sacred Majesty has lost
The appetite which you were used to have.
Allow me now to recommend this dish
A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook,
Such as is served at the great King's second table.
The price and pains which its ingredients cost
Might have maintained some dozen families
A winter or twonot moreso plain a dish
Could scarcely disagree.
Swellfoot.
After the trial,
And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps
I may recover my lost appetite,
I feel the gout flying about my stomach
Give me a glass of Maraschino punch.
Purganax
(filling his glass, and standing up).
The glorious Constitution of the Pigs!
All.
A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three!
Dakry.
No heel-tapsdarken daylights!
Laoctonos.
Claret, somehow,
Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret!
Swellfoot.
Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment,
But 'tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine,
And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes. [To Purganax.
For God's sake stop the grunting of those Pigs!
Purganax.
We dare not, Sire, 'tis Famine's privilege.
Chorus of Swine.
Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!
Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags;
Thou devil which livest on damning;
Saint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN BAGS,
Till in pity and terror thou risest,
Confounding the schemes of the wisest;
When thou liftest thy skeleton form,
When the loaves and the skulls roll about,
We will greet theethe voice of a storm
Would be lost in our terrible shout!
Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!
Hail to thee, Empress of Earth!
When thou risest, dividing possessions;
When thou risest, uprooting oppressions,
In the pride of thy ghastly mirth;
Over palaces, temples, and graves,
We will rush as thy minister-slaves,
Trampling behind in thy train,
Till all be made level again!
Mammon.
I hear a crackling of the giant bones
Of the dread image, and in the black pits
Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames.
These prodigies are oracular, and show
The presence of the unseen Deity.
Mighty events are hastening to their doom!
Swellfoot.
I only hear the lean and mutinous Swine
Grunting about the temple.
Dakry.
In a crisis
Of such exceeding delicacy, I think
We ought to put her Majesty, the Queen,
Upon her trial without delay.
Mammon.
THE BAG
Is here.
Purganax.
I have rehearsed the entire scene
With an ox-bladder and some ditchwater,
On Lady P-; it cannot fail. (Taking up the Bag.)
Your Majesty [To Swellfoot.
In such a filthy business had better
Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you.
A spot or two on me would do no harm,
Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad Genius
Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell,
Upon my browwhich would stain all its seas,
But which those seas could never wash away!
Iona Taurina.
My Lord, I am readynay, I am impatient
To undergo the test.
[A graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes unnoticed through the Temple; the word LIBERTY is seen through the veil, as if it were written in fire upon its forehead. Its words are almost drowned in the furious grunting of the Pigs, and the business of the trial. She kneels on the steps of the Altar, and speaks in tones at first faint and low, but which ever become louder and louder.
Mighty Empress! Death's white wife!
Ghastly mother-in-law of Life!
By the God who made thee such,
By the magic of thy touch,
By the starving and the cramming
Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine!
I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude,
Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood.
The earth did never mean her foison
For those who crown life's cup with poison
Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge
But for those radiant spirits, who are still
The standard-bearers in the van of Change.
Be they th'appointed stewards, to fill
The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age!
Remit, O Queen! thy accustomed rage!
Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low
Freedom calls Famine,her eternal foe,
To brief alliance, hollow truce.Rise now!
[Whilst the Veiled Figure has been chanting this strophe, Mammon, Dakry, Laoctonos, and Swellfoot, have surrounded Iona Taurina, who, with her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes lifted to Heaven, stands, as with saint-like resignation, to wait the issue of the business, in perfect confidence of her innocence.
[Purganax, after unsealing the Green Bag, is gravely about to pour the liquor upon her head, when suddenly the whole expression of her figure and countenance changes; she snatches it from his hand with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over Swellfoot and his whole Court, who are instantly changed into a number of filthy and ugly animals, and rush out of the Temple. The image of Famine then arises with a tremendous sound, the Pigs begin scrambling for the loaves, and are tripped up by the skulls; all those who eat the loaves are turned into Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly behind the altar. The image of Famine sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a Minotaur rises.
Minotaur.
I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest
Of all Europa's taurine progeny
I am the old traditional Man-Bull;
And from my ancestors having been Ionian,
I am called Ion, which, by interpretation,
Is John; in plain Theban, that is to say,
My name's John Bull; I am a famous hunter,
And can leap any gate in all Boeotia,
Even the palings of the royal park,
Or double ditch about the new enclosures;
And if your Majesty will deign to mount me,
At least till you have hunted down your game,
I will not throw you.
Iona Taurina.
(During this speech she has been putting on boots and spurs, and a hunting-cap, buckishly cocked on one side, and tucking up her hair, she leaps nimbly on his back.)
Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho!
Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down,
These stinking foxes, these devouring otters,
These hares, these wolves, these anything but men.
Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs,
Now let your noses be as keen as beagles',
Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries
More dulcet and symphonious than the bells
Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday;
Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music.
Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?)
But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho!
Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert,
Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!
Full Chorus of Iona and the Swine.
Tallyho! tallyho!
Through rain, hail, and snow,
Through brake, gorse, and briar,
Through fen, flood, and mire,
We go! we go!
Tallyho! tallyho!
Through pond, ditch, and slough,
Wind them, and find them,
Like the Devil behind them,
Tallyho! tallyho!
[Exeunt, in full cry; Iona driving on the Swine, with the empty Green Bag.
THE END
'Begun at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 24, 1819; published anonymously by J. Johnston, Cheapside (imprint C. F. Seyfang,) 1820. On a threat of prosecution the publisher surrendered the whole impression, seven copies -- the total number sold -- excepted. Oedipus does not appear in the first edition of the Poetical Works, 1839, but it was included by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of that year.' ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot The Tyrant
,#NFDB
1243:Custer
BOOK FIRST.
I.
ALL valor died not on the plains of Troy.
Awake, my Muse, awake! be thine the joy
To sing of deeds as dauntless and as brave
As e'er lent luster to a warrior's grave.
Sing of that noble soldier, nobler man,
Dear to the heart of each American.
Sound forth his praise from sea to listening seaGreece her Achilles claimed, immortal Custer, we.
II.
Intrepid are earth's heroes now as when
The gods came down to measure strength with men.
Let danger threaten or let duty call,
And self surrenders to the needs of all;
Incurs vast perils, or, to save those dear,
Embraces death without one sigh or tear.
Life's martyrs still the endless drama play
Though no great Homer lives to chant their worth to-day.
III.
And if he chanted, who would list his songs,
So hurried now the world's gold-seeking throngs?
And yet shall silence mantle mighty deeds?
Awake, dear Muse, and sing though no ear heeds!
Extol the triumphs, and bemoan the end
Of that true hero, lover, son and friend
Whose faithful heart in his last choice was shownDeath with the comrades dear, refusing flight alone.
IV.
He who was born for battle and for strife
Like some caged eagle frets in peaceful life;
152
So Custer fretted when detained afar
From scenes of stirring action and of war.
And as the captive eagle in delight,
When freedom offers, plumes himself for flight
And soars away to thunder clouds on high,
With palpitating wings and wild exultant cry,
V.
So lion-hearted Custer sprang to arms,
And gloried in the conflict's loud alarms.
But one dark shadow marred his bounding joy;
And then the soldier vanished, and the boy,
The tender son, clung close, with sobbing breath,
To her from whom each parting was new death;
That mother who like goddesses of old,
Gave to the mighty Mars, three warriors brave and bold,
VI.
Yet who, unlike those martial dames of yore,
Grew pale and shuddered at the sight of gore.
A fragile being, born to grace the hearth,
Untroubled by the conflicts of the earth.
Some gentle dove who reared young eaglets, might,
In watching those bold birdlings take their flight,
Feel what that mother felt who saw her sons
Rush from her loving arms, to face death-dealing guns.
VII.
But ere thy lyre is strung to martial strains
Of wars which sent our hero o'er the plains,
To add the cypress to his laureled brow,
Be brave, my Muse, and darker truths avow.
Let Justice ask a preface to thy songs,
Before the Indian's crimes declare his wrongs;
Before effects, wherein all horrors blend,
Declare the shameful cause, precursor of the end.
VIII.
153
When first this soil the great Columbus trod,
He was less like the image of his God
Than those ingenuous souls, unspoiled by art,
Who lived so near to Mother Nature's heart;
Those simple children of the wood and wave,
As frank as trusting, and as true as brave;
Savage they were, when on some hostile raid
(For where is he so high, whom war does not degrade?) .
IX.
But dark deceit and falsehood's shameless shame
They had not learned, until the white man came.
He taught them, too, the lurking devil's joy
In liquid lies, that lure but to destroy.
With wily words, as false as they were sweet,
He spread his snares for unsuspecting feet;
Paid truth with guile, and trampled in the dust
Their gentle childlike faith and unaffected trust.
X.
And for the sport of idle kings and knaves
Of Nature's greater noblemen, made slaves.
Alas, the hour, when the wronged Indian knows
His seeming benefactors are but foes.
His kinsmen kidnapped and his lands possessed,
The demon woke in that untutored breast.
Four hundred years have rolled upon their wayThe ruthless demon rules the red man to this day.
XI.
If, in the morning of success, that grand
Invincible discoverer of our land
Had made no lodge or wigwam desolate
To carry trophies to the proud and great;
If on our history's page there were no blot
Left by the cruel rapine of Cabot,
Of Verrazin, and Hudson, dare we claim
The Indian of the plains, to-day had been same?
154
XII.
For in this brief existence, not alone
Do our lives gather what our hands have sown,
But we reap, too, what others long ago
Sowed, careless of the harvests that might grow.
Thus hour by hour the humblest human souls
Inscribe in cipher on unending scrolls,
The history of nations yet to be;
Incite fierce bloody wars, to rage from sea to sea,
XIII.
Or pave the way to peace. There is no past,
So deathless are events-results so vast.
And he who strives to make one act or hour
Stand separate and alone, needs first the power
To look upon the breaking wave and say,
'These drops were bosomed by a cloud to-day,
And those from far mid-ocean's crest were sent.'
So future, present, past, in one wide sea are blent.
BOOK SECOND.
I.
Oh, for the power to call to aid, of mine
Own humble Muse, the famed and sacred nine.
Then might she fitly sing, and only then,
Of those intrepid and unflinching men
Who knew no homes save ever moving tents,
And who 'twixt fierce unfriendly elements
And wild barbarians warred. Yet unfraid,
Since love impels thy strains, sing, sing, my modest maid.
II.
Relate how Custer in midwinter sought
Far Washita's cold shores; tell why he fought
With savage nomads fortressed in deep snows.
Woman, thou source of half the sad world's woes
155
And all its joys, what sanguinary strife
Has vexed the earth and made contention rife
Because of thee! For, hidden in man's heart,
Ay, in his very soul, of his true self a part,
III.
The natural impulse and the wish belongs
To win thy favor and redress thy wrongs.
Alas! for woman, and for man, alas!
If that dread hour should ever come to pass,
When, through her new-born passion for control,
She drives that beauteous impulse from his soul.
What were her vaunted independence worth
If to obtain she sells her sweetest rights of birth?
IV.
God formed fair woman for her true estateMan's tender comrade, and his equal mate,
Not his competitor in toil and trade.
While coarser man, with greater strength was made
To fight her battles and her rights protect.
Ay! to protect the rights of earth's elect
(The virgin maiden and the spotless wife)
From immemorial time has man laid down his life.
V.
And now brave Custer's valiant army pressed
Across the dangerous desert of the West,
To rescue fair white captives from the hands
Of brutal Cheyenne and Comanche bands,
On Washita's bleak banks. Nine hundred strong
It moved its slow determined way along,
Past frontier homes left dark and desolate
By the wild Indians' fierce and unrelenting hate;
VI.
Past forts where ranchmen, strong of heart and bold,
Wept now like orphaned children as they told,
156
With quivering muscles and with anguished breath,
Of captured wives, whose fate was worse than death;
Past naked bodies whose disfiguring wounds
Spoke of the hellish hate of human hounds;
Past bleaching skeleton and rifled grave,
On pressed th' avenging host, to rescue and to save.
VII.
Uncertain Nature, like a fickle friend,
(Worse than the foe on whom we may depend)
Turned on these dauntless souls a brow of wrath
And hurled her icy jav'lins in their path.
With treacherous quicksands, and with storms that blight,
Entrapped their footsteps and confused their sight.
'Yet on, ' urged Custer, 'on at any cost,
No hour is there to waste, no moment to be lost.'
VIII.
Determined, silent, on they rode, and on,
Like fabled Centaurs, men and steeds seemed one.
No bugle echoed and no voice spoke near,
Lest on some lurking Indian's list'ning ear
The sound might fall. Through swift descending snow
The stealthy guides crept, tracing out the foe;
No fire was lighted, and no halt was made
From haggard gray-lipped dawn till night lent friendly shade.
IX.
Then, by the shelt'ring river's bank at last,
The weary warriors paused for their repast.
A couch of ice and falling shows for spread
Made many a suffering soldier's chilling bed.
They slept to dream of glory and delight,
While the pale fingers of the pitying night
Wove ghostly winding sheets for that doomed score
Who, ere another eve, should sleep to wake no more.
X.
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But those who slept not, saw with startled eyes
Far off, athwart dim unprotecting skies,
Ascending slowly with majestic grace,
A lustrous rocket, rising out of space.
'Behold the signal of the foe, ' cried one,
The field is lost before the strife's begun.
Yet no! for see! yon rays spread near and far;
It is the day's first smile, the radiant morning star.
XI.
The long hours counting till the daylight broke,
In whispered words the restless warriors spoke.
They talked of battles, but they thought of home
(For hearts are faithful though the feet may roam) .
Brave Hamilton, all eager for the strife,
Mused o'er that two-fold mystery-death and life;
'And when I die, ' quoth he, ' mine be the part
To fall upon the field, a bullet in my heart.'
XII.
At break of dawn the scouts crept in to say
The foe was camped a rifle shot away.
The baying of a dog, an infant's cry
Pierced through the air; sleep fled from every eye.
To horse! to arms! the dead demand the dead!
Let the grand charge upon the lodge be led!
Let the Mosaic law, life for a life
Pay the long standing debt of blood. War to the knife!
XIII.
So spake each heart in that unholy rage
Which fires the brain, when war the thoughts engage.
War, hideous war, appealing to the worst
In complex man, and waking that wild thirst
For human blood which blood alone can slake.
Yet for their country's safety, and the sake
Of tortured captives moaning in alarm
The Indian must be made to fear the law's strong arm.
158
XIV.
A noble vengeance burned in Custer's breast,
But, as he led his army to the crest,
Above the wigwams, ready for the charge
He felt the heart within him, swelling large
With human pity, as an infant's wail
Shrilled once again above the wintry gale.
Then hosts of murdered children seemed to rise;
And shame his halting thought with sad accusing eyes,
XV.
And urge him on to action. Stern of brow
The just avenger, and the General now,
He gives the silent signal to the band
Which, all impatient, waits for his command.
Cold lips to colder metal press; the air
Echoes those merry strains which mean despair
For sleeping chieftain and for toiling squaw,
But joy to those stern hearts which glory in the law
XVI.
Of murder paying murder's awful debt.
And now four squadrons in one charge are met.
From east and west, from north and south they come,
At call of bugle and at roll of drum.
Their rifles rain hot hail upon the foe,
Who flee from danger in death's jaws to go.
The Indians fight like maddened bulls at bay,
And dying shriek and groan, wound the young ear of day.
XVII.
A pallid captive and a white-browed boy
Add to the tumult piercing cries of joy,
As forth they fly, with high hope animate.
159
A hideous squaw pursues them with her hate;
Her knife descends with sickening force and sound;
Their bloody entrails stain the snow-clad ground.
She shouts with glee, then yells with rage and falls
Dead by her victims' side, pierced by avenging balls.
XVIII.
Now war runs riot, carnage reigns supreme.
All thoughts of mercy fade from Custer's scheme.
Inhuman methods for inhuman foes,
Who feed on horrors and exult in woes.
To conquer and subdue alone remains
In dealing with the red man on the plains.
The breast that knows no conscience yields to fear,
Strike! let the Indian meet his master now and here,
XIX.
With thoughts like these was Custer's mind engaged.
The gentlest are the sternest when enraged.
All felt the swift contagion of his ire,
For he was one who could arouse and fire
The coldest heart, so ardent was his own.
His fearless eye, his calm intrepid tone,
Bespoke the leader, strong with conscious power,
Whom following friends will bless, while foes will curse and cower.
XX.
Again they charge! and now among the killed
Lies Hamilton, his wish so soon fulfilled,
Brave Elliott pursues across the field
The flying foe, his own young life to yield.
But like the leaves in some autumnal gale
The red men fall in Washita's wild vale.
Each painted face and black befeathered head
Still more repulsive seems with death's grim pallor wed.
160
XXI.
New forces gather on surrounding knolls,
And fierce and fiercer war's red river rolls.
With bright-hued pennants flying from each lance
The gayly costumed Kiowas advance.
And bold Comanches (Bedouins of the land)
Infuse fresh spirit in the Cheyenne band.
While from the ambush of some dark ravine
Flash arrows aimed by hands, unerring and unseen.
XXIII.
The hours advance; the storm clouds roll away;
Still furious and more furious grows the fray.
The yellow sun makes ghastlier still the sight
Of painted corpses, staring in its light.
No longer slaves, but comrades of their griefs,
The squaws augment the forces of their chiefs.
They chant weird dirges in a minor key,
While from the narrow door of wigwam and tepee
XXIII.
Cold glittering eyes above cold glittering steel
Their deadly purpose and their hate reveal.
The click of pistols and the crack of guns
Proclaim war's daughters dangerous as her sons.
She who would wield the soldier's sword and lance
Must be prepared to take the soldier's chance.
She who would shoot must serve as target, too;
The battle-frenzied men, infuriate now pursue.
XXIV.
And blood of warrior, woman and papoose,
Flow free as waters when some dam breaks loose;
Consuming fire, the wanton friend of war
(Whom allies worship and whom foes abhor)
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Now trails her crimson garments through the street,
And ruin marks the passing of her feet.
Full three-score lodges smoke upon the plain,
And all the vale is strewn with bodies of the slain.
XXV.
And those who are not numbered with the dead
Before all-conquering Custer now are led.
To soothe their woes, and calm their fears he seeks;
An Osage guide interprets while he speaks.
The vanquished captives, humbled, cowed and spent
Read in the victor's eye his kind intent.
The modern victor is as kind as brave;
His captive is his guest, not his insulted slave.
XXVI.
Mahwissa, sister of the slaughtered chief
Of all the Cheyennes, listens; and her grief
Yields now to hope; and o'er her withered face
There flits the stealthy cunning of her race.
Then forth she steps, and thus begins to speak:
'To aid the fallen and support the weak
Is man's true province; and to ease the pain
Of those o'er whom it is his purpose now to reign.
XXVII.
'Let the strong chief unite with theirs his life,
And take this black-eyed maiden for a wife.'
Then, moving with an air of proud command,
She leads a dusky damsel by the hand,
And places her at wondering Custer's side,
Invoking choicest blessings on the bride
And all unwilling groom, who thus replies.
'Fair is the Indian maid, with bright bewildering eyes,
162
XXVIII.
'But fairer still is one who, year on year,
Has borne man's burdens, conquered woman's fear;
And at my side rode mile on weary mile,
And faced all deaths, all dangers, with a smile,
Wise as Minerva, as Diana brave,
Is she whom generous gods in kindness gave
To share the hardships of my wandering life,
Companion, comrade, friend, my loved and loyal wife.
XXIX.
'The white chief weds but one. Take back thy maid.'
He ceased, and o'er Mahwissa's face a shade
Of mingled scorn and pity and surprise
Sweeps as she slow retreats, and thus replies:
'Rich is the pale-faced chief in battle fame,
But poor is he who but one wife may claim.
Wives are the red-skinned heroes' rightful spoil;
In war they prove his strength, in times of peace they toil.'
XXX.
But hark! The bugle echoes o'er the plains
And sounds again those merry Celtic strains
Which oft have called light feet to lilting dance,
But now they mean the order to advance.
Along the river's bank, beyond the hill
Two thousand foemen lodge, unconquered still.
Ere falls night's curtain on this bloody play,
The army must proceed, with feint of further fray.
XXXI.
The weary warriors mount their foam-flecked steeds,
With flags unfurled the dauntless host proceeds.
What though the foe outnumbers two to one?
Boldness achieves what strength oft leaves undone;
A daring mein will cause brute force to cower,
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And courage is the secret source of power.
As Custer's column wheels upon their sight
The frightened red men yield the untried field by flight.
XXXII.
Yet when these conquering heroes sink to rest,
Dissatisfaction gnaws the leader's breast,
For far away across vast seas of snows
Held prisoners still by hostile Arapahoes
And Cheyennes unsubdued, two captives wait.
On God and Custer hangs their future fate.
May the Great Spirit nerve the mortal's arm
To rescue suffering souls from worse than death's alarm.
XXXIII.
But ere they seek to rescue the oppressed,
The valiant dead, in state, are laid to rest.
Mourned Hamilton, the faithful and the brave,
Nine hundred comrades follow to the grave;
And close behind the banner-hidden corse
All draped in black, walks mournfully his horse;
While tears of sound drip through the sunlit day.
A soldier may not weep, but drums and bugles may.
XXXIV.
Now, Muse, recount, how after long delays
And dangerous marches through untrodden ways,
Where cold and hunger on each hour attend,
At last the army gains the journey's end.
An Indian village bursts upon the eye;
Two hundred lodges, sleep-encompassed lie,
There captives moan their anguished prayers through tears,
While in the silent dawn the armied answer nears.
XXXV.
164
To snatch two fragile victims from the foe
Nine hundred men have traversed leagues of snow.
Each woe they suffered in a hostile land
The flame of vengeance in their bosoms fanned.
They thirst for slaughter, and the signal wait
To wrest the captives from their horrid fate.
Each warrior's hand upon his rifle falls,
Each savage soldier's heart for awful bloodshed calls.
XXXVI.
And one, in years a youth, in woe a man,
Sad Brewster, scarred by sorrow's blighting ban,
Looks, panting, where his captive sister sleeps,
And o'er his face the shade of murder creeps.
His nostrils quiver like a hungry beast
Who scents anear the bloody carnal feast.
He longs to leap down in that slumbering vale
And leave no foe alive to tell the awful tale.
XXXVII.
Not so, calm Custer. Sick of gory strife,
He hopes for rescue with no loss of life;
And plans that bloodless battle of the plains
Where reasoning mind outwits mere savage brains.
The sullen soldiers follow where he leads;
No gun is emptied, and no foeman bleeds.
Fierce for the fight and eager for the fray
They look upon their Chief in undisguised dismay.
XXXVIII.
He hears the murmur of their discontent,
But sneers can never change a strong mind's bent.
He knows his purpose and he does not swerve,
And with a quiet mien and steady nerve
He meets dark looks where'er his steps may go,
And silence that is bruising as a blow,
165
Where late were smiles and words of ardent praise.
So pass the lagging weeks of wearying delays.
XXXIX.
Inaction is not always what it seems,
And Custer's mind with plan and project teems.
Fixed in his peaceful purpose he abides
With none takes counsel and in none confides;
But slowly weaves about the foe a net
Which leaves them wholly at his mercy, yet
He strikes no fateful blow; he takes no life,
And holds in check his men, who pant for bloody strife.
XL.
Intrepid warrior and skilled diplomate,
In his strong hands he holds the red man's fate.
The craftiest plot he checks with counterplot,
Till tribe by tribe the tricky foe is brought
To fear his vengeance and to know his power.
As man's fixed gaze will make a wild beast cower,
So these crude souls feel that unflinching will
Which draws them by its force, yet does not deign to kill.
XLI.
And one by one the hostile Indians send
Their chiefs to seek a peaceful treaty's end.
Great councils follow; skill with cunning copes
And conquers it; and Custer sees his hopes
So long delayed, like stars storm hidden, rise
To radiate with splendor all his skies.
The stubborn Cheyennes, cowed at last by fear,
Leading the captive pair, o'er spring-touched hills appear.
XLII.
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With breath suspended, now the whole command
Waits the approach of that equestrian band.
Nearer it comes, still nearer, then a cry,
Half sob, half shriek, goes piercing God's blue sky,
And Brewster, like a nimble-footed doe,
Or like an arrow hurrying from a bow,
Shoots swiftly through the intervening space
And that lost sister clasps, in sorrowing love's embrace.
XLIII.
And men who leaned o'er Hamilton's rude bier
And saw his dead dear face without a tear,
Strong souls who early learned the manly art
Of keeping from the eye what's in the heart,
Soldiers who look unmoved on death's pale brow,
Avert their eyes, to hide their moisture now.
The briny flood forced back from shores of woe,
Needs but to touch the strands of joy to overflow.
XLIV.
About the captives welcoming warriors crowd,
All eyes are wet, and Brewster sobs aloud.
Alas, the ravage wrought by toil and woe
On faces that were fair twelve moons ago.
Bronzed by exposure to the heat and cold,
Still young in years, yet prematurely old,
By insults humbled and by labor worn,
They stand in youth's bright hour, of all youth's graces shorn.
XLV.
A scanty garment rudely made of sacks
Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs;
About their necks are twisted tangled strings
Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings
Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow.
Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe
The cunning Indians decked the captive pair
167
Who in one year have known a lifetime of despair.
XLVI.
But love can resurrect from sorrow's tomb
The vanished beauty and the faded bloom,
As sunlight lifts the bruised flower from the sod,
Can lift crushed hearts to hope, for love is God.
Already now in freedom's glad release
The hunted look of fear gives place to peace,
And in their eyes at thought of home appears
That rainbow light of joy which brightest shines through tears.
XLVII.
About the leader thick the warriors crowd;
Late loud in censure, now in praises loud,
They laud the tactics, and the skill extol
Which gained a bloodless yet a glorious goal.
Alone and lonely in the path of right
Full many a brave soul walks. When gods requite
And crown his actions as their worth demands,
Among admiring throngs the hero always stands.
A row of six asterisks is on the page at this point
XLVIII.
Back to the East the valorous squadrons sweep;
The earth, arousing from her long, cold sleep,
Throws from her breast the coverlet of snow,
Revealing Spring's soft charms which lie below.
Suppressed emotions in each heart arise,
The wooer wakens and the warrior dies.
The bird of prey is vanquished by the dove,
And thoughts of bloody strife give place to thoughts of love.
XLIX.
168
The mighty plains, devoid of whispering trees,
Guard well the secrets of departed seas.
Where once great tides swept by with ebb and flow
The scorching sun looks down in tearless woe.
And fierce tornadoes in ungoverned pain
Mourn still the loss of that mysterious main.
Across this ocean bed the soldiers flyHome is the gleaming goal that lures each eager eye.
L.
Like some elixir which the gods prepare,
They drink the viewless tonic of the air,
Sweet with the breath of startled antelopes
Which speed before them over swelling slopes.
Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor,
The column curves and makes a slight detour,
As Custer leads a thousand men away
To save a ground bird's nest which in the footpath lay.
LI.
Mile following mile, against the leaning skies
Far off they see a dull dark cloud arise.
The hunter's instinct in each heart is stirred,
Beholding there in one stupendous herd
A hundred thousand buffaloes. Oh great
Unwieldy proof of Nature's cruder state,
Rough remnant of a prehistoric day,
Thou, with the red man, too, must shortly pass away.
LII.
Upon those spreading plains is there not room
For man and bison, that he seals its doom?
What pleasure lies and what seductive charm
In slaying with no purpose but to harm?
Alas, that man, unable to create,
Should thirst forever to exterminate,
And in destruction find his fiercest joy.
169
The gods alone create, gods only should destroy.
LIII.
The flying hosts a straggling bull pursue;
Unerring aim, the skillful Custer drew.
The wounded beast turns madly in despair
And man and horse are lifted high in air.
The conscious steed needs not the guiding rein;
Back with a bound and one quick cry of pain
He springs, and halts, well knowing where must fall
In that protected frame, the sure death dealing ball.
LIV.
With minds intent upon the morrow's feast,
The men surround the carcass of the beast.
Rolled on his back, he lies with lolling tongue,
Soon to the saddle savory steaks are hung.
And from his mighty head, great tufts of hair
Are cut as trophies for some lady fair.
To vultures then they leave the torn remains
Of what an hour ago was monarch of the plains.
LV.
Far off, two bulls in jealous war engage,
Their blood-shot eye balls roll in furious rage;
With maddened hoofs they mutilate the ground
And loud their angry bellowings resound;
With shaggy heads bent low they plunge and roar,
Till both broad bellies drip with purple gore.
Meanwhile, the heifer, whom the twain desire,
Stands browsing near the pair, indifferent to their ire.
LVI.
At last she lifts her lazy head and heeds
170
The clattering hoofs of swift advancing steeds.
Off to the herd with cumb'rous gait she runs
And leaves the bulls to face the threatening guns.
No more for them the free life of the plains,
Its mating pleasures and its warring pains.
Their quivering flesh shall feed unnumbered foes,
Their tufted tails adorn the soldiers' saddle bows.
LVII.
Now into camp the conquering hosts advance;
On burnished arms the brilliant sunbeams glance.
Brave Custer leads, blonde as the gods of old;
Back from his brow blow clustering locks of gold,
And, like a jewel in a brook, there lies,
Far in the depths of his blue guarded eyes,
The thought of one whose smiling lips upcurled,
Mean more of joy to him than plaudits of the world.
LVIII.
The troops in columns of platoons appear
Close to the leader following. Ah, here
The poetry of war is fully seen,
Its prose forgotten; as against the green
Of Mother Nature, uniformed in blue,
The soldiers pass for Sheridan's review.
The motion-music of the moving throng,
Is like a silent tune, set to a wordless song.
LIX.
The guides and trailers, weird in war's array,
Precede the troops along the grassy way.
They chant wild songs, and, with loud noise and stress,
In savage manner savage joy express.
The Indian captives, blanketed in red,
On ponies mounted, by the scouts are led.
Like sumach bushes, etched on evening skies,
171
Against the blue-clad troops, this patch of color lies.
LX.
High o'er the scene vast music billows bound,
And all the air is liquid with the sound
Of those invisible compelling waves.
Perchance they reach the low and lonely graves
Where sleep brave Elliott and Hamilton,
And whisper there the tale of victory won;
Or do the souls of soldiers tried and true
Come at the bugle call, and march in grand review?
LXI.
The pleased Commander watches in surprise
This splendid pageant surge before his eyes.
Not in those mighty battle days of old
Did scenes like this upon his sight unfold.
But now it passes. Drums and bugles cease
To dash war billows on the shores of Peace.
The victors smile on fair broad bosomed Sleep
While in her soothing arms, the vanquished cease to weep.
BOOK THIRD.
There is an interval of eight years between Books Second and Third.
I.
As in the long dead days marauding hosts
Of Indians came from far Siberian coasts,
And drove the peaceful Aztecs from their grounds,
Despoiled their homes (but left their tell-tale mounds) ,
So has the white man with the Indians done.
Now with their backs against the setting sun
The remnants of a dying nation stand
And view the lost domain, once their beloved land.
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II.
Upon the vast Atlantic's leagues of shore
The happy red man's tent is seen no more;
And from the deep blue lakes which mirror heaven
His bounding bark canoe was long since driven.
The mighty woods, those temples where his God
Spoke to his soul, are leveled to the sod;
And in their place tall church spires point above,
While priests proclaim the law of Christ, the King of Love.
III.
The avaricious and encroaching rail
Seized the wide fields which knew the Indians' trail.
Back to the reservations in the West
The native owners of the land were pressed,
And selfish cities, harbingers of want,
Shut from their vision each accustomed haunt.
Yet hungry Progress, never satisfied,
Gazed on the western plains, and gazing, longed and sighed.
IV.
As some strange bullock in a pasture field
Compels the herds to fear him, and to yield
The juicy grass plots and the cooling shade
Until, despite their greater strength, afraid,
They huddle in some corner spot and cower
Before the monarch's all controlling power,
So has the white man driven from its place
By his aggressive greed, Columbia's native race.
V.
Yet when the bull pursues the herds at bay,
Incensed they turn, and dare dispute his sway.
And so the Indians turned, when men forgot
Their sacred word, and trespassed on the spot.
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The lonely little spot of all their lands,
The reservation of the peaceful bands.
But lust for gold all conscience kills in man,
'Gold in the Black Hills, gold! ' the cry arose and ran
VI.
From lip to lip, as flames from tree to tree
Leap till the forest is one fiery sea,
And through the country surged that hot unrest
Which thirst for riches wakens in the breast.
In mighty throngs the fortune hunters came,
Despoiled the red man's lands and slew his game,
Broke solemn treaties and defied the law.
And all these ruthless acts the Nation knew and saw.
VII.
Man is the only animal that kills
Just for the wanton love of slaughter; spills
The blood of lesser things to see it flow;
Lures like a friend, to murder like a foe
The trusting bird and beast; and, coward like,
Deals covert blows he dare not boldly strike.
The brutes have finer souls, and only slay
When torn by hunger's pangs, or when to fear a prey.
VIII.
The pale-faced hunter, insolent and bold,
Pursued the bison while he sought for gold.
And on the hungry red man's own domains
He left the rotting and unused remains
To foul with sickening stench each passing wind
And rouse the demon in the savage mind,
Save in the heart where virtues dominate
Injustice always breeds its natural offspring- hate.
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IX.
The chieftain of the Sioux, great Sitting Bull,
Mused o'er their wrongs, and felt his heart swell full
Of bitter vengeance. Torn with hate's unrest
He called a council and his braves addressed.
'From fair Wisconsin's shimmering lakes of blue
Long years ago the white man drove the Sioux.
Made bold by conquest, and inflamed by greed,
He still pursues our tribes, and still our ranks recede.
X.
'Fair are the White Chief's promises and words,
But dark his deeds who robs us of our herds.
He talks of treaties, asks the right to buy,
Then takes by force, not waiting our reply.
He grants us lands for pastures and abodes
To devastate them by his iron roads.
But now from happy Spirit Lands, a friend
Draws near the hunted Sioux, to strengthen and defend.
XI.
'While walking in the fields I saw a star;
Unconsciously I followed it afarIt led me on to valleys filled with light,
Where danced our noble chieftains slain in fight.
Black Kettle, first of all that host I knew,
He whom the strong armed Custer foully slew.
And then a spirit took me by the hand,
The Great Messiah King who comes to free the land.
XII.
'Suns were his eyes, a speaking tear his voice,
.Whose rainbow sounds made listening hearts rejoice
And thus he spake: 'The red man's hour draws near
When all his lost domains shall reappear.
The elk, the deer, the bounding antelope,
175
Shall here return to grace each grassy slope.'
He waved his hand above the fields, and lo!
Down through the valleys came a herd of buffalo.
XIII.
'The wondrous vision vanished, but I knew
That Sitting Bull must make the promise true.
Great Spirits plan what mortal man achieves,
The hand works magic when the heart believes.
Arouse, ye braves! let not the foe advance.
Arm for the battle and begin the danceThe sacred dance in honor of our slain,
Who will return to earth, ere many moons shall wane.'
XIV.
Thus Sitting Bull, the chief of wily knaves,
Worked on the superstitions of his braves.
Mixed truth with lies; and stirred to mad unrest
The warlike instinct in each savage breast.
A curious product of unhappy times,
The natural offspring of unnumbered crimes,
He used low cunning and dramatic arts
To startle and surprise those crude untutored hearts.
XV.
Out from the lodges pour a motley throng,
Slow measures chanting of a dirge-like song.
In one great circle dizzily they swing,
A squaw and chief alternate in the ring.
Coarse raven locks stream over robes of white,
Their deep set orbs emit a lurid light,
And as through pine trees moan the winds refrains,
So swells and dies away, the ghostly graveyard strains.
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XVI.
Like worded wine is music to the ear,
And long indulged makes mad the hearts that hear.
The dancers, drunken with the monotone
Of oft repeated notes, now shriek and groan
And pierce their ruddy flesh with sharpened spears;
Still more excited when the blood appears,
With warlike yells, high in the air they bound,
Then in a deathlike trance fall prostrate on the ground.
XVII.
They wake to tell weird stories of the dead,
While fresh performers to the ring are led.
The sacred nature of the dance is lost,
War is their cry, red war, at any cost.
Insane for blood they wait for no command,
But plunge marauding through the frightened land.
Their demon hearts on devils' pleasures bent,
For each new foe surprised, new torturing deaths invent.
XVIII.
Staked to the earth one helpless creature lies,
Flames at his feet and splinters in his eyes.
Another groans with coals upon his breast,
While 'round the pyre the Indians dance and jest.
A crying child is brained upon a tree,
The swooning mother saved from death, to be
The slave and plaything of a filthy knave,
Whose sins would startle hell, whose clay defile a grave.
XIX.
Their cause was right, their methods all were wrong.
Pity and censure both to them belong.
Their woes were many, but their crimes were more.
The soulless Satan holds not in his store
Such awful tortures as the Indians' wrath
177
Keeps for the hapless victim in his path.
And if the last lone remnants of that race
Were by the white man swept from off the earth's fair face,
XX.
Were every red man slaughtered in a day,
Still would that sacrifice but poorly pay
For one insulted woman captive's woes.
Again great Custer in his strength arose,
More daring, more intrepid than of old.
The passing years had touched and turned to gold
The ever widening aureole of fame
That shone upon his brow, and glorified his name.
XXI.
Wise men make laws, then turn their eyes away,
While fools and knaves ignore them day by day;
And unmolested, fools and knaves at length
Induce long wars which sap a country's strength.
The sloth of leaders, ruling but in name,
Has dragged full many a nation down to shame.
A word unspoken by the rightful lips
Has dyed the land with blood, and blocked the sea with ships.
XXII.
The word withheld, when Indians asked for aid,
Came when the red man started on his raid.
What Justice with a gesture might have done
Was left for noisy war with bellowing gun.
And who save Custer and his gallant men
Could calm the tempest into peace again?
What other hero in the land could hope
With Sitting Bull, the fierce and lawless one to cope?
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XXIII.
What other warrior skilled enough to dare
Surprise that human tiger in his lair?
Sure of his strength, unconscious of his fame
Out from the quiet of the camp he came;
And stately as Diana at his side
Elizabeth, his wife and alway bride,
And Margaret, his sister, rode apace;
Love's clinging arms he left to meet death's cold embrace.
XXIV.
As the bright column wound along its course,
The smiling leader turned upon his horse
To gaze with pride on that superb command.
Twelve hundred men, the picked of all the land,
Innured to hardship and made strong by strife
Their lithe limbed bodies breathed of out-door life;
While on their faces, resolute and brave,
Hope stamped its shining seal, although their thoughts were grave.
XXV.
The sad eyed women halted in the dawn,
And waved farewell to dear ones riding on.
