TERMS STARTING WITH
threshold ::: 1. A piece of wood or stone placed beneath a door; a doorsill. Also fig. 2. Fig. A level or point at which something would happen, would cease to happen, or would take effect, become true, etc. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
threshold ::: n. --> The plank, stone, or piece of timber, which lies under a door, especially of a dwelling house, church, temple, or the like; the doorsill; hence, entrance; gate; door.
Fig.: The place or point of entering or beginning, entrance; outset; as, the threshold of life.
threshold :::
threshold"s.
threshold ::: The level of membrane potential at which an action potential is generated.
Threshold ::: A pollutant concentration [or dose] below which no deleterious effect occurs.
Threshold Dose ::: The minimum application of a given substance required to produce an observable effect.
Threshold Level ::: Time-weighted average pollutant concentration values, exposure beyond which is likely to adversely affect human health.
Threshold Limit Value (TLV)::: Refers to airborne concentrations of substances and represents conditions under which it is believed that nearly all workers are protected while repeatedly exposed for an 8-hr day, 5 days a week (expressed as parts per million (ppm) for gases and vapors and as milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) for fumes, mists, and dusts).
TERMS ANYWHERE
absolute threshold: the minimum amount of energy required for a sensory experience to be produced
Also neuromorphic computing. ::: A concept describing the use of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) systems containing electronic analog circuits to mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervous system.[232] In recent times, the term neuromorphic has been used to describe analog, digital, mixed-mode analog/digital VLSI, and software systems that implement models of neural systems (for perception, motor control, or multisensory integration). The implementation of neuromorphic computing on the hardware level can be realized by oxide-based memristors,[233] spintronic memories,[234] threshold switches, and transistors.[235][236][237][238]
Amitabha Buddha ::: [in Buddhist legend "the Buddha of measureless splendour"] who turned away when his spirit was on the threshold of nirvana and took the vow never to cross its while a single being remained in the sorrow and the Ignorance.
anulomaNAna. In PAli, "conformity knowledge"; according to the VISUDDHIMAGGA, this is the ninth and last of nine knowledges (P. NAna, S. JNANA) cultivated as part of the purity of knowledge and vision of progress along the path (P. patipadANAnadassanavisuddhi). This latter category, in turn, constitutes the sixth of the seven purities (VIsUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation. "Conformity knowledge" refers to the last three so-called impulsion moments (javana) of consciousness that arise in the mind of the practitioner preceding his perception of the nibbAna element (NIRVAnADHATU). This knowledge is so named because it conforms itself to the preceding eight stages of knowledge, as well as to the immediately following supramundane path (P. AriyamAgga, S. ARYAMARGA) and the thirty-seven constituents of enlightenment (P. bodhipakkhiyadhamma, S. BODHIPAKsIKADHARMA). When the three moments are treated separately, they receive different names. The first impulsion moment is called "preparation" (P. parikamma), when adaptation knowledge takes as its object the compounded formations (SAMSKARA) as being something impermanent (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself (ANATMAN). Immediately thereafter, the second impulsion moment arises, which takes the same formations as its object and is called "access" (upacAra). Immediately following that the third impulsion moment arises taking the same object, which is called "conformity" (anuloma). At this point, the practitioner is at the threshold of liberation (P. vimokkha, S. VIMOKsA), and, therefore, conformity knowledge is described as the final stage in what is called "insight leading to emergence" (P. vutthAnagAminivipassanA). This category includes the sixth, seventh, and eighth knowledges (NAna) in the ninefold schema: namely, "knowledge arising from the desire for deliverance" (P. MUCCITUKAMYATANAnA), "knowledge arising from the contemplation on reflection" (P. PAtISAnKHANUPASSANANAnA), and "knowledge arising from equanimity regarding all formations of existence" (P. SAnKHARUPEKKHANAnA).
appanAsamAdhi. In PAli, "absorptive concentration"; the more advanced of the two broad types of concentration (SAMADHI) discussed in PAli commentarial literature. Both of these two types of samAdhi are used with reference to meditators who are specializing in calmness (samatha; S. sAMATHA) techniques. The preliminary "threshold concentration" (UPACARASAMADHI) helps to calm and focus the mind but is too discursive to lead to full meditative absorption (JHANA; S. DHYANA). In order to develop jhAna, meditators must proceed to cultivate less discursive topics of meditation (KAMMAttHANA) that will lead to "absorptive concentration" and thence jhAna: e.g., mindfulness of breathing (AnApAnasati, S. ANAPANASMṚTI); the four "divine abidings" (BRAHMAVIHARA; [alt. P. appamaNNa], S. APRAMAnA), namely, loving-kindness (P. mettA; S. MAITRĪ), compassion (KARUnA), altruistic or empathetic joy (MUDITA), and equanimity or impartiality (P. upekkhA; S. UPEKsA); and the ten "visual devices" (KASInA)-devices that are constructed from the elements earth, water, fire, and air; the colors blue, yellow, red, and white; and light and space. See also KHANIKASAMADHI.
artificial neural network ::: (artificial intelligence) (ANN, commonly just neural network or neural net) A network of many very simple processors (units or neurons), each opposed to symbolic) data. The units operate only on their local data and on the inputs they receive via the connections.A neural network is a processing device, either an algorithm, or actual hardware, whose design was inspired by the design and functioning of animal brains and components thereof.Most neural networks have some sort of training rule whereby the weights of connections are adjusted on the basis of presented patterns. In other words, dogs from examples of dogs, and exhibit some structural capability for generalisation.Neurons are often elementary non-linear signal processors (in the limit they are simple threshold discriminators). Another feature of NNs which distinguishes data and programs, but rather each neuron is pre-programmed and continuously active.The term neural net should logically, but in common usage never does, also include biological neural networks, whose elementary structures are far more complicated than the mathematical models used for ANNs.See Aspirin, Hopfield network, McCulloch-Pitts neuron.Usenet newsgroup: comp.ai.neural-nets. (1997-10-13)
artificial neural network "artificial intelligence" (ANN, commonly just "neural network" or "neural net") A network of many very simple processors ("units" or "neurons"), each possibly having a (small amount of) local memory. The units are connected by unidirectional communication channels ("connections"), which carry numeric (as opposed to symbolic) data. The units operate only on their local data and on the inputs they receive via the connections. A neural network is a processing device, either an {algorithm}, or actual hardware, whose design was inspired by the design and functioning of animal brains and components thereof. Most neural networks have some sort of "training" rule whereby the weights of connections are adjusted on the basis of presented patterns. In other words, neural networks "learn" from examples, just like children learn to recognise dogs from examples of dogs, and exhibit some structural capability for generalisation. Neurons are often elementary non-linear signal processors (in the limit they are simple threshold discriminators). Another feature of NNs which distinguishes them from other computing devices is a high degree of interconnection which allows a high degree of parallelism. Further, there is no idle memory containing data and programs, but rather each neuron is pre-programmed and continuously active. The term "neural net" should logically, but in common usage never does, also include biological neural networks, whose elementary structures are far more complicated than the mathematical models used for ANNs. See {Aspirin}, {Hopfield network}, {McCulloch-Pitts neuron}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.ai.neural-nets}. (1997-10-13)
Asat (Sanskrit) Asat [from a not + sat being from the verbal root as to be] Not being, non-being; used in the Indian philosophies with two meanings almost diametrically opposed: firstly, as the false, the unreal, or the manifested universe, in contrast with sat, the real; secondly, in a profoundly mystical sense, as all that is beyond or higher than sat. “Sat is born from Asat, and Asat is begotten by Sat: the perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can be squared only at the supreme Initiation, at the threshold of Paranirvana” (SD 2:449-50). In its lower sense, asat signifies the realms of objective nature built out of and from the various prakritis, and therefore regarded as illusory in contrast to the enduring Be-ness or sat. In its higher sense asat is that boundless and eternal metaphysical essence of space out of which, in which, and from which even sat or Be-ness itself is and endures. Asat here is parabrahman-mulaprakriti in its most abstract meaning.
bestride ::: v. t. --> To stand or sit with anything between the legs, or with the legs astride; to stand over
To step over; to stride over or across; as, to bestride a threshold.
Bragi (Icelandic) [from bragr best] One of the twelve aesir, gods of the Norse Eddas. Representing poetic inspiration of the highest order, he is called the divine singer. It is said he lay sleeping on the ship of the dwarfs (kingdoms of the elements — earth, water, air, fire, aether), and when the vessel crossed the threshold of death, he awoke and sang the worlds into life. The sound of his joyfilled song and golden harp reverberates through the nine worlds awakening the music of all the spheres.
threshold ::: 1. A piece of wood or stone placed beneath a door; a doorsill. Also fig. 2. Fig. A level or point at which something would happen, would cease to happen, or would take effect, become true, etc. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
threshold ::: n. --> The plank, stone, or piece of timber, which lies under a door, especially of a dwelling house, church, temple, or the like; the doorsill; hence, entrance; gate; door.
Fig.: The place or point of entering or beginning, entrance; outset; as, the threshold of life.
threshold :::
threshold"s.
threshold ::: The level of membrane potential at which an action potential is generated.
Composite idea: Any idea that consists of a fusion of sentient elements, which together are presumed to pass the threshold of consciousness. In logic, a compound of undefined ideas by way of definition. -- C.K.D.
Configurationism: A suggested English equivalent for Gestalt Psychology. See Gestalt Psychology. Confirmation, Confirmable: See Verification 3, 4. Conflict: The psychological phenomenon of struggle between competing ideas, emotions or tendencies to action. J. F. Herbart (Lehrbuch der Psychologie, 1816) enunciated a doctrine of conflict of ideas in accordance with which ideas opposed to the mind's dominant ideas are submerged below the threshold of consciousness. The doctrine of conflict has been revived by recent psychoanalytic psychology (see Psychoanalysis) to account for the relegation to the subconscious of ideas and tendencies intolerable to the conscious mind. -- L.W.
Deterministic Effect::: The health effects, the severity of which varies with the dose and for which a threshold is believed to exist. Radiation-induced cataract formation is an example of a deterministic effect (also called a non-stochastic effect)
Dharmakaya (Sanskrit) Dharmakāya [from dharma law, continuance from the verbal root dhṛ to support, carry, continue + kāya body] Continuance-body, body of the law. One of the trikaya of Buddhism, which consists of 1) nirmanakaya, 2) sambhogakaya, and 3) dharmakaya. “It is that spiritual body or state of a high spiritual being in which the restricted sense of soulship and egoity has vanished into a universal (hierarchical) sense, and remains only in the seed, latent — if even so much. It is pure consciousness, pure bliss, pure intelligence, freed from all personalizing thought” (OG 38). In the dharmakaya vesture the initiate is on the threshold of nirvana or in the nirvanic state. Sometimes the dharmakaya is called the “nirvana without remains,” for once having reached that state the buddha or bodhisattva remains entirely outside of every earthly condition; he will return no more until the commencement of a new manvantara, for he has crossed the cycle of births. Dharmakaya state is that of parasamadhi, where no progress is possible — at least as long as the entity remains in it. Such entities may be said to be for the time being crystallized in purity and homogeneity. This is, likewise, one of the states of adi-buddha, and as such is called the mystic, universally diffused essence, the robe or vesture of luminous spirituality. See also TRIKAYA; TRISARANA
Dharmakaya(Sanskrit) ::: This is a compound of two words meaning the "continuance body," sometimes translatedequally well (or ill) the "body of the Law" -- both very inadequate expressions, for the difficulty intranslating these extremely mystical terms is very great. A mere correct dictionary-translation oftenmisses the esoteric meaning entirely, and just here is where Occidental scholars make such ludicrouserrors at times.The first word comes from the root dhri, meaning "to support," "to sustain," "to carry," "to bear," hence"to continue"; also human laws are the agencies supposed to carry, support, sustain, civilization; thesecond element, kaya, means "body." The noun thus formed may be rendered the "body of the Law," butthis phrase does not give the idea at all. It is that spiritual body or state of a high spiritual being in whichthe restricted sense of soulship and egoity has vanished into a universal (hierarchical) sense, and remainsonly in the seed, latent -- if even so much. It is pure consciousness, pure bliss, pure intelligence, freedfrom all personalizing thought.In the Buddhism of Central Asia, the dharmakaya is the third and highest of the trikaya. The trikayaconsists of (1) nirmanakaya, (2) sambhogakaya, and (3) dharmakaya. We may look upon these threestates, all of them lofty and sublime, as being three vestures in which the consciousness of the entityclothes itself. In the dharmakaya vesture the initiate is already on the threshold of nirvana, if not indeedalready in the nirvanic state. (See also Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya)
Difference Threshold ::: The smallest change in perception which is noticeable at least 50% of the time.
doorsill ::: n. --> The sill or threshold of a door.
doorstone ::: n. --> The stone forming a threshold.
Dweller on the Threshold ::: A literary invention of the English mystic and novelist Sir Bulwer Lytton, found in his romance Zanoni.The term has obtained wide currency and usage in theosophical circles. In occultism the word "dweller,"or some exactly equivalent phrase or expression, has been known and used during long ages past. Itrefers to several things, but more particularly has an application to what H. P. Blavatsky calls "certainmaleficent astral Doubles of defunct persons." This is exact. But there is another meaning of this phrasestill more mystical and still more difficult to explain which refers to the imbodied karmic consequencesor results of the man's past, haunting the thresholds which the initiant or initiate must pass before he canadvance or progress into a higher degree of initiation. These dwellers, in the significance of the word justlast referred to are, as it were, the imbodied quasi-human astral haunting parts of the constitution thrownoff in past incarnations by the man who now has to face them and overcome them -- very real and livingbeings, parts of the "new" man's haunting past. The initiant must face these old "selves" of himself andconquer or -- fail, which failure may mean either insanity or death. They are verily ghosts of the deadmen that the present man formerly was, now arising to dog his footsteps, and hence are very truly calledDwellers on the Threshold. In a specific sense they may be truly called the kama-rupas of the man's pastincarnations arising out of the records in the astral light left there by the "old" man of the "new" man whonow is.
Dweller on the Threshold (Dweller of the Threshold) Coined by Bulwer-Lytton in his romance Zanoni, where it represents a malevolent entity of awful and terrifying aspect awaiting to menace and tempt the aspirant to occultism. The author, by means of this vivid portrayal, has expressed the mystical fact that when one has taken a stand to overcome a certain weakness in one’s nature, or even a habit, such resolution seems to array all the opposing forces against the aspirant. Thus it may readily be understood that when one seeks to enter the domain of the occult, a similar experience awaits the candidate; but the forces or energies thus aroused are of one’s own making, and they must be met and conquered by their originator before progress may be successfully made. “The real Dweller on the Threshold is formed of the despair and despondency of the neophyte, who is called upon to give up all his old affections for kindred, parents and children, as well as his aspirations for objects of worldly ambition, which have perhaps been his associates for many incarnations. When called upon to give up these things, the neophyte feels a kind of blank, before he realizes his higher possibilities.” (Subba Row, Theos 7:284).
Dweller on the Threshold: In occult terminology, a demon or evil elemental or nature-spirit capable of obsession (q.v.). The term was coined by Bulwer Lytton.
Eidolon(Greek; plural eidola) ::: A word meaning "image" of the man that was. After death there remains in theastral world -- which is on the other side of the threshold of physical life, the etheric world -- the"shadow" of the man that was. The ancients called these human shadows, shades; modern children andnursemaids call them ghosts and spooks; and each such shade is but an eidolon, or astral image or palecopy of the physical man that was. This eidolon coheres for a while in the astral realms or in thesuperphysical ether, and its particles are magnetically held more or less coherent as long as the physicalcorpse is not fully dissolved into its component elements; but these eidola in a comparatively short timefade out, for they decay in a manner closely resembling the disintegration of the physical body.
Environmental Exposure ::: Human exposure to pollutants originating from facility emissions. Threshold levels are not necessarily surpassed, but low level chronic pollutant exposure is one of the most common forms of environmental exposure.
Fechner, Gustav Theodor: (1801-1887) Philosophizing during the ascendency of modern science and the wane of metaphysical speculation, Fechner though as physicist believing in induction, analogy, history and pragmatic procedure, expounded a pure, objective idealism of Berkeley's type. With Oken and Schelling as spiritual guides, he held that everything is in consciousness, there are no substances, no things-in-themselves, everything, including animals, plants, earth, and heavens, shares the life of the soul (alles ist beseelt). In a consequent psycho-physicalism he interpreted soul (which is no substance, but the simplifying power in contrast to the diversifying physical) as appearance to oneself, and matter as appearance to others, both representing the same reality differentiated only in point of view. He applied the law of threshold to consciousness, explaining thus its relative discontinuity on one level while postulating its continuity on another, either higher or lower level. In God, as the highest rung of existence, there is infinite consciousness without an objective world. Evil arises inexplicably from darker levels of consciousness. With poetic imagination Fechner defended the "day-view" of the world in which phenomena are the real content of consciousness, against the "night-view" of science which professes knowledge of the not-sensation-conditioned colorless, soundless world.
flame ::: “The true soul secret in us,—subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil,—this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
From the zero emanate an infinite number of cosmic Ones or monads. Every absolute is not only the hierarch of its own hierarchy, the One from which all subsequent differentiations emanate, but is also a cosmic jivanmukta, a released monad freed from the pull of the lower planes. Every monad at the threshold of paranirvana reassumes its primeval essence and becomes at one with the absolute of its own hierarchy once more. The absolute is thus the goal of evolution as well as the source, the highest divinity or Silent Watcher of the hierarchy of compassion, which forms the light side of a universe or cosmic hierarchy.
garbage collection "programming" (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the {run-time system}), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like {Lisp} represent expressions as {graphs} built from {cells} which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic {dynamic storage allocation} to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on {virtual memory} size. The three main methods are {mark-sweep garbage collection}, {reference counting} and {copying garbage collection}. See also the {AI koan} about garbage collection. (1997-08-25)
garbage collection ::: (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory.Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme.Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation.Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size.The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection.See also the AI koan about garbage collection. (1997-08-25)
Generally speaking, because of their menacing aspects, the term Dweller on the Threshold might be applied to the denizens of kama-loka, specifically to the past kama-lokic or astral remnants of a former incarnation which haunt the new imbodiment of that reincarnating ego. A person who gives way to strongly material impulse and desires forms for himself a kama-rupa which, when the person dies, can persist without undergoing complete dissolution until the quick return of such materially-minded human soul to reincarnation, when the kama-rupa is then strongly attracted to the person thus reimbodied and haunts him as an evil genius, continually instilling by automatic psychomagnetic action thoughts and impulses of evil, temptations, and suggestions of fear and terror — all of which the person himself was responsible for in his last life.
Get a real computer! "jargon" A typical {hacker} response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a {toy} system or {bitty box}. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant {multi-tasking}, with a {hard disk}, and an {address space} bigger than 16 {megabytes}. At this time, according to {GLS}, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one {gigahertz} processor, 128 MB of {RAM}, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs {Linux}. [{Jargon File}] (2001-06-22)
Get a real computer! ::: (jargon) A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box.The threshold for real computer rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. verging on unreal. In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.[Jargon File](2001-06-22)
In the earlier third root-races, the Sons of Wisdom produced by kriyasakti a progeny called the Sons of Ad, Sons of the Fire-mist, or Sons of Will and Yoga. This was not a race, but “at first a wondrous Being, called the ‘Initiator,’ and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings. ‘Set apart’ in Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, ‘Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras’ — to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this earth and during the present cycle” (SD 1:207). This Wondrous Being, who descended in the early part of the Third Age, is the tree from which have come the great historically known sages and hierophants, and it holds spiritual sway over the initiated adepts. “He is the ‘Initiator,’ called the ‘great sacrifice.’ For, sitting at the threshold of light, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross, nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle. Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen post? Why does he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer, as he has naught to learn which he does not know . . .? Because the lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back to their home are never sure to the last moment of not losing their way in this limitless desert of illusion and matter called Earth-Life. Because he would fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, though but a few Elect may profit by the great sacrifice” (SD 1:208).
In theosophy the moon is only physically a satellite of the earth; in other respects it is the earth’s mother. Modern astronomy knows nothing as to the actual cosmological role played in the spatial deeps by the satellites of the planets or of the suns — particularly those moon-satellites, which being true moons (as is the moon of earth) are the extinct astral bodies or kama-rupas of the former physical imbodiments of the globe-chain, which now they accompany as attendants. The parts that the true moons especially play in the drama of cosmogonical history is enormous. Such true moons are the dwellers on the threshold of the globes which they thus attend.
“It is a Cross in a Circle and Crux Ansata, truly; but it is a Cross on which all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogi passes through the ‘strait gate,’ the narrow circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the inner man has passed the threshold” (SD 2:549).
Kotokuin. (高德院). In Japanese, "High Virtue Cloister"; located in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan. Kotokuin is best known as the home of the colossal buddha image of Kamakura (see KAMAKURA DAIBUTSU), a huge bronze statue of AMITĀBHA Buddha; as a consequence, the temple is often called Daibutsuji. The temple is associated with the Jodoshu, or Pure Land sect. After one crosses the threshold of the entrance gate into the temple compound, the site appears more like a park dedicated to the colossal buddha image than a temple; in fact, the real Kotokuin temple buildings are now located to the east of the image and are off-limits to most tourists. Toward the back of the temple is now located the Kangetsudo, or Moon-Viewing Hall, which was brought from Korea in 1934; it enshrines an Edo-period (1603-1868) statue of Kannon (AVALOKITEsVARA). To the right of the Moon-Viewing Hall is a stone stele on which is inscribed a famous tanka poem by Akiko Yosano (1878-1942) describing her impression on first seeing the Kamakura Daibutsu (although she mistakenly presumes she is viewing sĀKYAMUNI, not Amitābha).