The modest mist picked up her robes and ran
Before the Sun god's swift pursuing van.
And suddenly there burst on startled eyes,
The sight of soldiers, marching in the skies;
That phantom host, a phantom Custer led;
Mirage of dire portent, forecasting days ahead.
XXVI.
The soldiers' children, flaunting mimic flags,
Played by the roadside, striding sticks for nags.
Their mothers wept, indifferent to the crowd
Who saw their tears and heard them sob aloud.
Old Indian men and squaws crooned forth a rhyme
179
Sung by their tribes from immemorial time;
And over all the drums' incessant beat
Mixed with the scout's weird rune, and tramp of myriad feet.
XXVII.
So flawless was the union of each part
The mighty column (moved as by one heart)
Pulsed through the air, like some sad song well sung,
Which gives delight, although the soul is wrung.
Farther and fainter to the sight and sound
The beautiful embodied poem wound;
Till like a ribbon, stretched across the land
Seemed the long narrow line of that receding band.
XXVIII.
The lot of those who in the silence wait
Is harder than the fighting soldiers' fate.
Back to the lonely post two women passed,
With unaccustomed sorrow overcast.
Two sad for sighs, too desolate for tears,
The dark forebodings of long widowed years
In preparation for the awful blow
Hung on the door of hope the sable badge of woe.
XXIX.
Unhappy Muse! for thee no song remains,
Save the sad miséréré of the plains.
Yet though defeat, not triumph, ends the tale,
Great victors sometimes are the souls that fail.
All glory lies not in the goals we reach,
But in the lessons which our actions teach.
And he who, conquered, to the end believes
In God and in himself, though vanquished, still achieves.
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XXX.
Ah, grand as rash was that last fatal raid
The little group of daring heroes made.
Two hundred and two score intrepid men
Rode out to war; not one came back again.
Like fiends incarnate from the depths of hell
Five thousand foemen rose with deafening yell,
And swept that vale as with a simoon's breath,
But like the gods of old, each martyr met his death.
XXXI.
Like gods they battled and like gods they died.
Hour following hour that little band defied
The hordes of red men swarming o'er the plain,
Till scarce a score stood upright 'mid the slain.
Then in the lull of battle, creeping near,
A scout breathed low in Custer's listening ear:
'Death lies before, dear life remains behind
Mount thy sure-footed steed, and hasten with the wind.'
XXXII.
A second's silence. Custer dropped his head,
His lips slow moving as when prayers are saidTwo words he breathed-'God and Elizabeth, '
Then shook his long locks in the face of death
And with a final gesture turned away
To join that fated few who stood at bay.
Ah! deeds like that the Christ in man reveal
Let Fame descend her throne at Custer's shrine to kneel.
XXXIII.
Too late to rescue, but in time to weep,
His tardy comrades came. As if asleep
He lay, so fair, that even hellish hate
Withheld its hand and dared not mutilate.
By fiends who knew not honor, honored still,
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He smiled and slept on that far western hill.
Cast down thy lyre, oh Muse! thy song is done!
Let tears complete the tale of him who failed, yet won.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
1244:No more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk.
A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith!
We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.
It's different, preaching in basilicas,
And doing duty in some masterpiece
Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart!
I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes,
Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;
It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh?
These hot long ceremonies of our church
Cost us a littleoh, they pay the price,
You take meamply pay it! Now, we'll talk.
So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs.
No deprecation,nay, I beg you, sir!
Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know,
I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out,
We'd see truth dawn together?truth that peeps
Over the glasses' edge when dinners done.
And body gets its sop and holds its noise
And leaves soul free a little. Now's the time:
'T is break of day! You do despise me then.
And if I say, "despise me,"never fear!
I know you do not in a certain sense
Not in my arm-chair, for example: here,
I well imagine you respect my place
( Status, entourage , worldly circumstance)
Quite to its valuevery much indeed:
Are up to the protesting eyes of you
In pride at being seated here for once
You'll turn it to such capital account!
When somebody, through years and years to come,
Hints of the bishop,names methat's enough:
"Blougram? I knew him"(into it you slide)
"Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day,
"All alone, we two; he's a clever man:
"And after dinner,why, the wine you know,
"Oh, there was wine, and good!what with the wine . .
"'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk!
"He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen
"Something of mine he relished, some review:
"He's quite above their humbug in his heart,
"Half-said as much, indeedthe thing's his trade.
"I warrant, Blougram's sceptical at times:
"How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!"
Che che , my dear sir, as we say at Rome,
Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take;
You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths:
The hand's mine now, and here you follow suit.
Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays
You do despise me; your ideal of life
Is not the bishop's: you would not be I.
You would like better to be Goethe, now,
Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still,
Count D'Orsay,so you did what you preferred,
Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help,
Believed or disbelieved, no matter what,
So long as on that point, whate'er it was,
You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself.
That, my ideal never can include,
Upon that element of truth and worth
Never be based! for say they make me Pope
(They can'tsuppose it for our argument!)
Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached
My height, and not a height which pleases you:
An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say.
It's like those eerie stories nurses tell,
Of how some actor on a stage played Death,
With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart,
And called himself the monarch of the world;
Then, going in the tire-room afterward,
Because the play was done, to shift himself,
Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly,
The moment he had shut the closet door,
By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope
At unawares, ask what his baubles mean,
And whose part he presumed to play just now?
Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!
So, drawing comfortable breath again,
You weigh and find, whatever more or less
I boast of my ideal realized,
Is nothing in the balance when opposed
To your ideal, your grand simple life,
Of which you will not realize one jot.
I am much, you are nothing; you would be all,
I would be merely much: you beat me there.
No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why!
The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,
Isnot to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be,but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means: a very different thing!
No abstract intellectual plan of life
Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,
But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,
May lead within a world which (by your leave)
Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise.
Embellish Rome, idealize away,
Make paradise of London if you can,
You're welcome, nay, you're wise.
A simile!
We mortals cross the ocean of this world
Each in his average cabin of a life;
The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room.
Now for our six months' voyagehow prepare?
You come on shipboard with a landsman's list
Of things he calls convenient: so they are!
An India screen is pretty furniture,
A piano-forte is a fine resource,
All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf,
The new edition fifty volumes long;
And little Greek books, with the funny type
They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next:
Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!
And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add!
'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow
Hang full in face of one where'er one roams,
Since he more than the others brings with him
Italy's self,the marvellous Modenese!
Yet was not on your list before, perhaps.
Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is't the name?
The captain, or whoever's master here
You see him screw his face up; what's his cry
Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!"
If you won't understand what six feet mean,
Compute and purchase stores accordingly
And if, in pique because he overhauls
Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board
Barewhy, you cut a figure at the first
While sympathetic landsmen see you off;
Not afterward, when long ere half seas over,
You peep up from your utterly naked boards
Into some snug and well-appointed berth,
Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug
Put back the other, but don't jog the ice!)
And mortified you mutter "Well and good;
"He sits enjoying his sea-furniture;
"'T is stout and proper, and there's store of it:
"Though I've the better notion, all agree,
"Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter,
"Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances
"I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!"
And meantime you bring nothing: never mind
You've proved your artist-nature: what you don't
You might bring, so despise me, as I say.
Now come, let's backward to the starting-place.
See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.
Prepare together for our voyage, then;
Each note and check the other in his work,
Here's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize!
What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?
Why first, you don't believe, you don't and can't,
(Not statedly, that is, and fixedly
And absolutely and exclusively)
In any revelation called divine.
No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains
But say so, like the honest man you are?
First, therefore, overhaul theology!
Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,
Must find believing every whit as hard:
And if I do not frankly say as much,
The ugly consequence is clear enough.
Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe
If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,
Absolute and exclusive, as you say.
You're wrongI mean to prove it in due time.
Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie
I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,
So give up hope accordingly to solve
(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then
With both of us, though in unlike degree,
Missing full credenceoverboard with them!
I mean to meet you on your own premise:
Good, there go mine in company with yours!
And now what are we? unbelievers both,
Calm and complete, determinately fixed
To-day, to-morrow and for ever, pray?
You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!
In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief,
As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,
Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's
The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,
Make it bear fruit to us?the problem here.
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,
The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
There the old misgivings, crooked questions are
This good God,what he could do, if he would,
Would, if he couldthen must have done long since:
If so, when, where and how? some way must be,
Once feel about, and soon or late you hit
Some sense, in which it might be, after all.
Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"
That way
Over the mountain, which who stands upon
Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;
While, if he views it from the waste itself,
Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,
Not vague, mistakeable! what's a break or two
Seen from the unbroken desert either side?
And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)
What if the breaks themselves should prove at last
The most consummate of contrivances
To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?
And so we stumble at truth's very test!
All we have gained then by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,
For one of faith diversified by doubt:
We called the chess-board white,we call it black.
"Well," you rejoin, "the end's no worse, at least;
"We've reason for both colours on the board:
"Why not confess then, where I drop the faith
"And you the doubt, that I'm as right as you?"
Because, friend, in the next place, this being so,
And both things even,faith and unbelief
Left to a man's choice,we'll proceed a step,
Returning to our image, which I like.
A man's choice, yesbut a cabin-passenger's
The man made for the special life o' the world
Do you forget him? I remember though!
Consult our ship's conditions and you find
One and but one choice suitable to all;
The choice, that you unluckily prefer,
Turning things topsy-turvythey or it
Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief
Bears upon life, determines its whole course,
Begins at its beginning. See the world
Such as it is,you made it not, nor I;
I mean to take it as it is,and you,
Not so you'll take it,though you get nought else.
I know the special kind of life I like,
What suits the most my idiosyncrasy,
Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit
In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days.
I find that positive belief does this
For me, and unbelief, no whit of this.
For you, it does, however?that, we'll try!
'T is clear, I cannot lead my life, at least,
Induce the world to let me peaceably,
Without declaring at the outset, "Friends,
"I absolutely and peremptorily
"Believe!"I say, faith is my waking life:
One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,
We know, but waking's the main point with us
And my provision's for life's waking part.
Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand
All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends;
And when night overtakes me, down I lie,
Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,
The sooner the better, to begin afresh.
What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith?
You, the philosopher, that disbelieve,
That recognize the night, give dreams their weight
To be consistent you should keep your bed,
Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,
For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!
And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream,
Live through the day and bustle as you please.
And so you live to sleep as I to wake,
To unbelieve as I to still believe?
Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you
Bed-ridden,and its good things come to me.
Its estimation, which is half the fight,
That's the first-cabin comfort I secure:
The next . . . but you perceive with half an eye!
Come, come, it's best believing, if we may;
You can't but own that!
Next, concede again,
If once we choose belief, on all accounts
We can't be too decisive in our faith,
Conclusive and exclusive in its terms,
To suit the world which gives us the good things.
In every man's career are certain points
Whereon he dares not be indifferent;
The world detects him clearly, if he dare,
As baffled at the game, and losing life.
He may care little or he may care much
For riches, honour, pleasure, work, repose,
Since various theories of life and life's
Success are extant which might easily
Comport with either estimate of these;
And whoso chooses wealth or poverty,
Labour or quiet, is not judged a fool
Because his fellow would choose otherwise:
We let him choose upon his own account
So long as he's consistent with his choice.
But certain points, left wholly to himself,
When once a man has arbitrated on,
We say he must succeed there or go hang.
Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most
Or needs most, whatsoe'er the love or need
For he can't wed twice. Then, he must avouch,
Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,
The form of faith his conscience holds the best,
Whate'er the process of conviction was:
For nothing can compensate his mistake
On such a point, the man himself being judge:
He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.
Well now, there's one great form of Christian faith
I happened to be born inwhich to teach
Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,
As best and readiest means of living by;
The same on examination being proved
The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise
And absolute form of faith in the whole world
Accordingly, most potent of all forms
For working on the world. Observe, my friend!
Such as you know me, I am free to say,
In these hard latter days which hamper one,
Myselfby no immoderate exercise
Of intellect and learning, but the tact
To let external forces work for me,
Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;
Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,
Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world
And make my life an ease and joy and pride;
It does so,which for me's a great point gained,
Who have a soul and body that exact
A comfortable care in many ways.
There's power in me and will to dominate
Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:
In many ways I need mankind's respect,
Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:
While at the same time, there's a taste I have,
A toy of soul, a titillating thing,
Refuses to digest these dainties crude.
The naked life is gross till clothed upon:
I must take what men offer, with a grace
As though I would not, could I help it, take!
An uniform I wear though over-rich
Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;
No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake
And despicable therefore! now folk kneel
And kiss my handof course the Church's hand.
Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,
And thus that it should be I have procured;
And thus it could not be another way,
I venture to imagine.
You'll reply,
So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;
But were I made of better elements,
With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,
I hardly would account the thing success
Though it did all for me I say.
But, friend,
We speak of what is; not of what might be,
And how't were better if't were otherwise.
I am the man you see here plain enough:
Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!
Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;
The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed
I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes
To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.
My business is not to remake myself,
But make the absolute best of what God made.
Orour first similethough you prove me doomed
To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole,
The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive
To make what use of each were possible;
And as this cabin gets upholstery,
That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.
But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast
I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes
Enumerated so complacently,
On the mere ground that you forsooth can find
In this particular life I choose to lead
No fit provision for them. Can you not?
Say you, my fault is I address myself
To grosser estimators than should judge?
And that's no way of holding up the soul,
Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows
One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'
Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.
I pine among my million imbeciles
(You think) aware some dozen men of sense
Eye me and know me, whether I believe
In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,
And am a fool, or disbelieve in her
And am a knave,approve in neither case,
Withhold their voices though I look their way:
Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end
(The thing they gave at Florence,what's its name?)
While the mad houseful's plaudits near out-bang
His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,
He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths
Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.
Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here
That even your prime men who appraise their kind
Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,
Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street
Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?
You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;
Him you must watchhe's sure to fall, yet stands!
Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demirep
That loves and saves her soul in new French books
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway: one step aside,
They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line
Before your sages,just the men to shrink
From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad
You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?
Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,
Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
At thus being held unable to explain
How a superior man who disbelieves
May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!
It's through my coming in the tail of time,
Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
Had I been born three hundred years ago
They'd say, "What's strange? Blougram of course believes;"
And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."
But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet
"How can he?" All eyes turn with interest.
Whereas, step off the line on either side
You, for example, clever to a fault,
The rough and ready man who write apace,
Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less
You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?
Lord So-and-sohis coat bedropped with wax,
All Peter's chains about his waist, his back
Brave with the needlework of Noodledom
Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?
But I, the man of sense and learning too,
The able to think yet act, the this, the that,
I, to believe at this late time of day!
Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.
Except it's yours! Admire me as these may,
You don't. But whom at least do you admire?
Present your own perfection, your ideal,
Your pattern man for a minuteoh, make haste
Is it Napoleon you would have us grow?
Concede the means; allow his head and hand,
(A large concession, clever as you are)
Good! In our common primal element
Of unbelief (we can't believe, you know
We're still at that admission, recollect!)
Where do you findapart from, towering o'er
The secondary temporary aims
Which satisfy the gross taste you despise
Where do you find his star?his crazy trust
God knows through what or in what? it's alive
And shines and leads him, and that's all we want.
Have we aught in our sober night shall point
Such ends as his were, and direct the means
Of working out our purpose straight as his,
Nor bring a moment's trouble on success
With after-care to justify the same?
Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve
Why, the man's mad, friend, take his light away!
What's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare
With comfort to yourself blow millions up?
We neither of us see it! we do see
The blown-up millionsspatter of their brains
And writhing of their bowels and so forth,
In that bewildering entanglement
Of horrible eventualities
Past calculation to the end of time!
Can I mistake for some clear word of God
(Which were my ample warrant for it all)
His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk,
"The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about crowns,
And (when one beats the man to his last hold)
A vague idea of setting things to rights,
Policing people efficaciously,
More to their profit, most of all to his own;
The whole to end that dismallest of ends
By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church,
And resurrection of the old rgime ?
Would I, who hope to live a dozen years,
Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?
No: for, concede me but the merest chance
Doubt may be wrongthere's judgment, life to come!
With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right?
This present life is all?you offer me
Its dozen noisy years, without a chance
That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace,
And getting called by divers new-coined names,
Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine,
Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like!
Therefore I will not.
Take another case;
Fit up the cabin yet another way.
What say you to the poets? shall we write
Hamlet, Othellomake the world our own,
Without a risk to run of either sort?
I can'tto put the strongest reason first.
"But try," you urge, "the trying shall suffice;
"The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life:
"Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!"
Spare my self-knowledgethere's no fooling me!
If I prefer remaining my poor self,
I say so not in self-dispraise but praise.
If I'm a Shakespeare, let the well alone;
Why should I try to be what now I am?
If I'm no Shakespeare, as too probable,
His power and consciousness and self-delight
And all we want in common, shall I find
Trying for ever? while on points of taste
Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I
Are dowered alikeI'll ask you, I or he,
Which in our two lives realizes most?
Much, he imaginedsomewhat, I possess.
He had the imagination; stick to that!
Let him say, "In the face of my soul's works
"Your world is worthless and I touch it not
"Lest I should wrong them"I'll withdraw my plea.
But does he say so? look upon his life!
Himself, who only can, gives judgment there.
He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces
To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;
Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things,
Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute;
Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too,
And none more, had he seen its entry once,
Than "Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal."
Why then should I who play that personage,
The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made,
Be told that had the poet chanced to start
From where I stand now (some degree like mine
Being just the goal he ran his race to reach)
He would have run the whole race back, forsooth,
And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays?
Ah, the earth's best can be but the earth's best!
Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home
And get himself in dreams the Vatican,
Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls,
And English books, none equal to his own,
Which I read, bound in gold (he never did).
Terni's fall, Naples' bay and Gothard's top
Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these;
But, as I pour this claret, there they are:
I've gained themcrossed St. Gothard last July
With ten mules to the carriage and a bed
Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that?
We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself,
And what I want, I have: he, gifted more,
Could fancy he too had them when he liked,
But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed,
He would not have them also in my sense.
We play one game; I send the ball aloft
No less adroitly that of fifty strokes
Scarce five go o'er the wall so wide and high
Which sends them back to me: I wish and get
He struck balls higher and with better skill,
But at a poor fence level with his head,
And hithis Stratford house, a coat of arms,
Successful dealings in his grain and wool,
While I receive heaven's incense in my nose
And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess.
Ask him, if this life's all, who wins the game?
Believeand our whole argument breaks up.
Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat;
Only, we can't command it; fire and life
Are all, dead matter's nothing, we agree:
And be it a mad dream or God's very breath,
The fact's the same,belief's fire, once in us,
Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself:
We penetrate our life with such a glow
As fire lends wood and ironthis turns steel,
That burns to ashall's one, fire proves its power
For good or ill, since men call flare success.
But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn.
Light one in me, I'll find it food enough!
Why, to be Lutherthat's a life to lead,
Incomparably better than my own.
He comes, reclaims God's earth for God, he says,
Sets up God's rule again by simple means,
Re-opens a shut book, and all is done.
He flared out in the flaring of mankind;
Such Luther's luck was: how shall such be mine?
If he succeeded, nothing's left to do:
And if he did not altogetherwell,
Strauss is the next advance. All Strauss should be
I might be also. But to what result?
He looks upon no future: Luther did.
What can I gain on the denying side?
Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts,
Read the text right, emancipate the world
The emancipated world enjoys itself
With scarce a thank-you: Blougram told it first
It could not owe a farthing,not to him
More than Saint Paul! 't would press its pay, you think?
Then add there's still that plaguy hundredth chance
Strauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run
For what gain? not for Luther's, who secured
A real heaven in his heart throughout his life,
Supposing death a little altered things.
"Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,
"You run the same risk really on all sides,
"In cool indifference as bold unbelief.
"As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.
"It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,
"No more available to do faith's work
"Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"
Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point
Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.
We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith:
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?
By life and man's free will, God gave for that!
To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:
That's our one act, the previous work's his own.
You criticize the soul? it reared this tree
This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!
What matter though I doubt at every pore,
Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends,
Doubts in the trivial work of every day,
Doubts at the very bases of my soul
In the grand moments when she probes herself
If finally I have a life to show,
The thing I did, brought out in evidence
Against the thing done to me underground
By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?
I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?
All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?
It is the idea, the feeling and the love,
God means mankind should strive for and show forth
Whatever be the process to that end,
And not historic knowledge, logic sound,
And metaphysical acumen, sure!
"What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,
Like you this Christianity or not?
It may be false, but will you wish it true?
Has it your vote to be so if it can?
Trust you an instinct silenced long ago
That will break silence and enjoin you love
What mortified philosophy is hoarse,
And all in vain, with bidding you despise?
If you desire faiththen you've faith enough:
What else seeks Godnay, what else seek ourselves?
You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,
On hearsay; it's a favourable one:
"But still" (you add), "there was no such good man,
"Because of contradiction in the facts.
"One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,
"This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him
"I see he figures as an Englishman."
Well, the two things are reconcileable.
But would I rather you discovered that,
Subjoining"Still, what matter though they be?
"Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."
Pure faith indeedyou know not what you ask!
Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,
Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much
The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.
It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare
Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:
I say it's meant to hide him all it can,
And that's what all the blessed evil's for.
Its use in Time is to environ us,
Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough
Against that sight till we can bear its stress.
Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain
And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart
Less certainly would wither up at once
Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.
But time and earth case-harden us to live;
The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child
Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
Plays on and grows to be a man like us.
With me, faith means perpetual unbelief
Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot
Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
Or, if that's too ambitious,here's my box
I need the excitation of a pinch
Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose
Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes.
"Leave it in peace" advise the simple folk:
Make it aware of peace by itching-fits,
Say Ilet doubt occasion still more faith!
You'll say, once all believed, man, woman, child,
In that dear middle-age these noodles praise.
How you'd exult if I could put you back
Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony,
Geology, ethnology, what not
(Greek endings, each the little passing-bell
That signifies some faith's about to die),
And set you square with Genesis again,
When such a traveller told you his last news,
He saw the ark a-top of Ararat
But did not climb there since 't was getting dusk
And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot!
How should you feel, I ask, in such an age,
How act? As other people felt and did;
With soul more blank than this decanter's knob,
Believeand yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate
Full in belief's face, like the beast you'd be!
No, when the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,
Satan looks up between his feetboth tug
He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes
And grows. Prolong that battle through his life!
Never leave growing till the life to come!
Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks
That used to puzzle people wholesomely:
Men have outgrown the shame of being fools.
What are the laws of nature, not to bend
If the Church bid them?brother Newman asks.
Up with the Immaculate Conception, then
On to the rack with faith!is my advice.
Will not that hurry us upon our knees,
Knocking our breasts, "It can't beyet it shall!
"Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope?
"Low things confound the high things!" and so forth.
That's better than acquitting God with grace
As some folk do. He's triedno case is proved,
Philosophy is lenienthe may go!
You'll say, the old system's not so obsolete
But men believe still: ay, but who and where?
King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yet
The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes;
But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint
Believes God watches him continually,
As he believes in fire that it will burn,
Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire's law,
Sin against rain, although the penalty
Be just a singe or soaking? "No," he smiles;
"Those laws are laws that can enforce themselves."
The sum of all isyes, my doubt is great,
My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.
I have read much, thought much, experienced much,
Yet would die rather than avow my fear
The Naples' liquefaction may be false,
When set to happen by the palace-clock
According to the clouds or dinner-time.
I hear you recommend, I might at least
Eliminate, decrassify my faith
Since I adopt it; keeping what I must
And leaving what I cansuch points as this.
I won'tthat is, I can't throw one away.
Supposing there's no truth in what I hold
About the need of trial to man's faith,
Still, when you bid me purify the same,
To such a process I discern no end.
Clearing off one excrescence to see two,
There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,
That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!
First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last
But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?
Experimentalize on sacred things!
I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain
To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.
The first step, I am master not to take.
You'd find the cutting-process to your taste
As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,
Nor see more danger in it,you retort.
Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise
When we consider that the steadfast hold
On the extreme end of the chain of faith
Gives all the advantage, makes the difference
With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:
We are their lords, or they are free of us,
Just as we tighten or relax our hold.
So, others matters equal, we'll revert
To the first problemwhich, if solved my way
And thrown into the balance, turns the scale
How we may lead a comfortable life,
How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.
Of course you are remarking all this time
How narrowly and grossly I view life,
Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule
The masses, and regard complacently
"The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.
I act for, talk for, live for this world now,
As this world prizes action, life and talk:
No prejudice to what next world may prove,
Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge
To observe then, is that I observe these now,
Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.
Let us concede (gratuitously though)
Next life relieves the soul of body, yields
Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,
Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use
May be to make the next life more intense?
Do you know, I have often had a dream
(Work it up in your next month's article)
Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still
Losing true life for ever and a day
Through ever trying to be and ever being
In the evolution of successive spheres
Before its actual sphere and place of life,
Halfway into the next, which having reached,
It shoots with corresponding foolery
Halfway into the next still, on and off!
As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?
I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
I take and like its way of life; I think
My brothers, who administer the means,
Live better for my comfortthat's good too;
And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
Approves my service, which is better still.
If he keep silence,why, for you or me
Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"
What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?
You meet me at this issue: you declare,
All special-pleading done withtruth is truth,
And justifies itself by undreamed ways.
You don't fear but it's better, if we doubt,
To say so, act up to our truth perceived
However feebly. Do then,act away!
'T is there I'm on the watch for you. How one acts
Is, both of us agree, our chief concern:
And how you'll act is what I fain would see
If, like the candid person you appear,
You dare to make the most of your life's scheme
As I of mine, live up to its full law
Since there's no higher law that counterchecks.
Put natural religion to the test
You've just demolished the revealed withquick,
Down to the root of all that checks your will,
All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve,
Or even to be an atheistic priest!
Suppose a pricking to incontinence
Philosophers deduce you chastity
Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
Threw club down and forewent his brains beside,
So, stood a ready victim in the reach
Of any brother savage, club in hand;
Hence saw the use of going out of sight
In wood or cave to prosecute his loves:
I read this in a French book t' other day.
Does law so analysed coerce you much?
Oh, men spin clouds of fuzz where matters end,
But you who reach where the first thread begins,
You'll soon cut that!which means you can, but won't,
Through certain instincts, blind, unreasoned-out,
You dare not set aside, you can't tell why,
But there they are, and so you let them rule.
Then, friend, you seem as much a slave as I,
A liar, conscious coward and hypocrite,
Without the good the slave expects to get,
In case he has a master after all!
You own your instincts? why, what else do I,
Who want, am made for, and must have a God
Ere I can be aught, do aught?no mere name
Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth,
To wit, a relation from that thing to me,
Touching from head to footwhich touch I feel,
And with it take the rest, this life of ours!
I live my life here; yours you dare not live.
Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin)
Disfigure such a life and call it names,
While, to your mind, remains another way
For simple men: knowledge and power have rights,
But ignorance and weakness have rights too.
There needs no crucial effort to find truth
If here or there or anywhere about:
We ought to turn each side, try hard and see,
And if we can't, be glad we've earned at least
The right, by one laborious proof the more,
To graze in peace earth's pleasant pasturage.
Men are not angels, neither are they brutes:
Something we may see, all we cannot see.
What need of lying? I say, I see all,
And swear to each detail the most minute
In what I think a Pan's faceyou, mere cloud:
I swear I hear him speak and see him wink,
For fear, if once I drop the emphasis,
Mankind may doubt there's any cloud at all.
You take the simple lifeready to see,
Willing to see (for no cloud's worth a face)
And leaving quiet what no strength can move,
And which, who bids you move? who has the right?
I bid you; but you are God's sheep, not mine:
" Pastor est tui Dominus ." You find
In this the pleasant pasture of our life
Much you may eat without the least offence,
Much you don't eat because your maw objects,
Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock
Open great eyes at you and even butt,
And thereupon you like your mates so well
You cannot please yourself, offending them;
Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep,
You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleats
And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears
Restrain you, real checks since you find them so;
Sometimes you please yourself and nothing checks:
And thus you graze through life with not one lie,
And like it best.
But do you, in truth's name?
If so, you beatwhich means you are not I
Who needs must make earth mine and feed my fill
Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with,
But motioned to the velvet of the sward
By those obsequious wethers' very selves.
Look at me, sir; my age is double yours:
At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed,
What now I should beas, permit the word,
I pretty well imagine your whole range
And stretch of tether twenty years to come.
We both have minds and bodies much alike:
In truth's name, don't you want my bishopric,
My daily bread, my influence and my state?
You're young. I'm old; you must be old one day;
Will you find then, as I do hour by hour,
Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls
From your fat lap-dog's ear to grace a brooch
Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring
With much beside you know or may conceive?
Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I,
Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me,
While writing all the same my articles
On music, poetry, the fictile vase
Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon's Greek.
But youthe highest honour in your life,
The thing you'll crown yourself with, all your days,
Isdining here and drinking this last glass
I pour you out in sign of amity
Before we part for ever. Of your power
And social influence, worldly worth in short,
Judge what's my estimation by the fact,
I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech,
Hint secrecy on one of all these words!
You're shrewd and know that should you publish one
The world would brand the liemy enemies first,
Who'd sneer"the bishop's an arch-hypocrite
"And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool."
Whereas I should not dare for both my ears
Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile,
Before the chaplain who reflects myself
My shade's so much more potent than your flesh.
What's your reward, self-abnegating friend?
Stood you confessed of those exceptional
And privileged great natures that dwarf mine
A zealot with a mad ideal in reach,
A poet just about to print his ode,
A statesman with a scheme to stop this war,
An artist whose religion is his art
~ Robert Browning, Bishop Blougram's Apology
,#NFDB
1245:class:Classics
BOOK THE FIFTH
The Story of Perseus continu'd
While Perseus entertain'd with this report
His father Cepheus, and the list'ning court,
Within the palace walls was heard aloud
The roaring noise of some unruly crowd;
Not like the songs which chearful friends prepare
For nuptial days, but sounds that threaten'd war;
And all the pleasures of this happy feast,
To tumult turn'd, in wild disorder ceas'd:
So, when the sea is calm, we often find
A storm rais'd sudden by some furious wind.
Chief in the riot Phineus first appear'd,
The rash ringleader of this boist'rous herd,
And brandishing his brazen-pointed lance,
Behold, he said, an injur'd man advance,
Stung with resentment for his ravish'd wife,
Nor shall thy wings, o Perseus, save thy life;
Nor Jove himself; tho' we've been often told
Who got thee in the form of tempting gold.
His lance was aim'd, when Cepheus ran, and said,
Hold, brother, hold; what brutal rage has made
Your frantick mind so black a crime conceive?
Are these the thanks that you to Perseus give?
This the reward that to his worth you pay,
Whose timely valour sav'd Andromeda?
Nor was it he, if you would reason right,
That forc'd her from you, but the jealous spight
Of envious Nereids, and Jove's high decree;
And that devouring monster of the sea,
That ready with his jaws wide gaping stood
To eat my child, the fairest of my blood.
You lost her then, when she seem'd past relief,
And wish'd perhaps her death, to ease your grief
With my afflictions: not content to view
Andromeda in chains, unhelp'd by you,
Her spouse, and uncle; will you grieve that he
Expos'd his life the dying maid to free?
And shall you claim his merit? Had you thought
Her charms so great, you shou'd have bravely sought
That blessing on the rocks, where fix'd she lay:
But now let Perseus bear his prize away,
By service gain'd, by promis'd faith possess'd;
To him I owe it, that my age is bless'd
Still with a child: Nor think that I prefer
Perseus to thee, but to the loss of her.
Phineus on him, and Perseus, roul'd about
His eyes in silent rage, and seem'd to doubt
Which to destroy; 'till, resolute at length,
He threw his spear with the redoubled strength
His fury gave him, and at Perseus struck;
But missing Perseus, in his seat it stuck.
Who, springing nimbly up, return'd the dart,
And almost plung'd it in his rival's heart;
But he for safety to the altar ran,
Unfit protection for so vile a man;
Yet was the stroke not vain, as Rhaetus found,
Who in his brow receiv'd a mortal wound;
Headlong he tumbled, when his skull was broke,
From which his friends the fatal weapon took,
While he lay trembling, and his gushing blood
In crimson streams around the table flow'd.
But this provok'd th' unruly rabble worse,
They flung their darts, and some in loud discourse
To death young Perseus, and the monarch doom;
But Cepheus left before the guilty room,
With grief appealing to the Gods above,
Who laws of hospitality approve,
Who faith protect, and succour injur'd right,
That he was guiltless of this barb'rous fight.
Pallas her brother Perseus close attends,
And with her ample shield from harm defends,
Raising a sprightly courage in his heart:
But Indian Athis took the weaker part,
Born in the chrystal grottoes of the sea,
Limnate's son, a fenny nymph, and she
Daughter of Ganges; graceful was his mein,
His person lovely, and his age sixteen.
His habit made his native beauty more;
A purple mantle fring'd with gold he wore;
His neck well-turn'd with golden chains was grac'd,
His hair with myrrh perfum'd, was nicely dress'd.
Tho' with just aim he cou'd the javelin throw,
Yet with more skill he drew the bending bow;
And now was drawing it with artful hand,
When Perseus snatching up a flaming brand,
Whirl'd sudden at his face the burning wood,
Crush'd his eyes in, and quench'd the fire with blood;
Thro' the soft skin the splinter'd bones appear,
And spoil'd the face that lately was so fair.
When Lycabas his Athis thus beheld,
How was his heart with friendly horror fill'd!
A youth so noble, to his soul so dear,
To see his shapeless look, his dying groans to hear!
He snatch'd the bow the boy was us'd to bend,
And cry'd, With me, false traytor, dare contend;
Boast not a conquest o'er a child, but try
Thy strength with me, who all thy pow'rs defy;
Nor think so mean an act a victory.
While yet he spoke he flung the whizzing dart,
Which pierc'd the plaited robe, but miss'd his heart:
Perseus defy'd, upon him fiercely press'd
With sword, unsheath'd, and plung'd it in his breast;
His eyes o'erwhelm'd with night, he stumbling falls,
And with his latest breath on Athis calls;
Pleas'd that so near the lovely youth he lies,
He sinks his head upon his friend, and dies.
Next eager Phorbas, old Methion's son,
Came rushing forward with Amphimedon;
When the smooth pavement, slippery made with gore,
Trip'd up their feet, and flung 'em on the floor;
The sword of Perseus, who by chance was nigh,
Prevents their rise, and where they fall, they lye:
Full in his ribs Amphimedon he smote,
And then stuck fiery Phorbas in the throat.
Eurythus lifting up his ax, the blow
Was thus prevented by his nimble foe;
A golden cup he seizes, high embost,
And at his head the massy goblet tost:
It hits, and from his forehead bruis'd rebounds,
And blood, and brains he vomits from his wounds;
With his slain fellows on the floor he lies,
And death for ever shuts his swimming eyes.
Then Polydaemon fell, a Goddess-born;
Phlegias, and Elycen with locks unshorn
Next follow'd; next, the stroke of death he gave
To Clytus, Abanis, and Lycetus brave;
While o'er unnumber'd heaps of ghastly dead,
The Argive heroe's feet triumphant tread.
But Phineus stands aloof, and dreads to feel
His rival's force, and flies his pointed steel:
Yet threw a dart from far; by chance it lights
On Idas, who for neither party fights;
But wounded, sternly thus to Phineus said,
Since of a neuter thou a foe hast made,
This I return thee, drawing from his side
The dart; which, as he strove to fling, he dy'd.
Odites fell by Clymenus's sword,
The Cephen court had not a greater lord.
Hypseus his blade does in Protenor sheath,
But brave Lyncides soon reveng'd his death.
Here too was old Emathion, one that fear'd
The Gods, and in the cause of Heav'n appear'd,
Who only wishing the success of right,
And, by his age, exempted from the fight,
Both sides alike condemns: This impious war
Cease, cease, he cries; these bloody broils forbear.
This scarce the sage with high concern had said,
When Chromis at a blow struck off his head,
Which dropping, on the royal altar roul'd,
Still staring on the crowd with aspect bold;
And still it seem'd their horrid strife to blame,
In life and death, his pious zeal the same;
While clinging to the horns, the trunk expires,
The sever'd head consumes amidst the fires.
Then Phineus, who from far his javelin threw,
Broteas and Ammon, twins and brothers, slew;
For knotted gauntlets matchless in the field;
But gauntlets must to swords and javelins yield.
Ampycus next, with hallow'd fillets bound,
As Ceres' priest, and with a mitre crown'd,
His spear transfix'd, and struck him to the ground.
O Iapetides, with pain I tell
How you, sweet lyrist, in the riot fell;
What worse than brutal rage his breast could fill,
Who did thy blood, o bard celestial! spill?
Kindly you press'd amid the princely throng,
To crown the feast, and give the nuptial song:
Discord abhorr'd the musick of thy lyre,
Whose notes did gentle peace so well inspire;
Thee, when fierce Pettalus far off espy'd,
Defenceless with thy harp, he scoffing cry'd,
Go; to the ghosts thy soothing lessons play;
We loath thy lyre, and scorn thy peaceful lay:
And, as again he fiercely bid him go,
He pierc'd his temples with a mortal blow.
His harp he held, tho' sinking on the ground,
Whose strings in death his trembling fingers found
By chance, and tun'd by chance a dying sound.
With grief Lycormas saw him fall, from far,
And, wresting from the door a massy bar,
Full in his poll lays on a load of knocks,
Which stun him, and he falls like a devoted ox.
Another bar Pelates would have snach'd,
But Corynthus his motions slily watch'd;
He darts his weapon from a private stand,
And rivets to the post his veiny hand:
When strait a missive spear transfix'd his side,
By Abas thrown, and as he hung, he dy'd.
Melaneus on the prince's side was slain;
And Dorylas, who own'd a fertile plain,
Of Nasamonia's fields the wealthy lord,
Whose crowded barns, could scarce contain their board.
A whizzing spear obliquely gave a blow,
Stuck in his groin, and pierc'd the nerves below;
His foe behld his eyes convulsive roul,
His ebbing veins, and his departing soul;
Then taunting said, Of all thy spacious plain,
This spot thy only property remains.
He left him thus; but had no sooner left,
Than Perseus in revenge his nostrils cleft;
From his friend's breast the murd'ring dart he drew,
And the same weapon at the murderer threw;
His head in halves the darted javelin cut,
And on each side the brain came issuing out.
Fortune his friend, in deaths around he deals,
And this his lance, and that his faulchion feels:
Now Clytius dies; and by a diff'rent wound,
The twin, his brother Clanis, bites the ground.
In his rent jaw the bearded weapon sticks,
And the steel'd dart does Clytius' thigh transfix.
With these Mendesian Celadon he slew:
And Astreus next, whose mother was a Jew,
His sire uncertain: then by Perseus fell
Aethion, who cou'd things to come foretell;
But now he knows not whence the javelin flies
That wounds his breast, nor by whose arm he dies.
The squire to Phineus next his valour try'd,
And fierce Agyrtes stain'd with paricide.
As these are slain, fresh numbers still appear,
And wage with Perseus an unequal war;
To rob him of his right, the maid he won,
By honour, promise, and desert his own.
With him, the father of the beauteous bride,
The mother, and the frighted virgin side;
With shrieks, and doleful cries they rend the air:
Their shrieks confounded with the din of war,
With dashing arms, and groanings of the slain,
They grieve unpitied, and unheard complain.
The floor with ruddy streams Bellona stains,
And Phineus a new war with double rage maintains.
Perseus begirt, from all around they pour
Their lances on him, a tempestuous show'r,
Aim'd all at him; a cloud of darts, and spears,
Or blind his eyes, or whistle round his ears.
Their numbers to resist, against the wall
He guards his back secure, and dares them all.
Here from the left Molpeus renews the fight,
And bold Ethemon presses on the right:
As when a hungry tyger near him hears
Two lowing herds, a-while he both forbears;
Nor can his hopes of this, or that renounce,
So strong he lusts to prey on both at once;
Thus Perseus now with that, or this is loth
To war distinct:, but fain would fall on both.
And first Chaonian Molpeus felt his blow,
And fled, and never after fac'd his foe;
Then fierce Ethemon, as he turn'd his back,
Hurried with fury, aiming at his neck,
His brandish'd sword against the marble struck
With all his might; the brittle weapon broke,
And in his throat the point rebounding stuck.
Too slight the wound for life to issue thence,
And yet too great for battel, or defence;
His arms extended in this piteous state,
For mercy he wou'd sue, but sues too late;
Perseus has in his bosom plung'd the sword,
And, ere he speaks, the wound prevents the word.
The crowds encreasing, and his friends distress'd,
Himself by warring multitudes oppress'd:
Since thus unequally you fight, 'tis time,
He cry'd, to punish your presumptuous crime;
Beware, my friends; his friends were soon prepar'd,
Their sight averting, high the head he rear'd,
And Gorgon on his foes severely star'd.
Vain shift! says Thescelus, with aspect bold,
Thee, and thy bugbear monster, I behold
With scorn; he lifts his arm, but ere he threw
The dart, the heroe to a statue grew.
In the same posture still the marble stands,
And holds the warrior's weapons in its hands.
Amphyx, whom yet this wonder can't alarm,
Heaves at Lyncides' breast his impious arm;
But, while thus daringly he presses on,
His weapon and his arm are turn'd to stone.
Next Nileus, he who vainly said he ow'd
His origin to Nile's prolifick flood;
Who on his shield seven silver rivers bore,
His birth to witness by the arms he wore;
Full of his sev'n-fold father, thus express'd
His boast to Perseus, and his pride confess'd:
See whence we sprung; let this thy comfort be
In thy sure death, that thou didst die by me.
While yet he spoke, the dying accents hung
In sounds imperfect on his marble tongue;
Tho' chang'd to stone, his lips he seem'd to stretch,
And thro' th' insensate rock wou'd force a speech.
This Eryx saw, but seeing wou'd not own;
The mischief by your selves, he cries, is done,
'Tis your cold courage turns your hearts to stone.
Come, follow me; fall on the stripling boy,
Kill him, and you his magick arms destroy.
Then rushing on, his arm to strike he rear'd,
And marbled o'er his varied frame appear'd.
These for affronting Pallas were chastis'd,
And justly met the death they had despis'd.
But brave Aconteus, Perseus' friend, by chance
Look'd back, and met the Gorgon's fatal glance:
A statue now become, he ghastly stares,
And still the foe to mortal combat dares.
Astyages the living likeness knew,
On the dead stone with vengeful fury flew;
But impotent his rage, the jarring blade
No print upon the solid marble made:
Again, as with redoubled might he struck,
Himself astonish'd in the quarry stuck.
The vulgar deaths 'twere tedious to rehearse,
And fates below the dignity of verse;
Their safety in their flight two hundred found,
Two hundred, by Medusa's head were ston'd.
Fierce Phineus now repents the wrongful fight,
And views his varied friends, a dreadful sight;
He knows their faces, for their help he sues,
And thinks, not hearing him, that they refuse:
By name he begs their succour, one by one,
Then doubts their life, and feels the friendly stone.
Struck with remorse, and conscious of his pride,
Convict of sin, he turn'd his eyes aside;
With suppliant mein to Perseus thus he prays,
Hence with the head, as far as winds and seas
Can bear thee; hence, o quit the Cephen shore,
And never curse us with Medusa more,
That horrid head, which stiffens into stone
Those impious men who, daring death, look on.
I warr'd not with thee out of hate or strife,
My honest cause was to defend my wife,
First pledg'd to me; what crime cou'd I suppose,
To arm my friends, and vindicate my spouse?
But vain, too late I see, was our design;
Mine was the title, but the merit thine.
Contending made me guilty, I confess;
But penitence shou'd make that guilt the less:
'Twas thine to conquer by Minerva's pow'r;
Favour'd of Heav'n, thy mercy I implore;
For life I sue; the rest to thee I yield;
In pity, from my sight remove the shield.
He suing said; nor durst revert his eyes
On the grim head: and Perseus thus replies:
Coward, what is in me to grant, I will,
Nor blood, unworthy of my valour spill:
Fear not to perish by my vengeful sword,
From that secure; 'tis all the Fates afford.
Where I now see thee, thou shalt still be seen,
A lasting monument to please our queen;
There still shall thy betroth'd behold her spouse,
And find his image in her father's house.
This said; where Phineus turn'd to shun the shield
Full in his face the staring head he held;
As here and there he strove to turn aside,
The wonder wrought, the man was petrify'd:
All marble was his frame, his humid eyes
Drop'd tears, which hung upon the stone like ice.
In suppliant posture, with uplifted hands,
And fearful look, the guilty statue stands.
Hence Perseus to his native city hies,
Victorious, and rewarded with his prize.
Conquest, o'er Praetus the usurper, won,
He re-instates his grandsire in the throne.
Praetus, his brother dispossess'd by might,
His realm enjoy'd, and still detain'd his right:
But Perseus pull'd the haughty tyrant down,
And to the rightful king restor'd the throne.
Weak was th' usurper, as his cause was wrong;
Where Gorgon's head appears, what arms are strong?
When Perseus to his host the monster held,
They soon were statues, and their king expell'd.
Thence, to Seriphus with the head he sails,
Whose prince his story treats as idle tales:
Lord of a little isle, he scorns to seem
Too credulous, but laughs at that, and him.
Yet did he not so much suspect the truth,
As out of pride, or envy, hate the youth.
The Argive prince, at his contempt enrag'd,
To force his faith by fatal proof engag'd.
Friends, shut your eyes, he cries; his shield he takes,
And to the king expos'd Medusa's snakes.
The monarch felt the pow'r he wou'd not own,
And stood convict of folly in the stone.
Minerva's Interview with the Muses
Thus far Minerva was content to rove
With Perseus, offspring of her father Jove:
Now, hid in clouds, Seriphus she forsook;
And to the Theban tow'rs her journey took.
Cythnos and Gyaros lying to the right,
She pass'd unheeded in her eager flight;
And chusing first on Helicon to rest,
The virgin Muses in these words address'd:
Me, the strange tidings of a new-found spring,
Ye learned sisters, to this mountain bring.
If all be true that Fame's wide rumours tell,
'Twas Pegasus discover'd first your well;
Whose piercing hoof gave the soft earth a blow,
Which broke the surface where these waters flow.
I saw that horse by miracle obtain
Life, from the blood of dire Medusa slain;
And now, this equal prodigy to view,
From distant isles to fam'd Boeotia flew.
The Muse Urania said, Whatever cause
So great a Goddess to this mansion draws;
Our shades are happy with so bright a guest,
You, Queen, are welcome, and we Muses blest.
What Fame has publish'd of our spring is true,
Thanks for our spring to Pegasus are due.
Then, with becoming courtesy, she led
The curious stranger to their fountain's head;
Who long survey'd, with wonder, and delight,
Their sacred water, charming to the sight;
Their ancient groves, dark grottos, shady bow'rs,
And smiling plains adorn'd with various flow'rs.
O happy Muses! she with rapture cry'd,
Who, safe from cares, on this fair hill reside;
Blest in your seat, and free your selves to please
With joys of study, and with glorious ease.
The Fate of Pyreneus
Then one replies: O Goddess, fit to guide
Our humble works, and in our choir preside,
Who sure wou'd wisely to these fields repair,
To taste our pleasures, and our labours share,
Were not your virtue, and superior mind
To higher arts, and nobler deeds inclin'd;
Justly you praise our works, and pleasing seat,
Which all might envy in this soft retreat,
Were we secur'd from dangers, and from harms;
But maids are frighten'd with the least alarms,
And none are safe in this licentious time;
Still fierce Pyreneus, and his daring crime,
With lasting horror strikes my feeble sight,
Nor is my mind recover'd from the fright.
With Thracian arms this bold usurper gain'd
Daulis, and Phocis, where he proudly reign'd:
It happen'd once, as thro' his lands we went,
For the bright temple of Parnassus bent,
He met us there, and in his artful mind
Hiding the faithless action he design'd,
Confer'd on us (whom, oh! too well he knew)
All honours that to Goddesses are due.
Stop, stop, ye Muses, 'tis your friend who calls,
The tyrant said; behold the rain that falls
On ev'ry side, and that ill-boding sky,
Whose lowring face portends more storms are nigh.
Pray make my house your own, and void of fear,
While this bad weather lasts, take shelter here.
Gods have made meaner places their resort,
And, for a cottage, left their shining court.
Oblig'd to stop, by the united force
Of pouring rains, and complaisant discourse,
His courteous invitation we obey,
And in his hall resolve a-while to stay.
Soon it clear'd up; the clouds began to fly,
The driving north refin'd the show'ry sky;
Then to pursue our journey we began:
But the false traitor to his portal ran,
Stopt our escape, the door securely barr'd,
And to our honour, violence prepar'd.
But we, transform'd to birds, avoid his snare,
On pinions rising in the yielding air.
But he, by lust and indignation fir'd,
Up to his highest tow'r with speed retir'd,
And cries, In vain you from my arms withdrew,
The way you go your lover will pursue.
Then, in a flying posture wildly plac'd,
And daring from that height himself to cast,
The wretch fell headlong, and the ground bestrew'd
With broken bones, and stains of guilty blood.
The Story of the Pierides
The Muse yet spoke; when they began to hear
A noise of wings that flutter'd in the air;
And strait a voice, from some high-spreading bough,
Seem'd to salute the company below.
The Goddess wonder'd, and inquir'd from whence
That tongue was heard, that spoke so plainly sense
(It seem'd to her a human voice to be,
But prov'd a bird's; for in a shady tree
Nine magpies perch'd lament their alter'd state,
And, what they hear, are skilful to repeat).
The sister to the wondring Goddess said,
These, foil'd by us, by us were thus repaid.
These did Evippe of Paeonia bring
With nine hard labour-pangs to Pella's king.
The foolish virgins of their number proud,
And puff'd with praises of the senseless crowd,
Thro' all Achaia, and th' Aemonian plains
Defy'd us thus, to match their artless strains;
No more, ye Thespian girls, your notes repeat,
Nor with false harmony the vulgar cheat;
In voice or skill, if you with us will vye,
As many we, in voice or skill will try.
Surrender you to us, if we excell,
Fam'd Aganippe, and Medusa's well.
The conquest yours, your prize from us shall be
The Aemathian plains to snowy Paeone;
The nymphs our judges. To dispute the field,
We thought a shame; but greater shame to yield.
On seats of living stone the sisters sit,
And by the rivers swear to judge aright.
The Song of the Pierides
Then rises one of the presumptuous throng,
Steps rudely forth, and first begins the song;
With vain address describes the giants' wars,
And to the Gods their fabled acts prefers.
She sings, from Earth's dark womb how Typhon rose,
And struck with mortal fear his heav'nly foes.
How the Gods fled to Egypt's slimy soil,
And hid their heads beneath the banks of Nile:
How Typhon, from the conquer'd skies, pursu'd
Their routed godheads to the sev'n-mouth'd flood;
Forc'd every God, his fury to escape,
Some beastly form to take, or earthly shape.
Jove (so she sung) was chang'd into a ram,
From whence the horns of Libyan Ammon came.
Bacchus a goat, Apollo was a crow,
Phaebe a cat; die wife of Jove a cow,
Whose hue was whiter than the falling snow.
Mercury to a nasty Ibis turn'd,
The change obscene, afraid of Typhon, mourn'd;
While Venus from a fish protection craves,
And once more plunges in her native waves.
She sung, and to her harp her voice apply'd;
Then us again to match her they defy'd.
But our poor song, perhaps, for you to hear,
Nor leisure serves, nor is it worth your ear.
That causeless doubt remove, O Muse rehearse,
The Goddess cry'd, your ever-grateful verse.
Beneath a chequer'd shade she takes her seat,
And bids the sister her whole song repeat.
The sister thus: Calliope we chose
For the performance. The sweet virgin rose,
With ivy crown'd she tunes her golden strings,
And to her harp this composition sings.
The Song of the Muses
First Ceres taught the lab'ring hind to plow
The pregnant Earth, and quickning seed to sow.
She first for Man did wholsome food provide,
And with just laws the wicked world supply'd:
All good from her deriv'd, to her belong
The grateful tri butes of the Muse's song.
Her more than worthy of our verse we deem,
Oh! were our verse more worthy of the theme.
Jove on the giant fair Trinacria hurl'd,
And with one bolt reveng'd his starry world.
Beneath her burning hills Tiphaeus lies,
And, strugling always, strives in vain to rise.
Down does Pelorus his right hand suppress
Tow'rd Latium, on the left Pachyne weighs.
His legs are under Lilybaeum spread,
And Aetna presses hard his horrid head.
On his broad back he there extended lies,
And vomits clouds of ashes to the skies.
Oft lab'ring with his load, at last he tires,
And spews out in revenge a flood of fires.
Mountains he struggles to o'erwhelm, and towns;
Earth's inmost bowels quake, and Nature groans.
His terrors reach the direful king of Hell;
He fears his throws will to the day reveal
The realms of night, and fright his trembling ghosts.
This to prevent, he quits the Stygian coasts,
In his black carr, by sooty horses drawn,
Fair Sicily he seeks, and dreads the dawn.
Around her plains he casts his eager eyes,
And ev'ry mountain to the bottom tries.
But when, in all the careful search, he saw
No cause of fear, no ill-suspected flaw;
Secure from harm, and wand'ring on at will,
Venus beheld him from her flow'ry hill:
When strait the dame her little Cupid prest
With secret rapture to her snowy breast,
And in these words the flutt'ring boy addrest.
O thou, my arms, my glory, and my pow'r,
My son, whom men, and deathless Gods adore;
Bend thy sure bow, whose arrows never miss'd,
No longer let Hell's king thy sway resist;
Take him, while stragling from his dark abodes
He coasts the kingdoms of superior Gods.
If sovereign Jove, if Gods who rule the waves,
And Neptune, who rules them, have been thy slaves;
Shall Hell be free? The tyrant strike, my son,
Enlarge thy mother's empire, and thy own.
Let not our Heav'n be made the mock of Hell,
But Pluto to confess thy pow'r compel.
Our rule is slighted in our native skies,
See Pallas, see Diana too defies
Thy darts, which Ceres' daughter wou'd despise.
She too our empire treats with aukward scorn;
Such insolence no longer's to be born.
Revenge our slighted reign, and with thy dart
Transfix the virgin's to the uncle's heart.
She said; and from his quiver strait he drew
A dart that surely wou'd the business do.
She guides his hand, she makes her touch the test,
And of a thousand arrows chose the best:
No feather better pois'd, a sharper head
None had, and sooner none, and surer sped.
He bends his bow, he draws it to his ear,
Thro' Pluto's heart it drives, and fixes there.
The Rape of Proserpine
Near Enna's walls a spacious lake is spread,
Fam'd for the sweetly-singing swans it bred;
Pergusa is its name: and never more
Were heard, or sweeter on Cayster's shore.
Woods crown the lake; and Phoebus ne'er invades
The tufted fences, or offends the shades:
Fresh fragrant breezes fan the verdant bow'rs,
And the moist ground smiles with enamel'd flow'rs
The chearful birds their airy carols sing,
And the whole year is one eternal spring.
Here, while young Proserpine, among the maids,
Diverts herself in these delicious shades;
While like a child with busy speed and care
She gathers lillies here, and vi'lets there;
While first to fill her little lap she strives,
Hell's grizly monarch at the shade arrives;
Sees her thus sporting on the flow'ry green,
And loves the blooming maid, as soon as seen.
His urgent flame impatient of delay,
Swift as his thought he seiz'd the beauteous prey,
And bore her in his sooty carr away.
The frighted Goddess to her mother cries,
But all in vain, for now far off she flies;
Far she behind her leaves her virgin train;
To them too cries, and cries to them in vain,
And, while with passion she repeats her call,
The vi'lets from her lap, and lillies fall:
She misses 'em, poor heart! and makes new moan;
Her lillies, ah! are lost, her vi'lets gone.
O'er hills, the ravisher, and vallies speeds,
By name encouraging his foamy steeds;
He rattles o'er their necks the rusty reins,
And ruffles with the stroke their shaggy manes.
O'er lakes he whirls his flying wheels, and comes
To the Palici breathing sulph'rous fumes.
And thence to where the Bacchiads of renown
Between unequal havens built their town;
Where Arethusa, round th' imprison'd sea,
Extends her crooked coast to Cyane;
The nymph who gave the neighb'ring lake a name,
Of all Sicilian nymphs the first in fame,
She from the waves advanc'd her beauteous head,
The Goddess knew, and thus to Pluto said:
Farther thou shalt not with the virgin run;
Ceres unwilling, canst thou be her son?
The maid shou'd be by sweet perswasion won.
Force suits not with the softness of the fair;
For, if great things with small I may compare,
Me Anapis once lov'd; a milder course
He took, and won me by his words, not force.
Then, stretching out her arms, she stopt his way;
But he, impatient of the shortest stay,
Throws to his dreadful steeds the slacken'd rein,
And strikes his iron sceptre thro' the main;
The depths profound thro' yielding waves he cleaves,
And to Hell's center a free passage leaves;
Down sinks his chariot, and his realms of night
The God soon reaches with a rapid flight.
Cyane dissolves to a Fountain
But still does Cyane the rape bemoan,
And with the Goddess' wrongs laments her own;
For the stoln maid, and for her injur'd spring,
Time to her trouble no relief can bring.
In her sad heart a heavy load she bears,
'Till the dumb sorrow turns her all to tears.
Her mingling waters with that fountain pass,
Of which she late immortal Goddess was;
Her varied members to a fluid melt,
A pliant softness in her bones is felt;
Her wavy locks first drop away in dew,
And liquid next her slender fingers grew.
The body's change soon seizes its extreme,
Her legs dissolve, and feet flow off in stream.
Her arms, her back, her shoulders, and her side,
Her swelling breasts in little currents glide,
A silver liquor only now remains
Within the channel of her purple veins;
Nothing to fill love's grasp; her husb and chaste
Bathes in that bosom he before embrac'd.
A Boy transform'd to an Eft
Thus, while thro' all the Earth, and all the main,
Her daughter mournful Ceres sought in vain;
Aurora, when with dewy looks she rose,
Nor burnish'd Vesper found her in repose,
At Aetna's flaming mouth two pitchy pines
To light her in her search at length she tines.
Restless, with these, thro' frosty night she goes,
Nor fears the cutting winds, nor heeds the snows;
And, when the morning-star the day renews,
From east to west her absent child pursues.
Thirsty at last by long fatigue she grows,
But meets no spring, no riv'let near her flows.
Then looking round, a lowly cottage spies,
Smoaking among the trees, and thither hies.
The Goddess knocking at the little door,
'Twas open'd by a woman old and poor,
Who, when she begg'd for water, gave her ale
Brew'd long, but well preserv'd from being stale.
The Goddess drank; a chuffy lad was by,
Who saw the liquor with a grutching eye,
And grinning cries, She's greedy more than dry.
Ceres, offended at his foul grimace,
Flung what she had not drunk into his face,
The sprinklings speckle where they hit the skin,
And a long tail does from his body spin;
His arms are turn'd to legs, and lest his size
Shou'd make him mischievous, and he might rise
Against mankind, diminutives his frame,
Less than a lizzard, but in shape the same.
Amaz'd the dame the wondrous sight beheld,
And weeps, and fain wou'd touch her quondam child.
Yet her approach th' affrighted vermin shuns,
And fast into the greatest crevice runs.
A name they gave him, which the spots exprest,
That rose like stars, and varied all his breast.
What lands, what seas the Goddess wander'd o'er,
Were long to tell; for there remain'd no more.
Searching all round, her fruitless toil she mourns,
And with regret to Sicily returns.
At length, where Cyane now flows, she came,
Who cou'd have told her, were she still the same
As when she saw her daughter sink to Hell;
But what she knows she wants a tongue to tell.
Yet this plain signal manifestly gave,
The virgin's girdle floating on a wave,
As late she dropt it from her slender waste,
When with her uncle thro' the deep she past.
Ceres the token by her grief confest,
And tore her golden hair, and beat her breast.
She knows not on what land her curse shou'd fall,
But, as ingrate, alike upbraids them all,
Unworthy of her gifts; Trinacria most,
Where the last steps she found of what she lost.
The plough for this the vengeful Goddess broke,
And with one death the ox, and owner struck,
In vain the fallow fields the peasant tills,
The seed, corrupted ere 'tis sown, she kills.
The fruitful soil, that once such harvests bore,
Now mocks the farmer's care, and teems no more.
And the rich grain which fills the furrow'd glade,
Rots in the seed, or shrivels in the blade;
Or too much sun burns up, or too much rain
Drowns, or black blights destroy the blasted plain;
Or greedy birds the new-sown seed devour,
Or darnel, thistles, and a crop impure
Of knotted grass along the acres stand,
And spread their thriving roots thro' all the land.
Then from the waves soft Arethusa rears
Her head, and back she flings her dropping hairs.
O mother of the maid, whom thou so far
Hast sought, of whom thou canst no tidings hear;
O thou, she cry'd, who art to life a friend,
Cease here thy search, and let thy labour end.
Thy faithful Sicily's a guiltless clime,
And shou'd not suffer for another's crime;
She neither knew, nor cou'd prevent the deed;
Nor think that for my country thus I plead;
My country's Pisa, I'm an alien here,
Yet these abodes to Elis I prefer,
No clime to me so sweet, no place so dear.
These springs I Arethusa now possess,
And this my seat, o gracious Goddess, bless:
This island why I love, and why I crost
Such spacious seas to reach Ortygia's coast,
To you I shall impart, when, void of care,
Your heart's at ease, and you're more fit to hear;
When on your brow no pressing sorrow sits,
For gay content alone such tales admits.
When thro' Earth's caverns I a-while have roul'd
My waves, I rise, and here again behold
The long-lost stars; and, as I late did glide
Near Styx, Proserpina there I espy'd.
Fear still with grief might in her face be seen;
She still her rape laments; yet, made a queen,
Beneath those gloomy shades her sceptre sways,
And ev'n th' infernal king her will obeys.
This heard, the Goddess like a statue stood,
Stupid with grief; and in that musing mood
Continu'd long; new cares a-while supprest
The reigning of her immortal breast.
At last to Jove her daughter's sire she flies,
And with her chariot cuts the chrystal skies;
She comes in clouds, and with dishevel'd hair,
Standing before his throne, prefers her pray'r.
King of the Gods, defend my blood and thine,
And use it not the worse for being mine.
If I no more am gracious in thy sight,
Be just, o Jove, and do thy daughter right.
In vain I sought her the wide world around,
And, when I most despair'd to find her, found.
But how can I the fatal finding boast,
By which I know she is for ever lost?
Without her father's aid, what other Pow'r
Can to my arms the ravish'd maid restore?
Let him restore her, I'll the crime forgive;
My child, tho' ravish'd, I'd with joy receive.
Pity, your daughter with a thief shou'd wed,
Tho' mine, you think, deserves no better bed.
Jove thus replies: It equally belongs
To both, to guard our common pledge from wrongs.
But if to things we proper names apply,
This hardly can be call'd an injury.
The theft is love; nor need we blush to own
The thief, if I can judge, to be our son.
Had you of his desert no other proof,
To be Jove's brother is methinks enough.
Nor was my throne by worth superior got,
Heav'n fell to me, as Hell to him, by lot:
If you are still resolv'd her loss to mourn,
And nothing less will serve than her return;
Upon these terms she may again be yours
(Th' irrevocable terms of fate, not ours),
Of Stygian food if she did never taste,
Hell's bounds may then, and only then, be past.
The Transformation of Ascalaphus into an Owl
The Goddess now, resolving to succeed,
Down to the gloomy shades descends with speed;
But adverse fate had otherwise decreed.
For, long before, her giddy thoughtless child
Had broke her fast, and all her projects spoil'd.
As in the garden's shady walk she stray'd,
A fair pomegranate charm'd the simple maid,
Hung in her way, and tempting her to taste,
She pluck'd the fruit, and took a short repast.
Seven times, a seed at once, she eat the food;
The fact Ascalaphus had only view'd;
Whom Acheron begot in Stygian shades
On Orphne, fam'd among Avernal maids;
He saw what past, and by discov'ring all,
Detain'd the ravish'd nymph in cruel thrall.
But now a queen, she with resentment heard,
And chang'd the vile informer to a bird.
In Phlegeton's black stream her hand she dips,
Sprinkles his head, and wets his babling lips.
Soon on his face, bedropt with magick dew,
A change appear'd, and gawdy feathers grew.
A crooked beak the place of nose supplies,
Rounder his head, and larger are his eyes.
His arms and body waste, but are supply'd
With yellow pinions flagging on each side.
His nails grow crooked, and are turn'd to claws,
And lazily along his heavy wings he draws.
Ill-omen'd in his form, the unlucky fowl,
Abhorr'd by men, and call'd a scrieching owl.
The Daughters of Achelous transform'd to Sirens
Justly this punishment was due to him,
And less had been too little for his crime;
But, o ye nymphs that from the flood descend,
What fault of yours the Gods cou'd so offend,
With wings and claws your beauteous forms to spoil,
Yet save your maiden face, and winning smile?
Were you not with her in Pergusa's bow'rs,
When Proserpine went forth to gather flow'rs?
Since Pluto in his carr the Goddess caught,
Have you not for her in each climate sought?
And when on land you long had search'd in vain,
You wish'd for wings to cross the pathless main;
That Earth and Sea might witness to your care:
The Gods were easy, and return'd your pray'r;
With golden wing o'er foamy waves you fled,
And to the sun your plumy glories spread.
But, lest the soft enchantment of your songs,
And the sweet musick of your flat'ring tongues
Shou'd quite be lost (as courteous fates ordain),
Your voice and virgin beauty still remain.
Jove some amends for Ceres lost to make,
Yet willing Pluto shou'd the joy partake,
Gives 'em of Proserpine an equal share,
Who, claim'd by both, with both divides the year.
The Goddess now in either empire sways,
Six moons in Hell, and six with Ceres stays.
Her peevish temper's chang'd; that sullen mind,
Which made ev'n Hell uneasy, now is kind,
Her voice refines, her mein more sweet appears,
Her forehead free from frowns, her eyes from tears,
As when, with golden light, the conqu'ring day
Thro' dusky exhalations clears a way.
Ceres her daughter's rape no longer mourn'd,
But back to Arethusa's spring return'd;
And sitting on the margin, bid her tell
From whence she came, and why a sacred well.
The Story of Arethusa
Still were the purling waters, and the maid
From the smooth surface rais'd her beauteous head,
Wipes off the drops that from her tresses ran,
And thus to tell Alpheus' loves began.
In Elis first I breath'd the living air,
The chase was all my pleasure, all my care.
None lov'd like me the forest to explore,
To pitch the toils, and drive the bristled boar.
Of fair, tho' masculine, I had the name,
But gladly wou'd to that have quitted claim:
It less my pride than indignation rais'd,
To hear the beauty I neglected, prais'd;
Such compliments I loath'd, such charms as these
I scorn'd, and thought it infamy to please.
Once, I remember, in the summer's heat,
Tir'd with the chase, I sought a cool retreat;
And, walking on, a silent current found,
Which gently glided o'er the grav'ly ground.
The chrystal water was so smooth, so clear,
My eye distinguish'd ev'ry pebble there.
So soft its motion, that I scarce perceiv'd
The running stream, or what I saw believ'd.
The hoary willow, and the poplar, made
Along the shelving bank a grateful shade.
In the cool rivulet my feet I dipt,
Then waded to the knee, and then I stript;
My robe I careless on an osier threw,
That near the place commodiously grew;
Nor long upon the border naked stood,
But plung'd with speed into the silver flood.
My arms a thousand ways I mov'd, and try'd
To quicken, if I cou'd, the lazy tide;
Where, while I play'd my swimming gambols o'er,
I heard a murm'ring voice, and frighted sprung to shore.
Oh! whither, Arethusa, dost thou fly?
From the brook's bottom did Alpheus cry;
Again, I heard him, in a hollow tone,
Oh! whither, Arethusa, dost thou run?
Naked I flew, nor cou'd I stay to hide
My limbs, my robe was on the other side;
Alpheus follow'd fast, th' inflaming sight
Quicken'd his speed, and made his labour light;
He sees me ready for his eager arms,
And with a greedy glance devours my charms.
As trembling doves from pressing danger fly,
When the fierce hawk comes sousing from the sky;
And, as fierce hawks the trembling doves pursue,
From him I fled, and after me he flew.
First by Orchomenus I took my flight,
And soon had Psophis and Cyllene in sight;
Behind me then high Maenalus I lost,
And craggy Erimanthus scal'd with frost;
Elis was next; thus far the ground I trod
With nimble feet, before the distanc'd God.
But here I lagg'd, unable to sustain
The labour longer, and my flight maintain;
While he more strong, more patient of the toil,
And fir'd with hopes of beauty's speedy spoil,
Gain'd my lost ground, and by redoubled pace,
Now left between us but a narrow space.
Unweary'd I 'till now o'er hills, and plains,
O'er rocks, and rivers ran, and felt no pains:
The sun behind me, and the God I kept,
But, when I fastest shou'd have run, I stept.
Before my feet his shadow now appear'd;
As what I saw, or rather what I fear'd.
Yet there I could not be deceiv'd by fear,
Who felt his breath pant on my braided hair,
And heard his sounding tread, and knew him to be near.
Tir'd, and despairing, O celestial maid,
I'm caught, I cry'd, without thy heav'nly aid.
Help me, Diana, help a nymph forlorn,
Devoted to the woods, who long has worn
Thy livery, and long thy quiver born.
The Goddess heard; my pious pray'r prevail'd;
In muffling clouds my virgin head was veil'd,
The am'rous God, deluded of his hopes,
Searches the gloom, and thro' the darkness gropes;
Twice, where Diana did her servant hide
He came, and twice, O Arethusa! cry'd.
How shaken was my soul, how sunk my heart!
The terror seiz'd on ev'ry trembling part.
Thus when the wolf about the mountain prowls
For prey, the lambkin hears his horrid howls:
The tim'rous hare, the pack approaching nigh,
Thus hearkens to the hounds, and trembles at the cry;
Nor dares she stir, for fear her scented breath
Direct the dogs, and guide the threaten'd death.
Alpheus in the cloud no traces found
To mark my way, yet stays to guard the ground,
The God so near, a chilly sweat possest
My fainting limbs, at ev'ry pore exprest;
My strength distill'd in drops, my hair in dew,
My form was chang'd, and all my substance new.
Each motion was a stream, and my whole frame
Turn'd to a fount, which still preserves my name.
Resolv'd I shou'd not his embrace escape,
Again the God resumes his fluid shape;
To mix his streams with mine he fondly tries,
But still Diana his attempt denies.
She cleaves the ground; thro' caverns dark I run
A diff'rent current, while he keeps his own.
To dear Ortygia she conducts my way,
And here I first review the welcome day.
Here Arethusa stopt; then Ceres takes
Her golden carr, and yokes her fiery snakes;
With a just rein, along mid-heaven she flies
O'er Earth, and seas, and cuts the yielding skies.
She halts at Athens, dropping like a star,
And to Triptolemus resigns her carr.
Parent of seed, she gave him fruitful grain,
And bad him teach to till and plough the plain;
The seed to sow, as well in fallow fields,
As where the soil manur'd a richer harvest yields.
The Transformation of Lyncus
The youth o'er Europe and o'er Asia drives,
'Till at the court of Lyncus he arrives.
The tyrant Scythia's barb'rous empire sway'd;
And, when he saw Triptolemus, he said,
How cam'st thou, stranger, to our court, and why?
Thy country, and thy name? The youth did thus reply:
Triptolemus my name; my country's known
O'er all the world, Minerva's fav'rite town,
Athens, the first of cities in renown.
By land I neither walk'd, nor sail'd by sea,
But hither thro' the Aether made my way.
By me, the Goddess who the fields befriends,
These gifts, the greatest of all blessings, sends.
The grain she gives if in your soil you sow,
Thence wholsom food in golden crops shall grow.
Soon as the secret to the king was known,
He grudg'd the glory of the service done,
And wickedly resolv'd to make it all his own.
To hide his purpose, he invites his guest,
The friend of Ceres, to a royal feast,
And when sweet sleep his heavy eyes had seiz'd,
The tyrant with his steel attempts his breast.
Him strait a lynx's shape the Goddess gives,
And home the youth her sacred dragons drives.
The Pierides transform'd to Magpies
The chosen Muse here ends her sacred lays;
The nymphs unanimous decree the bays,
And give the Heliconian Goddesses the praise.
Then, far from vain that we shou'd thus prevail,
But much provok'd to hear the vanquish'd rail,
Calliope resumes: Too long we've born
Your daring taunts, and your affronting scorn;
Your challenge justly merited a curse,
And this unmanner'd railing makes it worse.
Since you refuse us calmly to enjoy
Our patience, next our passions we'll employ;
The dictates of a mind enrag'd pursue,
And, what our just resentment bids us, do.
The railers laugh, our threats and wrath despise,
And clap their hands, and make a scolding noise:
But in the fact they're seiz'd; beneath their nails
Feathers they feel, and on their faces scales;
Their horny beaks at once each other scare,
Their arms are plum'd, and on their backs they bear
Py'd wings, and flutter in the fleeting air.
Chatt'ring, the scandal of the woods they fly,
And there continue still their clam'rous cry:
The same their eloquence, as maids, or birds,
Now only noise, and nothing then but words.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
~ Ovid, BOOK THE FIFTH
,#NFDB
1246:BOOK THE ELEVENTH
The Death of Orpheus
Here, while the Thracian bard's enchanting strain
Sooths beasts, and woods, and all the listn'ing plain,
The female Bacchanals, devoutly mad,
In shaggy skins, like savage creatures, clad,
Warbling in air perceiv'd his lovely lay,
And from a rising ground beheld him play.
When one, the wildest, with dishevel'd hair,
That loosely stream'd, and ruffled in the air;
Soon as her frantick eye the lyrist spy'd,
See, see! the hater of our sex, she cry'd.
Then at his face her missive javelin sent,
Which whiz'd along, and brusht him as it went;
But the soft wreathes of ivy twisted round,
Prevent a deep impression of the wound.
Another, for a weapon, hurls a stone,
Which, by the sound subdu'd as soon as thrown,
Falls at his feet, and with a seeming sense
Implores his pardon for its late offence.
But now their frantick rage unbounded grows,
Turns all to madness, and no measure knows:
Yet this the charms of musick might subdue,
But that, with all its charms, is conquer'd too;
In louder strains their hideous yellings rise,
And squeaking horn-pipes eccho thro' the skies,
Which, in hoarse consort with the drum, confound
The moving lyre, and ev'ry gentle sound:
Then 'twas the deafen'd stones flew on with speed,
And saw, unsooth'd, their tuneful poet bleed.
The birds, the beasts, and all the savage crew
Which the sweet lyrist to attention drew,
Now, by the female mob's more furious rage,
Are driv'n, and forc'd to quit the shady stage.
Next their fierce hands the bard himself assail,
Nor can his song against their wrath prevail:
They flock, like birds, when in a clustring flight,
By day they chase the boding fowl of night.
So crowded amphitheatres survey
The stag, to greedy dogs a future prey.
Their steely javelins, which soft curls entwine
Of budding tendrils from the leafy vine,
For sacred rites of mild religion made,
Are flung promiscuous at the poet's head.
Those clods of earth or flints discharge, and these
Hurl prickly branches sliver'd from the trees.
And, lest their passion shou'd be unsupply'd,
The rabble crew, by chance, at distance spy'd
Where oxen, straining at the heavy yoke,
The fallow'd field with slow advances broke;
Nigh which the brawny peasants dug the soil,
Procuring food with long laborious toil.
These, when they saw the ranting throng draw near,
Quitted their tools, and fled, possest with fear.
Long spades, and rakes of mighty size were found,
Carelesly left upon the broken ground.
With these the furious lunaticks engage,
And first the lab'ring oxen feel their rage;
Then to the poet they return with speed,
Whose fate was, past prevention, now decreed:
In vain he lifts his suppliant hands, in vain
He tries, before, his never-failing strain.
And, from those sacred lips, whose thrilling sound
Fierce tygers, and insensate rocks cou'd wound,
Ah Gods! how moving was the mournful sight!
To see the fleeting soul now take its flight.
Thee the soft warblers of the feather'd kind
Bewail'd; for thee thy savage audience pin'd;
Those rocks and woods that oft thy strain had led,
Mourn for their charmer, and lament him dead;
And drooping trees their leafy glories shed.
Naids and Dryads with dishevel'd hair
Promiscuous weep, and scarfs of sable wear;
Nor cou'd the river-Gods conceal their moan,
But with new floods of tears augment their own.
His mangled limbs lay scatter'd all around,
His head, and harp a better fortune found;
In Hebrus' streams they gently roul'd along,
And sooth'd the waters with a mournful song.
Soft deadly notes the lifeless tongue inspire,
A doleful tune sounds from the floating lyre;
The hollows banks in solemn consort mourn,
And the sad strain in ecchoing groans return.
Now with the current to the sea they glide,
Born by the billows of the briny tide;
And driv'n where waves round rocky Lesbos roar,
They strand, and lodge upon Methymna's shore.
But here, when landed on the foreign soil,
A venom'd snake, the product of the isle
Attempts the head, and sacred locks embru'd
With clotted gore, and still fresh-dropping blood.
Phoebus, at last, his kind protection gives,
And from the fact the greedy monster drives:
Whose marbled jaws his impious crime atone,
Still grinning ghastly, tho' transform'd to stone.
His ghost flies downward to the Stygian shore,
And knows the places it had seen before:
Among the shadows of the pious train
He finds Eurydice, and loves again;
With pleasure views the beauteous phantom's charms,
And clasps her in his unsubstantial arms.