Ksitigarbha. (T. Sa yi snying po; C. Dizang; J. Jizo; K. Chijang 地藏). In Sanskrit, lit. "Earth Store," an important BODHISATTVA who has the power to rescue beings who have the misfortune to be reborn in the hells. Although Ksitigarbha is known in all Mahāyāna countries through his inclusion in the widely known grouping of eight great bodhisattvas (MAHOPAPUTRA; AstAMAHOPAPUTRA), he was apparently not the object of individual cultic worship in India or Tibet. It was in East Asian Buddhism that Ksitigarbha came into his own and became widely worshipped. In China, the cult of Ksitigarbha (C. Dizang) gained popularity by at least the fifth century, with the translation of the Dasheng daji Dizang shilun jing ("Mahāyāna Mahāsannipāta Sutra on Ksitigarbha and the Ten Wheels"), first in the Northern Liang dynasty and subsequently again by XUANZANG in 651 CE. The eponymous KsITIGARBHASuTRA, translated at the end of the seventh century, specifically relates the bodhisattva's vow to rescue all beings in the six realms of existence before he would attain buddhahood himself and tells the well-known prior-birth story of the bodhisattva as a young woman, whose filial piety after the death of her heretical mother saved her mother from rebirth in the AVĪCI hell. It was his ability to rescue deceased family members from horrific rebirths that became Dizang's dominant characteristic in China, where he took on the role of the Lord of Hell, opposite the Jade Emperor of native Chinese cosmology. This role may possibly have resulted from Dizang's portrayal as the Lord of Hell in the apocryphal (see APOCRYPHA) Foshuo Dizang pusa faxin yinlu shiwang jing and reflects Buddhist accommodations to the medieval Chinese interest in the afterlife. This specialization in servicing the denizens of hell seems also to have evolved alongside the emergence of Dizang's portrayal as a monk, whom the Chinese presume to reside on the Buddhist sacred mountain of JIUHUASHAN in Anhui province. (See also CHIJANG; KIM KYUGAK.) Ksitigarbha is easily recognizable in Chinese iconography because he is the only bodhisattva who wears the simple raiments of a monk and has a shaved head rather than an ornate headdress. In Japan, where Ksitigarbha is known as Jizo, the bodhisattva has taken on a different significance. Introduced to Japan during the Heian period, Jizo became immensely popular as a protector of children, patron of travelers, and guardian of community thresholds. Jizo is typically depicted as a monk carrying a staff in his left hand and a chaplet or rosary in his right. The boundaries of a village beyond which children should not wander were often marked by a stone statue of Jizo. Japanese fisherman also looked to Jizo for protection; statues of the bodhisattva erected by early Japanese immigrants to Hawaii are still found today at many popular shoreline fishing and swimming sites in the Hawaiian Islands. In modern Japan, Jizo continues to be regarded as the special protector of children, including the stillborn and aborted. In memory of these children, and as a means of requesting Jizo's protection of them, statues of Jizo are often dressed in a bib (usually red in color), sometimes wearing a knit cap or bonnet, with toys placed nearby (see MIZUKO KUYo). Tibetan iconography typically has Ksitigarbha seated on a lotus flower, holding a CINTĀMAnI in his right hand and displaying the VARADAMUDRĀ with his left.
Limits of Sensation: The two limiting sensations in the sensory continuum of any given sense: (a) the lower limit is the just noticeable sensation which if the stimulus producing it were diminished, would vanish altogether or -- in the view of some psychologists -- would pass into the unconscious. See Threshold of Consciousness, (b) The upper limit is the maximum sensation such that if the producing stimulus were increased the resultant sensation would again vanish. -- L.W.
Log-probit Model::: A dose-response model which assumes that each animal has its own threshold dose, below which no response occurs and above which a tumor [or other effect] is produced by exposure to a chemical.
Madhav: “When Aswapathy lifts the curtain of the flesh i.e. when he gets through the barrier of his physical existence, he comes to the threshold of another domain, subtle and occult. He sees a serpent watching, guarding the entrance. In all traditions, especially the ancient, at the doors of every subtle kingdom there is a sentinel and that sentinel is imaged as a serpent. In spiritual symbolism the serpent stands for Energy. Depending on the colour of the serpent, it is physical energy or vital energy, mental energy, spiritual energy. Unless this serpent allows one to pass one cannot enter. The serpent, in this context, is the guard whose consent is necessary before one can pass. The Book of the Divine Mother
Negative proposition: See affirmative proposition. Negative Sensation: Term used by Wundt to designate sensations produced by stimuli below the threshold of positive sensation. See Limits of Sensation. The term has largely been discarded because the existence of such sensations is now generally denied. -- L.W.
Nirvana(Sanskrit) ::: This is a compound: nir, "out," and vana, the past participle passive of the root va, "to blow,"literallly meaning "blown out." So badly has the significance of the ancient Indian thought (and even its language, the Sanskrit) been understood, that for many years erudite European scholars were discussingwhether being "blown out" meant actual entitative annihilation or not. But the being blown out refersonly to the lower principles in man.Nirvana is a very different thing from the "heavens." Nirvana is a state of utter bliss and complete,untrammeled consciousness, a state of absorption in pure kosmic Being, and is the wondrous destiny ofthose who have reached superhuman knowledge and purity and spiritual illumination. It really ispersonal-individual absorption into or rather identification with the Self -- the highest SELF. It is also thestate of the monadic entities in the period that intervenes between minor manvantaras or rounds of aplanetary chain; and more fully so between each seven-round period or Day of Brahma, and thesucceeding day or new kalpa of a planetary chain. At these last times, starting forth from the seventhsphere in the seventh round, the monadic entities will have progressed far beyond even the highest stateof devachan. Too pure and too far advanced even for such a condition as the devachanic felicity, they goto their appropriate sphere and condition, which latter is the nirvana following the end of the seventhround.Devachan and nirvana are not localities. They are states, states of the beings in those respective spiritualconditions. Devachan is the intermediate state; nirvana is the superspiritual state; and avichi, popularlycalled the lowest of the hells, is the nether pole of the spiritual condition. These three are states of beingshaving habitat in the lokas or talas, in the worlds of the kosmic egg.So far as the individual human being is concerned, the nirvanic state or condition may be attained to bygreat spiritual seers and sages, such as Gautama the Buddha, and even by men less progressed than he;because in these cases of the attaining of the nirvana even during a man's life on earth, the meaning isthat one so attaining has through evolution progressed so far along the path that all the lower personalpart of him is become thoroughly impersonalized, the personal has put on the garment of impersonality,and such a man thereafter lives in the nirvanic condition of the spiritual monad.As a concluding thought, it must be pointed out that nirvana, while the ultima thule of the perfection tobe attained by any human being, nevertheless stands less high in the estimate of mystics than thecondition of the bodhisattva. For the bodhisattva, although standing on the threshold of nirvana andseeing and understanding its ineffable glory and peace and rest, nevertheless retains his consciousness inthe worlds of men, in order to consecrate his vast faculties and powers to the service of all that is. Thebuddhas in their higher parts enter the nirvana, in other words, assume the dharmakaya state or vesture,whereas the bodhisattva assumes the nirmanakaya vesture, thereafter to become an ever-active andcompassionate and beneficent influence in the world. The buddha indeed may be said to act indirectlyand by long distance control, thus indeed helping the world diffusively or by diffusion; but thebodhisattva acts directly and positively and with a directing will in works of compassion, both for theworld and for individuals.
“Nirvana, while the Ultima Thule of the perfection to be attained by any human being, nevertheless stands less high in the estimate of mystics than the condition of the Bodhisattva. For the Bodhisattva, although standing on the threshold of Nirvana and seeing and understanding its ineffable glory and peace and rest, nevertheless retains his consciousness in the worlds of men, in order to consecrate his vast faculties and powers to the service of all that is. The Buddhas in their higher parts enter the Nirvana, in other words, assume the Dharmakaya-state or vesture, whereas the Bodhisattva assumes the Nirmanakaya-vesture, thereafter to become an ever-active and compassionate and beneficent influence in the world. The Buddha indeed may be said to act indirectly and by ‘long distance control,’ thus indeed helping the world diffusively or by diffusion; but the Bodhisattva acts directly and positively and with a directing will in works of compassion, both for the world and for individuals” (OG 116-17).
parihāni. (P. parihāni; T. yongs su nyams pa; C. tui; J. tai; K. t'oe 退). In Sanskrit, lit., "diminution," "retrogression," or "backsliding" from virtuous states that had previously been cultivated or mastered. Parihāni refers specifically to the diminution of mental states that had been directed toward liberation (VIMUKTI), which allows mental disturbances to reappear and thus causes regression to previous habitual tendencies involving unwholesome or mundane thoughts and activities. The term often appears in debates concerning the issue of whether the noble persons (ĀRYAPUDGALA) are subject to backsliding. Such MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS as the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA, SARVĀSTIVĀDA, and SAMMITĪYA argued, for example, that ARHATs were subject to backsliding because they were still prone to vestigial negative proclivities of mind (ANUsAYA), even if those only manifested themselves while the monks were sleeping, e.g., nocturnal emissions. The STHAVIRANIKĀYA argued that arhats were not subject to backsliding since they had perfected all the necessary stages of training and were free from such proclivities. Related to this issue are discussions concerning the status of once-returners (SAKṚDĀGĀMIN) and nonreturners (ANĀGĀMIN): the majority of schools posited that once-returners and nonreturners could regress to the status of the stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA), the first level of sanctity, but that the status of the stream-enterer was not subject to retrogression and was thus inviolate. In the PURE LAND tradition, backsliding is a core rationale justifying the pure land teachings, since, in the world of SAMSĀRA, backsliding is inevitable for all except the most resolute practitioners. According to the AMITĀBHASuTRA, for example, sentient beings have accumulated karmic burdens since time immemorial and are invariably subject to backsliding; thus, they will never be able to escape from the endless cycle of birth-and-death on their own. For this reason, the buddha AMITĀBHA encourages them to seek rebirth in the pure land, instead, where they will have no hindrances to their eventual attainment of liberation. In the MAHĀYĀNA tradition, reaching the stage where there no longer is any prospect of regression is a crucial threshold on the path to liberation. Different scriptures place this point of nonbacksliding at different stages along the path. One of the most common explanations about which stage is "irreversible" (AVAIVARTIKA) appears in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA, which locates it on the eighth stage (BHuMI), the "immovable" (ACALĀ), where further progress is assured and where there is no possible of retrogressing to a preceding stage. However, HARIBHADRA in his commentary on the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA identifies two earlier points at which the bodhisattva becomes irreversible, one on the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA) and one on the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA).
Partial Response Maximum Likelihood "storage" (PRML) A method for converting the weak {analog} signal from the head of a {magnetic disk} drive into a digital signal. PRML attempts to correctly interpret even small changes in the analog signal, whereas {peak detection} relies on fixed thresholds. Because PRML can correctly decode a weaker signal it allows higher density recording. For example, PRML would read the magnetic flux density pattern 70, 60, 55, 60, 70 as binary "101", and the same for 45, 40, 30, 40, 45. A peak detector would decode everything above, say, 50 as high, and below 50 as low, so the first pattern would read "111" and the second as "000". (1996-12-27)
Partial Response Maximum Likelihood ::: (storage) (PRML) A method for converting the weak analog signal from the head of a magnetic disk drive into a digital signal. PRML attempts to correctly on fixed thresholds. Because PRML can correctly decode a weaker signal it allows higher density recording.For example, PRML would read the magnetic flux density pattern 70, 60, 55, 60, 70 as binary 101, and the same for 45, 40, 30, 40, 45. A peak detector would decode everything above, say, 50 as high, and below 50 as low, so the first pattern would read 111 and the second as 000. (1996-12-27)
pass ::: v. 1. To move on or ahead; proceed. 2. To move by. 3. To go or get through (something), lit. and fig. **4. To go across or over (a stream, threshold, etc.); cross. 5. To cross, traverse, in reference to times, stages, states, conditions, processes, actions, experiences, etc. 6. To be transferred from one to another; circulate. 7. To come to or toward, then go beyond. 8. To come to an end. 9. To cease to exist. 10. To convey, transfer, or transmit; deliver (often followed by on). 11. To be accepted as or believed to be. 12. To sanction or approve. passes, passed, passing. n. 13. A way, such as a narrow gap between mountains, that affords passage around, over, or through a barrier. passes. ::: pass by. To let go without notice, action, remark, etc.; leave unconsidered; disregard; overlook.
threshold - Minimum point at which an effect is produced or detected.
threshold voltage - For an enhancement MOSFET, the minimum gate source voltage required for conduction of source drain current.
presence ::: 1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence. 2. A divine, spiritual, or supernatural spirit or influence felt or conceived as present. 3. The immediate proximity of someone or something.