There side by side they unmolested walk,
Or pass their blissful hours in pleasing talk;
Aft or before the bard securely goes,
And, without danger, can review his spouse.
The Thracian Women transform'd to Trees
Bacchus, resolving to revenge the wrong,
Of Orpheus murder'd, on the madding throng,
Decreed that each accomplice dame should stand
Fix'd by the roots along the conscious land.
Their wicked feet, that late so nimbly ran
To wreak their malice on the guiltless man,
Sudden with twisted ligatures were bound,
Like trees, deep planted in the turfy ground.
And, as the fowler with his subtle gins,
His feather'd captives by the feet entwines,
That flutt'ring pant, and struggle to get loose,
Yet only closer draw the fatal noose;
So these were caught; and, as they strove in vain
To quit the place, they but encreas'd their pain.
They flounce and toil, yet find themselves controul'd;
The root, tho' pliant, toughly keeps its hold.
In vain their toes and feet they look to find,
For ev'n their shapely legs are cloath'd with rind.
One smites her thighs with a lamenting stroke,
And finds the flesh transform'd to solid oak;
Another, with surprize, and grief distrest,
Lays on above, but beats a wooden breast.
A rugged bark their softer neck invades,
Their branching arms shoot up delightful shades;
At once they seem, and are, a real grove,
With mossy trunks below, and verdant leaves above.
The Fable of Midas
Nor this suffic'd; the God's disgust remains,
And he resolves to quit their hated plains;
The vineyards of Tymole ingross his care,
And, with a better choir, he fixes there;
Where the smooth streams of clear Pactolus roll'd,
Then undistinguish'd for its sands of gold.
The satyrs with the nymphs, his usual throng,
Come to salute their God, and jovial danc'd along.
Silenus only miss'd; for while he reel'd,
Feeble with age, and wine, about the field,
The hoary drunkard had forgot his way,
And to the Phrygian clowns became a prey;
Who to king Midas drag the captive God,
While on his totty pate the wreaths of ivy nod.
Midas from Orpheus had been taught his lore,
And knew the rites of Bacchus long before.
He, when he saw his venerable guest,
In honour of the God ordain'd a feast.
Ten days in course, with each continu'd night,
Were spent in genial mirth, and brisk delight:
Then on th' eleventh, when with brighter ray
Phosphor had chac'd the fading stars away,
The king thro' Lydia's fields young Bacchus sought,
And to the God his foster-father brought.
Pleas'd with the welcome sight, he bids him soon
But name his wish, and swears to grant the boon.
A glorious offer! yet but ill bestow'd
On him whose choice so little judgment show'd.
Give me, says he (nor thought he ask'd too much),
That with my body whatsoe'er I touch,
Chang'd from the nature which it held of old,
May be converted into yellow gold.
He had his wish; but yet the God repin'd,
To think the fool no better wish could find.
But the brave king departed from the place,
With smiles of gladness sparkling in his face:
Nor could contain, but, as he took his way,
Impatient longs to make the first essay.
Down from a lowly branch a twig he drew,
The twig strait glitter'd with a golden hue:
He takes a stone, the stone was turn'd to gold;
A clod he touches, and the crumbling mold
Acknowledg'd soon the great transforming pow'r,
In weight and substance like a mass of ore.
He pluck'd the corn, and strait his grasp appears
Fill'd with a bending tuft of golden ears.
An apple next he takes, and seems to hold
The bright Hesperian vegetable gold.
His hand he careless on a pillar lays.
With shining gold the fluted pillars blaze:
And while he washes, as the servants pour,
His touch converts the stream to Danae's show'r.
To see these miracles so finely wrought,
Fires with transporting joy his giddy thought.
The ready slaves prepare a sumptuous board,
Spread with rich dainties for their happy lord;
Whose pow'rful hands the bread no sooner hold,
But its whole substance is transform'd to gold:
Up to his mouth he lifts the sav'ry meat,
Which turns to gold as he attempts to eat:
His patron's noble juice of purple hue,
Touch'd by his lips, a gilded cordial grew;
Unfit for drink, and wondrous to behold,
It trickles from his jaws a fluid gold.
The rich poor fool, confounded with surprize,
Starving in all his various plenty lies:
Sick of his wish, he now detests the pow'r,
For which he ask'd so earnestly before;
Amidst his gold with pinching famine curst;
And justly tortur'd with an equal thirst.
At last his shining arms to Heav'n he rears,
And in distress, for refuge, flies to pray'rs.
O father Bacchus, I have sinn'd, he cry'd,
And foolishly thy gracious gift apply'd;
Thy pity now, repenting, I implore;
Oh! may I feel the golden plague no more.
The hungry wretch, his folly thus confest,
Touch'd the kind deity's good-natur'd breast;
The gentle God annull'd his first decree,
And from the cruel compact set him free.
But then, to cleanse him quite from further harm,
And to dilute the relicks of the charm,
He bids him seek the stream that cuts the land
Nigh where the tow'rs of Lydian Sardis stand;
Then trace the river to the fountain head,
And meet it rising from its rocky bed;
There, as the bubling tide pours forth amain,
To plunge his body in, and wash away the stain.
The king instructed to the fount retires,
But with the golden charm the stream inspires:
For while this quality the man forsakes,
An equal pow'r the limpid water takes;
Informs with veins of gold the neighb'ring land,
And glides along a bed of golden sand.
Now loathing wealth, th' occasion of his woes,
Far in the woods he sought a calm repose;
In caves and grottos, where the nymphs resort,
And keep with mountain Pan their sylvan court.
Ah! had he left his stupid soul behind!
But his condition alter'd not his mind.
For where high Tmolus rears his shady brow,
And from his cliffs surveys the seas below,
In his descent, by Sardis bounded here,
By the small confines of Hypaepa there,
Pan to the nymphs his frolick ditties play'd,
Tuning his reeds beneath the chequer'd shade.
The nymphs are pleas'd, the boasting sylvan plays,
And speaks with slight of great Apollo's lays.
Tmolus was arbiter; the boaster still
Accepts the tryal with unequal skill.
The venerable judge was seated high
On his own hill, that seem'd to touch the sky.
Above the whisp'ring trees his head he rears,
From their encumbring boughs to free his ears;
A wreath of oak alone his temples bound,
The pendant acorns loosely dangled round.
In me your judge, says he, there's no delay:
Then bids the goatherd God begin, and play.
Pan tun'd the pipe, and with his rural song
Pleas'd the low taste of all the vulgar throng;
Such songs a vulgar judgment mostly please,
Midas was there, and Midas judg'd with these.
The mountain sire with grave deportment now
To Phoebus turns his venerable brow:
And, as he turns, with him the listning wood
In the same posture of attention stood.
The God his own Parnassian laurel crown'd,
And in a wreath his golden tresses bound,
Graceful his purple mantle swept the ground.
High on the left his iv'ry lute he rais'd,
The lute, emboss'd with glitt'ring jewels, blaz'd
In his right hand he nicely held the quill,
His easy posture spoke a master's skill.
The strings he touch'd with more than human art,
Which pleas'd the judge's ear, and sooth'd his heart;
Who soon judiciously the palm decreed,
And to the lute postpon'd the squeaking reed.
All, with applause, the rightful sentence heard,
Midas alone dissatisfy'd appear'd;
To him unjustly giv'n the judgment seems,
For Pan's barbarick notes he most esteems.
The lyrick God, who thought his untun'd ear
Deserv'd but ill a human form to wear,
Of that deprives him, and supplies the place
With some more fit, and of an ampler space:
Fix'd on his noddle an unseemly pair,
Flagging, and large, and full of whitish hair;
Without a total change from what he was,
Still in the man preserves the simple ass.
He, to conceal the scandal of the deed,
A purple turbant folds about his head;
Veils the reproach from publick view, and fears
The laughing world would spy his monstrous ears.
One trusty barber-slave, that us'd to dress
His master's hair, when leng then'd to excess,
The mighty secret knew, but knew alone,
And, tho' impatient, durst not make it known.
Restless, at last, a private place he found,
Then dug a hole, and told it to the ground;
In a low whisper he reveal'd the case,
And cover'd in the earth, and silent left the place.
In time, of trembling reeds a plenteous crop
From the confided furrow sprouted up;
Which, high advancing with the ripening year,
Made known the tiller, and his fruitless care:
For then the rustling blades, and whisp'ring wind,
To tell th' important secret, both combin'd.
The Building of Troy
Phoebus, with full revenge, from Tmolus flies,
Darts thro' the air, and cleaves the liquid skies;
Near Hellespont he lights, and treads the plains
Where great Laomedon sole monarch reigns;
Where, built between the two projecting strands,
To Panomphaean Jove an altar stands.
Here first aspiring thoughts the king employ,
To found the lofty tow'rs of future Troy.
The work, from schemes magnificent begun,
At vast expence was slowly carry'd on:
Which Phoebus seeing, with the trident God
Who rules the swelling surges with his nod,
Assuming each a mortal shape, combine
At a set price to finish his design.
The work was built; the king their price denies,
And his injustice backs with perjuries.
This Neptune cou'd not brook, but drove the main,
A mighty deluge, o'er the Phrygian plain:
'Twas all a sea; the waters of the deep
From ev'ry vale the copious harvest sweep;
The briny billows overflow the soil,
Ravage the fields, and mock the plowman's toil.
Nor this appeas'd the God's revengeful mind,
For still a greater plague remains behind;
A huge sea-monster lodges on the sands,
And the king's daughter for his prey demands.
To him that sav'd the damsel, was decreed
A set of horses of the Sun's fine breed:
But when Alcides from the rock unty'd
The trembling fair, the ransom was deny'd.
He, in revenge, the new-built walls attack'd,
And the twice-perjur'd city bravely sack'd.
Telamon aided, and in justice shar'd
Part of the plunder as his due reward:
The princess, rescu'd late, with all her charms,
Hesione, was yielded to his arms;
For Peleus, with a Goddess-bride, was more
Proud of his spouse, than of his birth before:
Grandsons to Jove there might be more than one,
But he the Goddess had enjoy'd alone.
The Story of Thetis and Peleus
For Proteus thus to virgin Thetis said,
Fair Goddess of the waves, consent to wed,
And take some spritely lover to your bed.
A son you'll have, the terror of the field,
To whom in fame, and pow'r his sire shall yield.
Jove, who ador'd the nymph with boundless love,
Did from his breast the dangerous flame remove.
He knew the Fates, nor car'd to raise up one,
Whose fame and greatness should eclipse his own,
On happy Peleus he bestow'd her charms,
And bless'd his grandson in the Goddess' arms:
A silent creek Thessalia's coast can show;
Two arms project, and shape it like a bow;
'Twould make a bay, but the transparent tide
Does scarce the yellow-gravell'd bottom hide;
For the quick eye may thro' the liquid wave
A firm unweedy level beach perceive.
A grove of fragrant myrtle near it grows,
Whose boughs, tho' thick, a beauteous grot disclose;
The well-wrought fabrick, to discerning eyes,
Rather by art than Nature seems to rise.
A bridled dolphin oft fair Thetis bore
To this her lov'd retreat, her fav'rite shore.
Here Peleus seiz'd her, slumbring while she lay,
And urg'd his suit with all that love could say:
But when he found her obstinately coy,
Resolv'd to force her, and comm and the joy;
The nymph, o'erpowr'd, to art for succour flies
And various shapes the eager youth surprize:
A bird she seems, but plies her wings in vain,
His hands the fleeting substance still detain:
A branchy tree high in the air she grew;
About its bark his nimble arms he threw:
A tyger next she glares with flaming eyes;
The frighten'd lover quits his hold, and flies:
The sea-Gods he with sacred rites adores,
Then a libation on the ocean pours;
While the fat entrails crackle in the fire,
And sheets of smoak in sweet perfume aspire;
'Till Proteus rising from his oozy bed,
Thus to the poor desponding lover said:
No more in anxious thoughts your mind employ,
For yet you shall possess the dear expected joy.
You must once more th' unwary nymph surprize,
As in her cooly grot she slumbring lies;
Then bind her fast with unrelenting hands,
And strain her tender limbs with knotted bands.
Still hold her under ev'ry different shape,
'Till tir'd she tries no longer to escape.
Thus he: then sunk beneath the glassy flood,
And broken accents flutter'd, where he stood.
Bright Sol had almost now his journey done,
And down the steepy western convex run;
When the fair Nereid left the briny wave,
And, as she us'd, retreated to her cave.
He scarce had bound her fast, when she arose,
And into various shapes her body throws:
She went to move her arms, and found 'em ty'd;
Then with a sigh, Some God assists ye, cry'd,
And in her proper shape stood blushing by his side.
About her waiste his longing arms he flung,
From which embrace the great Achilles sprung.
The Transformation of Daedalion
Peleus unmix'd felicity enjoy'd
(Blest in a valiant son, and virtuous bride),
'Till Fortune did in blood his hands imbrue,
And his own brother by curst chance he slew:
Then driv'n from Thessaly, his native clime,
Trachinia first gave shelter to his crime;
Where peaceful Ceyx mildly fill'd the throne,
And like his sire, the morning planet, shone;
But now, unlike himself, bedew'd with tears,
Mourning a brother lost, his brow appears.
First to the town with travel spent, and care,
Peleus, and his small company repair:
His herds, and flocks the while at leisure feed,
On the rich pasture of a neighb'ring mead.
The prince before the royal presence brought,
Shew'd by the suppliant olive what he sought;
Then tells his name, and race, and country right,
But hides th' unhappy reason of his flight.
He begs the king some little town to give,
Where they may safe his faithful vassals live.
Ceyx reply'd: To all my bounty flows,
A hospitable realm your suit has chose.
Your glorious race, and far-resounding fame,
And grandsire Jove, peculiar favours claim.
All you can wish, I grant; entreaties spare;
My kingdom (would 'twere worth the sharing) share.
Tears stop'd his speech: astonish'd Peleus pleads
To know the cause from whence his grief proceeds.
The prince reply'd: There's none of ye but deems
This hawk was ever such as now it seems;
Know 'twas a heroe once, Daedalion nam'd,
For warlike deeds, and haughty valour fam'd;
Like me to that bright luminary born,
Who wakes Aurora, and brings on the morn.
His fierceness still remains, and love of blood,
Now dread of birds, and tyrant of the wood.
My make was softer, peace my greatest care;
But this my brother wholly bent on war;
Late nations fear'd, and routed armies fled
That force, which now the tim'rous pigeons dread.
A daughter he possess'd, divinely fair,
And scarcely yet had seen her fifteenth year;
Young Chione: a thousand rivals strove
To win the maid, and teach her how to love.
Phoebus, and Mercury by chance one day
From Delphi, and Cyllene past this way;
Together they the virgin saw: desire
At once warm'd both their breasts with am'rous fire.
Phoebus resolv'd to wait 'till close of day;
But Mercury's hot love brook'd no delay;
With his entrancing rod the maid he charms,
And unresisted revels in her arms.
'Twas night, and Phoebus in a beldam's dress,
To the late rifled beauty got access.
Her time compleat nine circling moons had run;
To either God she bore a lovely son:
To Mercury Autolycus she brought,
Who turn'd to thefts and tricks his subtle thought;
Possess'd he was of all his father's slight,
At will made white look black, and black look white.
Philammon born to Phoebus, like his sire,
The Muses lov'd, and finely struck the lyre,
And made his voice, and touch in harmony conspire.
In vain, fond maid, you boast this double birth,
The love of Gods, and royal father's worth,
And Jove among your ancestors rehearse!
Could blessings such as these e'er prove a curse?
To her they did, who with audacious pride,
Vain of her own, Diana's charms decry'd.
Her taunts the Goddess with resentment fill;
My face you like not, you shall try my skill.
She said; and strait her vengeful bow she strung,
And sent a shaft that pierc'd her guilty tongue:
The bleeding tongue in vain its accents tries;
In the red stream her soul reluctant flies.
With sorrow wild I ran to her relief,
And try'd to moderate my brother's grief.
He, deaf as rocks by stormy surges beat,
Loudly laments, and hears me not intreat.
When on the fun'ral pile he saw her laid,
Thrice he to rush into the flames assay'd,
Thrice with officious care by us was stay'd.
Now, mad with grief, away he fled amain,
Like a stung heifer that resents the pain,
And bellowing wildly bounds along the plain.
O'er the most rugged ways so fast he ran,
He seem'd a bird already, not a man:
He left us breathless all behind; and now
In quest of death had gain'd Parnassus' brow:
But when from thence headlong himself he threw,
He fell not, but with airy pinions flew.
Phoebus in pity chang'd him to a fowl,
Whose crooked beak and claws the birds controul,
Little of bulk, but of a warlike soul.
A hawk become, the feather'd race's foe,
He tries to case his own by other's woe.
A Wolf turn'd into Marble
While they astonish'd heard the king relate
These wonders of his hapless brother's fate;
The prince's herdsman at the court arrives,
And fresh surprize to all the audience gives.
O Peleus, Peleus! dreadful news I bear,
He said; and trembled as he spoke for fear.
The worst, affrighted Peleus bid him tell,
Whilst Ceyx too grew pale with friendly zeal.
Thus he began: When Sol mid-heav'n had gain'd,
And half his way was past, and half remain'd,
I to the level shore my cattle drove,
And let them freely in the meadows rove.
Some stretch'd at length admire the watry plain,
Some crop'd the herb, some wanton swam the main.
A temple stands of antique make hard by,
Where no gilt domes, nor marble lure the eye;
Unpolish'd rafters bear its lowly height,
Hid by a grove, as ancient, from the sight.
Here Nereus, and the Nereids they adore;
I learnt it from the man who thither bore
His net, to dry it on the sunny shore.
Adjoyns a lake, inclos'd with willows round,
Where swelling waves have overflow'd the mound,
And, muddy, stagnate on the lower ground.
From thence a russling noise increasing flies,
Strikes the still shore; and frights us with surprize,
Strait a huge wolf rush'd from the marshy wood,
His jaws besmear'd with mingled foam, and blood,
Tho' equally by hunger urg'd, and rage,
His appetite he minds not to asswage;
Nought that he meets, his rabid fury spares,
But the whole herd with mad disorder tears.
Some of our men who strove to drive him thence,
Torn by his teeth, have dy'd in their defence.
The echoing lakes, the sea, and fields, and shore,
Impurpled blush with streams of reeking gore.
Delay is loss, nor have we time for thought;
While yet some few remain alive, we ought
To seize our arms, and with confederate force
Try if we so can stop his bloody course.
But Peleus car'd not for his ruin'd herd;
His crime he call'd to mind, and thence inferr'd,
That Psamathe's revenge this havock made,
In sacrifice to murder'd Phocus' shade.
The king commands his servants to their arms;
Resolv'd to go; but the loud noise alarms
His lovely queen, who from her chamber flew,
And her half-plaited hair behind her threw:
About his neck she hung with loving fears,
And now with words, and now with pleading tears,
Intreated that he'd send his men alone,
And stay himself, to save two lives in one.
Then Peleus: Your just fears, o queen, forget;
Too much the offer leaves me in your debt.
No arms against the monster I shall bear,
But the sea nymphs appease with humble pray'r.
The citadel's high turrets pierce the sky,
Which home-bound vessels, glad, from far descry;
This they ascend, and thence with sorrow ken
The mangled heifers lye, and bleeding men;
Th' inexorable ravager they view,
With blood discolour'd, still the rest pursue:
There Peleus pray'd submissive tow'rds the sea,
And deprecates the ire of injur'd Psamathe.
But deaf to all his pray'rs the nymph remain'd,
'Till Thetis for her spouse the boon obtain'd.
Pleas'd with the luxury, the furious beast,
Unstop'd, continues still his bloody feast:
While yet upon a sturdy bull he flew,
Chang'd by the nymph, a marble block he grew.
No longer dreadful now the wolf appears,
Bury'd in stone, and vanish'd like their fears.
Yet still the Fates unhappy Peleus vex'd;
To the Magnesian shore he wanders next.
Acastus there, who rul'd the peaceful clime,
Grants his request, and expiates his crime.
The Story of Ceyx and Alcyone
These prodigies affect the pious prince,
But more perplex'd with those that happen'd since,
He purposes to seek the Clarian God,
Avoiding Delphi, his more fam'd abode,
Since Phlegyan robbers made unsafe the road.
Yet could he not from her he lov'd so well,
The fatal voyage, he resolv'd, conceal;
But when she saw her lord prepar'd to part,
A deadly cold ran shiv'ring to her heart;
Her faded cheeks are chang'd to boxen hue,
And in her eyes the tears are ever new.
She thrice essay'd to speak; her accents hung,
And falt'ring dy'd unfinish'd on her tongue,
And vanish'd into sighs: with long delay
Her voice return'd, and found the wonted way.
Tell me, my lord, she said, what fault unknown
Thy once belov'd Alcyone has done?
Whither, ah, whither, is thy kindness gone!
Can Ceyx then sustain to leave his wife,
And unconcern'd forsake the sweets of life?
What can thy mind to this long journey move?
Or need'st thou absence to renew thy love?
Yet, if thou go'st by land, tho' grief possess
My soul ev'n then, my fears will be the less.
But ah! be warn'd to shun the watry way,
The face is frightful of the stormy sea:
For late I saw a-drift disjointed planks,
And empty tombs erected on the banks.
Nor let false hopes to trust betray thy mind,
Because my sire in caves constrains the wind,
Can with a breath their clam'rous rage appease,
They fear his whistle, and forsake the seas:
Not so; for once indulg'd, they sweep the main;
Deaf to the call, or hearing, hear in vain;
But bent on mischief bear the waves before,
And not content with seas, insult the shore,
When ocean, air, and Earth, at once ingage,
And rooted forests fly before their rage:
At once the clashing clouds to battel move,
And lightnings run across the fields above:
I know them well, and mark'd their rude comport,
While yet a child within my father's court:
In times of tempest they comm and alone,
And he but sits precarious on the throne:
The more I know, the more my fears augment;
And fears are oft prophetick of th' event.
But if not fears, or reasons will prevail,
If Fate has fix'd thee obstinate to sail,
Go not without thy wife, but let me bear
My part of danger with an equal share,
And present, what I suffer only fear:
Then o'er the bounding billows shall we fly,
Secure to live together, or to die.
These reasons mov'd her warlike husband's heart,
But still he held his purpose to depart:
For as he lov'd her equal to his life,
He would not to the seas expose his wife;
Nor could be wrought his voyage to refrain,
But sought by arguments to sooth her pain:
Nor these avail'd; at length he lights on one,
With which so difficult a cause he won:
My love, so short an absence cease to fear,
For by my father's holy flame I swear,
Before two moons their orb with light adorn,
If Heav'n allow me life, I will return.
This promise of so short a stay prevails;
He soon equips the ship, supplies the sails,
And gives the word to launch; she trembling views
This pomp of death, and parting tears renews:
Last with a kiss, she took a long farewel,
Sigh'd with a sad presage, and swooning fell:
While Ceyx seeks delays, the lusty crew,
Rais'd on their banks, their oars in order drew
To their broad breasts, the ship with fury flew.
The queen recover'd, rears her humid eyes,
And first her husb and on the poop espies,
Shaking his hand at distance on the main;
She took the sign, and shook her hand again.
Still as the ground recedes, contracts her view
With sharpen'd sight, 'till she no longer knew
The much-lov'd face; that comfort lost supplies
With less, and with the galley feeds her eyes;
The galley born from view by rising gales,
She follow'd with her sight the flying sails:
When ev'n the flying sails were seen no more,
Forsaken of all sight she left the shore.
Then on her bridal bed her body throws,
And sought in sleep her wearied eyes to close:
Her husband's pillow, and the widow'd part
Which once he press'd, renew'd the former smart.
And now a breeze from shoar began to blow,
The sailors ship their oars, and cease to row;
Then hoist their yards a-trip, and all their sails
Let fall, to court the wind, and catch the gales:
By this the vessel half her course had run,
Both shoars were lost to sight, when at the close
Of day a stiffer gale at east arose:
The sea grew white, the rouling waves from far,
Like heralds, first denounce the watry war.
This seen, the master soon began to cry,
Strike, strike the top-sail; let the main-sheet fly,
And furl your sails: the winds repel the sound,
And in the speaker's mouth the speech is drown'd.
Yet of their own accord, as danger taught
Each in his way, officiously they wrought;
Some stow their oars, or stop the leaky sides,
Another bolder, yet the yard bestrides,
And folds the sails; a fourth with labour laves
Th' intruding seas, and waves ejects on waves.
In this confusion while their work they ply,
The winds augment the winter of the sky,
And wage intestine wars; the suff'ring seas
Are toss'd, and mingled, as their tyrants please.
The master would command, but in despair
Of safety, stands amaz'd with stupid care,
Nor what to bid, or what forbid he knows,
Th' ungovern'd tempest to such fury grows:
Vain is his force, and vainer is his skill;
With such a concourse comes the flood of ill;
The cries of men are mix'd with rattling shrowds;
Seas dash on seas, and clouds encounter clouds:
At once from east to west, from pole to pole,
The forky lightnings flash, the roaring thunders roul.
Now waves on waves ascending scale the skies,
And in the fires above the water fries:
When yellow sands are sifted from below,
The glittering billows give a golden show:
And when the fouler bottom spews the black
The Stygian dye the tainted waters take:
Then frothy white appear the flatted seas,
And change their colour, changing their disease,
Like various fits the Trachin vessel finds,
And now sublime, she rides upon the winds;
As from a lofty summit looks from high,
And from the clouds beholds the nether sky;
Now from the depth of Hell they lift their sight,
And at a distance see superior light;
The lashing billows make a loud report,
And beat her sides, as batt'ring rams a fort:
Or as a lion bounding in his way,
With force augmented, bears against his prey,
Sidelong to seize; or unapal'd with fear,
Springs on the toils, and rushes on the spear:
So seas impell'd by winds, with added pow'r
Assault the sides, and o'er the hatches tow'r.
The planks (their pitchy cov'ring wash'd away)
Now yield; and now a yawning breach display:
The roaring waters with a hostile tide
Rush through the ruins of her gaping side.
Mean-time in sheets of rain the sky descends,
And ocean swell'd with waters upwards tends;
One rising, falling one, the Heav'ns and sea
Meet at their confines, in the middle way:
The sails are drunk with show'rs, and drop with rain,
Sweet waters mingle with the briny main.
No star appears to lend his friendly light;
Darkness, and tempest make a double night;
But flashing fires disclose the deep by turns,
And while the lightnings blaze, the water burns.
Now all the waves their scatter'd force unite,
And as a soldier foremost in the fight,
Makes way for others, and an host alone
Still presses on, and urging gains the town;
So while th' invading billows come a-breast,
The hero tenth advanc'd before the rest,
Sweeps all before him with impetuous sway,
And from the walls descends upon the prey;
Part following enter, part remain without,
With envy hear their fellows' conqu'ring shout,
And mount on others' backs, in hopes to share
The city, thus become the seat of war.
An universal cry resounds aloud,
The sailors run in heaps, a helpless crowd;
Art fails, and courage falls, no succour near;
As many waves, as many deaths appear.
One weeps, and yet despairs of late relief;
One cannot weep, his fears congeal his grief,
But stupid, with dry eyes expects his fate:
One with loud shrieks laments his lost estate,
And calls those happy whom their fun'rals wait.
This wretch with pray'rs and vows the Gods implores,
And ev'n the skies he cannot see, adores.
That other on his friends his thoughts bestows,
His careful father, and his faithful spouse.
The covetous worldling in his anxious mind,
Thinks only on the wealth he left behind.
All Ceyx his Alcyone employs,
For her he grieves, yet in her absence joys:
His wife he wishes, and would still be near,
Not her with him, but wishes him with her:
Now with last looks he seeks his native shoar,
Which Fate has destin'd him to see no more;
He sought, but in the dark tempestuous night
He knew not whither to direct his sight.
So whirl the seas, such darkness blinds the sky,
That the black night receives a deeper dye.
The giddy ship ran round; the tempest tore
Her mast, and over-board the rudder bore.
One billow mounts, and with a scornful brow,
Proud of her conquest gain'd, insults the waves below;
Nor lighter falls, than if some giant tore
Pindus and Athos with the freight they bore,
And toss'd on seas; press'd with the pond'rous blow,
Down sinks the ship within th' abyss below:
Down with the vessel sink into the main
The many, never more to rise again.
Some few on scatter'd planks, with fruitless care,
Lay hold, and swim; but while they swim, despair.
Ev'n he who late a scepter did command,
Now grasps a floating fragment in his hand;
And while he struggles on the stormy main,
Invokes his father, and his wife's, in vain.
But yet his consort is his greatest care,
Alcyone he names amidst his pray'r;
Names as a charm against the waves and wind;
Most in his mouth, and ever in his mind.
Tir'd with his toil, all hopes of safety past,
From pray'rs to wishes he descends at last;
That his dead body, wafted to the sands,
Might have its burial from her friendly hands,
As oft as he can catch a gulp of air,
And peep above the seas, he names the fair;
And ev'n when plung'd beneath, on her he raves,
Murm'ring Alcyone below the waves:
At last a falling billow stops his breath,
Breaks o'er his head, and whelms him underneath.
That night, his heav'nly form obscur'd with tears,
And since he was forbid to leave the skies,
He muffled with a cloud his mournful eyes.
Mean-time Alcyone (his fate unknown)
Computes how many nights he had been gone.
Observes the waining moon with hourly view,
Numbers her age, and wishes for a new;
Against the promis'd time provides with care,
And hastens in the woof the robes he was to wear:
And for her self employs another loom,
New-dress'd to meet her lord returning home,
Flatt'ring her heart with joys, that never were to come:
She fum'd the temples with an od'rous flame,
And oft before the sacred altars came,
To pray for him, who was an empty name.
All Pow'rs implor'd, but far above the rest
To Juno she her pious vows address'd,
Her much-lov'd lord from perils to protect,
And safe o'er seas his voyage to direct:
Then pray'd, that she might still possess his heart,
And no pretending rival share a part;
This last petition heard of all her pray'r,
The rest, dispers'd by winds, were lost in air.
But she, the Goddess of the nuptial bed,
Tir'd with her vain devotions for the dead,
Resolv'd the tainted hand should be repell'd,
Which incense offer'd, and her altar held:
Then Iris thus bespoke: Thou faithful maid,
By whom thy queen's commands are well convey'd,
Haste to the house of sleep, and bid the God
Who rules the night by visions with a nod,
Prepare a dream, in figure, and in form
Resembling him, who perish'd in the storm;
This form before Alcyone present,
To make her certain of the sad event.
Indu'd with robes of various hue she flies,
And flying draws an arch (a segment of the skies):
Then leaves her bending bow, and from the steep
Descends, to search the silent house of sleep.
The House of Sleep
Near the Cymmerians, in his dark abode,
Deep in a cavern, dwells the drowzy God;
Whose gloomy mansion nor the rising sun,
Nor setting, visits, nor the lightsome noon;
But lazy vapours round the region fly,
Perpetual twilight, and a doubtful sky:
No crowing cock does there his wings display,
Nor with his horny bill provoke the day;
Nor watchful dogs, nor the more wakeful geese,
Disturb with nightly noise the sacred peace;
Nor beast of Nature, nor the tame are nigh,
Nor trees with tempests rock'd, nor human cry;
But safe repose without an air of breath
Dwells here, and a dumb quiet next to death.
An arm of Lethe, with a gentle flow
Arising upwards from the rock below,
The palace moats, and o'er the pebbles creeps,
And with soft murmurs calls the coming sleeps.
Around its entry nodding poppies grow,
And all cool simples that sweet rest bestow;
Night from the plants their sleepy virtue drains,
And passing, sheds it on the silent plains:
No door there was th' unguarded house to keep,
On creaking hinges turn'd, to break his sleep.
But in the gloomy court was rais'd a bed,
Stuff'd with black plumes, and on an ebon-sted:
Black was the cov'ring too, where lay the God,
And slept supine, his limbs display'd abroad:
About his head fantastick visions fly,
Which various images of things supply,
And mock their forms; the leaves on trees not more,
Nor bearded ears in fields, nor sands upon the shore.
The virgin ent'ring bright, indulg'd the day
To the brown cave, and brush'd the dreams away:
The God disturb'd with this new glare of light,
Cast sudden on his face, unseal'd his sight,
And rais'd his tardy head, which sunk again,
And sinking, on his bosom knock'd his chin;
At length shook off himself, and ask'd the dame,
(And asking yawn'd) for what intent she came.
To whom the Goddess thus: O sacred rest,
Sweet pleasing sleep, of all the Pow'rs the best!
O peace of mind, repairer of decay,
Whose balms renew the limbs to labours of the day,
Care shuns thy soft approach, and sullen flies away!
Adorn a dream, expressing human form,
The shape of him who suffer'd in the storm,
And send it flitting to the Trachin court,
The wreck of wretched Ceyx to report:
Before his queen bid the pale spectre stand,
Who begs a vain relief at Juno's hand.
She said, and scarce awake her eyes could keep,
Unable to support the fumes of sleep;
But fled, returning by the way she went,
And swerv'd along her bow with swift ascent.
The God, uneasy 'till he slept again,
Resolv'd at once to rid himself of pain;
And, tho' against his custom, call'd aloud,
Exciting Morpheus from the sleepy crowd:
Morpheus, of all his numerous train, express'd
The shape of man, and imitated best;
The walk, the words, the gesture could supply,
The habit mimick, and the mein bely;
Plays well, but all his action is confin'd,
Extending not beyond our human kind.
Another, birds, and beasts, and dragons apes,
And dreadful images, and monster shapes:
This demon, Icelos, in Heav'n's high hall
The Gods have nam'd; but men Phobetor call.
A third is Phantasus, whose actions roul
On meaner thoughts, and things devoid of soul;
Earth, fruits, and flow'rs he represents in dreams,
And solid rocks unmov'd, and running streams.
These three to kings, and chiefs their scenes display,
The rest before th' ignoble commons play.
Of these the chosen Morpheus is dispatch'd;
Which done, the lazy monarch, over-watch'd,
Down from his propping elbow drops his head,
Dissolv'd in sleep, and shrinks within his bed.
Darkling the demon glides, for flight prepar'd,
So soft, that scarce his fanning wings are heard.
To Trachin, swift as thought, the flitting shade,
Thro' air his momentary journey made:
Then lays aside the steerage of his wings,
Forsakes his proper form, assumes the king's;
And pale, as death, despoil'd of his array,
Into the queen's apartment takes his way,
And stands before the bed at dawn of day:
Unmov'd his eyes, and wet his beard appears;
And shedding vain, but seeming real tears;
The briny waters dropping from his hairs.
Then staring on her with a ghastly look,
And hollow voice, he thus the queen bespoke.
Know'st thou not me? Not yet, unhappy wife?
Or are my features perish'd with my life?
Look once again, and for thy husb and lost,
Lo all that's left of him, thy husband's ghost!
Thy vows for my return were all in vain,
The stormy south o'ertook us in the main,
And never shalt thou see thy living lord again.
Bear witness, Heav'n, I call'd on thee in death,
And while I call'd, a billow stop'd my breath.
Think not, that flying fame reports my fate;
I present, I appear, and my own wreck relate.
Rise, wretched widow, rise; nor undeplor'd
Permit my soul to pass the Stygian ford;
But rise, prepar'd in black, to mourn thy perish'd lord.
Thus said the player-God; and adding art
Of voice and gesture, so perform'd his part,
She thought (so like her love the shade appears)
That Ceyx spake the words, and Ceyx shed the tears;
She groan'd, her inward soul with grief opprest,
She sigh'd, she wept, and sleeping beat her breast;
Then stretch'd her arms t' embrace his body bare;
Her clasping arms inclose but empty air:
At this, not yet awake, she cry'd, O stay;
One is our fate, and common is our way!
So dreadful was the dream, so loud she spoke,
That starting sudden up, the slumber broke:
Then cast her eyes around, in hope to view
Her vanish'd lord, and find the vision true:
For now the maids, who waited her commands,
Ran in with lighted tapers in their hands.
Tir'd with the search, not finding what she seeks,
With cruel blows she pounds her blubber'd cheeks;
Then from her beaten breast the linnen tare,
And cut the golden caul that bound her hair.
Her nurse demands the cause; with louder cries
She prosecutes her griefs, and thus replies.
No more Alcyone; she suffer'd death
With her lov'd lord, when Ceyx lost his breath:
No flatt'ry, no false comfort, give me none,
My shipwreck'd Ceyx is for ever gone:
I saw, I saw him manifest in view,
His voice, his figure, and his gestures knew:
His lustre lost, and ev'ry living grace,
Yet I retain'd the features of his face;
Tho' with pale cheeks, wet beard, and dropping hair,
None but my Ceyx could appear so fair:
I would have strain'd him with a strict embrace,
But thro' my arms he slipt, and vanish'd from the place:
There, ev'n just there he stood; and as she spoke,
Where last the spectre was she cast her look:
Fain would she hope, and gaz'd upon the ground,
If any printed footsteps might be found.
Then sigh'd, and said: This I too well foreknew,
And my prophetick fears presag'd too true:
'Twas what I begg'd, when with a bleeding heart
I took my leave, and suffer'd thee to part;
Or I to go along, or thou to stay,
Never, ah never to divide our way!
Happier for me, that all our hours assign'd
Together we had liv'd; ev'n not in death disjoin'd!
So had my Ceyx still been living here,
Or with my Ceyx I had perish'd there:
Now I die absent, in the vast profound;
And me, without my self, the seas have drown'd.
The storms were not so cruel: should I strive
To leng then life, and such a grief survive;
But neither will I strive, nor wretched thee
In death forsake, but keep thee company.
If not one common sepulchre contains
Our bodies, or one urn our last remains,
Yet Ceyx and Alcyone shall join,
Their names remember'd in one common line.
No farther voice her mighty grief affords,
For sighs come rushing in betwixt her words,
And stop'd her tongue; but what her tongue deny'd,
Soft tears, and groans, and dumb complaints supply'd.
'Twas morning; to the port she takes her way,
And stands upon the margin of the sea:
That place, that very spot of ground she sought,
Or thither by her destiny was brought,
Where last he stood: and while she sadly said,
'Twas here he left me, lingring here delay'd
His parting kiss, and there his anchors weigh'd.
Thus speaking, while her thoughts past actions trace,
And call to mind, admonish'd by the place,
Sharp at her utmost ken she cast her eyes,
And somewhat floating from afar descries:
It seems a corps a-drift to distant sight,
But at a distance who could judge aright?
It wafted nearer yet, and then she knew,
That what before she but surmis'd, was true:
A corps it was, but whose it was, unknown,
Yet mov'd, howe'er, she made the cause her own.
Took the bad omen of a shipwreck'd man,
As for a stranger wept, and thus began.
Poor wretch, on stormy seas to lose thy life,
Unhappy thou, but more thy widow'd wife;
At this she paus'd: for now the flowing tide
Had brought the body nearer to the side:
The more she looks, the more her fears increase,
At nearer sight; and she's her self the less:
Now driv'n ashore, and at her feet it lies,
She knows too much in knowing whom she sees:
Her husband's corps; at this she loudly shrieks,
'Tis he, 'tis he, she cries, and tears her cheeks,
Her hair, and vest; and stooping to the sands,
About his neck she cast her trembling hands.
And is it thus, o dearer than my life,
Thus, thus return'st thou to thy longing wife!
She said, and to the neighbouring mole she strode,
(Rais'd there to break th' incursions of the flood).
Headlong from hence to plunge her self she springs,
But shoots along, supported on her wings;
A bird new-made, about the banks she plies,
Not far from shore, and short excursions tries;
Nor seeks in air her humble flight to raise,
Content to skim the surface of the seas:
Her bill tho' slender, sends a creaking noise,
And imitates a lamentable voice.
Now lighting where the bloodless body lies,
She with a fun'ral note renews her cries:
At all her stretch, her little wings she spread,
And with her feather'd arms embrac'd the dead:
Then flick'ring to his palid lips, she strove
To print a kiss, the last essay of love.
Whether the vital touch reviv'd the dead,
Or that the moving waters rais'd his head
To meet the kiss, the vulgar doubt alone;
For sure a present miracle was shown.
The Gods their shapes to winter-birds translate,
But both obnoxious to their former fate.
Their conjugal affection still is ty'd,
And still the mournful race is multiply'd:
They bill, they tread; Alcyone compress'd,
Sev'n days sits brooding on her floating nest:
A wintry queen: her sire at length is kind,
Calms ev'ry storm, and hushes ev'ry wind;
Prepares his empire for his daughter's ease,
And for his hatching nephews smooths the seas.
Aesacus transform'd into a Cormorant
These some old man sees wanton in the air,
And praises the unhappy constant pair.
Then to his friend the long-neck'd corm'rant shows,
The former tale reviving others' woes:
That sable bird, he cries, which cuts the flood
With slender legs, was once of royal blood;
His ancestors from mighty Tros proceed,
The brave Laomedon, and Ganymede
(Whose beauty tempted Jove to steal the boy),
And Priam, hapless prince! who fell with Troy:
Himself was Hector's brother, and (had Fate
But giv'n this hopeful youth a longer date)
Perhaps had rival'd warlike Hector's worth,
Tho' on the mother's side of meaner birth;
Fair Alyxothoe, a country maid,
Bare Aesacus by stealth in Ida's shade.
He fled the noisy town, and pompous court,
Lov'd the lone hills, and simple rural sport.
And seldom to the city would resort.
Yet he no rustick clownishness profest,
Nor was soft love a stranger to his breast:
The youth had long the nymph Hesperie woo'd,
Oft thro' the thicket, or the mead pursu'd:
Her haply on her father's bank he spy'd,
While fearless she her silver tresses dry'd;
Away she fled: not stags with half such speed,
Before the prowling wolf, scud o'er the mead;
Not ducks, when they the safer flood forsake,
Pursu'd by hawks, so swift regain the lake.
As fast he follow'd in the hot career;
Desire the lover wing'd, the virgin fear.
A snake unseen now pierc'd her heedless foot;
Quick thro' the veins the venom'd juices shoot:
She fell, and 'scap'd by death his fierce pursuit;
Her lifeless body, frighted, he embrac'd,
And cry'd, Not this I dreaded, but thy haste:
O had my love been less, or less thy fear!
The victory, thus bought, is far too dear.
Accursed snake! yet I more curs'd than he!
He gave the wound; the cause was given by me.
Yet none shall say, that unreveng'd you dy'd.
He spoke; then climb'd a cliff's o'er-hanging side,
And, resolute, leap'd on the foaming tide.
Tethys receiv'd him gently on the wave;
The death he sought deny'd, and feathers gave.
Debarr'd the surest remedy of grief,
And forc'd to live, he curst th' unask'd relief.
Then on his airy pinions upward flies,
And at a second fall successless tries;
The downy plume a quick descent denies.
Enrag'd, he often dives beneath the wave,
And there in vain expects to find a grave.
His ceaseless sorrow for th' unhappy maid,
Meager'd his look, and on his spirits prey'd.
Still near the sounding deep he lives; his name
From frequent diving and emerging came.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
~ Ovid, BOOK THE ELEVENTH
,#NFDB
93 Integral Yoga
28 Poetry
12 Fiction
11 Occultism
11 Christianity
10 Philosophy
6 Psychology
3 Mythology
2 Mysticism
1 Yoga
1 Science
1 Education
1 Alchemy
49 Sri Aurobindo
32 The Mother
28 Satprem
15 Nolini Kanta Gupta
8 William Wordsworth
8 James George Frazer
8 H P Lovecraft
7 Saint Augustine of Hippo
7 A B Purani
5 Plato
5 Percy Bysshe Shelley
5 Carl Jung
4 Robert Browning
3 Plotinus
3 Friedrich Schiller
2 William Butler Yeats
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Sri Ramakrishna
2 R Buckminster Fuller
2 Ovid
2 Ken Wilber
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jordan Peterson
2 George Van Vrekhem
28 Record of Yoga
8 Wordsworth - Poems
8 The Golden Bough
8 Lovecraft - Poems
7 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Life Divine
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
6 Agenda Vol 02
5 The Synthesis Of Yoga
5 Talks
5 Shelley - Poems
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
4 City of God
4 Browning - Poems
4 Agenda Vol 01
3 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
3 Schiller - Poems
2 Yeats - Poems
2 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Preparing for the Miraculous
2 Metamorphoses
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
2 Aion
2 Agenda Vol 10
2 Agenda Vol 08
2 Agenda Vol 04
2 Agenda Vol 03
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the right-hand man of Keshab and an accomplished Brahmo preacher in Europe and America, bitterly criticized Sri Ramakrishna's use of uncultured language and also his austere attitude toward his wife. But he could not escape the spell of the Master's personality. In the course of an article about Sri Ramakrishna, Pratap wrote in the "Theistic Quarterly review": "What is there in common between him and me? I, a Europeanized, civilized, self-centred, semi-sceptical, so-called educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished, half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max Muller, and a whole host of European scholars and divines? . . . And it is not I only, but dozens like me, who do the same. . . . He worships Siva, he worships Kali, he worships Rama, he worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of Vedantic doctrines. . . . He is an idolater, yet is a faithful and most devoted meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite Deity. . . . His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling. . . . So long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality, and inebriation in the love of God. . . . He, by his childlike bhakti, by his strong conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped to unfold it [God as our Mother] in our minds wonderfully. . . . By associating with him we learnt to realize better the divine attributes as scattered over the three hundred and thirty millions of deities of mythological India, the gods of the Puranas."
The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in their hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and appreciate the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts about the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the sincerity of many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the necessity of renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of discipline, faith in God, the performance of one's duties without thought of results, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
There is an inherently minimum set of essential concepts and current information, cognizance of which could lead to our operating our planet Earth to the lasting satisfaction and health of all humanity. With this objective, we set out on our review of the spectrum of significant experiences and seek therein for the greatest meanings as well as for the family of generalized principles governing the realization of their optimum significance to humanity aboard our Sun circling planet Earth.
We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience.
--
But, goaded by youth, we older ones are now taking second looks at almost everything. And that promises many ultimately favorable surprises. The oldsters do have vast experience banks not available to the youth. Their memory banks, integrated and reviewed, may readily disclose generalized principles of eminent importance.
The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case.
--
Mind is the weightless and uniquely human faculty that surveys the ever larger inventory of special-case experiences stored in the brain bank and, seeking to identify their intercomplementary significance, from time to time discovers one of the rare scientifically generalizable principles running consistently through all the relevant experience set. The thoughts that discover these principles are weightless and tentative and may also be eternal. They suggest eternity but do not prove it, even though there have been no experiences thus far that imply exceptions to their persistence. It seems also to follow that the more experiences we have, the more chances there are that the mind may discover, on the one hand, additional generalized principles or, on the other hand, exceptions that disqualify one or another of the already catalogued principles that, having heretofore held "true" without contradiction for a long time, had been tentatively conceded to be demonstrating eternal persistence of behavior. Mind's relentless reviewing of the comprehensive brain bank's storage of all our special-case experiences tends both to progressive enlargement and definitive refinement of the catalogue of generalized principles that interaccommodatively govern all transactions of Universe.
It follows that the more specialized society becomes, the less attention does it pay to the discoveries of the mind, which are intuitively beamed toward the brain, there to be received only if the switches are "on." Specialization tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery of the all-powerful generalized principles. Again we see how society's perverse fixation on specialization leads to its extinction. We are so specialized that one man discovers empirically how to release the energy of the atom, while another, unbeknownst to him, is ordered by his political factotum to make an atomic bomb by use of the secretly and anonymously published data. That gives much expedient employment, which solves the politician's momentary problem, but requires that the politicians keep on preparing for further warring with other political states to keep their respective peoples employed. It is also mistakenly assumed that employment is the only means by which humans can earn the right to live, for politicians have yet to discover how much wealth is available for distribution. All this is rationalized on the now scientifically discredited premise that there can never be enough life support for all. Thus humanity's specialization leads only toward warring and such devastating tools, both, visible and invisible, as ultimately to destroy all Earthians.
--
Intellectually advantaged with no more than the child's facile, lucid eagerness to understand constructively and usefully the major transformational events of our own times, it probably is synergetically advantageous to review swiftly the most comprehensive inventory of the most powerful human environment transforming events of our totally known and reasonably extended history. This is especially useful in winnowing out and understanding the most significant of the metaphysical revolutions now recognized as swiftly tending to reconstitute history. By such a comprehensively schematic review, we might identify also the unprecedented and possibly heretofore overlooked pivotal revolutionary events not only of today but also of those trending to be central to tomorrow's most cataclysmic changes.
It is synergetically reasonable to assume that relativistic evaluation of any of the separate drives of art, science, education, economics, and ideology, and their complexedly interacting trends within our own times, may be had only through the most comprehensive historical sweep of which we are capable.
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Her witness spirit stood reviewing Time.
3.3
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We welcome voices that speak of this ancient tradition, this occult Knowledge of a high Future. Recently we have come across one aspirant in the line, and being a contemporary, his views and reviews in the matter will be all the more interesting to us.2 He is Gustave Thibon, a Frenchman-not a priest or even a religious man in the orthodox sense in any way, but a country farmer, a wholly self-educated laque. Of late he has attracted a good deal of attention from intellectuals as well as religious people, especially the Catholics, because of his remarkable conceptions which are so often unorthodox and yet so often ringing true with an old-world au thenticity.
Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
So far so good. For it is not far enough. The being or becoming that is demanded in fulfilment of the divine advent in humanity must go to the very roots of life and nature, must seize God in his highest and sovereign status. No prejudice of the past, no notion of our mental habits must seek to impose its law. Thus, for example, in the matter of redeeming the senses by the influx of the higher light, our author seems to consider that the senses will remain more or less as they are, only they will be controlled, guided, used by the higher light. And he seems to think that even the sex relation (even the institution of marriage) may continue to remain, but sublimated, submitted to the laws of the Higher Order. This, according to us, is a dangerous compromise and is simply the imposition of the lower law upon the higher. Our view of the total transformation and divinisation of the Lower is altogether different. The Highest must come down wholly and inhabit in the Lowest, the Lowest must give up altogether its own norms and lift itself into the substance and form too of the Highest.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
night, before going to sleep, it is good to review the day, taking
note of all the times one has forgotten or neglected to make an
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This immense ship had just arrived at the shore of the supramental world, and a first batch of people destined to become the future inhabitants of the supramental world were about to disembark. Everything was arranged for this first landing. A certain number of very tall beings were posted on the wharf. They were not human beings and never before had they been men. Nor were they permanent inhabitants of the supramental world. They had been delegated from above and posted there to control and supervise the landing. I was in charge of all this since the beginning and throughout. I myself had prepared all the groups. I was standing on the bridge of the ship, calling the groups forward one by one and having them disembark on the shore. The tall beings posted there seemed to be reviewing those who were disembarking, allowing those who were ready to go ashore and sending back those who were not and who had to continue their training aboard the ship. While standing there watching everyone, that part of my consciousness coming from here became extremely interested: it wanted to see, to identify all the people, to see how they had changed and to find out who had been taken immediately as well as those who had to remain and continue their training. After awhile, as I was observing, I began to feel pulled backwards and that my body was being awakened by a consciousness or a person from here1and in my consciousness, I protested: No, no, not yet! Not yet! I want to see whos there! I was watching all this and noting it with intense interest It went on like that until, suddenly, the clock here began striking three, which violently jerked me back. There was the sensation of a sudden fall into my body. I came back with a shock, but since I had been called back very suddenly, all my memory was still intact. I remained quiet and still until I could bring back the whole experience and preserve it.
The nature of objects on this ship was not that which we know upon earth; for example, the clothes were not made of cloth, and this thing that resembled cloth was not manufacturedit was a part of the body, made of the same substance that took on different forms. It had a kind of plasticity. When a change had to be made, it was done not by artificial and outer means but by an inner working, by a working of the consciousness that gave the substance its form or appearance. Life created its own forms. There was ONE SINGLE substance in all things; it changed the nature of its vibration according to the needs or uses.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
He had assumed two names: one was an Arab name he had adopted when he took refuge in Algeria (I dont know for what reason). After having worked with Blavatsky and having founded an occult society in Egypt, he went to Algeria, and there he first called himself Aa Aziz (a word of Arabic origin meaning the beloved). Then, when he began setting up his Cosmic review and his cosmic group, he called himself Max Theon, meaning the supreme God (!), the greatest God! And no one knew him by any other name than these twoAa Aziz or Max Theon.
He had an English wife.
0 1960-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
As for me, my night is now organized. I go to bed at 8 oclock and get up at 4, which makes for a very long night, and its sliced into three parts. And I get up punctually at 4 in the morning. But Im always awake ten or fifteen minutes beforehand, and I review all that has happened during the night, the dreams, the various activities, etc., so that when I get up, I am fully active.
To make use of your nights is an excellent thing, for it has a double effect: a negative effect, in that it keeps you from falling backwards, from losing what youve gained (that is really painful); and a positive effect, in that you progress, you continue progressing. You make use of your nights, so theres no more residue of fatigue.
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
What I call studying is to take Sri Aurobindos books, where he quotes or speaks of one thing or another, then have the corresponding bookswhen he quotes something, you must take the book it corresponds to; when he speaks of something, you must study the writings on that subject. This is what I call studying. Then, after having read the corresponding works, you compare them with what Sri Aurobindo has said, and in this way there may be a beginning of understanding. If someone is very studious, he can review all that has ever been written or taught by going through Sri Aurobindos books. I mean this for someone who loves working.
I SEE this state of mind, this mental attitude Oh! Its its so repugnant. People are so afraid of taking sides, so afraid of appearing biased; they are so afraid of appearing to have faith, so afraid Oh, its disgraceful.
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A monthly review published by the Ashram.
On the Sunday preceding each Darshan (this February 21st, Mother would be 84), Mother used to distribute saris, napkins or handkerchiefs to the disciples.
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, for you its a review. But it is absorbingly interestingno doubt about it.
I mean there is nothing sensational, interesting to recount. Its a minuscule labor, minute to minute, like oh, its not even like cutting a path through a virgin forest, because a virgin forest is pleasant to look at! But this. Its almost like laying stones together to build a road. Every day and all the time, night and day and at any moment whatsoever, there are tiny, tiny things, tiny things, tinyits not interesting.
There are successive curves, each second of which would have to be noted down; and in the course of one of these curves, something is suddenly found. For example, at the beginning of The Yoga of Self-Perfection, Sri Aurobindo reviews other yogas, beginning with Hatha Yoga. I had just translated this when I remembered Sri Aurobindo saying that Hatha Yoga was very effective but that it amounted to spending your whole life training your body, which is an enormous time and effort spent on something not essentially very interesting. Then I looked at it and said to myself, But after all, (I was looking at life as it is, as people ordinarily live it) one spends at least 90% of ones life merely to PRESERVE ones body, to keep it going! All this attention and concentration on an instrument which is put to hardly any use. Anyway, I was looking at it with that attitude, when suddenly all the cells of my body responded, in such a spontaneous and WARM way. How to say it? Something so so moving. They told me, But its the Lord who is looking after Himself in us! Each one was saying: But its the Lord who is looking after Himself in us!
It was truly lovely. Then I gave my reason a good poke: How stupid can you be! You always forget the essential.
0 1961-05-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother reviews some earlier Questions and Answers. In one of themdated November 14, 1956someone had asked if mastery over circumstances depended on self-mastery, citing the case of Vivekananda, who was said to possess great mastery over circumstances even though he could not master his own anger.)
I never knew Vivekananda. I only know what I have heard or read about him, but that isnt what I call knowing. So I cant say anything, and above all I dont want to seem to give credence to all the gossip that has been spread about him. I have had no personal contact with him, neither in the physical nor elsewherenot with him personally. Naturally I could if I made an effort, but.
0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother is alluding to two extracts from Questions and Answers (dated June 19 and July 17, 1957) which she has just reviewed for inclusion in the Bulletin. In them she speaks of the causes of illness and of using the conscious will for physical development.
***
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Extract from the Cosmic review of 1906)
A VISION
--
See the addendum following this conversation for a transcription of Mother's vision as she noted it down for publication in Theon's Cosmic review in 1906.
Cent. Ed., Vol. XVII, p. 28 ff.
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He was a pastor at Lille, in France, for perhaps ten years; he was quite a practicing Christian, but he dropped it all as soon as he began to study occultism. He had first specialized in theological philosophy in order to pass the pastoral examinations, studying all the modem philosophy of Europe (he had a rather remarkable metaphysical brain). Then I met him in connection with Theon and the Cosmic review, and I led him into occult knowledge. Afterwards, there were all sorts of uninteresting stories. He became a lawyer during the early period of our relationship and I learned Law along with him I could even have passed the exam! Then the divorce stories began: he divorced his wife; they had three children and he wanted to keep them, but to do so he had to be legally married, so he asked me to marry himand I said yes. I have always been totally indifferent to these things. Anyway, when I met him I knew who he was and I decided to convert him the whole story revolves around that.
As a matter of fact, the books he wrote (especially the first one, The Living Ether) were based on my knowledge; he put my knowledge into French and beautiful French, I must say! I would tell him my experiences and he would write them down. Later he wrote The Gods (it was incomplete, one-sided). Then he became a lawyer and entered politics (he was a first-class orator and fired his audiences with enthusiasm) and was sent to Pondicherry to help a certain candidate who couldnt manage his election campaign single-handed. And since Richard was interested in occultism and spirituality, he took this opportunity to seek a Master, a yogi. When he arrived, instead of involving himself in politics, the first thing he did was announce, I am seeking a yogi. Someone said to him, Youre incredibly lucky! The yogi has just arrived. It was Sri Aurobindo, who was told, Theres a Frenchman asking to see you. Sri Aurobindo wasnt particularly pleased but he found the coincidence rather interesting and received him. This was in 1910.
--
I wrote in my book that Paul Richard intended to bring out simultaneously in Paris a review of the Great Synthesis. Is this true?5
No, its not true! This was never intended, never! The Arya was bilingual, one part in French and one in English, but it was one and the same magazine published here in Pondicherry. There was never any question of publishing anything in France; this is incorrect, entirely falsea myth. Besides, it was I who translated the English into French, and rather poorly at that!
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it cant be an Ashram organ. It should look like a literary review (it cant be politicalyoud be thrown in jail the day after it came out!). It shouldnt be presented as something practical, but merely as literary or philosophical speculation; that wouldnt matter at all, but it would give the journal a certain security which, as a combat magazine, it would need.
Its something that could very well be planned and prepared for 65 or 67. It could probably be done in 67. And then, for each issue (I dont know how many issues a year there would be) we could take one of these aphorisms (like the one on Europe, for example) and go into it all the way.
0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was in both French and English. He called it Fundamental Axioms of Cosmic Philosophy. It was the work of a certain French metaphysician who was well known around the turn of the centuryhis name began with a B. He met Theon in Egypt when Theon was with Blavatski; they started a magazine with an ancient Egyptian name (I cant recall what it was), and then he told Theon (Theon must have already known French) to publish a Cosmic review and the Cosmic Books. And this B. is the one who formulated all this gobbledygook.
There used to be the name of the printer and the year it was printed, but its not there any more.
--
Look, they made the central square very elongated. The one done here is more correct: Pavitra made all the sides equal. But the one for the Cosmic review was elongated, with the lotus in the center.
Its the same [as the one for the Cosmic review], only elongated so that the two triangles meet and form a square.
I am keeping this to show Pavitra, because thats what I had first tried to make. But obviously the one we have now is correct.
0 1963-03-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive seen this phenomenon very often. For example, the impression people have in ordinary life (few are conscious of it, but everyone has the impression, I know that) of a Destiny or a Fate or a will hanging over them, a set of circumstances (it doesnt matter what you call it), something that weighs you down and tries to manifest through you. But weighing you down. That was the first of my experiences: emerging above (very long ago, at the beginning of the century). And it was that kind of experience: one second, but suddenly, oh, you find yourself above it all. I remember because at the time I told the people I knew (maybe I was already looking after the Cosmic review, it was the beginning, or maybe just before), I told them: There is a state in which you are free to decide what you will do; when you say, I want this, it means it will happen. That was the impression I lived with. Instead of thinking Id like to do this, Id like that to happen, with the sense of the decision being left to Fate, the impression that you are above and you make the decision: things WILL BE like that, things WILL BE like that.
Thats my memory of the beginning of the century.
0 1963-03-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a sort of review going on of all the elements of the body consciousness, with a sample of the circumstances of their various manifestations or expressions. All this is passed before me as if to show me all the points in the bodys cells that were contrary to or unprepared for the reception of the divine Forces. All that comes up in the form of lived memoriesthings I had more than forgotten (I could have sworn they no longer existed), but which come back. Un-be-liev-able. And its not an egos or a persons memory, but the memory of a force in motion in the general vibrations. So I see fantastic things!
But its erased immediately; as soon as I wake up, my first movement (gesture of offering) is to present it all to the Lord: the cause, the effect, the image, the sensationeverything. When its all seen, I tell Him, Now its Yours. And then I forgetfortunately, thank God!
0 1964-08-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact, these last few nights Ive been conducting a sort of review of all the stages my nights went through before being what they areits fantastic! I started working on my nights at the beginning of the century, exactly in 1900, sixty-four years ago now, and the number of nights when I didnt continue my training is absolutely minimalminimal. There had to be something unexpected or I had to be ill; and even then, there was another kind of study going on. I remember (Sri Aurobindo was here), I caught a sort of fever like influenza from contact with the workers, one of those fevers that take hold of you brutally, instantly, and in the night I had a temperature of more than 105. Anyway, it was And then I spent my night studying what people call delirium(laughing) it was very interesting! I was explaining it to Sri Aurobindo (he was there: I was lying on the bed and he was sitting by the bedside), I told him, This is whats going on, that is whats going on and that (such and such and such a thing) is what gives people what doctors call delirium. It isnt delirium. I remember having been assailed for hours by little entities, vital forms that were hideous, vile, and so vicious! An unequaled cruelty. They rushed at me in a troop, I had to fight to repel them: they retreated, moved forward, retreated, moved forward. And for hours like that. Naturally, at that time I had Sri Aurobindos full power and presence, and yet it lasted three or four hours. So I thought, How terrible it must be for the poor devils who have neither the knowledge I have, nor the power I have, nor Sri Aurobindos protective presenceall the best conditions. It must be frightful, oh! I have never in my life seen anything so disgusting.
I had picked it all up in the workers atmosphere. Because I hadnt been careful, it was the festival of arms and I had been in communion with them: I had given them some food and taken something theyd given me, which means it was a terrible communion. And I brought all that back.
0 1965-07-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So you can tell N. on my behalf that this is how I see the thing: a quite complete biographical and bibliographical note should be prepared to tell them, Here is the gentleman Satprem is writing about. It could be published along with the book, or published in newspapers to announce the book (thats a practical question, it depends on what suits their taste better). It can be published in some newspapers or reviews or magazines before the release of the book, to announce it.
Of the book which book?
0 1966-09-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its not me! Me, where is the me? Its not this, in any case (Mother pinches the skin of her hand), poor thispoor this! It keeps on with its aspiration, and it has the sense all at once of its incapacity, its misery, its powerlessness to express what it should express, and its unworthiness to be an instrument of the Divine. At the same time, it has, first, a sort of increasing certitude of (how can I put it?) the magnanimity of the divine Presence, which is so marvelous in its effects in spite of the almost total imbecility of all this (Mother points to her own body); all this is really cast in, outwardly cast in stupidity, but with the ardor of such an intense and constant aspiration, with something touching in its humility and trust, and with the sense of its powerlessness and at the same time of this marvelous Presence there, ready and willing to actif It is allowed to. All that is translated as a sort of film review of all of the bodys difficulties, all its powerlessness, all its incapacities, all its darknesses, its all shown as if on a screen, in order to be dissolved. And then one is a spectator of the dissolution by the Light. Its fantastic.
And the feeling of hanging from such a slender thread, the thread not of faith, its not faith: its a certitude, but at the same time an aspiration, and it feelsit feels there is something so new, so young, in an absolutely rotten atmosphere of disbelief, stupidity, bad will. So thats how it is, a slender thread, and its a miracle if
0 1967-05-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is increasingly a sort of pressure of the Consciousness to awaken all thats semiconscious, subconscious, and to reach the Inconscient; its like something going down (gesture like a drill) with a pressure. And as it goes down, as the pressure increases, there is a sort of (what can I call it?) a review or overall vision of the whole state of consciousness of the being and beings (gesture around). And the result is the perception of such imbecility! When you live, while you live something (you dont even know what you live while you live it), you feel you are in a light, that you receive a direction, that you follow that direction, that, well, that a light of consciousness is acting; and when there is that pressure of THE Consciousness (like that, from above; we could call it the truth-consciousness or anything THE consciousness), then all you have done, all you have thought, all you have felt, all you have seen, all those things which appeared to be conscious it all becomes so idiotic that you really need a faith very (how should I put it?), not only a very complete faith, but a very complete surrender in order not to be crushed under the weight of that imbecility.
All morning I reviewed all kinds of movements of consciousness (not a recollection in thought or sensation or vision, but a recollection in the consciousness) of whole periods of life, especially life with Sri Aurobindo, because at the time, I felt I was relying on the divine Consciousness and acting under its pressure (already); so its interesting that it should now look like an abyss of imbecility. And then, you wonder what Sri Aurobindohe who was consciouswhat he must have felt? How he must have seen all that around him, all those people bustling and acting and moving around him (Mother takes her head in her hands). You say to yourself that if he had the consciousness which is here now (he surely had it! He had that consciousness), well, it was a marvel of patience. Thats my conclusion.
You see, an undeniable goodwill, a will to do the right thing (Mother is speaking about herself), an attitude that seemed as good as possible, and already the sense of a surrender and an effort to express not at all personal movements, but the guiding Willall that, that whole attitude (which at the time seemed quite good), seen with todays consciousness! (Mother takes her head in her hands) So its easy to think that
0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, I had an experience of this sort quite a long time ago (a very long time), when I was still in France, in Paris. There was a student friend in the studio (because I studied in a painting studio for a long time), she was a very good painter, we were close friends, and I started telling her about the Cosmic review and Thons teaching. She belonged to a Catholic family of archbishops, even cardinals, anyway it was And she was extremely interested and wholly convinced: she felt a liberation of the spirit and aspiration. Then, after I had Sri Aurobindos teaching, I passed it on to her, and there she was really quite taken. But she often told me, As long as I am awake, everything is fine, but in my sleep Ill suddenly wake up in a dreadful panic: and if the Catholic teaching is true, then Ill go to hell! And so, a torture. And she would tell me, When I am wide awake, I see how ridiculous it is
But all those who were baptized and went for a time to confession are part of an inner, a whole psychological entity, and its VERY DIFFICULT to break free of it; they are bound to a wholethere is there is an invisible Church, and all those people are in its grip. To break free of it, one must be a vital hero. A true hero, you understand. Because its very strong. I saw that all religions have in that way kinds of congregations in the invisible; but the Christian one is the strongest of them all from a terrestrial standpoint. Its much stronger than that of the Buddhists, much stronger than that of the Chinese, much stronger than the ancient Hindu religionsits the strongest. And naturally stronger than the more recent religions, too the strongest. And when you are baptized, you are bound. If you dont go to mass and have never been to confession, with a little vital energy you can get out of it, but those who have gone to confessionespecially confession and when you take communion, when you are given Christ to eat (another frightful thing).
0 1968-03-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, the aspiration of flowers blossoms out; with Nature, it rises and widens as much as it can to receive. This (Mother points to the review = I) is like a knife. Its quite symbolic.
Ive never said anything.
--
"= 1" is an "Aurovilian" review.
***
0 1969-04-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"=1," the review edited by Y.
The "slight movement" is Mother's consciousness going through the column of light, which means that Mother's consciousness had the same color or the same light as the column's.
0 1969-05-21, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was a time when I concerned myself with that a good deal, and I made a good number of discoveries (following Thons indications); later on, it no longer interested me. And now, quite lately, I have been reviewing all kinds of things, all kinds of things.
But Pavitras case, I really believe its exceptional. Its the first time it has happened to mewith nobody, nobody else before. I told you, when Sri Aurobindo left, for hours he passed on to me the whole supramental force and consciousness he had concentrated in his body. It was immediately after he left. I felt he had called me; I stood there, near his bed, looking at him, and I saw it, you understand: he passed on to me the force, the whole supramental force he had concentrated in his body, and I felt him everywhere enter like that, with a friction. It lasted for hours. But thats quite an exceptional case, as I told you. But what took place with Pavitra is really its really Its not the same thing: he simply came out of his body deliberately (and not his psychic being: it was as material as he could), and I felt him, felt it enter and enter everywhere, all over my body And now, if I look within, I cant say I see a form, but its not completely fused. And for certain thingscertain things that have to do with people, or the School2theres a very clear personal reaction. And then, those photos I think thats quite exceptional.
0 1970-01-10, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I found the Cosmic review [of Thon] again, its quite amusing! Ive kept it to show you. They made some rules and regulations for the members of the Society, its very funny! People must be very nice to each other! And among the rules there is one saying that one must not recognize personal gods.
(Mother holds out the file to Satprem)
0 1972-01-12, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did you read in the Cosmic review about the cosmic square: 1, 2, 3, 4, and one in the center? The cosmic square was conceived by Thon, and I know he put Love in the center. But the four sides what are the four sides? I dont remember anymore. I used to know all that so well; its all gone. I know there was Light, Life, and Utility the fourth was Utility, but the first? Utility was the last. What was the first? Its all gone.
That would have given me a clue.
02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo retired from the outer political world to devote himself more intensively to the discovery and conquestof a new consciousness and force, glimpses of which he was having at the time and which alone could save mankind and recreate it. From 1910 to 1914 he was, he said, silently developing this new power in seclusion and in 1914 he began to give to the world the result of his realisations through his monthly review Arya. In five major sequences published month after month through several years, he envisaged, in the main, the progressive march of man towards a divine life on earth, towards the unity of mankind and a perfect social order. One of these serials was called The Future Poetry in which he traced the growth and development that world poetry is undergoing towards its future form that would voice the dawn of a New Age of the Spirit. Sri Aurobindo hailed those who feel and foresee this distant dawn behind the horizon as the Forerunners of the new Spirit, among whom he included Rabindranath, because he saw in Tagore's the first beginnings, "a glint of the greater era of man's living", something that "seems to be in promise." "The poetry of Tagore," Sri Aurobindo says, "owes its sudden and universal success to this advantage that he gives us more of this discovery and fusion for which the mind of our age is in quest than any other creative writer of the time. His work is a constant music of the overpassing of the borders, a chant-filled realm in which the subtle sounds and lights of the truth of the spirit give new meanings to the finer subtleties of life."
Characterising Tagore's poetry, in reference to a particular poem, Sri Aurobindo once wrote: "But the poignant sweetness, passion and spiritual depth and mystery of a poem like this, the haunting cadences subtle with a subtlety which is not of technique but of the soul, and the honey-laden felicity of the expression, these are the essential Rabindranath and cannot be imitated because they are things of the spirit and one must have the same sweetness and depth of soul before one can hope to catch any of these desirable qualities." Furthermore: "One of the most remarkable peculiarities of Rabindra Babu's genius is the happiness and originality with which he has absorbed the whole spirit of Vaishnava poetry and turned it into something essentially the same and yet new and modern. He has given the old sweet spirit of emotional and passionate religion an expression of more delicate and complex richness voiceful of subtler and more penetratingly spiritual shades of feeling than the deep-hearted but simple early age of Bengal could know."
--
The Modern review, July 1928.
***
03.08 - The Standpoint of Indian Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
India art is not in truth unreal and unnatural, though it may so appear to the eye of the ordinary man or to an eye habituated to the classical tradition of European art. Indian art, too, does hold the mirror up to Nature; but it is a different kind of Nature, not altogether this outward Nature that the mere physical eye envisages. All art is human creation; it is man's review of Nature; but the particular type of art depends upon the particular 'view-point that the artist takes for his survey. The classical artist surveys his field with the physical eye, from a single point of observation and at a definite angle; it is this which gives him the sine qua non of his artistic composition, anatomy and perspective. And the genius of the artist lies very much in the selection of a vantage ground from which his survey would throw into relief all the different parts of the objective in the order and gradation desired; to this vantage ground the entire construction is organicallyone could even say, in this case, geometricallycorrelated.
Indian art, too, possesses a perspective and an anatomy; it, too, has a focus of observation which governs and guides the composition, in the ensemble and in detail. Only, it is not the physical eye, but an inner vision, not the angle given by the retina, but the angle of a deeper perception or consciousness. To understand the difference, let us ask ourselves a simple question: when we call back to memory a landscape, how does the picture form itself in the mind? Certainly, it is not an exact photograph of the scenery observed. We cannot, even if we try, re-form in memory the objects in the shape, colour and relative positions they had when they appeared to the physical eye. In the picture represented to the mind's eye, some objects loom large, others are thrown into the background and others again do not figure at all; the whole scenery is reshuffled and rearranged in deference to the stress of the mind's interest. Even the structure and build of each object undergoes a change; it does not faithfully re-copy Nature, but gives the mind's version of it, aggrandizing certain parts, suppressing others, reshaping and recolouring the whole aspect, metamorphosing the very contour into something that may not be "natural" or anatomical figure at all. Only we are not introspective enough to observe this phenomenon of the mind's alchemy; we think we are representing with perfect exactitude in the imagination whatever is presented to the senses, whereas in fact we do nothing of the kind; our idea that we do it is a pure illusion.
04.04 - A Global Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We say then that the fraternity and unity of mankind has been a constant dream and aspiration, a settled ideal. And in the circumstances of today it is becoming more and mace evident that the idea is a secret fact of existence and that there is an overwhelming urge in Nature to bring it out and establish it as a manifest and concrete reality. If we review the history of mankind once again, not measuring it by its centuries but by its millenniums, not by its apparent habits and outward forms but by inner forces and attitudes, we shall discover that it is the story of the unfoldment of a collective fulfilment, of an ascension in grades of consciousness towards an ever higher and vaster truth and reality.
Viewed as a progressive growth of consciousness and transformation of nature, man's advance has been marked out in a few very definite stages. The first was the purely animal manPasuwhen man lived merely as a physical being, concerned solely about his body. Then came the Pisacha, the man of vital urges in their crudest form, the man of ignorant passions and dark instincts who has been imaged in the popular mind as the ghoul. At the next stage, with a further release of the consciousness, when the larger vital impulses come into play man becomes the Rakshasa, the demon. Egoistic hunger for possession, enjoyment, enlarged and increased appetite are his characteristics. Next came the Asura, the Titan, the egoistic mental man in his earlier avatar seeking to emerge out of the purely vital nature. Ambition and pride are his guiding spirit. Prometheus is his prototype. There are still two higher types which have been established in the human consciousness and in the world atmosphere as dynamic ideals, if not as common concrete facts of the material world. The first is the ethical man, who seeks to govern his life according to some principles of light and purity, such, for example, as unselfishness, altruism, chivalry, self-abnegation, rectitude, truthfulness etc. He is the Sattwic man, as known in India. There is also a still higher category, where consciousness endeavours to go beyond mind, enters into the consciousness of the Spirit; then we have the spiritual man, the saint and the sage. Beyond lie the supra-mental domains formed of the consciousness of the gods.
05.10 - Knowledge by Identity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Calcutta review, 1948 August-September.
***
05.11 - The Place of Reason, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Calcutta review, January 1949.
Thus, take the principles of matter, life and mind. They are separate and distinct from one point of view the logical and practical. But life came out of matter, and then mind out of life that is the evolutionary conception. In other words, matter shades off into life, there is a point where it is difficult to say whether it is matter or life; similarly there is a point where life shades off into mind, where mind and life are fused together. We can further say that in matter there is a life and there is a mind, and in life there is a matter and a mind and in mind too there is a matter and a life. But these facts of Nature are disconcerting to the one-track mind of the logical philosopher and make the confusion worse confounded for him.
05.16 - A Modernist Mentality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Andre Gide, a very well-known name in French letter for the last half a century, is quoted, very appreciatively, in the editorial of the World review(July 1950), as saying:
"The world can only be saved, if it can be, by the rebels. Without them there would be an end to our civilisation, our culture, all that we love and that gave to our presence on earth a secret justification. They are, these rebels, the salt of the earth and the men sent from God. For I am convinced that God does not exist, and that we have to create him."
09.11 - The Supramental Manifestation and World Change, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have been asked what difference the presence of the Supermind will make, in what way will it change the trend of events and how, since the Supramental manifestation, life has to be reviewed. I am asked to give practical examples. I do not know what this means, but here is what I have seen in a somewhat mathematical mood. Although the mathematical language is quite foreign to me, still I may call it a mathematical mood, that is to say, a mathematical way of looking at the problem.
I believe you have done sufficient mathematics to know the complexity of combinations that arises when you take as your basis some elements out of a sum total. To make it clearer I shall give you an example but without using the terms you have been taught at schoolfrom the letters of the alphabet. There are a certain number of letters. Now, if you want to calculate or know the number of combinations possible with these letters, taking all the letters together and organising them in as many ways as you can, as you have been taught, you will find that it runs into a fantastic figure.