Sri Aurobindo: "It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master — a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within.” *The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
"If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, — all Nature is its external proof, — we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” *The Life Divine
"The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” *The Life Divine
"There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"They [the psychic being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. The psychic being is one"s own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
"For it is quietness and inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” *Essays Divine and Human
The Mother: "For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart — not in the physical heart but the psychic centre — of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
sankhārupekkhāNāna. In Pāli, "knowledge arising from equanimity regarding all formations"; according to the VISUDDHIMAGGA, the eighth of nine knowledges (P. Nāna, S. JNĀNA) cultivated as part of "purity of knowledge and vision of progress along the path" (PAtIPADĀNĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI). This latter category, in turn, constitutes the sixth and penultimate purity (P. visuddhi, S. VIsUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation. Knowledge arising from equanimity regarding all formations arises as a consequence of understanding all conditioned formations (S. SAMSKĀRA) that comprise the individual and the universe as being characterized by the three marks (S. TRILAKsAnA) of impermanence (S. ANITYA), suffering (S. DUḤKHA) and nonself (S. ANĀTMAN). This understanding is the product of the immediately preceding (seventh) knowledge called "knowledge arising from contemplation of reflection" (PAtISAnKHĀNUPASSANĀNĀnA). Understanding the formations to be void (see suNYATĀ) in this way, the practitioner abandons both terror and delight, and, regarding them as neither "I" nor "mine," he becomes indifferent and neutral towards them. The sixth, seventh, and eighth knowledges when taken together are called "insight leading to emergence" (vutthānagāmini vipassanā) because they stand at the threshold of liberation. The Visuddhimagga states that, at this stage in the practice, one can continue to contemplate the formations with equanimity, or, if the mind turns towards the nibbāna element (S. NIRVĀnADHĀTU) as its object, one of three types of liberation (S. VIMUKTI) ensues. If liberation occurs while contemplating impermanence, it is called "signless liberation," if it occurs while contemplating suffering it is called "wishless liberation," and if it occurs while contemplating nonself it is called "empty liberation" (see VIMOKsAMUKHA).
Sat (Sanskrit) Sat [from the verbal root as to be] Being; the real, the enduring fundamental essence of the world, “for Sat is in itself neither the ‘existent,’ nor ‘being.’ Sat is the immutable, the ever present, changeless and eternal root, from and through which all proceeds. But it is far more than the potential force in the seed, which propels onward the process of development, or what is now called evolution. It is the ever becoming, though the never manifesting. Sat is born from Asat and ASAT is begotten by sat: the perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can be squared only at the supreme Initiation, at the threshold of Paranirvana” (SD 2:449-50).
serpent of the Threshold
sill ::: a ledge of wood, stone, etc. at the foot of an opening, such as a window or a door; the threshold.
sill ::: n. --> The basis or foundation of a thing; especially, a horizontal piece, as a timber, which forms the lower member of a frame, or supports a structure; as, the sills of a house, of a bridge, of a loom, and the like.
The timber or stone at the foot of a door; the threshold.
The timber or stone on which a window frame stands; or, the lowest piece in a window frame.
The floor of a gallery or passage in a mine.
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
Sri Aurobindo: "The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
Stochastic Effects::: Effects that occur by chance, generally occurring without a threshold level of dose, whose probability is proportional to the dose and whose severity is independent of the dose. In the context of radiation protection, the main stochastic effects are cancer and genetic effects.
Subconscious mind: According to the theory of psychoanalysis, a compartment of the mind which exists below the threshold of consciousness. The subconscious, though not directly accessible to introspection (q.v.), is capable of being tapped by special techniques such as random association, dream-analysis, automatic writing, etc.
Subconscious Mind: (Lat. sub, under -- cum together + scire to know) A compartment of the mind alleged by certain psychologists and philosophers (see Psycho-analysis) to exist below the threshold of consciousness. The subconscious, though not directly accessible to introspection (see Introspection), is capable of being tapped by special techniques such as random association, dream-analysis, automatic writing, etc. The doctrine of the subconscious was foreshadowed in Leibniz's doctrine of petites perceptions (Monadology, Sections 21, 23) and received philosophical expression by A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, and E. von Hartman, Philosophy of the Unconscious and has become an integral part of Freudian psychology. See Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, esp. pp. 425-35, 483-93. -- L.W.
subliminal ::: existing or operating below the threshold of sensation or consciousness. subliminal"s.
Subliminal: (Lat. sub. under + limen, the threshold) Term popularized by F. Myers to describe allegedly unconscious mental processes especially sensations which lie below the threshold of consciousness. See Unconscious Mind. -- L.W.
Subliminal: Unconscious, below the threshold of consciousness.
“The ‘BEING’ . . . is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane — the ever invisible) yet ever present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who holds spiritual sway over the initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the ‘Nameless One’ who has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the ‘Initiator,’ called the ‘Great sacrifice.’ For, sitting at the threshold of light, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle. . . . Because he would fain show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. . . .
“The ‘Being’ just referred to, which has to remain nameless, is the Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known Sages and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., etc., have branched off. As objective man, he is the mysterious (to the profane — the ever invisible) yet ever present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who holds spiritual sway over the initiated Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the ‘Nameless One’ who has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the ‘Initiator,’ called the ‘great sacrifice.’ For, sitting at the threshold of light, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this life-cycle” (SD 1:207-8).
The_cost_of_equity ::: is the return a company requires to decide if an investment meets capital return requirements. It is often used as a capital budgeting threshold for required rate of return. A firm's cost of equity represents the compensation the market demands in exchange for owning the asset and bearing the risk of ownership. The traditional formulas for cost of equity (COE) are the dividend capitalization model and the capital asset pricing model.
The structural problem stated in terms of the antithesis between subjective and objective is rather too vague for the purposes of epistemology and a more precise analysis of the knowledge-situation and statement of the issues involved is required. The perceptual situation -- and this analysis may presumably be extended with appropriate modifications to memory, imagination and other modes of cognition -- consists of a subject (the self, or pure act of perceiving), the content (sense data) and the object (the physical thing perceived). In terms of this analysis, two issues may be formulated Are content and object identical (epistemological monism), or are they numerically distinct (epistemological dualism)? and Does the object exist independently of the knowing subject (epistemological idealism) or is it dependent upon the subject (epistemological realism)? (h) The problem of truth is perhaps the culmination of epistemological enquiry -- in any case it is the problem which brings the enquiry to the threshold of metaphysics. The traditional theories of the nature of truth are: the correspondence theory which conceives truth as a relation between an "idea" or a proposition and its object --the relation has commonly been regarded as one of resemblance but it need not be so considered (see Correspondence theory of truth); the Coherence theory which adopts as the criterion of truth, the logical consistency of a proposition with a wider system of propositions (see Coherence theory of truth), and the intrinsic theory which views truth as an intrinsic property of the true proposition. See Intrinsic theory of truth. --L-W. Bibliography:
“The true soul secret in us,—subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil,—this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
thresh-fold ::: n. --> Threshold.
Threshold ::: A pollutant concentration [or dose] below which no deleterious effect occurs.
Threshold Dose ::: The minimum application of a given substance required to produce an observable effect.
Threshold Level ::: Time-weighted average pollutant concentration values, exposure beyond which is likely to adversely affect human health.
Threshold Limit Value (TLV)::: Refers to airborne concentrations of substances and represents conditions under which it is believed that nearly all workers are protected while repeatedly exposed for an 8-hr day, 5 days a week (expressed as parts per million (ppm) for gases and vapors and as milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) for fumes, mists, and dusts).
threshwold ::: n. --> Threshold.
upacārasamādhi. In Pāli, "access concentration," "neighborhood concentration," or "threshold concentration"; the more elementary of the two broad types of concentration (SAMĀDHI) described in Pāli commentarial literature. Both of these two types of samādhi are used with reference to meditators who are specializing in calmness (P. samatha; S. sAMATHA) techniques. Upacārasamādhi precedes full meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA) and is the highest level of concentration that may be developed from the more discursive topics of meditation (KAMMAttHĀNA), viz., the first eight of ten recollections (P. anussati; S. ANUSMṚTI), on the Buddha, dharma, SAMGHA, morality, generosity, divinities, death, and peace, as well as the contemplation on the loathsomeness of food, and the analysis of the four material elements. Upacārasamādhi is characterized by the visualization in the mind of a luminous "counterpart" or "representational" "image" (PAtIBHĀGANIMITTA) of the object of meditation. It is through further concentration on this stable representational image that the mind finally attains "full concentration" (APPANĀSAMĀDHI), which leads to jhāna. (See also KHANIKASAMĀDHI; SĀMANTAKA.) According to some THERAVĀDA accounts (e.g., in the modern VIPASSANĀ movement), concentration of at least the level of upacārasamādhi is said to be required for the achievement of the state of stream-enterer (P. sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA).
vipassanā. In Pāli, "insight" (see also S. VIPAsYANĀ). Insight is defined as the direct intuition of the three marks (P. tilakkhana; S. TRILAKsAnA) of existence that characterize all phenomena: P. aniccā (S. ANITYATĀ) or impermanence, dukkha (S. DUḤKHA) or suffering, and anatta (S. ANĀTMAN) or nonself. Insight associated with the attainment of any of the eight noble paths and fruits (P. ariyamaggaphala; S. ĀRYAMĀRGAPHALA) or associated with the attainment of cessation (NIRODHASAMĀPATTI) is classified as supramundane (P. lokuttara; S. LOKOTTARA); that which is not associated with the noble paths and fruits is classified as mundane (P. lokiya; S. LAUKIKA). The classical commentarial paradigm pairs vipassanā with samatha (S. sAMATHA), or tranquillity, these two together being described as the two wings of Buddhist meditative cultivation (BHĀVANĀ). Vipassanā, when fully developed, leads to enlightenment (BODHI) and nibbāna (S. NIRVĀnA); samatha when fully developed leads to the attainment of JHĀNA (S. DHYĀNA), or meditative absorption, and the attainment of certain supranormal powers (P. abhiNNā; S. ABHIJNĀ). While the formal training in vipassanā meditation does not require the prior attainment of either jhāna or abhiNNā, the mind must nevertheless have achieved a modicum of pacification through "threshold concentration" (UPACĀRASAMĀDHI) as a prerequisite for successful vipassanā practice. The VISUDDHIMAGGA lists eighteen main types of vipassanāNāna (S. vipasyanājNāna), or insight knowledge, of (1) impermanence (aniccānupassanā), (2) suffering (dukkhānupassanā), (3) nonself (anattānupnupassanā), (4) aversion (nibbidānupassanā), (5) dispassion (virāgānupassanā), (6) extinction (nirodhānupassanā), (7) abandoning (patinissaggānupassanāā), (8) waning (khayānupassanā), (9) disappearing (vayānupassanā), (10) change (viparināmānupassanā), (11) signlessness (animittānupassanā), (12) wishlessness (apanihitānupassanā), (13) emptiness (suNNatānupassanā), (14) higher wisdom regarding phenomena (adhipaNNādhammavipassanā), (15) knowledge and vision that accords with reality (YATHĀBHuTAJNĀNADARsANA), (16) contemplation of danger (ādīnavānupassanā), (17) contemplation involving reflection (patisankhānupassanā), and (18) turning away (vivattanānupassanā). While the terms samatha and vipassanā do appear in sutta discussions of meditative training-although far more often in the later KHUDDAKANIKĀYA sections of the canon-they figure most prominently in the ABHIDHAMMA and the later commentarial literature. The systems of vipassanā training taught today are modern constructs that do not antedate late-nineteenth century Burma (see LEDI SAYADAW; MAHASI SAYADAW); they are, however, derived from, or at least inspired by, commentarial or scriptural precedents. Two of the most successful vipassanā organizations outside Asia are the Insight Meditation Society and the loosely knit group of centers teaching S. N. Goenka's vipassana meditation; the former originates with AJAHN CHAH BODHINĀnA (1917-1992) of the Thai forest tradition and the latter with the Burmese teacher U BA KHIN (1899-1971). See also YATHĀBHuTAJNĀNADARsANA.
vipassanāNānikasamādhi. In Pāli, "concentration of insight knowledge"; a commentarial term used to refer to a form of concentration that is developed through attending to the arising and passing away of the present thought-moment or object, when such concentration has successfully removed all distractions. It is equal in intensity to the "threshold concentration" (UPACĀRASAMĀDHI) that is cultivated in the course of practicing tranquillity meditation (P. samathabhāvanā; see sAMATHA). VipassanāNānikasamādhi, when fully developed, leads to the attainment of the paths (P. magga; S. MĀRGA) and fruits (PHALA) of liberation, whereas upacārasamādhi, when fully developed, leads only to the attainment of "absorptive concentration" (APPANĀSAMĀDHI), which is synonymous with "meditative absorption" (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA).
word recognition threshold: is the minimum exposure of a word necessary to recognise and identify it. The threshold is set as the point at which the word can be correctly recognised 50 per cent of the time when presented.