100.00 - Synergy, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
miscarriages of misconceptioning as induced by too-brief reviews of their
progressive experiences as observed from too few viewpoints or loci. They can
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
confusion, I decided to experiment. I tried only to say things that my internal reviewer would pass
unchallenged. This meant that I really had to listen to what I was saying, that I spoke much less often, and
1.01 - How is Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds Attained?, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
During these periods the student should wrest himself entirely free from his work-a-day life. His thoughts and feelings should take on a different coloring. His joys and sorrows, his cares, experiences and actions must pass in review before his soul; and he must adopt such a position that he may regard all his sundry experiences from a higher point of view.
We need only bear in mind how, in ordinary life, we regard the experiences and actions of others quite differently from our own. This cannot be otherwise, for we are interwoven with our own actions and experiences, whereas those of others we only contemplate. Our aim in these moments of seclusion must be so to contemplate and judge our own actions and experiences as though they applied not to ourselves but to some other person. Suppose, for example, a heavy misfortune befalls us. How different would be our attitude toward a similar misfortune had it befallen our neighbor. This attitude cannot be blamed as unjustifiable; it is part of human nature,
1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India's eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, 'This is our dharma.' We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians.
And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours."
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
of a monthly review to make their new worldview known,
Sri Aurobindo had his material ready. The main concepts
1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
In the above section, and throughout the following pages, I have made no attempt to exhaust the evidence. To have done so (after the manner, for example, of Frazer, in The Golden Bough) would have enlarged my chapters prodigiously without making the main line of the monomyth any clearer. Instead, I am giving in each section a few striking examples from a number of widely scattered, repre sentative traditions. During the course of the work I shift my sources gradually, so that the reader may savor the peculiar qualities of the various styles. By the time he comes to the last page, he will have reviewed an immense number of mythologies. Should he wish to prove whether all might have been cited for every section of the monomyth, he need only turn to some of the source volumes enumerated in the footnotes and ramble through a few of the multitude of tales.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: The Modern review and other papers have been complaining that fine-silk weaving and gold-lace work and other fine handicrafts are being starved because of insistence on Khadi, while foreign-made imitation Khadi is coming to India unchecked! The artisans of Patan, Surat, Paithan, etc. are without a market for their fine products!
Sri Aurobindo: The way they are proceeding they might completely destroy even the little of the fine artistic value that is left in the country.
1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen
ANSWER: Many Tablets were revealed and dispatched in their original form without being checked and reviewed. Consequently, as bidden, they were again read out in the Holy Presence, and brought into conformity with the grammatical conventions of the people in order to forestall the cavils of opponents of the Cause. Another reason for this practice is that the new style inaugurated by the Herald, may the souls of all else but Him be offered up for His sake, was seen to be marked by substantial latitude in adherence to the rules of grammar; sacred verses therefore were then revealed in a style which is for the most part in conformity with current usage for ease of understanding and concision of expression.
58. QUESTION: Concerning the blessed verse, "When travelling, if ye should stop and rest in some safe spot, perform ye ... a single prostration in place of each unsaid Obligatory Prayer": is this compensation for the Obligatory Prayer missed by reason of insecure circumstances, or is obligatory prayer completely suspended during travel, and doth the prostration take its place?
1.03 - Reading, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.
My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mr Camar Uddn Mast,
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
species under review. In the case of the oldest groups the mecha-
nism of their formation can only be conjectured; but with more re-
--
seek, in this paper, to pass under review the various possible
courses of action open, at this critical moment, to those at the
1.03 - The Sunlit Path, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But, alone in our room that night, if we go over the day, review the thousand gestures and steps and faces, the coming and going in that whirling grayness in which nothing seems to have happened, a day among a thousand others that are like a deserted semidarkness, we suddenly notice a little spark of light rising to the surface, oh, so tiny, so fleeting that it is almost like a passing firefly, and it is that lone little second when we stopped in the midst of the frenzy, that little second of nothing, that useless misstep, that faltering of thought, that snag of being that's all that remains of the day, the only existing second, the only inhabited moment. That's all that was among a million empty seconds.
From then on, the suffocation becomes very effective. It is as if our being had begun to feel an imperceptible fissure in the dark, some crack we do not even know lets light in and what light, since it seems even darker than before? But we come back to it despite ourselves. There is like another air circulating, an impalpable change of density, and at the same time like a fire being lit, an obscure black fire which knows nothing except that it needs, needs something else so very much.
1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
passed in review in the preceding pages, and which may be taken as
fair samples of the bulk, we shall find, as I have already
1.05 - BOOK THE FIFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
And here I first review the welcome day.
Here Arethusa stopt; then Ceres takes
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
we must write and write petitions, begging a review of our cases, begging for a pardon....
Or else he will tell you something interesting: In the Communist Academy they decided to devour
--
Pihl, R.O. & Peterson, J.B. (1993). Etiology. Annual review of Addictions Research and Treatment, 2, 153174.
Pihl, R.O. & Peterson, J.B. (1995). Heinz Lehmann Memorial Prize Address: Alcoholism: The Role of
--
Biobehavioral review, 9, 377-389.
Teylor, T.J. & Discenna, P. (1986). The hippocampal memory indexing theory. Behavioural Neuroscience,
--
Psychological review, 91, 185-215.
Tymoczko, D. (1996, May). The nitrous oxide philosopher. Atlantic Monthly, 93-101.
--
Wise, R.A. & Bozarth, M. A. (1987). A psychomotor stimulant theory of addiction. Psychological review,
94, 469-492.
--
for reviews of supporting evidence, see Tucker, D.M. & Williamson, P.A. (1984); Davidson, R.J. (1984a; 1984b;
1992; Goldberg, E., Podell, K., & Lovell, H. (1994); Goldberg, E. (1995); Goldberg, E. & Costa, L.D. (1981); for some
--
for reviews of supporting evidence, see Tucker, D.M. & Williamson, P.A. (1984); Davidson, R.J. (1984a);
Davidson, R.J. (1984b); Davidson, R.J. (1992); Goldberg, E., Podell, K., & Lovell, H. (1994); Goldberg, E. (1995);
--
see review by Springer, S.P. & Deutsch, G. (1989).
153
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
toward a bright light, a life review, the crossing of a border,
and meetings with other spiritual beings, often deceased
--
life review, a process in which they confronted the totality
of their life; they were made to understand the reason for
1.07 - On Dreams, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Moreover, as a general rule, we should take great intellectual precautions before interpreting a dream, and above all, we should review exhaustively all the subjective explanations before we assign to it the value of an objective reality.
However, especially in those who have unlearnt the habit of always directing their thoughts towards themselves, there are cases where we can observe events outside ourselves, events which are not the reflection of our personal mental constructions. And if we know how to translate into intellectual language the more or less inadequate images into which the brain has translated these events, we can learn many things that our too limited physical faculties do not allow us to perceive.
--
The daily habit of reviewing with interest the various dreams of the night, whose traces will gradually become transformed into precise memories, as well as the habit of noting them down on waking, will be found most helpful from this point of view.
By these habits, the mental faculties will be led to adapt their mechanism to phenomena of this kind and to exercise on them their attention, their curiosity and power of analysis.
1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
First and foremost, if this higher unfolding is to be called "religious" or "spiritual," it is a very far cry from what is ordinarily meant by those terms. We have spent several chapters painstakingly reviewing the earlier developments of the archaic, magic, and mythic structures (which are usually associated with the world's great religions), precisely because those structures are what transpersonal and contemplative development is not. And here we can definitely agree with Campbell: if 99.9 percent of people want to call magic and mythic "real religion," then so be it for them (that is a legitimate use);10 but that is not what the world's greatest yogis, saints, and sages mean by mystical or "really religious" development, and in any event is not what I have in mind. Campbell, however, is quite right that a very, very few individuals, during the magic and mythic and rational eras, were indeed able to go beyond magic, beyond mythic, and beyond rational-into the transrational and transpersonal domains. And even if their teachings (such as those of Buddha, Christ, Patanjali, Padmasambhava, Rumi, and Chih-i) were snapped up by the masses and translated downward into magic and mythic and egoic terms-"the salvation of the individual soul"-that is not what their teachings clearly and even blatantly stated, nor did they intentionally lend any support to such endeavors. Their teachings were about the release from individuality, and not about its everlasting perpetuation, a grotesque notion that was equated flat-out with hell or samsara. Their teachings, and their contemplative endeavors, were (and are) transrational through and through. That is, although all of the contemplative traditions aim at going within and beyond reason, they all start with reason, start with the notion that truth is to be established by evidence, that truth is the result of experimental methods, that truth is to be tested in the laboratory of personal experience, that these truths are open to all those who wish to try the experiment and thus disclose for themselves the truth or falsity of the spiritual claims-and that dogmas or given beliefs are precisely what hinder the emergence of deeper truths and wider visions.
Thus, each of these spiritual or transpersonal endeavors (which we will carefully examine) claims that there exist higher domains of awareness, embrace, love, identity, reality, self, and truth. But these claims are not dogmatic; they are not believed in merely because an authority proclaimed them, or because sociocentric tradition hands them down, or because salvation depends upon being a "true believer." Rather, the claims about these higher domains are a conclusion based on hundreds of years of experimental introspection and communal verification. False claims are rejected on the basis of consensual evidence, and further evidence is used to adjust and fine-tune the experimental conclusions.
1.08 - The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:Such is the scheme of the human understanding upon which the conclusions of the most ancient Vedanta were built. To develop the results arrived at on this foundation by the ancient sages is not my object, but it is necessary to pass briefly in review some of their principal conclusions so far as they affect the problem of the divine Life with which alone we are at present concerned. For it is in those ideas that we shall find the best previous foundation of that which we seek now to rebuild and although, as with all knowledge, old expression has to be replaced to a certain extent by new expression suited to a later mentality and old light has to merge itself into new light as dawn succeeds dawn, yet it is with the old treasure as our initial capital or so much of it as we can recover that we shall most advantageously proceed to accumulate the largest gains in our new commerce with the ever-changeless and ever-changing Infinite.
11:Sad Brahman, Existence pure, indefinable, infinite, absolute, is the last concept at which Vedantic analysis arrives in its view of the universe, the fundamental Reality which Vedantic experience discovers behind all the movement and formation which constitute the apparent reality. It is obvious that when we posit this conception, we go entirely beyond what our ordinary consciousness, our normal experience contains or warrants. The senses and sense-mind know nothing whatever about any pure or absolute existence. All that our sense-experience tells us of, is form and movement. Forms exist, but with an existence that is not pure, rather always mixed, combined, aggregated, relative. When we go within ourselves, we may get rid of precise form, but we cannot get rid of movement, of change. Motion of Matter in Space, motion of change in Time seem to be the condition of existence. We may say indeed, if we like, that this is existence and that the idea of existence in itself corresponds to no discoverable reality. At the most in the phenomenon of selfawareness or behind it, we get sometimes a glimpse of something immovable and immutable, something that we vaguely perceive or imagine that we are beyond all life and death, beyond all change and formation and action. Here is the one door in us that sometimes swings open upon the splendour of a truth beyond and, before it shuts again, allows a ray to touch us, - a luminous intimation which, if we have the strength and firmness, we may hold to in our faith and make a starting-point for another play of consciousness than that of the sense-mind, for the play of Intuition.
1.09 - Civilisation and Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Philistine is not dead,quite the contrary, he abounds,but he no longer reigns. The sons of Culture have not exactly conquered, but they have got rid of the old Goliath and replaced him by a new giant. This is the sensational man who has got awakened to the necessity at least of some intelligent use of the higher faculties and is trying to be mentally active. He has been whipped and censured and educated into that activity and he lives besides in a maelstrom of new information, new intellectual fashions, new ideas and new movements to which he can no longer be obstinately impervious. He is open to new ideas, he can catch at them and hurl them about in a rather confused fashion; he can understand or misunderstand ideals, organise to get them carried out and even, it would appear, fight and die for them. He knows he has to think about ethical problems, social problems, problems of science and religion, to welcome new political developments, to look with as understanding an eye as he can attain to at all the new movements of thought and inquiry and action that chase each other across the modern field or clash upon it. He is a reader of poetry as well as a devourer of fiction and periodical literature,you will find in him perhaps a student of Tagore or an admirer of Whitman; he has perhaps no very clear ideas about beauty and aesthetics, but he has heard that Art is a not altogether unimportant part of life. The shadow of this new colossus is everywhere. He is the great reading public; the newspapers and weekly and monthly reviews are his; fiction and poetry and art are his mental caterers, the theatre and the cinema and the radio exist for him: Science hastens to bring her knowledge and discoveries to his doors and equip his life with endless machinery; politics are shaped in his image. It is he who opposed and then brought about the enfranchisement of women, who has been evolving syndicalism, anarchism, the war of classes, the uprising of labour, waging what we are told are wars of ideas or of cultures,a ferocious type of conflict made in the very image of this new barbarism,or bringing about in a few days Russian revolutions which the century-long efforts and sufferings of the intelligentsia failed to achieve. It is his coming which has been the precipitative agent for the reshaping of the modern world. If a Lenin, a Mussolini, a Hitler have achieved their rapid and almost stupefying success, it was because this driving force, this responsive quick-acting mass was there to carry them to victorya force lacking to their less fortunate predecessors.
The first results of this momentous change have been inspiriting to our desire of movement, but a little disconcerting to the thinker and to the lover of a high and fine culture; for if it has to some extent democratised culture or the semblance of culture, it does not seem at first sight to have elevated or streng thened it by this large accession of the half-redeemed from below. Nor does the world seem to be guided any more directly by the reason and intelligent will of her best minds than before. Commercialism is still the heart of modern civilisation; a sensational activism is still its driving force. Modern education has not in the mass redeemed the sensational man; it has only made necessary to him things to which he was not formerly accustomed, mental activity and occupations, intellectual and even aesthetic sensations, emotions of idealism. He still lives in the vital substratum, but he wants it stimulated from above. He requires an army of writers to keep him mentally occupied and provide some sort of intellectual pabulum for him; he has a thirst for general information of all kinds which he does not care or has not time to coordinate or assimilate, for popularised scientific knowledge, for such new ideas as he can catch, provided they are put before him with force or brilliance, for mental sensations and excitation of many kinds, for ideals which he likes to think of as actuating his conduct and which do give it sometimes a certain colour. It is still the activism and sensationalism of the crude mental being, but much more open and free. And the cultured, the intelligentsia find that they can get a hearing from him such as they never had from the pure Philistine, provided they can first stimulate or amuse him; their ideas have now a chance of getting executed such as they never had before. The result has been to cheapen thought and art and literature, to make talent and even genius run in the grooves of popular success, to put the writer and thinker and scientist very much in a position like that of the cultured Greek slave in a Roman household where he has to work for, please, amuse and instruct his master while keeping a careful eye on his tastes and preferences and repeating trickily the manner and the points that have caught his fancy. The higher mental life, in a word, has been democratised, sensationalised, activised with both good and bad results. Through it all the eye of faith can see perhaps that a yet crude but an enormous change has begun. Thought and Knowledge, if not yet Beauty, can get a hearing and even produce rapidly some large, vague, yet in the end effective will for their results; the mass of culture and of men who think and strive seriously to appreciate and to know has enormously increased behind all this surface veil of sensationalism, and even the sensational man has begun to undergo a process of transformation. Especially, new methods of education, new principles of society are beginning to come into the range of practical possibility which will create perhaps one day that as yet unknown phenomenon, a race of mennot only a classwho have to some extent found and developed their mental selves, a cultured humanity.
1.10 - Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
FROM THE FOREGOING review of the beneficent qualities commonly
ascribed to tree-spirits, it is easy to understand why customs like
1.11 - BOOK THE ELEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
And, without danger, can review his spouse.
The Thracian Women transform'd to Trees
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Upanishad closes with two verses which seem to review
and characterise the whole work in the manner of the ancient
--
E HAVE now completed our review of this Upanishad; we have considered minutely the bearings of its
successive utterances and striven to make as precise
1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Then, one day in 1910, at Chandernagore, a strange thing happened. . . . But before describing the experience that would change the course of our evolution, let us stop to take stock and briefly review the present human condition. It is really quite simple: we are stuck in Matter, imprisoned in the Black Egg that constrains us on all sides every second of the day. There are not a hundred ways of getting out of it, but only two: one is to fall asleep (to dream, to fly into ecstasy, or to meditate, but all are more or less lofty, conscious or divine gradations of sleep), and the other is to die. Sri Aurobindo's experience, however, provides a third possibility, allowing us to get out without flying into ecstasy or dying that is, to get out without actually getting out thereby reversing the course of man's spiritual evolution, since the goal is no longer only above or outside, but inside; and, in addition, opening the door of waking life to all the dreams, all the ecstasies, and especially to all the powers that can help us incarnate our dreams and transform the Black Egg into an open, clear and livable place. That day of 1910, in Chandernagore, Sri Aurobindo had reached the very depths, had broken through all the squalid layers upon which Life has grown like an inexplicable flower. There was only that Light above shining more and more intensely as he went down, bringing out all the impurities one after another under its keen ray, as if all that night were drawing in an ever greater amount of Light, as if the subconscious boundaries were receding farther and farther downward in an ever greater concentration the mirror image of the concentration above and leaving just that one wall of Shadow beneath that one Light. Then, suddenly, without warning, in the depths of this "unconscious" Matter and in the very cells of this body, Sri Aurobindo was thrust into the supreme Light, without trance, without loss of individuality, without cosmic dissolution, and with his eyes wide open:
He broke into another Space and Time.245
1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
all review the facts that led psychologists to conjecture an arche-
type of wholeness, i.e., the self. These are in the first place
1.15 - Index, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Critical review (1911)
On the Criticism of Psychoanalysis (1910)
--
A review of the Complex Theory (1934)
The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology (1929)
1.15 - SILENCE, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
UNRESTRAINED and indiscriminate talk is morally evil and spiritually dangerous. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. This may seem a very hard saying. And yet if we pass in review the words we have given vent to in the course of the average day, we shall find that the greater number of them may be classified under three main heads: words inspired by malice and uncharitableness towards our neighbours; words inspired by greed, sensuality and self-love; words inspired by pure imbecility and uttered without rhyme or reason, but merely for the sake of making a distracting noise. These are idle words; and we shall find, if we look into the matter, that they tend to outnumber the words that are dictated by reason, charity or necessity. And if the unspoken words of our minds endless, idiot monologue are counted, the majority for idleness becomes, for most of us, overwhelmingly large.
All these idle words, the silly no less than the self-regarding and the uncharitable, are impediments in the way of the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, a dance of dust and flies obscuring the inward and the outward Light. The guard of the tongue (which is also, of course, a guard of the mind) is not only one of the most difficult and searching of all mortifications; it is also the most fruitful.
1.15 - The Value of Philosophy, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
Having now come to the end of our brief and very incomplete review of the problems of philosophy, it will be well to consider, in conclusion, what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be studied. It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view of the fact that many men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible.
This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or primarily, because of the effect on the student, but rather because of the effect on mankind in general. Thus utility does not belong to philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it.
1.16 - Man, A Transitional Being, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
thoughts into written form. A bilingual review was founded, with Richard in charge of the French section. Thus the Arya, or review of the Great Synthesis, would be born. But the war broke out, Richard was called back to France, and Sri Aurobindo found himself alone with sixty-four pages of philosophy to produce every month.
Nevertheless, he was no philosopher. And philosophy! Let me tell you in confidence that I never, never, never was a philosopher although I have written philosophy which is another story altogether. I knew precious little about philosophy before I did the Yoga and came to Pondicherry I was a poet and a politician, not a philosopher. How I
managed to do it and why? First, because Paul Richard proposed to me to cooperate in a philosophic review and as my theory was that a Yogi ought to be able to turn his hand to anything, I could not very well refuse; and then he had to go to the war and left me in the lurch with sixty-four pages a month of philosophy all to write by my lonely self. Secondly, because I had only to write down in the terms of the intellect all that I had observed and come to know in practising Yoga daily and the philosophy was there automatically. But that is not being a philosopher!301 And so it was that Sri Aurobindo became a writer. He was forty-two. Typically, he himself had decided nothing:
"outer" circumstances had launched him upon his path.
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
4 - Literature-Poetry-Drama Views and reviews, 'Arya' 1914-1920 1st ed. 1941
Letters, third series 1st ed. 1949
1.23 - Our Debt to the Savage, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
best. Therefore in reviewing the opinions and practices of ruder
ages and races we shall do well to look with leniency upon their
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Dandapani, a resident devotee now on a North Indian tour, sent an extract from the Modern Psychological review which stated that the dynamic centre of the Heart is on the right and not on the left whereas the physical organ is on the left.
Conversation followed on that subject.
--
Heart is usually understood to be the muscular organ lying on the left of the chest. The Modern Psychological review speaks of the
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi physical organ on the left and the Heart centre on the right. The
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Dandapani, a resident devotee now on a North Indian tour, sent an extract from the Modern Psychological review which stated that the dynamic centre of the Heart is on the right and not on the left whereas the physical organ is on the left.
Conversation followed on that subject.
13.01 - A Centurys Salutation to Sri Aurobindo The Greatness of the Great, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Publishers Note A review of Sri Aurobindos Life
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Light of LightsA Centurys Salutation to Sri Aurobindo The Greatness of the Great
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Publishers Note A review of Sri Aurobindos Life
13.02 - A Review of Sri Aurobindos Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:13.02 - A review of Sri Aurobindos Life
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
--
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Light of LightsA review of Sri Aurobindos Life
A review of Sri Aurobindos Life
I propose to speak to you on a very interesting subjectabout Sri Aurobindo. You know it is his centenary, that is to say, this August1 he completes a hundred years of earthly existence: I say earthly advisedly because although he has left his body he has not left earth's atmosphere. The Mother assures us he will be there to see the work begun be completed. I will speak on a very peculiar aspect of Sri Aurobindo's life. Many must have noticed it but I wish to draw your particular attention to it. Sri Aurobindo's life is an extraordinary phenomenon. It is not that of an ordinary human being. The life of an ordinary man follows a well-marked line of development, almost a routine good for everybody. The pattern is familiar, you can even foresee and foretell the future and the destiny of a person. You start as a student, join a school, go up to the college, after passing out you choose a profession, become an engineer or doctor or businessman or something well-recognised like that, then you continue to stick to the job you have chosen: you become a rich man or if you are unfortunate a poor man, anyhow go through the experiences of the life allotted to you, you become old, have children, grandchildren and then pass away; that is the ordinary course of life. In Sri Aurobindo life has a different line, movement and procedure. Strangely it consists of breaks, sudden unforeseen turns almost cutting away the past altogether. And then what is to be noted is that these breaks or turns are not imposed upon him but they are normally his own conscious decisions out of his own deliberate will, except one or two, I shall point out as I go on. These turns however may not be always a right-about-turn but anyhow, I may say, a right turn, a turn to the right, always to the rightuntil the final ultimate Right is reached.
13.03 - A Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A review of Sri Aurobindos Life A Note on Supermind
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Light of LightsA Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation
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A review of Sri Aurobindos Life A Note on Supermind
1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Heart is usually understood to be the muscular organ lying on the left of the chest. The Modern Psychological review speaks of the
407
14.06 - Liberty, Self-Control and Friendship, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Golden Rule A review of Our Ashram Life
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Eight TalksLiberty, Self-Control and Friendship
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The Golden Rule A review of Our Ashram Life
14.07 - A Review of Our Ashram Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:14.07 - A review of Our Ashram Life
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Eight TalksA review of Our Ashram Life
A review of Our Ashram Life
In its early days, quite at the beginning, we may now say, long long ago, for it is now almost half a century ago, the Ashram from its very start and quite spontaneously and inevitably grew into a community life. That is to say, the individuals ceased to have any personal possessions. Whatever they had belonged not to themselves but to the group, rather to the Master of the group, the Guru, to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Whatever they had, they considered as having received from the Mother for use only. They are not proprietors or possessors of anything: whatever they needed or they thought they needed, they had to ask for it and the Mother decided what they should have or not. It was a joyous surrender of possessions and a grateful acceptance of gifts. One may yet remember the beautiful movement that impelled each one of those who were fortunate to be there at that time. One is reminded of a parallel movement, although on a different field, described by Tagore in his well-known lines:
14.08 - A Parable of Sea-Gulls, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A review of Our Ashram Life The Mother, Human and Divine
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Eight TalksA Parable of Sea-Gulls
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A review of Our Ashram Life The Mother, Human and Divine
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Sri Bhagavan handed over the extract from the Psychological review of Philadelphia for her to read. He also added. The Heart is the place wherefrom the I-thought arises.
D.: So you mean the spiritual Heart as distinguished from the physical heart?
1.45 - The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
spring customs which we reviewed in an earlier part of this work.
(1) As in the spring customs the tree-spirit is represented both by
1.46 - The Corn-Mother in Many Lands, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
customs which have been passed under review, it may be noticed that
they involve two distinct conceptions of the corn-spirit. For
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Sri Bhagavan handed over the extract from the Psychological review of Philadelphia for her to read. He also added. The Heart is the place wherefrom the 'I-thought' arises.
D.: So you mean the spiritual Heart as distinguished from the physical heart?
1.59 - Killing the God in Mexico, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
have passed in review seem to show that the custom of killing men
whom their worshippers regard as divine has prevailed in many parts
1.63 - The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
carry great weight, and that on a fuller review of the facts the
balance of evidence seems to me to incline decidedly in his favour.
1.65 - Balder and the Mistletoe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
which have been passed in review help to shed light on the myth. In
this enquiry it may be convenient to begin with the mistletoe, the
1951-01-15 - Sincerity - inner discernment - inner light. Evil and imbalance. Consciousness and instruments., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If in your mind you go over the various movements and reactions of the day like one repeating indefinitely the same thing, you will not progress. If this reviewing is to make you progress, you must find something within you in whose light you yourself can be your own judge, something which represents for you the best part of yourself, which has some light, some goodwill and which precisely is in love with progress. Place that before you and, first of all, pass across it as at a cinema all that you have done, all that you have felt, your impulses, your thoughts, etc.; then try to coordinate them, that is, find out why this has followed that. And look at the luminous screen that is before you: certain things pass across it well, without throwing a shadow; others, on the contrary, throw a little shadow; others yet cast a shadow altogether black and disagreeable. You must do this very sincerely, as though you were playing a game: under such circumstances I did such and such a thing, feeling like this and thinking in this way; I have before me my ideal of knowledge and self-mastery, well, was this act in keeping with my ideal or not? If it was, it would not leave any shadow on the screen, which would remain transparent, and one would not have to worry about it. If it is not in conformity, it casts a shadow. Why has it left this shadow? What was there in this act that was contrary to the will to self-knowledge and self-mastery? Most often you will find that it corresponds to unconsciousness then you file it among unconscious things and resolve that next time you will try to be conscious before doing anything. But in other cases you will see that it was a nasty little egoism, quite black, which had come to distort your action or your thought. Then you place this egoism before your light and ask yourself: Why has it the right to make me act like that, think like that? And instead of accepting any odd explanation you must search and you will find in a corner of your being something which thinks and says, Ah, no, I shall accept everything but that. You will see that it is a petty vanity, a movement of self-love, an egoistic feeling hidden somewhere, a hundred things. Then you take a good look at these things in the light of your ideal: Is cherishing this movement in conformity with my seeking and the realisation of my ideal or not? I put this little dark corner in front of the light until the light enters into it and it disappears. Then the comedy is over. But the comedy of your whole day is not finished yet, you know, for there are many things which have to pass thus before the light. But if you continue this game for truly it is a game, if you do this sincerely I assure you that in six months you will not recognise yourself, you will say to yourself, What? I was like that! It is impossible!
You may be five years old or twenty, fifty or sixty and yet transform yourself in this way by putting everything before this inner light. You will see that the elements which do not conform with your ideal are not generally elements which you have to throw wholly out of yourself (there are very few of this kind); they are simply things not in their place. If you organise everythingyour feelings, your thoughts, your impulses, etc,around the psychic centre which is the inner light, you will see that all inner disorder will change into a luminous order.
1955-06-01 - The aesthetic conscience - Beauty and form - The roots of our life - The sense of beauty - Educating the aesthetic sense, taste - Mental constructions based on a revelation - Changing the world and humanity, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I shall tell you perhaps in ten years I dont know, perhaps in ten years I shall tell you whether there is something in modern painting. Because I am going to tell you something curious: for the moment I find it downright ugly, not only ugly but stupid; but what is frightening is that it makes you completely sick of all other pictures. When one sees painting as it is done today for we receive all the time art reviews in which, with much intelligence, are put reproductions of both ancient and modern pictures, and they are put side by side, which makes the thing very interesting, you can see both and compare. I cant manage to have yet a very clear notion of beauty in what modern painters do, I confess this, I havent yet understood; but what is curious is that they have succeeded in taking away from me all the taste for the painting of old; except some very rare things, the rest seems to me pompous, artificial, ridiculous, unbearable.
Now this means that behind this incoherence and chaos there certainly is, there must be a creative spirit which is trying to manifest.
1956-08-29 - To live spontaneously - Mental formations Absolute sincerity - Balance is indispensable, the middle path - When in difficulty, widen the consciousness - Easiest way of forgetting oneself, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was in the review Arya, within a period of six years (1914-1920), that Sri Aurobindo published most of his major works: The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Human Cycle (originally The Psychology of Social Development), The Ideal of Human Unity, Essays on the Gita, The Secret of the Veda, The Future Poetry, The Foundations of Indian Culture (originally a number of series under other titles).
***
1958-05-07 - The secret of Nature, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, in every being, the whole process of evolution is reproduced, as if at a dizzy speed one were reviewing all that has been done, and as if it were necessary to relive all that in a flash before taking the next step.
(Silence)
1958 09 19, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As we have just said, this inspiration from regions far above the mind surpasses in value and quality the highest achievements of the mind, such as reason. Reason is certainly at the apex of human mental activity. It can review and control the knowledge acquired with the help of the senses. It has often been said that the senses are altogether defective instruments of knowledge, that they are incapable of perceiving things as they are, that the information they supply is superficial and very often faulty. When it is fully developed, the human reason knows this and does not trust the knowledge of the senses. It is only if one is infra-rational, if I may say so, that one believes that all one sees, hears, or touches is absolutely true. As soon as one is developed in the region of higher reason, one knows that all these notions are almost essentially false, and that one can in no way rely on them. But the knowledge one receives from this supramental or divine region surpasses all that can be conceived or understood by reason, at least to the same extent that reason surpasses the knowledge of the senses.
Several questions concern a practical point: How to develop the capacity for inspiration?; What are the conditions needed to receive inspiration and is it possible to have it constantly?
1f.lovecraft - A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
toward new Writers in the Articles I prepard for The Monthly review.
He said, I pushd every Aspirant off the Slopes of Parnassus. Sir, I
1f.lovecraft - Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
scenes of other days, flash before me in stereoscopic review. A flaming
factory . . . hysterical screams of terrified women penned in by walls
1f.lovecraft - Out of the Aeons, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
article in The Occult review by the famous New Orleans mystic
Etienne-Laurent de Marigny, in which was asserted the complete identity
--
reviewing its talk of primal and fabulous Mu, and claiming boldly that
the hideous mummy was none other than the daring heretic Tyog,
1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
after a scene at the bungalow itself. Willett now reviewed the whole
case with febrile energy; it being at this time that he obtained the
--
brain, which he recognised later when reviewing the events of that
horrible Good Friday of the previous year.
1f.lovecraft - The Horror at Red Hook, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
And now, as he reviewed the things he had seen and felt and
apprehended, Malone was content to keep unshared the secret of what
--
poignant things to his credit in the Dublin revieweven write a truly
interesting story of New York low life; and now, looking back, he
1f.lovecraft - The Loved Dead, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
mentally review that portentous hour it seems that it must have
originated with my first glimpse of that funeral scene, silently
1f.lovecraft - The Shunned House, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
seriousness, and began at once not only to review the evidence, but to
accumulate as much more as I could. I talked with the elderly Archer
1.fs - Elysium, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
Lulled with harp-strings, reviews, in the calm of his dreams,
The fields, when the harvest is o'er.
1.fs - The Celebrated Woman - An Epistle By A Married Man, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
(Sweet eyes!) fall straighton the review!
I by her sideall undetected,
--
In Doctor Dunderhead's review.
1.fs - To My Friends, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
Thoughtfully and calmly in review
All. in life repeats itself forever,
1.jk - Isabella; Or, The Pot Of Basil - A Story From Boccaccio, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
(stanza LXII): Hunt says - "The passage about the tone of her voice, -- the poor lost-witted coaxing, -- the 'chuckle,' in which she asks after her Pilgrim and her Basil,-- is as true and touching an instance of the effect of a happy familiar word, as any in all poetry." It is difficult to imagine that these sentences of Hunt's were not somehow misprinted; but, as the review occurs only in the original issue of The Indicator, one has no means of testing this passage by comparison with later editions. It can hardly be supposed that Hunt really thought the Pilgrim meant Lorenzo; and it ought not to be necessary to explain that the poor lost girl called after any pilgrim whom chance sent her way, enquiring of him where her Basil was.
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
1.jwvg - Answers In A Game Of Questions, #Goethe - Poems, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Is each day review'd and blamed,
Who, when others fools are still,
1.lovecraft - Fact And Fancy, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Freezes poor Ovid in an iced review,
And sneers because his fables are untrue!
1.pbs - Letter To Maria Gisborne, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
1.pbs - Lines To A Reviewer, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
object:1.pbs - Lines To A reviewer
author class:Percy Bysshe Shelley
1.pbs - Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot The Tyrant, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Court Journal or legitimate review!
Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover
1.pbs - Peter Bell The Third, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
The Devil to all the first reviews
A copy of it slyly sent,
--
All these reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
--
From God's own voice in a review.
All Peter did on this occasion
--
Yet the reviews, who heaped abuse
On Peter while he wrote for freedom,
--
Even the reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
With adamantine nerves, grew tired;
--
'Composed at Florence, October 1819, and forwarded to Hunt (Nov. 2) to be published by C. & J. Ollier without the author's name; ultimately printed by Mrs. Shelley in the second edition of the Poetical Works, 1839. A skit by John Hamilton Reynolds, Peter Bell, A Lyrical Ballad, had already appeared (April, 1819), a few days before the publication of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, A Tale. These productions were reviewed in Leigh Hunt's Examiner (April 26, May 3, 1819); and to the entertainment derived from his perusal of Hunt's criticisms the composition of Shelley's Peter Bell the Third is chiefly owing.' ~ Hutchinson's Poetical Works of Percy Shelley, 1905.
Note by Mrs. Shelley: 'In this new edition I have added Peter Bell the Third. A critique on Wordsworth's Peter Bell reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley exceedingly, and suggested this poem.
1.pbs - The Witch Of Atlas, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
1.rb - An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!
1.rb - Bishop Blougram's Apology, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
"Something of mine he relished, some review:
"He's quite above their humbug in his heart,
--
In all our own reviews and some not ours.
Go write your lively sketches! be the first
1.rb - Paracelsus - Part II - Paracelsus Attains, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
The sad review of an ambitious youth
Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth,
1.rb - Paracelsus - Part IV - Paracelsus Aspires, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
I must review my captured truth, sum up
Its value, trace what ends to what begins,
1.wby - Adams Curse, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
First published on December 1902 in the Monthly review.
In 'A Servant of the Queen,' Maud Gonne claimed the poem was based on a conversation her sister, (Kathleen) and herself had with Yeats. Kathleen remarked that it was hard work being beautiful.
1.wby - The Indian To His Love, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
First published as 'An Indian Song,' in the Dublin University review, December 1886.
\
1.whitman - As I Sat Alone By Blue Ontarios Shores, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to
life itself?
1.ww - 2- The White Doe Of Rylstone, Or, The Fate Of The Nortons, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
The past he calmly hath reviewed:
But where will be the fortitude
1.ww - 6- The White Doe Of Rylstone, Or, The Fate Of The Nortons, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Was then reviewed, and prompt word given,
That to what place soever fled
1.ww - Book Ninth [Residence in France], #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
For breathing-time, is tempted to review
The region left behind him; and, if aught
1.ww - Book Tenth {Residence in France continued], #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
A youthful pilgrim; above all reviewed
That eventide, when under windows bright
1.ww - Matthew, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Read o'er these lines; and then review
This tablet, that thus humbly rears
1.ww - The Brothers, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
And, sitting down beneath the trees, reviewed
All that the Priest had said: his early years
1.ww - The Excursion- IV- Book Third- Despondency, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
What followed cannot be reviewed in thought;
Much less, retraced in words. If she, of life
1.ww - The Excursion- IX- Book Eighth- The Parsonage, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Pastor's apology and apprehensions that he might have detained his Auditors too long, with the Pastor's invitation to his house-- Solitary disinclined to comply--Rallies the Wanderer--And playfully draws a comparison between his itinerant profession and that of the Knight-errant--Which leads to Wanderer's giving an account of changes in the Country from the manufacturing spirit-- Favourable effects--The other side of the picture, and chiefly as it has affected the humbler classes--Wanderer asserts the hollowness of all national grandeur if unsupported by moral worth--Physical science unable to support itself--Lamentations over an excess of manufacturing industry among the humbler Classes of Society--Picture of a Child employed in a Cotton-mill-- Ignorance and degradation of Children among the agricultural Population reviewed--Conversation broken off by a renewed Invitation from the Pastor--Path leading to his House--Its appearance described--His Daughter--His Wife--His Son (a Boy) enters with his Companion--Their happy appearance--The Wanderer how affected by the sight of them.
THE pensive Sceptic of the lonely vale
2.01 - Habit 1 Be Proactive, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
2. Identify an experience you might encounter in the near future where, based on past experience, you would probably behave reactively. review the situation in the context of your Circle of Influence.
How could you respond proactively? Take several moments and create the experience vividly in your mind, picturing yourself responding in a proactive manner. Remind yourself of the gap between stimulus and response. Make a commitment to yourself to exercise your freedom to choose.
2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
After 1910 when Sri Aurobindo was engrossed in Sadhana he read very few books. But he was in contact with the world through newspapers and magazines. Besides, the disciples living in the Ashram from 1923 used to read books and they brought some of the ideas and opinions from the books to Sri Aurobindo's notice in the evening talks. Here it may be necessary only to state that the initiative in these talks was very often taken by the disciples and that these talks are not complete reviews of the books mentioned. They will be found interesting as revealing a particular side of Sri Aurobindo's personality, one in which he was speaking freely to disciples with whom he was familiar.
12 SEPTEMBER 1923
Disciple: The Utkal Star has written an article on the 15th of August and the writer points out the absence of Islamic culture in the grand synthesis you have made. I believe the Modern review also pointed out the same.
Sri Aurobindo: The Mahomedan or Islamic culture hardly gave anything to the world which may be said to be of fundamental importance and typically its own. Islamic culture was mainly borrowed from others. Their mathematics and astronomy and other subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is true they gave some of these things a new turn. But they have not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result of gnostics who lived in Persia, and they are the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta.
--
Charu Chandra Dutt's review of The Life Divine in the Vishva Bharati was read out to Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo: He may continue it, it may be for some people an introduction to The Life Divine.
--
Disciple: Tagore has said in reviewing Shkuntala that the love which Dushyant felt for Shakuntala at the first sight was only passion, a result of mere physical, at most vital, attraction. But when he met her again after separation in the Marichi Ashram his love had become purified and there was no element of passion in it.
Sri Aurobindo: That is not at all true; all that one can put from ones own imagination. But Dushyant is not shown outgrowing his vital passion in Shkuntala he was made to forget it by the power of the curse. That does not mean that his attraction has lessened.
--
Anilbaran Roy's article "The Advaita in the Gita" had appeared in the Calcutta review.
Sri Aurobindo: He finds the idea of transformation of nature in the Gita and also other things contained in The Life Divine. I don't see all that in the Gita myself.
--
A review of his poems appeared in a Christian monthly magazine, New review. The reviewer there writes that Gerard Hopkins had tried a kind of quantitative verse in English. Bridges has written notes on the 2nd edition of these poems.
Sri Aurobindo: The poem on "Mary" is very fine. Hopkins nearly becomes a great poet in his sonnets. He is not a mystic poet but a religious one. In all Catholic poets there is a note of acute suffering which he also shares. Christina Rosetti is better in that respect.
2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Being can have three different states of its consciousness with regard to its own eternity. The first is that in which there is the immobile status of the Self in its essential existence, self-absorbed or self-conscious, but in either case without development of consciousness in movement or happening; this is what we distinguish as its timeless eternity. The second is its whole-consciousness of the successive relations of all things belonging to a destined or an actually proceeding manifestation, in which what we call past, present and future stand together as if in a map or settled design or very much as an artist or painter or architect might hold all the detail of his work viewed as a whole, intended or reviewed in his mind or arranged in a plan for execution; this is the stable status or simultaneous integrality of Time. This seeing of Time is not at all part of our normal awareness of events as they happen, though our view of the past, because it is already known and can be regarded in the whole, may put on something of this character; but we know that this consciousness exists because it is possible in an exceptional state to enter into it and see things from the view-point of this simultaneity of Time-vision. The third status is that of a processive movement of Consciousness-Force and its successive working out of what has been seen by it in the static vision of the Eternal; this is the Time movement. But it is in one and the same Eternity that this triple status exists and the movement takes place; there are not really two eternities, one an eternity of status, another an eternity of movement, but there are different statuses or positions taken by Consciousness with regard to the one Eternity. For it can see the whole Time development from outside or from above the movement; it can take a stable position within the movement and see the before and the after in a fixed, determined or destined succession; or it can take instead a mobile position in the movement, itself move with it from moment to moment and see all that has happened receding back into the past and all that has to happen coming towards it from the future; or else it may concentrate on the moment it occupies and see nothing but what is in that moment and immediately around or behind it. All these positions can be taken by the being of the Infinite in a simultaneous vision or experience. It can see Time from above and inside Time, exceeding it and not within it; it can see the Timeless develop the Time-movement without ceasing to be timeless, it can embrace the whole movement in a static and a dynamic vision and put out at the same time something of itself into the moment-vision. This simultaneity may seem to the finite consciousness tied to the moment-vision a magic of the Infinite, a magic of Maya; to its own way of perception which needs to limit, to envisage one status only at a time in order to harmonise, it would give a sense of confused and inconsistent unreality. But to an infinite consciousness such an integral simultaneity of vision and experience would be perfectly logical and consistent; all could be elements of a whole-vision capable of being closely related together in a harmonious arrangement, a multiplicity of view bringing out the unity of the thing seen, a diverse presentation of concomitant aspects of the One Reality.
If there can be this simultaneous multiplicity of selfpresentation of one Reality, we see that there is no impossibility in the coexistence of a Timeless Eternal and a Time Eternity.
2.02 - Habit 2 Begin with the End in Mind, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
A mission statement is not something you write overnight. It takes deep introspection, careful analysis, thoughtful expression, and often many rewrites to produce it in final form. It may take you several weeks or even months before you feel really comfortable with it, before you feel it is a complete and concise expression of your innermost values and directions. Even then, you will want to review it regularly and make minor changes as the years bring additional insights or changing circumstances.
But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.
I recently finished reviewing my own mission statement, which I do fairly regularly. Sitting on the edge of a beach, alone, at the end of a bicycle ride, I took out my organizer and hammered it out. It took several hours, but I felt a sense of clarity, a sense of organization and commitment, a sense of exhilaration and freedom.
I find the process is as important as the product. Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs. As you do, other people begin to sense that you're not being driven by everything that happens to you. You have a sense of mission about what you're trying to do and you are excited
about it.
--
My review of the success literature brought me in contact with hundreds of books on this subject.
Although some made extravagant claims and relied on anecdotal rather than scientific evidence, I think that most of the material is fundamentally sound. The majority of it appears to have originally come
--
It keeps each role clearly before you. You can review your roles frequently to make sure that you don't get totally absorbed by one role to the exclusion of others that are equally or even more important in your life.
After you identify your various roles, then you can think about the Long Term Goals are plans you make that support the principles described in your Mission Statement. These goals should represent areas you want to focus on in the near future. Typically, Long Term Goals take longer than a week to complete, but are most specific than the lifetime goals of your Mission Statement.long-term goals you want to accomplish in each of those roles. We're into the right brain again, using imagination, creativity, conscience, and inspiration. If these goals are the extension of a mission statement based on correct principles, they will be vitally different from the goals people normally set. They will be in harmony with correct principles, with natural laws, which gives you greater power to achieve them.
--
By getting input from every family member, drafting a statement, getting feedback, revising it, and using wording from different family members, you get the family talking, communicating, on things that really matter deeply. The best mission statements are the result of family members coming together in a spirit of mutual respect, expressing their different views, and working together to create something greater than any one individual could do alone. Periodic review to expand perspective, shift emphasis or direction, amend or give new meaning to time-worn phrases can keep the family united in common values and purposes.
The mission statement becomes the framework for thinking, for governing the family. When the problems and crises come, the constitution is there to remind family members of the things that matter most and to provide direction for problem solving and decision making based on correct principles.
--
We review the statement frequently and rework goals and jobs twice a year, in September and June
-- the beginning of school and the end of school -- to reflect the situation as it is, to improve it, to streng then it. It renews us, it recommits us to what we believe in, what we stand for.
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
vivifying them from time to time by a fresh review in the light
of new experience and wider knowledge. The sattwic nation
2.03 - THE ENIGMA OF BOLOGNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[96] After reviewing a number of earlier authors who had devoted themselves to the same theme, Licetus mentions the work of Joannes Casparius Gevartius,252 who propounded the theory that the inscription described the nature of Love. This author cites the comic poet Alexis in Athenaeus:
I think that the painters, or, to put it more concisely, all who make images of this god, are unacquainted with Eros. For he is neither female nor male; again, neither god nor man, neither stupid nor yet wise, but rather composed of elements from everywhere, and bearing many qualities under a single form. For his audacity is that of a man, his timidity a womans; his folly argues madness, his reasoning good sense; his impetuosity is that of an animal, his persistence that of adamant, his love of honour that of a god.253
2.04 - On Art, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: They are trying to be Eliotian (imitators of T. S. Eliot). Good poetry is not being read. X's book came out and was very well reviewed and yet the book is not selling.
Sri Aurobindo: So they don't read poetry in India as they don't in England. Nowadays, at least for the last 20 years and more, the field has been captured by fiction novels, short stories, etc.
2.05 - Habit 3 Put First Things First, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
You may want to review your personal mission statement while riding the bus. You may want to measure the value of a new opportunity against something you already have planned. If your organizer is portable, you will keep it with you so that important data is always within reach.
Since Quadrant II is the heart of effective self-management, you need a tool that moves you into
--
Taking a few minutes each morning to review your schedule can put you in touch with the value-based decisions you made as you organized the week as well as unanticipated factors that may have come up. As you overview the day, you can see that your roles and goals provide a natural prioritization that grows out of your innate sense of balance. It is a softer, more right-brain prioritization that ultimately comes out of your sense of personal mission.
You may still find that the third-generation A, B, C or 1, 2, 3 prioritization gives needed order to daily activities. It would be a false dichotomy to say that activities are either important or they aren't.
--
And fifth, it gives greater context through weekly organizing (with daily adaptation as needed), rising above the limiting perspective of a single day and putting you in touch with your deepest values through review of your key roles.
The practical thread running through all five of these advances is a primary focus on relationships and results and a secondary focus on time.
2.10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In thought separation of the thinker and the thinking is more difficult. The thinker is plunged and lost in the thought or carried in the thought current, identified with it; it is not usually at the time of or in the very act of thinking that he can observe or review his thoughts, - he has to do that in retrospect and with the aid of memory or by a critical pause of corrective judgment before he proceeds further: but still a simultaneity of thinking and conscious direction of the mind's action can be achieved partially when the thought does not engross, entirely when the thinker acquires the faculty of stepping back into the mental self and standing apart there from the mental energy. Instead of being absorbed in the thought with at most a vague feeling of the process of thinking, we can see the process by a mental vision, watch our thoughts in their origination and movement and, partly by a silent insight, partly by a process of thought upon thought, judge and evaluate them. But whatever the kind of identification, it is to be noted that the knowledge of our internal movements is of a double nature, separation and direct contact: for even when we detach ourselves, this close contact is maintained; our knowledge is always based on a direct touch, on a cognition by direct awareness carrying in it a certain element of identity. The more separative attitude is ordinarily the method of our reason in observing and knowing our inner movements; the more intimate is the method of our dynamic part of mind associating itself with our sensations, feelings and desires: but in this association too the thinking mind can intervene and exercise a separative dissociated observation and control over both the dynamic self-associating part of mind and the vital or physical movement. All the observable movements of our physical being also are known and controlled by us in both these ways, the separative and the intimate; we feel the body and what it is doing intimately as part of us, but the mind is separate from it and can exercise a detached control over its movements.
Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
2.11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
T IS now possible to review in its larger lines this Ignorance, or this separative knowledge labouring towards identical knowledge, which constitutes our human mentality and, in an obscurer form, all consciousness that has evolved below our
1 I. 2. 6.
2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
I would like to spend the rest of this chapter exploring this idea, and end with a brief review and summary of the difficulties in both the Ego and the Eco views. And we will finish our account of the Idealists and their enduring legacy. But I would like to start with one last reason that an approach to Spirit based on monological exteriors is a losing proposition.
INCOMPLETE OR UNCERTAIN
2.1.5.1 - Study of Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A monthly review (1914-1921) in which Sri Aurobindo's major prose works first appeared.
***
2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: But you have reviewed it!
Sri Aurobindo: Then I have reviewed it without having read it. (Loud laughter) Of course, I might have glanced through it. I don't think it is inspired. It is more a mental interpretation, for he had a brilliant mind.
Disciple: When someone asked Tilak what he would do when India got Swaraj, he said he would again become a professor of Mathematics.
2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: And the Modern review put in another objection which is worth considering. The article accepts that non-violence may be a good gospel for a great saint but for the ordinary man to allow evil to triumph so easily, by passive resistance, would not be good for the society. There is no reason to hope that the goonda will change his mind, or heart, if you allow him to kill you.
Sri Aurobindo: Exactly, and Gandhi has been trying to apply it to other fields whereas its extreme application is meant for spiritual life. Non-violence or Ahimsa as a spiritual attitude and practice is perfectly understandable and has a standing. You may not accept it in toto but it has a basis in Reality. You can live it in spiritual life but to try to apply it to ordinary life is absurd. You ignore, as the Europeans do, the great principle of Adhikara, qualification. Also it makes no provision for the difference in situations.
--
Disciple: It seems Gandhi criticised Nivedita as volatile and mercurial. The Modern review violetly protested and he had to recant.
Sri Aurobindo: Nivedita volatile? What nonsense! She was a solid worker.
2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri** Aurobindo:** I have seen a review of it in New Statesman.
Disciple: Jwalanti told me Henderson speaks of Hitler as a man possessed.
2.22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It becomes at once evident that in this plan of rebirth the false importance which our mind attaches to the memory of past lives disappears altogether. If indeed rebirth were governed by a system of rewards and punishments, if life's whole intention were to teach the embodied spirit to be good and moral, - supposing that that is the intention in the dispensation of Karma and it is not what it looks like in this presentation of it, a mechanical law of recompense and retri bution without any reformatory meaning or purpose, - then there is evidently a great stupidity and injustice in denying to the mind in its new incarnation all memory of its past births and actions. For it deprives the reborn being of all chance to realise why he is rewarded or punished or to get any advantage from the lesson of the profitableness of virtue and the unprofitableness of sin vouchsafed to him or inflicted on him. Even, since life seems often to teach the opposite lesson, - for he sees the good suffer for their goodness and the wicked prosper by their wickedness, - he is rather likely to conclude in this perverse sense, because he has not the memory of an assured and constant result of experience which would show him that the suffering of the good man was due to his past wickedness and the prosperity of the sinner due to the splendour of his past virtues, so that virtue is the best policy in the long run for any reasonable and prudent soul entering into this dispensation of Nature. It might be said that the psychic being within remembers; but such a secret memory would seem to have little effect or value on the surface. Or it may be said that it realises what has happened and learns its lesson when it reviews and assimilates its experiences after issuing from the body: but this intermittent memory does not very apparently help in the next birth; for most of us persist in sin and error and show no tangible signs of having profited by the teaching of our past experience.
But if a constant development of being by a developing cosmic experience is the meaning and the building of a new personality in a new birth is the method, then any persistent or complete memory of the past life or lives might be a chain and a serious obstacle: it would be a force for prolonging the old temperament, character, preoccupations, and a tremendous burden hampering the free development of the new personality and its formulation of new experience. A clear and detailed memory of past loves, hatreds, rancours, attachments, connections would be equally a stupendous inconvenience; for it would bind the reborn being to a useless repetition or a compulsory continuation of his surface past and stand heavily in the way of his bringing out new possibilities from the depths of the spirit. If, indeed, a mental learning of things were the heart of the matter, if that were the process of our development, memory would have a great importance: but what happens is a growth of the soul personality and a growth of the nature by an assimilation into our substance of being, a creative and effective absorption of the essential results of past energies; in this process conscious memory is of no importance. As the tree grows by a subconscient or inconscient assimilation of action of sun and rain and wind and absorption of earth-elements, so the being grows by a subliminal or intraconscient assimilation and absorption of its results of past becoming and an output of potentialities of future becoming. The law that deprives us of the memory of past lives is a law of the cosmic Wisdom and serves, not disserves its evolutionary purpose.
2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
| 26-08-40 | C.C. Dutt's review of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo on himself |
| 04-09-40 | Kalidasa's poetry |
2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the human mind the intuition is even such a truthremembrance or truth-conveyance, or such a revealing flash or blaze breaking into a great mass of ignorance or through a veil of nescience: but we have seen that it is subject there to an invading mixture or a mental coating or an interception and substitution; there is too a manifold possibility of misinterpretation which comes in the way of the purity and fullness of its action. Moreover, there are seeming intuitions on all levels of the being which are communications rather than intuitions, and these have a very various provenance, value and character. The infrarational "mystic", so styled, - for to be a true mystic it is not sufficient to reject reason and rely on sources of thought or action of which one has no understanding, - is often inspired by such communications on the vital level from a dark and dangerous source. In these circumstances we are driven to rely mainly on the reason and are disposed even to control the suggestions of the intuition - or the pseudo-intuition, which is the more frequent phenomenon, - by the observing and discriminating intelligence; for we feel in our intellectual part that we cannot be sure otherwise what is the true thing and what the mixed or adulterated article or false substitute. But this largely discounts for us the utility of the intuition: for the reason is not in this field a reliable arbiter, since its methods are different, tentative, uncertain, an intellectual seeking; even though it itself really relies on a camouflaged intuition for its conclusions, - for without that help it could not choose its course or arrive at any assured finding, - it hides this dependence from itself under the process of a reasoned conclusion or a verified conjecture. An intuition passed in judicial review by the reason ceases to be an intuition and can only have the authority of the reason for which there is no inner source of direct certitude. But even if the mind became predominantly an intuitive mind reliant upon its portion of the higher faculty, the co-ordination of its cognitions and its separated activities, - for in mind these would always be apt to appear as a series of imperfectly connected flashes, - would remain difficult so long as this new mentality has not a conscious liaison with its suprarational source or a self-uplifting access to a higher plane of consciousness in which an intuitive action is pure and native.
Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of "stable lightnings". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.
2.2.7.01 - Some General Remarks, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I look at these things from a more impersonal or, if you like, a personal-impersonal point of view. There is on one side my effort at perfection, for myself and others and for the possibility of a greater perfection in a changed humanity: on the other side there is a play of forces some favouring it but more trying to prevent it. The challenge I speak of comes from these forces. On one side it is a pressure from the pro-forces saying Your work is not good enough; learn to do better; on the other it is a pressure from the contrary forces saying Your work? It is a delusion and error,a poor mediocre thing, and we will trample and break it to pieces. Part of the work was an attempt to inspire a poetry which would express first the aspiration and labour towards the spiritual or divine and afterwards its realisation and manifestation. There are many who write poetry in the Ashram under this impulse but in the languages which I know best (English perfectlyat least I hope soBengali a little), there were four here whose work seemed to me to contain already in a fairly ample way the ripe possibility of the thing I wantedyourself [Dilip Kumar Roy], Arjava, Amal, Harin. (I do not speak of Nishikanta and others because they are new or emergent only). There are some Gujarati poets but I do not know the poetic language and technique in that tongue well enough to form an indubitable judgment. These four then I have encouraged and tried to push on towards a greater and richer expression: I have praised but there was nothing insincere in my praise. For some time however I have received intimations from many quarters that my judgment was mistaken, ignorant, partial and perhaps not wholly sincere. It began with your poetry even at the time of Anami and the forces at play spoke through some literary coteries of Bengal and reached here through reviews, letters etc. There has been much inability to appreciate Arjavas poetry, Yeats observing that he had evidently something to say but struggled to say it with too much obscurity and roughness. Amals work is less criticised, but A. E.s attitude towards it was rather condescending as to an Indian who writes unexpectedly well in English. Finally, there is the ignoring or rejection of Harins work by this array of authorities there are as good authorities on the other side, but that is irrelevant. That makes the issue complete and clear. If I have made so big a mistake, then the whole thing is a hallucination I am an incompetent critic of poetry, at least of contemporary poetry, and my pretension to inspire cannot stand for a moment. Personally that would not matter to me, for personally I have my own feeling of these things and what it may be in the eyes of others makes no differencejust as it makes no difference to me if my own poetry is really no poetry, as Anandashanker and so many others think and may from their own viewpoint there are a million possible viewpoints in the worldbe justified in thinking. But for my work it does matter. I recognise in it the challenge of the forces and, once I recognise that in whatever field, I never think myself entitled to ignore it. If it is a challenge to do better (from the favourable forces), I must see that and get it done. If it is a challenge from the other forces, I must see that too and know how far it is justifiable or else what can be put against it. That is what I have always done both in my own Yoga looking carefully to see what was imperfect in the instrumentation of my own consciousness as a vehicle of the manifestation and working to set it right or else maintaining what was right against all challenge. So I began to do it here. Instead of reading rapidly through Harins poems every day, I began to weigh and consider looking to see what could be justly said from Krishnaprems viewpoint and what could be fairly said from mine. I took Krishnaprems criticism because it is the only thing I have that is definite and, though his technical strictures are obviously mistaken, the general ones have to be weighed even though they are far from conclusive. But this is a work for my personal use,its main object is not a weighing of Harins work but of my own capacity and judgment and that is too personal in scope for me to lay before others. That is why I said I was not writing it to circulate.
I have written all this to explain to you that you have not pained or hurt or displeased me, nor has Krishnaprem either. It would be childish to be displeased with someone because his opinions on literature or a particular piece of literature are not identical with my own at every point. I may also say that I was not displeased with you for your letter. I was a little disappointed that you should have gone back to mental doubts or to vital feelings after you had started so well for something else. But these temporary reversions are too common on the path to the Divine for me to be displeased or discouraged. The work I have to do for myself or for the world or for you or others can only be achieved if I have love for all and faith for all and go firmly on till it is done. It is why I urge you to do the same, because I know that if one does not give up, one is sure to arrive. That is the attitude you had started to take, to go quietly on and give time for the right development however slow. I want you to return to that and keep to it.
3.00.1 - Foreword, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
alchemy here under review is almost virgin territory. I must therefore take it
for granted that the reader has some knowledge of my Psychology andAlchemy, otherwise it will be hard for him to gain access to the present
3.03 - The Four Foundational Practices, #The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, #Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, #Buddhism
The third preparation involves reviewing the day before going to sleep, and streng thening the intention to practice during the night. As you prepare for sleep, allow the memories of the day to arise. Whatever comes to mind recognize as a dream. The memories most likely to arise are of those experiences strong enough to affect the coming dreams. During this review, attempt to experience the memories that arise as memories of dreams. Memory is actually very similar to dream. Again, this is not about automatic labeling, a ritual of repeating "It was a dream," over and over. Try to truly comprehend the dream-like nature of your experience, the projections that sustain it, and feel the difference of relating to experience as a dream.
Then develop the strong determination to recognize the dreams of the night for what they are.
--
Begin by reviewing the night. The Tibetan term for this preparation is literally "remembering."
Did you dream? Were you aware that you were in a dream? If you dreamt but did not attain lucidity, you should reflect, "I dreamt but did not recognize the dream as a dream. But it was a dream."
3.04 - The Way of Devotion, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Bhakti in itself is as wide as the heart-yearning of the soul for the Divine and as simple and straightforward as love and desire going straight towards their object. It cannot therefore be fixed down to any systematic method, cannot found itself on a psychological science like the Rajayoga, or a psycho-physical like the Hathayoga, or start from a definite intellectual process like the ordinary method of the Jnanayoga. It may employ various means or supports, and man, having in him a tendency towards order, process and system, may try to methodise his resort to these auxiliaries: but to give an account of their variations one would have to review almost all man's numberless religions upon their side of inner approach to the Deity. Really, however, the more intimate yoga of Bhakti resolves itself simply into these four movements, the desire of the Soul when it turns towards God and the straining of its emotion towards him, the pain of love and the divine return of love, the delight of love possessed and the play of that delight, and the eternal enjoyment of the divine Lover which is the heart of celestial bliss. These are things that are at once too simple and too profound for methodising or for analysis. One can at best only say, here are these four successive elements, steps, if we may so call them, of the siddhi, and here are, largely, some of the means which it uses, and here again are some of the aspects and experiences of the sadhana of devotion. We need only trace broadly the general line they follow before we turn to consider how the way of devotion enters into a synthetic and integral Yoga, what place it takes there and how its principle affects the other principles of divine living.
All Yoga is a turning of the human mind and the human soul, not yet divine in realisation, but feeling the divine impulse and attraction in it, towards that by which it finds its greater being. Emotionally, the first form which this turning takes must be that of adoration. In ordinary religion this adoration wears the form of external worship and that again develops a most external form of ceremonial worship. This element is ordinarily necessary because the mass of men live in their physical minds, cannot realise anything except by the force of a physical symbol and cannot feel that they are living anything except by the force of a physical action. We might apply here the Tantric gradation of sadhana, which makes the way of the pasu, the herd, the animal or physical being, the lowest stage of its discipline, and say that the purely or predominantly ceremonial adoration is the first step of this lowest part of the way. It is evident that even real religion,--and Yoga is something more than religion,--only begins when this quite outward worship corresponds to something really felt within the mind, some genuine submission, awe or spiritual aspiration, to which it becomes an aid, an outward expression and also a sort of periodical or constant reminder helping to draw back the mind to it from the preoccupations of ordinary life. But so long as it is only an idea of the Godhead to which one renders reverence or homage, we have not yet got to the beginning of Yoga. The aim of Yoga being union, its beginning must always be a seeking after the Divine, a longing after some kind of touch, closeness or possession. When this comes on us, the adoration becomes always primarily an inner worship; we begin to make ourselves a temple of the Divine, our thoughts and feelings a constant prayer of aspiration and seeking, our whole life an external service and worship. It is as this change, this new soul-tendency grows, that the religion of the devotee becomes a Yoga, a growing contact and union. It does not follow that the outward worship will necessarily be dispensed with, but it will increasingly become only a physical expression or outflowing of the inner devotion and adoration, the wave of the soul throwing itself out in speech and symbolic act.
3.2.08 - Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is also a manifestation of Light the Upanishads speak of jyotir brahma, the Light that is Brahman. Very often the sadhak feels a flow of Light upon him or around him or a flow of Light invading his centres or even his whole being and body, penetrating and illumining every cell and in that Light there grows the spiritual consciousness and one becomes open to all or many of its workings and realisations. Appositely I have a review of a book of Ramdas (of the Vision) before me in which is described such an experience got by the repetition of the Rama mantra, but, if I understand rightly, after a long and rigorous self-discipline. The mantra having stopped automatically, he beheld a small circular light before his mental vision. This yielded him thrills of delight. This experience having continued for some days, he felt a dazzling light like lightning, flashing before his eyes, which ultimately permeated and absorbed him. Now an inexpressible transport of bliss filled every pore of his physical frame. It does not always come like thatvery often it comes by stages or at long intervals, at first, working on the consciousness till it is ready.
We speak here also of Krishnas lightKrishnas light in the mind, Krishnas light in the vital; but it is a special lightin the mind it brings clarity, freedom from obscurity, mental error and perversion; in the vital it clears out all perilous stuff and where it is there is a pure and divine happiness and gladness.
33.17 - Two Great Wars, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such a moment of crisis came to man in the time of Sri Krishna. The Kurukshetra War is known as a war of righteousness, dharma-yuddha;it was a war of the gods and titans. On the battlefield of Kurukshetra Sri Krishna gave his message that was to initiate the New Age that was coming. In exactly the same way, Sri Aurobindo began to proclaim his message with the opening of the guns in the first World War. The War began in August 1914; on the 15th August of the same year came out the first number of his review, the Arya.Another point of note: the Aryacontinued almost as long as the War lasted. The "official end" of the War came towards the close of May, 1921; the Aryaceased in January of the same year. The Mother had arrived in the meantime to make Pondicherry her home.
The War left India practically untouched and without any major upheaval. It came and blew over like a stray wind, even as the raids of the Emden did on the Indian seas. Our memories of the War are still associated with that strange episode. The German cruiser passed by the shores of Pondicherry without doing any damage here, though Madras city received a few shell-shots. But I distinctly remember how many of the local residents, that is, those who lived on the Pondicherry sea-face, fled pen-mell towards the west, in the direction of the present Lake Estate. They packed themselves into rows of "push-push" carts - we had no rickshaws in those days - and looked for safety among the ravines of the Red Hills, or perhaps was it to hide themselves in the waters of the Lake, like Mainaka of the Indian legend?
3.4.1 - The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This review of the past is a very good sign, for it usually comes when there is a preparation of the physical consciousness and subconscient for change. One has not to regret the stumbles of the past but look with a quiet eye and understand, for all came the stumbles includedas part of the necessary experience by which the being learns and advances through error to the Light and through the imperfections of Nature towards the divine perfection.
***
3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
4. Harvard Business review, March-April 1967, page 10 (quoted in Anthony Judge, "Organizational Apartheid--Who Needs Whom in the Second United Nations Development Decade (1970-1980)?," Union of International Associations, Brussels, 1 rue aux Laines, Brussels 1, Belgium, UIA Study Papers INF/1, page 16).
5. This section is adapted largely from J. W. Clark, "Quantum Leaps in Education," CONNECTICUT INDUSTRY (Vol. 47, No. 5), May, 1969.
--
There is now much evidence, originating in the work of Piaget (1960) and substantiated in numerous experiments by other child psychologists both here and abroad (for reviews see Flavell, 1963; Kohlberg, 1968; and Phillips, 1969), that individual cognitive development proceeds by distinct, qualitatively different stages in children's modes of thinking and problem solving at different ages. Piaget and others have demonstrated that children's thinking is not just a watered-down or inferior approximation to adult thinking; it is radically and qualitatively different. The stages of mental development form an invariant sequence or succession of individual development. Each stage of cognitive development is a structured whole; mental development does not consist of the mere accretion of specific stimulus-response associations. Cognitive stages are hierarchically integrated; higher stages reintegrate the cognitive structures found at lower stages. Also, as Kohlberg (1968, p. 1021) points out "...there is a hierarchical preference within the individual...to prefer a solution of a problem at the highest level available to him." In reviewing the experimental literature on children's learning, Sheldon White (1965) has amassed evidence for two broad stages of mental development, which he labels associative and cognitive. The transition from one to the other occurs for the vast majority of children between five and seven years of age. In the simplest terms, these stages correspond to concrete-associative thinking and abstract-conceptual thinking. The latter does not displace the former in the course of the child's mental development; in older children and adults the two modes co-exist as hierarchical layers.
Ontogeny of Human Mental Abilities.
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Over the past half century numerous studies (for reviews see Jensen 1967, 1969) based on a wide variety of tests of mental ability administered to persons of varying degrees of genetic and environmental relatedness, sampled from European and North American Caucasian populations, lead to the now generally accepted conclusion that in these populations genetic factors are approximately twice as important as environmental factors in accounting for individual differences in mental ability. This means, among other things, that variation in mental abilities can be, have been, and are subject to selective pressures of the environment and culture and are subject also to change through different systems of selective and assortative mating, just as is true of physical characteristics that display genetic variation.
Subpopulation Differences in Mental Development.
--
Social classes as defined largely in terms of educational and occupational status are subject to differential selection for mental abilities. Since these have genetic as well as environmental components, they are transmitted to the offspring, and because of a high degree of assortative mating for mental traits in Western cultures, the gene pools for difFerent social classes will differ in the genetic factors related to ability. The evidence for phenotypic mental ability differences among social classes, along with evidence for genotypic differences, has been reviewed extensively elsewhere (Eckland, 1967; Jensen, 1970). It is now generally accepted by geneticists, psychologists, and sociologists who have reviewed the evidence that social class differences in mental abilities have a substantial genetic component. This genetic component should be expected to increase in an open society that permits and encourages social mobility. Phenotypically, of course, social class differences in patterns of mental ability are firmly established. Jensen (1968) has found that lower-class and middle-class population samples differ much less in abilities that are lower in the ontogenetic hierarchy, such as associative learning and memory span, than in higher cognitive abilities, such as conceptual learning and abstract reasoning. A different pattern of correlations between lower and higher abilities also is found in lower-class and middle-class groups, implying a hierarchical relationship among abilities, such that lower-level abilities are necessary-but-not-sufficient for the development or utilization of higher-level abilities.1
Scientific knowledge concerning the genetic aspect of ability differences among racial groups, having been generally shunned as a subject of scientific study in modern genetics and psychology, is far more ambiguous and more in dispute than social class differences. The uncertainty in this area will be reduced only through further appropriate research using the most advanced techniques of behavior-genetic analysis. Phenotypically, racial differences in abilities are well established, both with respect to overall average level of performance and to the pattern of relative strengths of various abilities (e.g. Lesser, Fifer, and Clark, 1965). Both social class and racial (Caucasian, Negro, and Oriental) differences have been found in rates of cognitive development as assessed by Piagetian test procedures, such as ability to grasp concepts of conservation of number, quantity, and volume (Tuddenham, 1968): Some indication of the role of genetic factors in the Piagetian indices of levels of cognitive development is shown in a study of Australian aboriginal children, the majority of whom, if full-blooded aborigines, do not show ability for grasping the concepts of conservation of quantity, weight, volume, number, and area, even by the time they have reached adolescence, while the majority of Caucasian children attain this level of mental development by seven years of age. However, aboriginal children having (on the average genetically) one Caucasian grandparent, but reared in the same circumstances as the full-blooded aborigines, performed significantly better (i.e. showed higher levels of cognitive development) than the full-blooded aborigines (De Lemos, 1966).
--
Jensen, A. R., "A theory of primary and secondary mental retardation." In Ellis, N. R. (Ed.), International review of Research in Mental Ratardation, IV, New York: Academic Press, 1970.
Jensen, A. R., "Hierarchical theories of mental ability." In B. Dockrell (Ed.), Theories of Intelligence, London: Methuen, in press.
--
34. Haskell, Edward, "Unified Science: The Public Philosophy of the Space Age," Connecticut review, Board of Trustees for the Connecticut State Colleges, Hartford, Conn., 1969.
35. People displaying this mentality are called Generalists. See The Moral Society--A Rational Alternative to Death by John David Garcia. ( Julian Press, New York, 1971.)
--
"What I propose to do is first to congratulate you for seeing this venture through. Second, I intend to read the book insofar as my limited scientific perceptions will permit me to do. Third, I will give you my honest response to the book, something I frequently do in line of duty under the general heading of book reviews."--Our dialogue has thus begun.
The crucial dialogues, however, will be among scientists, for our first objective has to be moral orientation of the sciences. Only with its attainment, does our ultimate aim become even possibly attainable: moral orientation of the Earth. That is the way it's said in uni-scientese. In the ideolect of our religion this goal is called the Kingdom of God.
--
12. ----, "Unified Science--The Public Philosophy of the Space Age," Connecticut review, Hartford, Conn., April, 1969.
13. "The Public Philosophy of the Space Age," a chapter in a symposium volume. Gordon and Breach, Science Publishers, New York, 1972.
--
3. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General Systems Theory A Critical review" in Modern Systems Researck for the Behavioral Scientist, Walter Buckley, Ed., Aldine, Chicago, 1968.
4. Kenneth E. Boulding, "General Systems Theory-The Skeleton of Science " in Modern Systems Research for the Behauioral Scientist.
3.8.1.02 - Arya - Its Significance, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the word "rya" printed in Devanagari script on the cover of the review.
Image 1
4.1.01 - The Intellect and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1 Leonard Woolf, "Quack, Quack! or Having it Both Ways" [a review of C. E. M.
Joad, Counterattack from the East: The Philosophy of Radhakrishnan (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932)]. "New Statesman and Nation", vol. 6, no. 145 (2 December 1933): pp. 702 - 4.
4.18 - Faith and shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The three parts of the perfection of our instrumental nature of which we have till now been reviewing the general features, the perfection of the intelligence, heart, vital consciousness and body, the perfection of the fundamental soul powers, the perfection of the surrender of our instruments and action to the divine. shakti, depend at every moment of their progression on a fourth power that is covertly and overtly the pivot of all endeavour and action, faith, sraddha. The perfect faith is an assent of the whole being to the truth seen by it or offered to its acceptance, and its central working is a faith of the soul in its own will to be and attain and become and its idea of self and things and its knowledge, of which the belief of the intellect, the heart's consent and the desire of the life mind to possess and realise are the outward figures. This soul faith, in some form of itself, is indispensable to the action of the being and without it man cannot move a single pace in life, much less take any step forward to a yet unrealised perfection. It is so central and essential a thing that the Gita can justly say of it that whatever is a man's sraddha, that he is, yo yacchraddhah sa eva sah, and, it may be added, whatever he has the faith to see as possible in himself and strive for, that he can create and become. There is one kind of faith demanded as indispensable by the integral Yoga and that may be described as faith in God and the shakti, faith in the presence and power of the Divine in us and the world, a faith that all in the world is the working of one divine shakti, that all the steps of the Yoga, its strivings and sufferings and failures as well as its successes and satisfactions and victories are utilities and necessities of her workings and that by a firm and strong dependence on and a total self-surrender to the Divine and to his shakti in us we can attain to oneness and freedom and victory and perfection.
The enemy of faith is doubt, and yet doubt too is a utility and necessity, because man in his ignorance and in his progressive labour towards knowledge needs to be visited by doubt, otherwise he would remain obstinate in an ignorant belief and limited knowledge and unable to escape from his errors. This utility and necessity of doubt does not altogether disappear when we enter on the path of Yoga. The integral Yoga aims at a knowledge not merely of some fundamental principle, but a knowing, a gnosis which will apply itself to and cover all life and the world action, and in this search for knowledge we enter on the way and are accompanied for many miles upon it by the mind's unregenerated activities before these are purified and transformed by a greater light: we carry with us a number of intellectual beliefs and ideas which are by no means all of them correct and perfect and a host of new ideas and suggestions meet us afterwards demanding our credence which it would be fatal to seize on and always cling to in the shape in which they come without regard to their possible error, limitation or imperfection. And indeed at one stage in the Yoga it becomes necessary to refuse to accept as definite and final any kind of intellectual idea or opinion whatever in its intellectual form and to hold it in a questioning suspension until it is given its right place and luminous shape of truth in a spiritual experience enlightened by supramental knowledge. And much more must this be the case with the desires or impulsions of the life mind, which have often to be provisionally accepted as immediate indices of a temporarily necessary action before we have the full guidance, but not always clung to with the soul's complete assent, for eventually all these desires and impulsions have to be rejected or else transformed into and replaced by impulsions of the divine will taking up the life movements. The heart's faith, emotional beliefs, assents are also needed upon the way, but cannot be always sure guides until they too are taken up, purified, transformed and are eventually replaced by the luminous assents of a divine Ananda which is at one with the divine will and knowledge. In nothing in the lower nature from the reason to the vital will can the seeker of the Yoga put a complete and permanent faith, but only at last in the spiritual truth, power, Ananda which become in the spiritual reason his sole guides and luminaries and masters of action.