KEYS (10k)
10 Joseph Campbell
4 Sri Aurobindo
1 Sri Aurobindo
1 Petrarch
1 Jalaluddin Rumi
1 Guru Rinpoche
1 Franz Kafka
1 Athanasius
1 The Mother
1 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
44 Lisa Kleypas
16 Joseph Campbell
15 Anonymous
10 Charlotte Bront
10 Alfred Lord Tennyson
9 Suzy Kassem
9 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8 Friedrich Nietzsche
7 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
7 Marcel Proust
7 J K Rowling
6 Steven Pressfield
6 Rudyard Kipling
6 Malcolm Gladwell
6 Edith Wharton
6 Dante Gabriel Rossetti
6 Count Giacomo Leopardi
6 Amor Towles
6 Alfred Austin
5 Victor Hugo
1:Guard the threshold and prevent troops of fantasies from entering.
~ Petrarch,#KEYS
2:For anyone, man or woman, who has faith in me, I have never departed. I sleep on their threshold. ~ Guru Rinpoche, #KEYS
3:Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.
~ Franz Kafka,#KEYS
4:The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
5:Now let me sit here, on the threshold of two worlds, lost in the eloquence of silence". ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
6:For the key is hid and by the Inconscient kept;
The secret God beneath the threshold dwells.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
7:The Serpent of the threshold hissing rose,
A fatal guardian hood with monstrous coils, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
8:Across the threshold's sleep she entered in
And found herself amid great figures of gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Book of Yoga, The Finding of the Soul, 524,#KEYS
9:If we follow Christ closely we shall be allowed, even on this earth, to stand as it were on the threshold of the heavenly Jerusalem, and enjoy like the blessed apostles the contemplation of that everlasting feast. ~ Athanasius, #KEYS
10:A border sovereign is the occult Force.
A threshold guardian of the earth-scene's Beyond,
She has canalised the outbreaks of the Gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
11:The remainder of the long story of Kamar al-Zaman is a history of the slow yet wonderful operation of a destiny that has been summoned into life. Not everyone has a destiny: only the hero who has plunged to touch it, and has come up again-with a ring. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, #KEYS
12:And Thou, O Lord, who art all this made one and much more, O sovereign Master, extreme limit of our thought, who standest for us at the threshold of the Unknown, make rise from that Unthinkable some new splendour, some possibility of a loftier and more integral realisation, that Thy work may be accomplished and the universe take one step farther towards the sublime Identity, the supreme Manifestation.
And now my pen falls mute and I adore Thee in silence.*
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, 270,#KEYS
13:The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form-all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Ultimate Boon, #KEYS
14:The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero. The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness. As in the stories of the cannibal ogresses, the fearfulness of this loss of personal individuation can be the whole burden of the transcendental experience for unqualified souls. But the hero-soul goes boldly in-and discovers the hags converted into goddesses and the dragons into the watchdogs of the gods. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, #KEYS
15:The true soul secret in us, - subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, - this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine #KEYS
16:4. Crossing the First Threshold:With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the 'threshold guardian' at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in four directions-also up and down-standing for the limits of the hero's present sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is darkness, the unknown and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the members of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored. The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
17:Part 2 - Initiation
6. The Road of Trials:Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed-again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unsustainable ecstasies and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land. ~ Joseph Campbell,#KEYS
18:15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold:The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world. Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided" The hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
19:3. Meeting the Mentor:For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass. What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance-promise that the peace of Paradise, which was known first within the mother womb, is not to be lost; that it supports the present and stands in the future as well as in the past (is omega as well as alpha); that though omnipotence may seem to be endangered by the threshold passages and life awakenings, protective power is always and ever present within or just behind the unfamiliar features of the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side. Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task. And in so far as the hero's act coincides with that for which his society is ready, he seems to ride on the great rhythm of the historical process. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
20:5. Belly of the Whale:The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. Instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again. The disappearance corresponds to the passing of a worshipper into a temple-where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal. The temple interior, the belly of the whale, and the heavenly land beyond, above, and below the confines of the world, are one and the same. That is why the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. The devotee at the moment of entry into a temple undergoes a metamorphosis. Once inside he may be said to have died to time and returned to the World Womb, the World Navel, the Earthly Paradise. Allegorically, then, the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both denoting in picture language, the life-centering, life-renewing act. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
21:The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again-if the powers have remained unfriendly to him-his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir). ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Keys, #KEYS
22:Apotheosis ::: One of the most powerful and beloved of the Bodhisattvas of the Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, China, and Japan is the Lotus Bearer, Avalokiteshvara, "The Lord Looking Down in Pity," so called because he regards with compassion all sentient creatures suffering the evils of existence. To him goes the millionfold repeated prayer of the prayer wheels and temple gongs of Tibet: Om mani padme hum, "The jewel is in the lotus." To him go perhaps more prayers per minute than to any single divinity known to man; for when, during his final life on earth as a human being, he shattered for himself the bounds of the last threshold (which moment opened to him the timelessness of the void beyond the frustrating mirage-enigmas of the named and bounded cosmos), he paused: he made a vow that before entering the void he would bring all creatures without exception to enlightenment; and since then he has permeated the whole texture of existence with the divine grace of his assisting presence, so that the least prayer addressed to him, throughout the vast spiritual empire of the Buddha, is graciously heard. Under differing forms he traverses the ten thousand worlds, and appears in the hour of need and prayer. He reveals himself in human form with two arms, in superhuman forms with four arms, or with six, or twelve, or a thousand, and he holds in one of his left hands the lotus of the world.
Like the Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance. "When the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, beyond the reach of change." This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain-through herohood; for, as we read: "All things are Buddha-things"; or again (and this is the other way of making the same statement) : "All beings are without self."
The world is filled and illumined by, but does not hold, the Bodhisattva ("he whose being is enlightenment"); rather, it is he who holds the world, the lotus. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them-and with profound repose. And since he is what all of us may be, his presence, his image, the mere naming of him, helps. "He wears a garland of eight thousand rays, in which is seen fully reflected a state of perfect beauty.
The color of his body is purple gold. His palms have the mixed color of five hundred lotuses, while each finger tip has eighty-four thousand signet-marks, and each mark eighty-four thousand colors; each color has eighty-four thousand rays which are soft and mild and shine over all things that exist. With these jewel hands he draws and embraces all beings. The halo surrounding his head is studded with five hundred Buddhas, miraculously transformed, each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas, who are attended, in turn, by numberless gods. And when he puts his feet down to the ground, the flowers of diamonds and jewels that are scattered cover everything in all directions. The color of his face is gold. While in his towering crown of gems stands a Buddha, two hundred and fifty miles high." - Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra, 19; ibid., pp. 182-183. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Apotheosis,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:We stand in life at midnight; we are always at the threshold of a new dawn. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 2:Do not aim low, you will miss the mark. Aim high and you will be on a threshold of bliss. ~ b-k-s-iyengar, @wisdomtrove 3:Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, & 4:To the man whose senses are alive and alert there is not even the need to stir from one's threshold. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 5:When our deepest desire is not the things of God, or a favor from God, but God Himself, we cross a threshold. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 6:He that shuts love out, in turn shall be Shut out from love, and on her threshold lie, Howling in outer darkness. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 7:When the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping, a threshold is crossed. What seemed unthinkable becomes thinkable. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 8:there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak ~ franz-kafka, @wisdomtrove 9:Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve! ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 10:The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 11:Sometimes many publishers prefer that you write the same book every time, but I have a low boredom threshold so that isn't going to happen. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 12:The inner body lies at the threshold between your form identity and your essence identity, your true nature. Never lose touch with it. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 13:At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better. ~ barack-obama, @wisdomtrove 14:The intuitive wisdom that comes from your infinite mind can add to your creativity, success and well-being, and can take you to the threshold of enlightenment. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 15:The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 16:The social potential movement is on the threshold of a mass awakening, seeking to carry into society what individuals have learned spiritually and personally. ~ barbara-marx-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 17:It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 18:And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good. ~ barack-obama, @wisdomtrove 19:One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 20:Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 21:Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs ‚Äî in time, in space, and in potential ‚Äî the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 22:The pressure of adversity is the most powerful sustainer of accountability. It's as though everything you do is multiplied by 50 in order to surpass those with a head-start. I was never capable of slacking when at the threshold of failure. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 23:We are approaching levels - if we're not beyond levels - of threshold for the number of messages that consumers can take in in a given day. There is a kind of hunger for some kind of new approach to getting the word out about something. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 24:Please open your eyes now, but keep attention in the inner energy field of the body as you look around the room. The inner body lies at the threshold between your form identity and your essence identity, your true nature. Never lose touch with it. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 25:With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta's arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 26:We live at the threshold of a universal recognition that the human being is not mere matter, but a potent, energetic field of consciousness. Modalities of the past millennium are quickly giving way to breakthrough technologies wherein we heal ourselves at the level of all true healing, which is spirit. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 27:A tremendously complex work is going on all the time in your brain and body, are you conscious of it? Not at all. Yet for an outsider all seems to be going on intelligently and purposefully. Why not admit that one’s entire personal life may sink largely below the threshold of consciousness and yet proceed sanely and smoothly. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 28:Don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have the compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight; we are always on the threshold of a new dawn. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 29:Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 30:No person can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teachers who walk in the shadow of the temple, among their followers, give not of their wisdom but rather of their faith and their lovingness. If they are indeed wise they do not bid you enter the house of their wisdom, but rather lead you to the threshold of your own mind. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 31:A home isn't just a roof over our heads. A home is a place where we feel loved and where we love others. It's a place we belong. Love is what makes a home, not the contents inside the house or the number on the door. It's the people waiting for us across the threshold, the people who will take us in their arms after a ad day and kiss us good night and good morning everyday for the rest of our lives. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 32:How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 33:There comes a time when the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping. At that moment, a threshold is crossed. What seemed unthinkable becomes thinkable. Slowly, the realization emerges that the choice to continue what you have been doing is the choice to live in discomfort, and the choice to stop what you have been doing is the choice to breathe deeply and freely again. Once that realization has emerged, you can either honor it or ignore it, but you cannot forget it. What has become known can not become unknown again. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 34:At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 35:Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness—to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 36:There was another thing I heartily disbelieved in - work. Work, it seemed to me even at the threshold of life, is an activity reserved for the dullard. It is the very opposite of creation, which is play‚ ¶ The part of me which was given up to work, which enabled my wife and child to live in the manner which they unthinkingly demanded, this part of me which kept the wheel turning - a completely fatuous, ego-centric notion! - was the least part of me. I gave nothing to the world in fulfilling the function of breadwinner; the world exacted its tribute of me, that was all. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 37:How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:I have a very low eerie threshold. ~ Jandy Nelson, #NFDB
2:I have a really low boredom threshold. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
3:I have a very low boredom threshold. ~ Garth Kravits, #NFDB
4:Pain has a threshold and so does death. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
5:crossed the threshold of confidence, ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
6:The grave Is but the threshold of eternity. ~ Robert Southey, #NFDB
7:Magic happens on the threshold of the forbidden. ~ Maria Tatar, #NFDB
8:Every dancer lives on the threshold of chucking it. ~ Judith Jamison, #NFDB
9:Great mysteries inhabit the threshold of my being. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
10:The threshold is the place of expectation. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
11:We're all latchkey kids a threshold from peace. ~ S Kelley Harrell M Div, #NFDB
12:We’re on the threshold of death. Soon, we shall be inside … ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
13:I have gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
14:A teacher can only lead you to the threshold of your own mind. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
15:Guard the threshold and prevent troops of fantasies from entering.