4.26 - The Supramental Time Consciousness, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
THE SYNTHESIS OF YOGA first appeared in seventy-seven monthly instalments in the philosophical review Arya, beginning with its first issue, August 1914, and continuing until its last, January 1921. The Arya text of the Synthesis consisted of five introductory chapters numbered
I - V and seventy-two other chapters numbered I - II and IV - LXXIII
--- Overview of noun review
The noun review has 10 senses (first 3 from tagged texts)
1. (4) reappraisal, revaluation, review, reassessment ::: (a new appraisal or evaluation)
2. (2) review, critique, critical review, review article ::: (an essay or article that gives a critical evaluation (as of a book or play))
3. (1) follow-up, followup, reexamination, review ::: (a subsequent examination of a patient for the purpose of monitoring earlier treatment)
4. review, limited review ::: ((accounting) a service (less exhaustive than an audit) that provides some assurance to interested parties as to the reliability of financial data)
5. revue, review ::: (a variety show with topical sketches and songs and dancing and comedians)
6. review ::: (a periodical that publishes critical essays on current affairs or literature or art)
7. recapitulation, recap, review ::: (a summary at the end that repeats the substance of a longer discussion)
8. review ::: ((law) a judicial reexamination of the proceedings of a court (especially by an appellate court))
9. review, brushup ::: (practice intended to polish performance or refresh the memory)
10. inspection, review ::: (a formal or official examination; "the platoon stood ready for review"; "we had to wait for the inspection before we could use the elevator")
--- Overview of verb review
The verb review has 5 senses (first 3 from tagged texts)
1. (13) review, reexamine ::: (look at again; examine again; "let's review your situation")
2. (9) review, critique ::: (appraise critically; "She reviews books for the New York Times"; "Please critique this performance")
3. (3) review, go over, survey ::: (hold a review (of troops))
4. review, brush up, refresh ::: (refresh one's memory; "I reviewed the material before the test")
5. review, look back, retrospect ::: (look back upon (a period of time, sequence of events); remember; "she reviewed her achievements with pride")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun review
10 senses of review
Sense 1
reappraisal, revaluation, review, reassessment
=> appraisal, assessment
=> classification, categorization, categorisation, sorting
=> basic cognitive process
=> process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
review, critique, critical review, review article
=> criticism, literary criticism
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
follow-up, followup, reexamination, review
=> examination, scrutiny
=> investigation, investigating
=> work
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
review, limited review
=> accounting, accounting system, method of accounting
=> register
=> record
=> document
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
revue, review
=> variety show, variety
=> show
=> social event
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 6
review
=> periodical
=> publication
=> work, piece of work
=> product, production
=> creation
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 7
recapitulation, recap, review
=> capitulation
=> summary, sum-up
=> statement
=> message, content, subject matter, substance
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 8
review
=> proceeding, legal proceeding, proceedings
=> due process, due process of law
=> group action
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 9
review, brushup
=> exercise, practice, drill, practice session, recitation
=> training, preparation, grooming
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 10
inspection, review
=> examination, scrutiny
=> investigation, investigating
=> work
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun review
9 of 10 senses of review
Sense 1
reappraisal, revaluation, review, reassessment
=> stocktaking, stock-taking
Sense 2
review, critique, critical review, review article
=> book review
=> notice
=> rave
Sense 4
review, limited review
=> analytical review
Sense 5
revue, review
=> follies
Sense 6
review
=> literary review
Sense 7
recapitulation, recap, review
=> epanodos
Sense 8
review
=> bill of review
=> judicial review
Sense 9
review, brushup
=> rub up
Sense 10
inspection, review
=> check, checkout, check-out procedure
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun review
10 senses of review
Sense 1
reappraisal, revaluation, review, reassessment
=> appraisal, assessment
Sense 2
review, critique, critical review, review article
=> criticism, literary criticism
Sense 3
follow-up, followup, reexamination, review
=> examination, scrutiny
Sense 4
review, limited review
=> accounting, accounting system, method of accounting
Sense 5
revue, review
=> variety show, variety
Sense 6
review
=> periodical
Sense 7
recapitulation, recap, review
=> capitulation
Sense 8
review
=> proceeding, legal proceeding, proceedings
Sense 9
review, brushup
=> exercise, practice, drill, practice session, recitation
Sense 10
inspection, review
=> examination, scrutiny
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun review
10 senses of review
Sense 1
reappraisal, revaluation, review, reassessment
-> appraisal, assessment
=> critical appraisal, critical analysis
=> evaluation, valuation, rating
=> assay, check
=> acid test
=> reappraisal, revaluation, review, reassessment
=> underevaluation
Sense 2
review, critique, critical review, review article
-> criticism, literary criticism
=> explication de texte
=> textual criticism
=> new criticism
=> analysis
=> review, critique, critical review, review article
Sense 3
follow-up, followup, reexamination, review
-> examination, scrutiny
=> audit
=> autopsy, necropsy, postmortem, post-mortem, PM, postmortem examination, post-mortem examination
=> checkup, medical checkup, medical examination, medical exam, medical, health check
=> comparison, comparing
=> fine-tooth comb, fine-toothed comb
=> follow-up, followup, reexamination, review
=> going-over
=> once-over, look-over
=> ophthalmoscopy
=> palpation, tactual exploration
=> endoscopy
=> gonioscopy
=> keratoscopy
=> rhinoscopy
=> scan
=> search
=> survey, study
=> testing
=> time and motion study, time-and-motion study, time-motion study, motion study, time study, work study
=> inspection, review
=> bank examination
Sense 4
review, limited review
-> accounting, accounting system, method of accounting
=> control account
=> entry, accounting entry, ledger entry
=> credit side
=> debit side
=> accrual basis
=> cash basis
=> pooling of interest
=> audited account, audit
=> review, limited review
Sense 5
revue, review
-> variety show, variety
=> minstrel show
=> revue, review
=> vaudeville, music hall
Sense 6
review
-> periodical
=> digest
=> pictorial
=> series, serial, serial publication
=> organ
=> issue, number
=> journal
=> review
Sense 7
recapitulation, recap, review
-> capitulation
=> recapitulation, recap, review
Sense 8
review
-> proceeding, legal proceeding, proceedings
=> foreclosure
=> intervention
=> procedure
=> legal action, action, action at law
=> lawsuit, suit, case, cause, causa
=> adoption
=> appeal
=> bankruptcy
=> receivership
=> litigation, judicial proceeding
=> naturalization, naturalisation
=> trial
=> review
=> hearing
Sense 9
review, brushup
-> exercise, practice, drill, practice session, recitation
=> fire drill
=> manual of arms, manual
=> military drill
=> rehearsal
=> rehearsal, dry run
=> review, brushup
=> scrimmage
=> shadowboxing
=> target practice
Sense 10
inspection, review
-> examination, scrutiny
=> audit
=> autopsy, necropsy, postmortem, post-mortem, PM, postmortem examination, post-mortem examination
=> checkup, medical checkup, medical examination, medical exam, medical, health check
=> comparison, comparing
=> fine-tooth comb, fine-toothed comb
=> follow-up, followup, reexamination, review
=> going-over
=> once-over, look-over
=> ophthalmoscopy
=> palpation, tactual exploration
=> endoscopy
=> gonioscopy
=> keratoscopy
=> rhinoscopy
=> scan
=> search
=> survey, study
=> testing
=> time and motion study, time-and-motion study, time-motion study, motion study, time study, work study
=> inspection, review
=> bank examination
--- Grep of noun review
analytical review
bill of review
book review
critical review
judicial review
limited review
literary review
preview
review
review article
review copy
reviewer
reviewing stand
security intelligence review committee
security review
sneak preview
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Wikipedia - IDreamBooks -- Book review aggregator Web site
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Wikipedia - Indian Journal of Asian Affairs -- Peer-reviewed academic journal
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Wikipedia - Institutional review board -- Type of committee that applies research ethics
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Wikipedia - Judicial review -- Ability of courts to review actions by executive and legislatures
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Wikipedia - Leonardo (journal) -- American peer-reviewed academic journal
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Wikipedia - Life review
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Wikipedia - Limnology and Oceanography -- Bimonthly peer-reviewed journal
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Wikipedia - Literary Review -- Magazine
Wikipedia - Literature review
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Integral World - Scientific delusions, or delusions about science?, Review of Rupert Sheldrake's The Science Delusion, Egil Asprem
Integral World - Review of "The Creative Artist" by Elliot Benjamin, Ruth Richards
Integral World - No I'm Not A "Guru-Hater": Review of "Modern Religions", Elliot Benjamin
Integral World - Review of Jeremy Rifkin's “The Zero Marginal Cost Society", Edward Berge
Integral World - Review of Evan Thompson's "Waking, Dreaming, Being", Edward Berge
Integral World - Review of Jeff Meyerhoff's "Bald Ambition", by Jan Brouwer
Integral World - The Future of the Mind, A Review, Andrea Diem-Lane
Integral World - The Rise of the Machine Brain, A Review of The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, Andrea Diem-Lane
Integral World - Integral Consciousness and The Future of Evolution, A Philosophical Review, Chris Dierkes
Integral World - Mark Edwards on Jorge Ferrer's review of The Marriage of Sense and Soul
Integral World - Excerpts Roadmap: Preview of parts of Wilber's "Kosmic Karma and Creativity" (Shambhala, 2004)
Integral World - Incredible India:A Review of 'Aryan Patriarchy and Dravidian Matriarchy', Anthony Galli
Integral World - Is Teal The New Black? Probably Not, A review of Federic Laloux's Reinventing Organizations, Zaid Hassan
Integral World - Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion, by Frank Visser
Integral World - Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion, by Frank Visser
Integral World - Pitfalls of Wilberian Ecology: A Critical Review of "Integral Ecology", Tomislav Markus
Integral World - A Guided Tour of The Human Odyssey, Your Entire Life Journey in 58 Minutes or Less, A Book Review by Ulysses of Ithaca
Integral World - Like the Companion Volume to a PBS Miniseries, A Book Review of The Human Odyssey, Telemachus
Integral World - Reading The Human Odyssey for Fun, A Book Review by Nestor of Sandy Pylos
Integral World - Reply to Jan Brouwer's review of Bald Ambition, Jeff Meyerhoff
Integral World - Review of Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, Scott Parker
Integral World - List of reviews of Wilber's books
Integral World - Review by Stan Grof of The Atman Project
Integral World - Review of "Boomeritis" by Patricia Herron
Integral World - Review of The Eye of Spirit by Network
Integral World - Review by Richard Young of The Eye of Spirit
Integral World - Review of Jordan Gruber of The Marriage of Sense and Soul
Integral World - Review essay of "The Marriage of Sense and Soul" by Roger Walsh
Integral World - Review essay of "The Marriage of Sense and Soul" by Michael Zimmerman
Integral World - Review of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Jan Adams
Integral World - Review by David Boadella of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
Integral World - Review by Christina Desser
Integral World - Review of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Christina Desser
Integral World - Review by Glickmann of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
Integral World - Review by Dean Kehmeier
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Integral World - Review by Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Kaisa Puhakka
Integral World - Review of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Nova Spivak
Integral World - Review by Michael Zimmermann of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
Integral World - Review essay of A Sociable God by David Lane
Integral World - Review of The Spectrum of Consciousness by John Welwood
Integral World - Review by Stan Grof of Up from Eden
Integral World - A Light in the Wilberniss, review essay by Brian Van der Horst
Integral World - CONTEXTUALIZING KEN, A Review of Jeff Meyerhoff's Bald Ambition, Andy Smith
Integral World - Getting to the Point, A Review of Mike Hockney's The Mathematical Universe, Andy Smith
Integral World - Humans as History, A Comparative Review of Tyler Volk's Quarks to Culture, Andy Smith
Integral World - Online Reviews of The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Corona Virus, Frank Visser
Integral World - From Atom to Atman, Ken Wilber's Religious View of Evolution, Review of "The Religion of Tomorrow", Part II, Frank Visser
Integral World - A More Adequate Spectrum of Colors?, A Comparison of Color Terminology in Integral Theory, Spiral Dynamics and Chakra-psychology, Review of "The Religion of Tomorrow", Part III, Frank Visser
Integral World - What's It Like to Be a Super-Nova?, Ken Wilber's Cosmic Approach to the Mind-Body Problem, Review of "The Religion of Tomorrow", Part IV, Frank Visser
Integral World - Rational Reasons to Believe in Spirit?, Evaluating Ken Wilber's Case for a Spiritual Worldview, Review of "The Religion of Tomorrow", Part V, Frank Visser
Integral World - Is Darwin Really 'On Our Side'?, Ken Wilber's Misreading of Neo-Darwinism, Review of "The Religion of Tomorrow", Part VI, Frank Visser
Integral World - Climbing the Stairway to Heaven, Ken Wilber's Mystical Religion of the Future, Review of "The Religion of Tomorrow", Part VII, Frank Visser
Integral World - Looking For the Grand Sequence, An Integrally-Informed Review of Tyler Volk's "Quarks to Culture", Frank Visser
Integral World - The Dissipative Universe and the Paradox of Complexity, A Review of David Christian's "Origin Story", Frank Visser
Integral World - Outgrowing the Mythic God, Review of Richard Dawkins' "Outgrowing God", Frank Visser
Integral World - Saving the World Through Darwin 2.0, Review of David Loye's "Rediscovering Darwin", Frank Visser
Integral World - Lord, Give Us Integral, But Without the Hype: A Review of "Integral Spirituality", Frank Visser
Integral World - Telling the Story As If It Were True, Review of "The Integral Vision", Frank Visser
Integral World - The Evolution Religion: Making Sense of Evolution: Review of Carter Phipps' "Evolutionaries" (2012), Frank Visser
Integral World - Platonic Evolution: Review of Steve McIntosh' "Evolution's Purpose" (2012), Frank Visser
Integral World - Evolutionary Endarkenment, Review of Andrew Cohen's "Evolutionary Enlightenment", Frank Visser
Integral World - Our DNA as Proof for God's Existence?, Review of Perry Marshall's "Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design", Frank Visser
Integral World - A Self-Help Guide for Democrats, Review of Ken Wilber's "Trump and a Post-Truth World", Frank Visser
Integral World - The involution/evolution cosmology, Ken Wilber holds on to an outdated scheme of existence, Review of "The Religion of Tomorrow", Part I, Frank Visser
Integral World - The Evolution of Consciousness, An Essay Review of Up from Eden (Wilber, 1981), Michael Winkelman
2020 Integral European Conference Preview
Integral European Conference: A Preview from Bence Ganti
The Breakup Episode(IJW Season 1 Review)
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The Great Space Coaster (1981 - 1986) - A kid's fantasy/variety show about three friends who leave Earth each day in their 'Space Coaster'. Each episode featured several musical numbers (usually dealing with the various issues and problems kids face every day), plus news reports from Gary Gnu and book reviews from Speed Reader.
The Facts of life (1979 - 1988) - In this series which was originally a spin off o Diffrent strokes, Mrs. Garrett has become the warming housemother at an expensive all girls school called Eastland academy. The first season brought in horrible ratings and morbid critic reviews so several members of the original cast including a youn...
PAW Patrol (2013 - Current) - a Canadian CGIanimated television series created by Keith Chapman. It is produced by Spin Master Entertainment in association with TVOntario and Nickelodeon, with animation provided by Guru Studio. In Canada, the series is primarily broadcast on TVOntario, which first ran previews of the show in Au...
At the Movies (1982 - 1990) - Roger Ebert (Film Critic for the Chicago Sun-Times) and Gene Siskel (Film Critic for the Chicago Tribune) would review the latest movies and have discussions covering the world of cinema.
GamesMaster (1992 - 1998) - Hugely succesful video game show. Each series had a themed set and consisted of reviews and head to head challenges in which contestants played to win a Golden Joystick. Overseeing these events was the Gamesmaster himself played by Bristish astronomer Patrick Moore. All but the third series was p...
Rebeltaxi (2008 - Current) - A web series featuring Pan Pizza in the rebeltaxi reviewing various cartoons.
The Don and Murph Show (2004 - 2010) - Don and Murph are two fourteen year olds who review the latest movies in a parodic manner.
SportsCenter (1979 - Current) - SportsCenter (SC) is a daily sports news television program that serves as the flagship program of American cable and satellite television network ESPN. Originally broadcast only once per day, SportsCenter now has up to twelve airings each day; the program features highlights and updates, and review...
Washington Week (1967 - Current) - Washington Weekpreviously Washington Week in Reviewis an American public affairs television program which has aired on PBS and its predecessor, National Educational Television, since 1967. Unlike other panel discussion shows which encourage informal (sometimes vociferous) debates as a means of pre...
Education Showcase (1994 - 1998) - A Monthly Television Magazine program gives a monthly preview of the best of educational programming. Hosted by Joan Scott. This program gives previews of dates, times and what channel it is shown for education purposes and some programs used for Cable in the Classroom.
MotorWeek (1981 - Current) - MotorWeek is a weekly automotive TV series first premireing on PBS in 1981 as hosted by auto expert John H. Davis. The series is presented in magazine-like format featuring reviews, comparisons, news, and features. Segments on the show include Road Tests(where a vehicle is test driven), Goss Garage(...
Sneak Previews (1975 - 1996) - This long-running PBS movie reviews program started out under the name "Opening Soon At A Theater Near You". The first two hosts were Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Things were a little different in the early days. For example, instead of their thumbs, they rated movies with a yes or a no. Instead of...
Video & Arcade Top 10 (1991 - 2006) - It is a Canadian game show broadcast on YTV from 1991 to 2006. Filmed in Toronto, Ontario, it is a competitive game show in which contestants played against each other in video games for prizes, with assorted review and profile segments.
Attack of the Show! (2005 - 2013) - A variety show that reviewed new technology, discussed pop culture and general news, reviewed video games, movies, and media, and even aired pop culture parody sketches! Episodes were hosted by Kevin Pereira, Kevin Rose, Olivia Munn, Zach Selwyn, Layla Kayleigh, Sarah Lane, Alison Haislip, Candace B...
Streets of Fire(1984) - Streets of Fire is a film that was directed by Walter Hill, and co-written by Hill and Larry Gross in the fall and winter of 1983. It was described in the previews, trailers, and posters as "A Rock & Roll Fable." It's an unusual mix of part musical, part drama and part comedy with a setting that is...
Pinocchio & The Emperor of the Night(1987) - Pinocchio and the Emperor of The Night is an animated feature film that was released in December 1987. It should not be confused with the acclaimed classic 1940 film Pinocchio by Walt Disney. Running for 87 minutes and created by the now-defunct Filmation Studios, the film has gained mixed reviews f...
C'Mon Saturday: NBC saturday preview special(1977) - Saturday morning special hosted by Andrea McArdle from Annie; featuring Arte Johnson, Leonard Nimoy, Muhammad Ali and Ruth Buzzi.
84 Charing Cross Road(1987) - When a humorous script-reader(Anne Bancroft) in her New York apartment sees an ad in the Saturday Review of Literature for a bookstore in London that does mail order, she begins a very special correspondence and friendship with Frank Doel(Anthony Hopkins), the bookseller who works at Marks & Co., 84...
The Rundown(2003) - The Rundown (also known as Welcome to the Jungle) is a 2003 American action comedy film starring The Rock and Seann William Scott about a bounty hunter who must head for Brazil to retrieve his employer's renegade son. It was directed by Peter Berg. The film received positive reviews but failed at th...
Supercade in hazzard: cbs 1983 saturday preview(1983) - Preview Special (hosted by Scott Baio; featuring the Krofft Puppets, and Sorrell Booke and James Best (in-character as Boss Hogg and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from Dukes of Hazard
De-Lovely(2004) - Inspecting a magical biographical stage musical, composer Cole Porter reviews his life and career with his wife, Linda.
The T.A.M.I Show(1964) - Hailed by one music reviewer as "the grooviest, wildest, slickest hit ever to pound the screen," "The T.A.M.I. Show" is an unrelenting rock spectacular starring some of the greatest pop performers of the 60s. These top recording idols - representing the musical moods of London, Liverpool, Hollywood...
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling(1986) - After severely burning himself in a drug incident, a comedian has a near death experience in which he reviews his life.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/16740/Hanamaru_Youchien_Special_Preview -- Comedy, School
https://myanimelist.net/anime/40010/Ishuzoku_Reviewers -- Comedy, Ecchi, Fantasy
https://myanimelist.net/anime/9716/Rurouni_Kenshin__Review_Special -- Action, Comedy, Samurai, Shounen
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DC's Legends of Tomorrow: Their Time Is Now (2016) ::: 7.1/10 -- 22min | Documentary, Action, Sci-Fi | TV Movie 19 January 2016 -- The producers introduce audiences to the characters and concepts of "Legends of Tomorrow", the upcoming spin-off of superhero series "Arrow" and "The Flash". Stars: Victor Garber, Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim Add to Watchlist Reviews 21 user
De-Lovely (2004) ::: 6.6/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 5min | Biography, Drama, Music | 6 August 2004 (USA) -- Inspecting a magical biographical stage musical, composer Cole Porter reviews his life and career with his wife, Linda. Director: Irwin Winkler Writer: Jay Cocks
Fog Hill of Five Elements ::: 28min | Animation | TV Mini-Series (2020) Episode Guide 3 episodes Fog Hill of Five Elements Poster A legend tells that a long time ago, monsters could give the ability to certain elected officials to master the five elements. But for that, you have to go through the dangerous foggy ... S Add to Watchlist Reviews 5 user
Grindhouse (2007) ::: 7.5/10 -- R | 3h 11min | Action, Horror, Thriller | 6 April 2007 (USA) -- Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's homage to exploitation double features in the '60s and '70s with two back-to-back cult films that include previews of coming attractions between them. Directors: Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth | 3 more credits Writers:
Heaven Can Wait (1943) ::: 7.5/10 -- Passed | 1h 52min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy | 13 August 1943 (USA) -- An old rou arrives in Hades to review his life with Satan, who will rule on his eligibility to enter the Underworld. Director: Ernst Lubitsch Writers: Samson Raphaelson (screenplay), Leslie Bush-Fekete (play) (as Lazlo Bus-Fekete) Stars:
JonTron ::: TV-14 | Comedy | TV Series (2010 ) The ongoing adventures of JonTron, as he takes it upon himself to review games of all kinds (and some movies), under the watchful eye of his friend and overlord, the cyborg bird, Jacques. Creator: Jon Jafari Stars:
Meme Review ::: TV-14 | Short, Comedy, Talk-Show | TV Series (2017 ) PewDiePie's critically acclaimed show where he rates and reviews popular memes out of 10 every week. Stars: Felix Kjellberg, Elon Musk, Will Smith
Nostalgia Critic ::: The Nostalgia Critic (original tit ::: TV-14 | Comedy, Fantasy | TV Series (2007 ) A sardonic critic reviews movies and TV shows from his childhood and adulthood. Creator: Doug Walker Stars:
Review ::: TV-14 | 30min | Comedy | TV Series (20142017) -- In this spoof of review shows, Forrest MacNeil, a critic obsessed with his work, experiences whatever the viewers ask him to review including divorce, anonymous sex, and all manner of criminal activity. Creators:
The Angry Video Game Nerd ::: TV-14 | 35min | Comedy, Fantasy, Sci-Fi | TV Series (2004 ) A foul-mouthed nerd reviews bad video games. Creator: James Rolfe Stars: James Rolfe, Mike Matei, Kyle Justin
The Critic ::: TV-14 | 8h 42min | Animation, Comedy, Drama | TV Series (19942001) -- Jay Sherman is a New York film critic who has to review films he doesn't like for a living. Creators: Al Jean, Mike Reiss
The Trip ::: TV-14 | 2h 52min | Comedy | TV Series (2010 ) Steve is asked to review restaurants for the UK's Observer who is joined on a working road trip by his friend Rob who fills in at the last minute when Coogan's romantic relationship falls apart. Stars: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Claire Keelan
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Akuma no Riddle: Shousha wa Dare? Nukiuchi Test -- -- Diomedéa -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Ecchi Comedy Shoujo Ai -- Akuma no Riddle: Shousha wa Dare? Nukiuchi Test Akuma no Riddle: Shousha wa Dare? Nukiuchi Test -- Unaired episode 13 of Akuma no Riddle released with the seventh Blu-ray/DVD volume. -- -- The special will be previewed at a screening in Tokyo City on November 22, 2014. The BD/DVD will be released on December 17, 2014. -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Special - Nov 22, 2014 -- 34,387 6.53
Change!! Getter Robo: Sekai Saigo no Hi -- -- Brain's Base -- 13 eps -- - -- Action Psychological Adventure Mecha Sci-Fi Horror Shounen -- Change!! Getter Robo: Sekai Saigo no Hi Change!! Getter Robo: Sekai Saigo no Hi -- Dr. Saotome returns from the dead after being seemingly murdered by Getter pilot Nagare Ryoma and threatens the world with his ultimate creation: the Shin Dragon. Ryoma reluctantly teams up with his former co-pilots Jin Hayato and Tomoe Mushashi to combat Dr. Saotome. The pilots must also deal with the mysterious Invaders, aliens that have the ability to possess humans and warp their flesh to form hideous creatures. -- -- (Source: Nihon Review) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, Discotek Media -- OVA - Aug 25, 1998 -- 11,345 7.68
Detective Conan Movie 19: The Hellfire Sunflowers -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Mystery Police Shounen -- Detective Conan Movie 19: The Hellfire Sunflowers Detective Conan Movie 19: The Hellfire Sunflowers -- Kaitou Kid and Vincent van Gogh's artworks feature heavily in the movie, according to an interview with Gosho Aoyama. The teaser preview at the end of Dimensional Sniper included references to van Gogh's "Sunflowers" series. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- Movie - Apr 18, 2015 -- 28,215 7.71
Gekijou Tanpen Macross Frontier: Toki no Meikyuu -- -- Satelight -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Military Sci-Fi Music Space Romance Mecha -- Gekijou Tanpen Macross Frontier: Toki no Meikyuu Gekijou Tanpen Macross Frontier: Toki no Meikyuu -- Short screened with Macross Δ Movie 2: Zettai Live!!!. -- Movie - ??? ??, 2021 -- 728 N/A -- -- Aoki Uru: Overture -- -- Gainax -- 1 ep -- - -- Military Sci-Fi -- Aoki Uru: Overture Aoki Uru: Overture -- A short special created by a newly launched Uru in Blue LLP (Limited Liability Partnership) in Singapore that was pre-streamed in 2015. Aoki Uru: Overture is a lead up/preview to the full film. -- Special - ??? ??, 2015 -- 712 N/A -- -- Gasshin Sentai Mechander Robo -- -- - -- 35 eps -- - -- Space Mecha Military Mystery Sci-Fi -- Gasshin Sentai Mechander Robo Gasshin Sentai Mechander Robo -- The Doron Empire from the Ganymede System discovered Earth as an ideal world for them to conquer. The interest of expanding the empire came as a result of the power-hungry General Ozmel who overthrew the current reigning Queen Medusa of the Ganymede System as a start of their universal conquest. -- -- Almost completely succumbed to the empire, Earth is at its last days, and one scientist, Dr. Shikishima, had only one hope in restoring Earth from its alien conquerors--- a massive mecha known as the Mechander Robo, specially programmed and designed to battle these invading aliens from complete takeover of Earth. Along with this awesome fighter machine, Dr. Shikishima also recruited three pilots to be placed behind the Mechander Robo's controls--- the mysterious Jimmy Orion, the scientist's son Ryosuke Shikishima, and Kojiro Hachijima. -- -- Although the primary storyline is Earth battling the Doron Empire, there is something within lead pliot Jimmy Orion's past that was somewhat connected towards the entire storyline. -- TV - Mar 3, 1977 -- 699 5.83
Gintama°: Umai-mono wa Atomawashi ni Suru to Yokodorisareru kara Yappari Saki ni Kue -- -- Bandai Namco Pictures -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Comedy Historical Parody Samurai Shounen -- Gintama°: Umai-mono wa Atomawashi ni Suru to Yokodorisareru kara Yappari Saki ni Kue Gintama°: Umai-mono wa Atomawashi ni Suru to Yokodorisareru kara Yappari Saki ni Kue -- The Gintama crew gets together to present a preview for the upcoming arc, the biggest ever in the anime's history, and also discuss the difficulties involved in producing one mid-season. -- -- (Source: Crunchyroll) -- Special - Nov 3, 2015 -- 25,908 8.11
Girls & Panzer: Fushou Akiyama Yukari no Sensha Kouza - Extra -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Military School -- Girls & Panzer: Fushou Akiyama Yukari no Sensha Kouza - Extra Girls & Panzer: Fushou Akiyama Yukari no Sensha Kouza - Extra -- In honor of Girls & Panzer TV & OVA receiving a 5.1ch Blu-ray Disc BOX set, a new Akiyama Yukari's Tank Course "Extra" was made with nearly a half hour worth of content. -- -- A short ~7 minute watermarked 'preview' version was available on Bandai Namco's official YouTube Channel on September 29, 2018. -- Special - Dec 21, 2018 -- 2,673 6.29
.hack//Versus: The Thanatos Report -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action Game Sci-Fi -- .hack//Versus: The Thanatos Report .hack//Versus: The Thanatos Report -- Bundled along with a free game, .hack//Versus, on the .hack//Sekai no Mukou ni Blu-ray disc, is a special called "The Thanatos Report". This special connects the events of the game with the events of the movie and "reveal the last truth". The protagonist of the special is David; a character who also appears in the main movie. The special takes place in both 2024 (the year in which the movie takes place) and 2025 (the year in which the game .hack//Versus takes place). -- -- (Source: AnimeReviews.co) -- Special - Jun 28, 2012 -- 6,551 6.35
Initial D: Project D to the Next Stage - Project D e Mukete -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Cars Sports Drama Seinen -- Initial D: Project D to the Next Stage - Project D e Mukete Initial D: Project D to the Next Stage - Project D e Mukete -- A special that comes with the Fourth Stage DVD-BOX. It is comprised of a recap from First Stage to Third Stage, along with staff commentary and sneak preview of the making of the Fourth Stage. -- Special - Mar 22, 2003 -- 8,131 7.49
Ishuzoku Reviewers -- -- Passione -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Ecchi Fantasy -- Ishuzoku Reviewers Ishuzoku Reviewers -- Countless diverse races, from perky fairies to oozing slimes, inhabit the world. Naturally, such a melting pot of creatures has a broad and alluring variety of brothels. With so many options to choose from, it is hard to decide with which succu-girl to have a meaningful, interpersonal experience. -- -- Fortunately, a tight group of brave warriors has come together to enlighten the public. These perverted adventurers take it upon themselves to assess the appeal of all types of succu-girls through hands-on research. Whether it be the scorchingly hot salamanders or the udderly hu-moo-ngous cow-girls, the Yoruno Gloss reviewers leave no species behind. -- -- Directed by the mastermind behind Miru Tights, Ishuzoku Reviewers seeks to answer one of the most pressing questions there is: which species is the sexiest? -- -- 332,880 7.55
Karma -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Dementia -- Karma Karma -- "In his early experimental short Karma (カルマ, 1977), Aihara uses water as his central motif. The film is hand drawn and appears to be shot on 16mm using a blue filter. At first we can only see tiny specks on the screen, coming and going like snow flurries. The specks gradually grow larger and take the shape of bubbles, then even larger into rivulets of water on a transparent surface." -- -- (Source: Nishikata Film Review) -- Movie - ??? ??, 1977 -- 347 5.16
Karneval -- -- Manglobe -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Fantasy Josei Sci-Fi -- Karneval Karneval -- DVD bundled with the limited edition of the 10th volume of the manga, previewing the upcoming TV anime and including footage that will not be used in the series. -- OVA - Oct 25, 2012 -- 16,290 7.04
Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- -- SILVER LINK. -- ? eps -- Light novel -- Action Demons Magic Fantasy School -- Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e -- Second half of Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e Kayou 2nd Season. -- TV - ??? ??, ???? -- 12,937 N/A -- -- Queen's Blade Rebellion vs. Hagure Yuusha no Aesthetica -- -- Arms -- 1 ep -- Other -- Action Ecchi Fantasy -- Queen's Blade Rebellion vs. Hagure Yuusha no Aesthetica Queen's Blade Rebellion vs. Hagure Yuusha no Aesthetica -- A promotional video for Hagure Yuusha no Estetica, with a little battle against Queen's Blade: Rebellion characters, as the first part. -- -- The second part is the real preview Hagure Yuusha no Estetica. -- Special - Jun ??, 2012 -- 12,927 6.12
Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse Recap - Climax Chokuzen Special -- -- ixtl, Satelight -- 1 ep -- - -- Action Mecha Military Sci-Fi -- Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse Recap - Climax Chokuzen Special Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse Recap - Climax Chokuzen Special -- A recap primarily of episodes 3-19, this special aired prior to episode 20. It also included the new OP/ED of the series and a preview of what's to come in future episodes. -- Special - Nov 19, 2012 -- 7,316 6.25
Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation -- -- Telecom Animation Film -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Game Sci-Fi School -- Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation -- In the year 2027, the video game Phantasy Star Online 2 is all the rage at Seiga Academy. Every student is on board the fad—except for Itsuki Tachibana, a well-rounded student who doesn't play video games. Due to its popularity, the game is currently under review at Seiga Academy to see if it has a negative impact on the students. Consequently, this causes Itsuki to catch the attention of Rina Izumi, the perfectionist student council president who aims to prove that the game is not to blame. -- -- To accomplish her objective, Rina recruits Itsuki as the student council vice president and tasks him with learning to play the game while keeping his grades up. Now obliged to report his daily findings of the game to Rina and analyze its merits, Itsuki carries the fate of Phantasy Star Online 2 in his hands. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 59,993 6.34
Shuang Yue Zhi Cheng -- -- - -- 13 eps -- Original -- Military Sci-Fi -- Shuang Yue Zhi Cheng Shuang Yue Zhi Cheng -- In the year 2200, a new Cold War between two forces is set to end with a peace treaty. However, one side is hiding a dark secret, which results in numerous tragedies in the following months. In the wake of a crisis, a paramilitary team is founded to steal information at the center of the conflict. -- ONA - Mar 30, 2016 -- 553 N/A -- -- Soukyuu no Fafner: Dead Aggressor - The Beyond Part 4 -- -- I.Gzwei, Production I.G -- 3 eps -- Original -- Action Military Sci-Fi Drama Mecha -- Soukyuu no Fafner: Dead Aggressor - The Beyond Part 4 Soukyuu no Fafner: Dead Aggressor - The Beyond Part 4 -- Episodes 10-12 of the Soukyuu no Fafner: Dead Aggressor - The Beyond series. -- Movie - ??? ??, 2021 -- 542 N/A -- -- Koutetsu no Vendetta Episode 0 -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Action Mecha Military Sci-Fi -- Koutetsu no Vendetta Episode 0 Koutetsu no Vendetta Episode 0 -- The doujin (self-published) creators of the Koutetsu no Vendetta (Iron Vendetta) military robot anime project released a preview DVD at Tokyo's Comic Market 75 convention. The DVD included the unedited versions of the project's pilot film, special supplemental videos, and a collection of key animation drawings. The running times of the pilot and the supplemental video collection are each under five minutes long. -- -- Note: The project is on hold due to the dissolution of the production division of its sponsor Ankama Japan. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- ONA - Feb 22, 2013 -- 509 N/A -- -- Dalam-iwa Goseumdochi -- -- - -- 32 eps -- - -- Military Historical -- Dalam-iwa Goseumdochi Dalam-iwa Goseumdochi -- Squirrel and Hedgehog documents various animal communities warring and in conflict against one another, each animal being a symbolic representation of real life countries and sometimes political events. -- -- A North Korean propaganda anime that was developed and produced in North Korea to be aired on state television. -- TV - ??? ??, 1977 -- 475 N/AAoi Kioku: Manmou Kaitaku to Shounen-tachi -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Drama Historical Military -- Aoi Kioku: Manmou Kaitaku to Shounen-tachi Aoi Kioku: Manmou Kaitaku to Shounen-tachi -- A class of Japanese youths volunteer for the war effort during WWII, but then get stranded in Manchuria. -- Movie - Dec 18, 1993 -- 439 N/A -- -- Guan Hai Ce -- -- Tong Ming Xuan -- 16 eps -- Original -- Action Military Historical Martial Arts Fantasy -- Guan Hai Ce Guan Hai Ce -- (No synopsis yet.) -- ONA - Jun 17, 2018 -- 396 N/A -- -- Konpeki no Kantai: Sourai Kaihatsu Monogatari -- -- J.C.Staff -- 1 ep -- - -- Military Historical -- Konpeki no Kantai: Sourai Kaihatsu Monogatari Konpeki no Kantai: Sourai Kaihatsu Monogatari -- A special which tells the story of the development of the japanese Sourai interceptor plane. -- Special - ??? ??, 1997 -- 392 N/AZhen Gyi Hong Shi -- -- - -- 52 eps -- - -- Action Military Sci-Fi Adventure Mecha -- Zhen Gyi Hong Shi Zhen Gyi Hong Shi -- This series, which is set in the future, is about several events that break out after troops successfully rescued a teenager who was kidnapped by the mysterious Black Armors. -- Ever since Marty had his first contact with the Black Armors and was subsequently rescued, he has been found to possess mysterious prophetic abilities as he is able to see the future in fragmented visions portraying an avalanche, a tsunami, a storm and other catastrophes. These disasters will always come true after Marty experiences the prophetic visions, but he is unable to predict accurately when and where they will occur. -- When the government learns about this, a unit is sent to protect Marty, and World Peacekeepers, abbreviated as WPK, is established to fight against the Black Armors. In order to defeat the Black Armors, the government grants permission for World Peacekeepers to use Ammobots – mechanical armors which have been developed over many years. -- -- After several battles with the Black Armors, the World Peacekeepers realizes that they are actually linked to the unusual natural disasters and discovers that they originate from a small planet called Mirzam, which is outside the solar system. -- -- Their real intention is to seize the abundant ecological resources on Earth and when these resources are seized, the ecosystem will lose its balance, thus leading to natural disasters. -- -- (Source: Official Site) -- TV - Oct 4, 2014 -- 389 N/A -- -- Spy Gekimetsu -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Military Historical -- Spy Gekimetsu Spy Gekimetsu -- A war propaganda film which begins with Roosevelt and Churchill in a secret meeting preparing their spy plans. Western spies in fancy suits and top hats parachute into Japan, disturbing innocent farmers. The Japanese civilians manage to thwart the spy activities. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- Movie - Jul 16, 1942 -- 351 N/A -- -- Malay Oki Kaisen -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Historical Military -- Malay Oki Kaisen Malay Oki Kaisen -- A war propaganda film by Oofuji Noburou. -- Movie - Nov 26, 1943 -- 345 5.42
Soul Eater: Late Night Show -- -- Bones -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Action Fantasy Comedy -- Soul Eater: Late Night Show Soul Eater: Late Night Show -- Additional specials included in two Blu-ray Box volumes of Soul Eater. -- -- Originally they were a part of late-night version of dual broadcast of Soul Eater; the regular Monday 6:00 p.m. version and a late-night "Soul Eater Late Show" version. -- -- Special footage was added at the start and end of the commercial break; the next episode preview was also different from the regular version. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Special - Apr ??, 2008 -- 21,872 6.82
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online - Refrain -- -- Studio 3Hz -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Action Fantasy Game Military Sci-Fi -- Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online - Refrain Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online - Refrain -- Following the conclusion of the first ever Squad Jam, Pitohui is eager to see what she missed, dying to know how everything went down. To satiate her desires, M reviews footage of the competition with her, commentating on the trials that he and LLENN faced together. -- -- Special - May 13, 2018 -- 29,940 6.48
Yoru no Hi -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Psychological -- Yoru no Hi Yoru no Hi -- The rooftops of a darkened city, a couple walking by a lone streetlight on an otherwise darkened street, an old man rocking in a creaky chair in the corner of a room lit only by the moon or the streetlight entering through the window. -- -- (Source: Nishikata Film Review) -- Movie - ??? ??, 2005 -- 1,216 4.94
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