~ Petrarch,#NFDB
16:Stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's threshold. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
17:Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
18:I don't need an invitation to step over your threshold. -Cristophe ~ Lili St Crow, #NFDB
19:And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
20:Lack of comfort means we are on the threshold of new insights. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
21:We are just about to cross the 400 parts per million threshold. ~ Christiana Figueres, #NFDB
22:Without a high pain threshold, you can't be a successful President. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
23:I have an extremely low threshold for disorder; it offends my very being. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
24:Let me sit here, on the threshold of two worlds. Lost in the eloquence of silence. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
25:The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
26:The threshold of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
27:To be a poet did not occur to me. It was indeed a threshold guarded by demons. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
28:I'd gone so far past my fear threshold, I'd completely given up on being afraid ~ Deanna Chase, #NFDB
29:They thought of frustration as a threshold, a factor to heighten awareness. It ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
30:All beginnings are delightful; the threshold is the place to pause. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
31:Happiness is only the threshold to misery. When a friend refuses to share in joys. ~ Georg Ebers, #NFDB
32:I’d crossed an invisible threshold, and my life would never be the same again. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
33:One cleans someone else's threshold of consciousness only if one's own home is dirty. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
34:The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
35:Happy people are those who use a lower threshold in order to label an event positive. ~ David Niven, #NFDB
36:The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
37:We stand in life at midnight; we are always at the threshold of a new dawn. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
38:He said the threshold of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
39:Never so sweet a repast as the Reaper's when you tread upon the threshold of a Quiznos. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
40:We are now on the threshold of a newer movement, with a newer hope and a new inspiration. ~ James Larkin, #NFDB
41:Do not aim low, you will miss the mark. Aim high and you will be on a threshold of bliss. ~ B K S Iyengar, #NFDB
42:I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold ~ Mahmoud Darwish, #NFDB
43:Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
44:There is a divinity awaiting entry into human history at the threshold of our heart's doors. ~ Wendy Wright, #NFDB
45:For many men that stumble at the threshold are well foretold that danger lurks within. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
46:beyond a certain threshold, capital tends to reproduce itself and accumulates exponentially. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
47:Here we stop. On the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling, a finger to his lips. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
48:The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
49:He had the vague sense of standing on a threshold, the crossing of which would change everything. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
50:Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering 'it will be happier'... ~ Alfred Tennyson,#NFDB
51:Here we stop. Upon the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling, his finger on his lip. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
52:Men who know themselves are no longer fools. They stand on the threshold of the door of Wisdom. ~ Havelock Ellis, #NFDB
53:For anyone, man or woman, who has faith in me, I have never departed. I sleep on their threshold. ~ Guru Rinpoche, #NFDB
54:It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
55:it is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
56:To the man whose senses are alive and alert there is not even the need to stir from one's threshold. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
57:We are past opposition. I mean, we've crossed that threshold before [Donald] Trump was inaugurated. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
58:We are standing on the threshold of a world-epoch of religious creativeness, on a cosmic divide. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev, #NFDB
59:…the threshold between the hospital and its outside was like a threshold between worlds, between media. ~ Ben Lerner, #NFDB
60:Reading is at the threshold of our inner life; it can lead us into that life but cannot constitute it. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
61:Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it; it does not constitute it. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
62:They are considered to be automatic and operate very fast, and are also below the threshold of consciousness. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
63:Whenever I let him in he would halt on the threshold drawing the whole of his luminous life up into his smile. ~ Mina Loy, #NFDB
64:When our deepest desire is not the things of God, or a favor from God, but God Himself, we cross a threshold. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
65:I got to the threshold and looked up and figured I could not do it, but also knew the only way through was up. ~ John Green, #NFDB
66:Nonviolence is kindling light of love into the dark places and budding trust from the threshold of hopelessness. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
67:This is the moment in scary movies when viewers scream, “You fool, don’t go inside!” I step over the threshold anyway. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
68:habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. ~ James Clear, #NFDB
69:There it is," he'd say reverentially. "The box represents the mysterious threshold between reality and make believe. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
70:This submission to the threshold of a cross is at the very root of our following Jesus; it changes the game completely. ~ Alan Hirsch, #NFDB
71:Three things have a limited threshold:
Time, pain, and death.
While truth, love, and knowledge –
Are boundless. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
72:A major threshold is passed when you mature enough to acknowledge what drives you, and to take the wheel and steer it. ~ Andrew Stanton, #NFDB
73:If the windmill should prove too formidable," said he, from the threshold, "I may see what can be done with the wind. ~ Rafael Sabatini, #NFDB
74:In a well-run mental household there ought to be a thorough cleaning at the threshold of consciousness a few times a year. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
75:He that shuts love out, in turn shall be Shut out from love, and on her threshold lie, Howling in outer darkness. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
76:There are no excuses this time. Now it's up to women to step up and lead ourselves and our sisters through the threshold. ~ Gloria Feldt, #NFDB
77:Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.
~ Franz Kafka,#NFDB
78:For some, the universe ends at the borders of their villages; even for others, at the threshold of their home doors. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
79:When the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping, a threshold is crossed. What seemed unthinkable becomes thinkable. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
80:I'm a dweller of the threshold and I'm waiting at the door, and I'm standing in the darkness, I don't want to wait no more. ~ Van Morrison, #NFDB
81:Pseudoscience is like a virus. At low levels, it's no big deal, but when it reaches a certain threshold it becomes sickening. ~ Phil Plait, #NFDB
82:there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak ~ Franz Kafka, #NFDB
83:At the threshold of every transition in our lives the devil send a spirit of fear. Therefore be strong and very courageous! ~ Christine Caine, #NFDB
84:When we experience panic, it means that we’re about to cross a threshold. We’re poised on the doorstep of a higher plane. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
85:Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. ~ James Clear, #NFDB
86:Death is not an ending. It is a transformation. Death is the threshold of this life. Beyond it is something else, some mystery. ~ Ming Dao Deng, #NFDB
87:Don’t talk dirty to me, Muse.” He stepped over the threshold and into my apartment. “I just might take you up on your promises. ~ Pippa DaCosta, #NFDB
88:Doors didn’t open on their own. You had to choose to open them, to consciously cross the threshold and glimpse what lay beyond. ~ Barbara Davis, #NFDB
89:I don't like being in one place too long. Five days just about does it for me because I have a very low threshold for boredom. ~ Jackie Collins, #NFDB
90:... once evil is invited in, tremendous effort is required to show it to the door and kick its cloven hoof off the threshold. ~ E A Bucchianeri, #NFDB
91:There is no threshold level of fine particle pollution below which health risk reductions are not achieved by reduced exposure. ~ Gina McCarthy, #NFDB
92:For the key is hid and by the Inconscient kept;
The secret God beneath the threshold dwells.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#NFDB
93:If you break this door you will find me dead on the threshold."
And be easy, madame, you shall be revenged," said Bussy. ~ Alexandre Dumas,#NFDB
94:There are people who want everybody dead. When you get over being surprised about that, you have a high amazement threshold. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
95:Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve! ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
96:I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
97:If you don't step across the threshold of what you already know into the world of challenges, you never truly measure yourself. ~ Mariel Hemingway, #NFDB
98:This hand shake is a threshold moment. With this strangely beautiful man in my life, I have a feeling it will never be the same again. ~ L H Cosway, #NFDB
99:The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
100:Death is another bar which lies several steps below the normal world. I'm at its threshold, but not yet in it. Its doorway is doorless. ~ Kathy Acker, #NFDB
101:Teach me the wilderness simplicity.
Help me to point to you, honestly and joyously,
as the threshold of all that really matters. ~ Calvin Miller,#NFDB
102:The inner body lies at the threshold between your form identity and your essence identity, your true nature. Never lose touch with it. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
103:I have a high pain threshold. In fact, it's more of a large and tastfully decorated foyer than a threshold. But I do get easily bored ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
104:Last night, I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven. I have my eyes on it: hardly three feet to sever me! ~ Emily Bronte, #NFDB
105:The Serpent of the threshold hissing rose,
A fatal guardian hood with monstrous coils, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#NFDB
106:The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
107:Georgie paused on the threshold for a moment as if hesitant to enter the habitation of such a perjurer lest it should be struck by lightning. ~ Tom Holt, #NFDB
108:It’s not that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic, it’s that any technology taking place beyond the threshold of our senses is. ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
109:Sometimes many publishers prefer that you write the same book every time, but I have a low boredom threshold so that isn't going to happen. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
110:Wine and bread. This has always seemed rather ghoulish to me, as though one were smearing the threshold with Puree of Christ. “Thank ~ Franny Billingsley, #NFDB
111:He closed the door but he knew that, for those who seek to step beyond the threshold, the door is always open. You need only turn the knob. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
112:Grief can have a quality of profound healing because we are forced to a depth of feeling that is usually below the threshold of awareness. ~ Stephen Levine, #NFDB
113:It's not just a boring exercise in pushing oil paint around a canvas. It's a way of opening a threshold to an exciting new world of vision. ~ Nelson Shanks, #NFDB
114:Nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness. ~ Harriet Lerner, #NFDB
115:But what if hope had a threshold? What if there was a limit to it? What if each of us was only given a certain amount and mine was used up? ~ Jennifer Niven, #NFDB
116:That threshold lying at the entrance to each man's and woman's life, I knew without equivocation now, must be recognized and genuflected before. ~ Kay Boyle, #NFDB
117:[...] [T]here was no quota on misery for people, no quantifiable threshold that once reached, got you miraculously taken out of the distress pool. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
118:The sight which met her eyes held her frozen on the threshold, and the thought flashed across her mind that she knew now how it felt to die ~ Georgette Heyer, #NFDB
119:We stand on the threshold of a twilight-whether morning or evening we do not know. One is followed by the night, the other heralds the dawn. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
120:But nobody is visually naive any longer. We are cluttered with images, and only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the divine. ~ Dominique de Menil, #NFDB
121:This is embarrassing,” Mr. Haffey informed me. I winked at him. “What, Mrs. Haffey never carried you over the threshold on your wedding night? ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
122:The lock doesn’t exist that could resist absolute violence, and all locks are an invitation to thieves. A lock is a psychological threshold. ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
123:Here is the threshold I do not cross: a sliver of light through the doorway finds his tattoo, the anchor on his forearm tangled in its chain. ~ Natasha Trethewey, #NFDB
124:I gulped, then stepped over the threshold into the house where I'd lived as a boy. After eighteen long years of wandering, I had finally come home. ~ Darren Shan, #NFDB
125:People should meet an acceptable threshold of appropriateness. But for many women in the public eye, it just seems that the burden is so heavy. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
126:The gods granted us misery, in jealousy over the thought that we two, always together, should enjoy our youth, and then come to the threshold of old age. ~ Homer, #NFDB
127:There is a critical threshold where the natural biosphere stops buffering us from the effects of our emissions and actually starts to amplify them. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
128:Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, men would behold its threshold, and despair. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon, #NFDB
129:Grief for a dead Wife, and a troublesome Guest, Continues to the threshold, and there is at rest; But I mean such wives as are none of the best ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
130:All mass movements deprecate the present by depicting it as a mean preliminary to a glorious future; a mere doormat on the threshold of the millennium. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
131:From the threshold of reflection onwards, we are at what is nothing less than a new form of biological existence. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB
132:it. I was venturing into a wilderness many had explored before me, crossing the threshold separating those who had killed from those who had not. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
133:The professional will not tolerate disorder... He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
134:The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold—your hard-breathing point—during your endurance runs. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
135:The grave is but the threshold of eternity. What a world were this, how unendurable its weight, If they whom death hath sundered, did not meet again! ~ Robert Southey, #NFDB
136:A house doesn't make a home. When the place has got history, family, emotions, worries, joys worked into the wood, that's when it gets a solid threshold. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
137:Apparently the kid, Aiden Cole, was in high demand. He was a talented role-player, had a high pain threshold, gave incredible head, and was--well, gorgeous. ~ J A Rock, #NFDB
138:Hesitating, at the threshold of various illusory paths of life, I considered them one by one, without daring to pursue any one of them. ~ Fran ois Ren de Chateaubriand, #NFDB
139:Across the threshold's sleep she entered in
And found herself amid great figures of gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Book of Yoga, The Finding of the Soul, 524,#NFDB
140:A noxious stimulus, such as an angry person, crowds, noise, or bright light, can agitate us because our threshold for sensory overload is extremely low. ~ Judith Orloff, #NFDB
141:But whenever good fortune has called on him, he has been there, planted on the threshold, ready to fling open the door to her timid scratch on the wood. ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
142:I always tell people: Life is the dance between what you desire most and what you fear most. You've got to be able to deal with the threshold of control. ~ Marc Benioff, #NFDB
143:Death, of course, should not be feared, but awaited with certain wonder. To die was to step across a threshold into a new world, unknown, unimaginable. ~ Juliet Marillier, #NFDB
144:And, just as with inflation, as described in the last chapter, our observable universe is at the threshold of expanding faster than the speed of light. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
145:Doctors have told me I have a high pain threshold, but I can only know what I feel. I think I'm good at minimising the pain and being indifferent to it. ~ Johnny Knoxville, #NFDB
146:Festival of the impassioned efforts and manifold ambitions of all forms of youthful activity of every generation springing from the threshold of life. ~ Pierre de Coubertin, #NFDB
147:The threshold by the Commission on Presidential Debates. In the words of the League of Women Voters, they are a fraud being perpetrated on the American public. ~ Jill Stein, #NFDB
148:At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
149:Care stops at the threshold of your apartment. You lavish and stroke your personal world, but when you reach the public space, you pull on your war face. ~ Peter Pomerantsev, #NFDB
150:I nearly forgot something my old father told me not long before he died. He said the threshold of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
151:The Carpenters had a threshold more solid and extensive than the Great Wall of China. I would not be in the least bit surprised if you could see it from space. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
152:Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come forth. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
153:US law requires financial institutions to report cash transactions of $10,000 or larger to the government; for currency exchangers, the threshold is $1,000. ~ Bruce Schneier, #NFDB
154:As recently as 2011, the government regarded 8 per cent annual growth as a quasi-mystical threshold, below which society would descend into chaos and the Communist ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
155:Obedience insures greatness, whilst disobedience leads to a repulse. Whosoever possesseth the qualities of righteousness placeth his head on the threshold of obedience. ~ Saadi, #NFDB
156:The intuitive wisdom that comes from your infinite mind can add to your creativity, success and well-being, and can take you to the threshold of enlightenment. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
157:some even affirmed that they had passed the night across the threshold of the great door, in order to make sure that they should be the first to pass in. The crowd ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
158:Harry and Hermione supported Ron over the threshold, into the one-roomed cabin, which had an enormous bed in one corner, a fire crackling merrily in another. Hagrid ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
159:The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
160:Does it hurt to bite your tongue so hard?" he asked with faux concern.
Holly didn't miss a beat. "I'm in a car with you--I clearly have a high pain threshold, ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
161:It has always amazed and humbled me to how the risk to bloom can seem so insurmountable beforehand and so inevitably freeing once the threshold of suffering is crossed. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
162:There has to be a common sense cutoff for craziness, and when that threshold is exceeded, then the criteria for publication should get far, far more stringent. ~ Douglas Hofstadter, #NFDB
163:We are only now on the threshold of knowing the range of the educability of man-the perfectibility of man. We have never addressed ourselves to this problem before. ~ Jerome Bruner, #NFDB
164:Brian was flinging the door open and bellowing, “Hello!” while Ian stalled at the threshold…
“Dude.”
Brian looked back at him. “What are you, a fuckin’ vampire? ~ Cherrie Lynn,#NFDB
165:The social potential movement is on the threshold of a mass awakening, seeking to carry into society what individuals have learned spiritually and personally. ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard, #NFDB
166:How little the world would look moral without forgetfulness! A poet might say that God made forgetfulness the guard he placed at the threshold of human dignity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
167:My boredom threshold is low at the best of times but I have spent more time being slowly and excruciatingly bored by children than any other section of the human race. ~ Jill Tweedie, #NFDB
168:The more the climate is forced to change, the more likely it is to hit some unforeseen threshold that can trigger quite fast, surprising and perhaps unpleasant changes. ~ Richard Alley, #NFDB
169:And so, like Moses (cf Ex 3, 5), in spirit we remove the shoes from our feet, on the threshold of the inner sanctuary that each of us must become as we meet the Lord. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
170:Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren't easy questions. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
171:For some reason, I kept seeing it—it trembled and silkily glowed on my damp retina—a radiant child of twelve, sitting on a threshold, "pinging" pebbles at an empty can. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
172:Witch!” a resonant voice echoed, and I tossed my hair aside, taking in the robed figure in the
threshold. “Why, by Cormel’s gonads, does my coffee taste like dandelions! ~ Kim Harrison,#NFDB
173:But we don’t live in a perfect world, Knight.” “I do, certain times a day, those bein’ when I walk over that threshold,” he stated, jerking his chin toward the front door. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
174:It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so,it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that gaurds the door,and this dragon is religion ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
175:Once a society’s level of per capita wealth crosses a threshold from poverty to adequate subsistence, further increases in national wealth have almost no effect on happiness. ~ Barry Schwartz, #NFDB
176:The two parts of technology that lower the threshold for activism and technology is the Internet and the mobile phone. Anyone who has a cause can now mobilize very quickly. ~ Howard Rheingold, #NFDB
177:It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
178:Once the pain threshold has been crossed, the spirit grows strong. Everyday desires become meaningless, and man is purified. Suffering comes from desire, not from pain.
Aleph ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
179:I learned to cross the threshold of my studio with reverence, as though I were entering a shrine set apart for me to become co-creator with the Universal Thinker of all things. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
180:Ennui, the demon, waited at the threshold of his noiseless refuge, and drove away the stirring hopes and enlivening expectations, which form the better part of life. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
181:When we look at thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, we must, once we cross the threshold, grasp the essence of the thing. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
182:The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
183:There's a threshold of pain, a person loses consciousness in order not to die. And there's a threshold of grief, it suddenly stops hurting. And you feel nothing. Nothing at all. ~ Mikhail Shishkin, #NFDB
184:When you have done your best, confronted your fear of committing to color and form, and dared to step over the threshold into the unknown, you will invariably find your own voice. ~ Michele Cassou, #NFDB
185:good heuristic decision is made by 1) knowing what to look for, 2) knowing when enough information is enough (the “threshold of decision”), and 3) knowing what decision to make. ~ Patrick Van Horne, #NFDB
186:Inner silence works from the moment you begin to accrue it. What the old sorcerers were after was the final dramatic, end result of reaching that individual threshold of silence. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
187:It was right then and there that she'd realized there was no quota on misery for people, no quantifiable threshold that once reached, got you miraculously taken out of the distress pool. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
188:With fairest images of dreams infold him, Plunge him in seas of sweet untruth! Yet, for the threshold’s magic which controlled him, The Devil needs a rat’s quick tooth. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
189:[E]ven when a dream crosses the threshold of consciousness, consciousness in reporting it does something to it, amends it and makes it a little more understandable. ~ Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy, #NFDB
190:A good heuristic decision is made by 1) knowing what to look for, 2) knowing when enough information is enough (the “threshold of decision”), and 3) knowing what decision to make. ~ Patrick Van Horne, #NFDB
191:How is it that disappointment arrives as soon as what you have desired for so long steps over the threshold? It’s like finding the end of your wedding train dragging behind in the mud. ~ Camilla Gibb, #NFDB
192:Below the threshold of conscious awareness, ignorance infiltrates our perceptions, and from there spreads to our thoughts and views, resulting in distorted modes of understanding ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
193:Prague is a threshold.”
“A threshold?”
“Yes. Between the life of good and … the other.”
Sarah thought of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I’m not going to have to fight demons, am I? ~ Magnus Flyte,#NFDB
194:Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety. And yet I have never left school. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
195:That is the strangeness of language: it crosses the boundaries of the body, is at once inside and outside, and it sometimes happens that we don't notice the threshold has been crossed. ~ Siri Hustvedt, #NFDB
196:The moonflower Keren had picked lay on the threshold. Its head had been broken in the struggle but the petals were still white and damp with a freshness that would soon begin to fade. ~ Winston Graham, #NFDB
197:An unseen hand turned off the radio as he crossed the threshold, and bags of potato chips vanished, leaving the faint scent of salt to mix with vermilion oil paint and wet clay. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
198:Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal - a sort of 'voting' situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is. ~ Alan Kay, #NFDB
199:To live beyond the threshold of identity, to do so in the name of a peace that has not yet occurred but that is infinitely possible - this is exhilarating, necessary, and within reach. ~ G Willow Wilson, #NFDB
200:It is all still there. The times we spent together are immortal, imperishable, and life never stops. The death of our loved ones is merely a threshold between an ending and a new beginning. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
201:Opening a book was like opening a door to another world, and once she stepped across the threshold, she was transported. When she was reading a story, she lived inside a different skin. She ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
202:As I turned the key and pushed open the front door, as I crossed the threshold, I thought how breathtaking, how fleeting, how precious was my ordinary day Now is now. Here is my treasure. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
203:Prague does not have its name for no reason - in truth,
Prague is a threshold between the life on Earth
and Heaven, a threshold much thinner and narrower then in any other places… ~ Gustav Meyrink,#NFDB
204:This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath. ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
205:Some say death is a doorway,
belief the key. Others claim you only
have to stumble across the threshold
to glimpse a hundred billion universes
in the blink of single silver shard. ~ Ellen Hopkins,#NFDB
206:Triumphant science and technology are only at the threshold of man's command over sources of energy so stupendous that, if used for military purposes, they can wipe out our entire civilization. ~ Cordell Hull, #NFDB
207:One step is all it will take. Just put one foot across the threshold and we will make all the pain go away forever: the pain you feel now and the pain that is still to come. It will never happen. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
208:Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
209:has a control system so perilously close to intelligence that a government agent must be on hand at all times, ready to destroy the machine if it slips over the threshold into consciousness. ~ Alastair Reynolds, #NFDB
210:I’m going to check the world’s best source for spawning new urban legends, the Internet. What, you thought I couldn’t even type? The Web is just another threshold between one world and another. ~ Nalo Hopkinson, #NFDB
211:Our task today is to bring India to the threshold of the twenty-first century, free of burden of poverty, legacy of our colonial past, and capable of meeting the rising aspirations of our people. ~ Rajiv Gandhi, #NFDB
212:To make it into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
213:One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own. ~ John O Donohue, #NFDB
214:I told him, "The writing instinct has always lain dormant in me. Now it is in the process of metamorphosis. The era of transition has passed. I am on the threshold of expression."
He said, "Balls. ~ John Fante,#NFDB
215:On the threshold she paused ... for perchance the idea of entering, all alone, and all so changed, the home of so intense a former life was more dreary and desolate than even she could bear. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
216:Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film. ~ Alfred Hitchcock, #NFDB
217:Starting from a certain threshold and above, a multiplicity of possibilities harms our ability to make a good choice and does not help us, and it significantly raises the likelihood of making mistakes. ~ Yoav Blum, #NFDB
218:Strange how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
219:In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism; he stands on the threshold of European (modern) music, but he looks back from there to the Middle Ages. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
220:You can have an epidemic in a state. You can have it in a region. You can have it in a country where the critical level of disease passes a certain threshold and we call that an epidemic threshold. ~ Anthony S Fauci, #NFDB
221:Nietzsche’s existence was, in a sense, one of continual threshold-crossing, forged by experiences in which he was driven beyond his psychological limits into and through the pain of self-overcoming. ~ Keiron Le Grice, #NFDB
222:Most learners have a knob you can turn to make them more or less flexible, such as the threshold for significance tests or the penalty on the size of the model. Tweaking that knob is your first resort. ~ Pedro Domingos, #NFDB
223:The figure of the enthusiast who has just discovered jogging or a new way to fix tofu can be said to stand or, more accurately, to tremble on the threshold of conversion, as the representative American ~ Lewis H Lapham, #NFDB
224:The Olympic Games are not just ordinary world championships but a quadrennial festival of universal youth. . . celebrated by each succeeding generation as it arrives on the threshold of adulthood. ~ Pierre de Coubertin, #NFDB
225:Where will you drive your own picket stake? Where will you choose to make your stand? Give me a threshold, a specific point at which you will finally stop running, at which you will finally fight back. ~ Derrick Jensen, #NFDB
226:Here we pause. On the threshold of wedding nights stands a smiling angel with his finger on his lips.
The soul enters into contemplation before that sanctuary where the celebration of love takes place. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
227:This is a general comment that you should take a committed dose of whatever it is you're taking so that there is no ambiguity, because there's nothing worse than a sub-threshold psychedelic experience. ~ Terence McKenna, #NFDB
228:Prague. Praha. The name actually meant “threshold”. Pollina had said the city was a portal between the life of the good and … the other. A city of dark magic, Alessandro had called it. ~ Magnus Flyte, #NFDB
229:Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
230:The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride; The threshold high enough to turn deceit aside; The doorband strong enough from robbers to defend; This door will open at a touch to welcome every friend. ~ Henry Van Dyke, #NFDB
231:and a short knife in his left. The door creaked open. There on the threshold, holding an old-fashioned lamp, stood a boy Harry recognised at once: tall, pale, dark-haired and handsome – the teenage Voldemort. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
232:In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
233:Personal power is the ability to go into other planes, to cross that threshold from one dimension to another. Why do that? Because it is there to do; knowledge, power, and beauty lie in those other worlds. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
234:The American West is just arriving at the threshold of its greatness and growth. Where the West of yesterday is glamorized in our fiction, the future of the American West now is both fabulous and factual. ~ Lyndon B Johnson, #NFDB
235:A person who is worth nothing must introduce you to a person worth next-to-nothing, and that person to another, and so on and so forth until finally you can step across the threshold, almost one of the family. ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
236:Once we lose our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe which dwarfs -- in time, in space, and in potential -- the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
237:shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
238:You’re right, Manon. It is all still there. The times we spent together are immortal, imperishable, and life never stops. The death of our loved ones is merely a threshold between an ending and a new beginning. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
239:It is not only the ratio of pleasure to pain that determines the quality of a life, but also the sheer quantity of pain. Once a certain threshold of pain is passed, no amount of pleasure can compensate for it. ~ David Benatar, #NFDB
240:We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind, that is the approval by the General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
241:Interest in reading memoirs is universal. What has happened is that people are writing about more and more outrageous things. Our threshold for weirdness - you can't have just a normal childhood - has gone way up. ~ Sara Nelson, #NFDB
242: I saw there, on that threshold – framed – more than a thousand who had rained from Heaven. Spitting in wrath. ‘Who’s that,’ they hissed, ‘who, yet undead, 85 travels the kingdom of the truly dead? ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
243:It was so strange to realize how it was only at this brink of the chasm, threshold of the dark or the god's holy light, that one could grasp and accept one's own heart's yearning for more of the world. For life. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay, #NFDB
244:Michael pulled himself up straighter, wondering if he should let any of them across his threshold. He’d watched enough vampire movies to know they couldn’t hurt you in your own home unless you invited them inside. ~ Donna McDonald, #NFDB
245:When we remember our former selves, there is always that little figure with its long shadow stopping like an uncertain belated visitor on a lighted threshold at the far end of some impeccably narrowing corridor. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
246:And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
247:I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art. ~ Louis Kahn, #NFDB
248:Writing is a deeply immersive experience. When the words are flying, the house could be burgled and I wouldn’t notice. I have a low boredom threshold and I like intensity – writing is a way of escaping the quotidian. ~ Monica Ali, #NFDB
249:Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
250:A border sovereign is the occult Force.
A threshold guardian of the earth-scene’s Beyond,
She has canalised the outbreaks of the Gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness,#NFDB
251:As Charlie is leaving the house, she somehow trips on the threshold and nearly face-plants onto the ground. I roll my eyes. How is it possible out of all the people in this world, this is the soul I’ve come to collect? ~ Victoria Scott, #NFDB
252:At two o’clock, when Marina answered her office door to find the Count at the threshold in the company of a little girl with a rag doll gripped tightly by the neck, she was so surprised her eyes almost came into alignment. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
253:Face-book has all the social graces of a nose-picking, hyperactive six-year-old, standing at the threshold of your attention and chanting, “I know something, I know something, I know something, won’t tell you what it is! ~ Cory Doctorow, #NFDB
254:If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution - and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity. ~ Jane Goodall, #NFDB
255:I knew then that when we had crested that final tortuos pass in the rocks and dropped down into this valley, we had crossed a threshold into another world, a world with its own sun and moon, and its own separate race of man. ~ Jim Fergus, #NFDB
256:Time is one of the biggest issues you'll see. People just do not know how to maximize their time. The way in which you execute and utilize time is everything. And most people push up against the threshold of their control. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
257:Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
258:No one person is the cause for or consequence of all that happens. I am just the tenth man, the threshold, the turn in the tide. I stand here on the shoulders of humanity, a mere instrument of Time.
– Govinda Shauri ~ Krishna Udayasankar,#NFDB
259:Abortion, however, is a big threshold issue for me because the dominant majority of people in my state are pro-choice. I ran as a pro-choice Democrat, and she fills Sandra Day O'Connor's shoes, and they are critical shoes. ~ Dianne Feinstein, #NFDB
260:He is on a mission. He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind. He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
261:Our tolerance of the intolerable found a low threshold as early as the late 1950s with the grotesque excesses of McCarthyism, which destroyed so many honest lives, and then with the insane nuclear arms race and confrontations. ~ Pankaj Mishra, #NFDB
262:The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero...is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
263:Anthropologist Victor Turner writes that we are most free to explore identity in places outside of our normal routines, places that are in some way "betwixt and between." Turner calls them liminal, from the Latin word for "threshold. ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
264:Emotional intelligence, more than any other factor, more than I.Q. or expertise, accounts for 85% to 90% of success at work... I.Q. is a threshold competence. You need it, but it doesn't make you a star. Emotional intelligence can. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
265:His eyelids closed—buckled, really—the bones in his face so fragile they shattered under the weight of his very lids as he dropped to the threshold of existence. His last breath had already left him. And as he fell, life did the same. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
266:Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful: the threshold is the place of expectation. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
267:Absent the rapid mobilization of climate advocates at every level - and the pooling of all their energy, creativity, and resources into a coordinated, no-holds-barred campaign - we will soon be crossing the threshold into climate hell. ~ Ross Gelbspan, #NFDB
268:An oppressive odor met us when we crossed the threshold, an odor I had met many times in rain-rotted gray houses where there are coal-oil lamps, water dippers, and unbleached domestic sheets. It always made me afraid, expectant, watchful. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
269:Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through the wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold over which one must step who would enter into the mystery and adventure of the great white North. ~ James Oliver Curwood, #NFDB
270:But all the other frenzies of passions-impious both toward the bodies and toward the sexes-beyond the laws of nature, we banish not only from the threshold, but from all shelter of the Church, because they are not sins, but monstrosities. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
271:Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny. ~ Frances Wright, #NFDB
272:The pressure of adversity is the most powerful sustainer of accountability. It's as though everything you do is multiplied by 50 in order to surpass those with a head-start. I was never capable of slacking when at the threshold of failure. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
273:When we cross some threshold of damage, dementia begins to manifest itself. If we’re diabetic and hypertensive, which also means we’re insulin-resistant, we’re going to have more vascular damage and so reach that threshold of damage sooner. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
274:We are approaching levels - if we're not beyond levels - of threshold for the number of messages that consumers can take in in a given day. There is a kind of hunger for some kind of new approach to getting the word out about something. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
275:Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. Suffering can be likened to a baptism - the passing over the threshold of pain and grief and anguish to claim a new state of being. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
276:I believe in the song of the white dove. On the threshold of the new technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear warfare, human species are in new danger. There is an urgent need for superhuman compassion in machine. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
277:You'd think a guy who has broken 35 bones in his body would have a high pain threshold, but mine is pretty low. I got hit in the shin with a golf ball once and it almost brought tears to my eyes. I've had broken bones that didn't hurt as bad. ~ Evel Knievel, #NFDB
278:I am a member of this body. Therefore, sir, I shall neither fawn nor cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg . . . I am here to demand my rights, and to hurl thunderbolts at the men who would dare to cross the threshold of my manhood. ~ Henry McNeal Turner, #NFDB
279:I need a girl night. And you . . .” She divided a look between them. “You two need a cooling-off period.” She shoved a brownie in Cam’s hand, then pushed him over the threshold and shut the door in his face. “There. I thought he’d never leave. ~ Jill Shalvis, #NFDB
280:The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
281:The rustling of the silk is discontinued, Dust drifts over the courtyard, There is not sound of footfall, and the leaves Scurry into heaps and lie still, And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them: A wet leaf that clings to the threshold. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
282:Adams began his reply with a devastating comment on the preamble to the Constitution: “I confess,” he said, “as I enter the Building I stumble at the Threshold. I meet with a National Government, instead of a federal Union of Sovereign States. ~ Pauline Maier, #NFDB
283:Even here, in the weight machine of a train station, they try to hoodwink us. Here, on the threshold of a man's freedom, just before he boards a train to a new life, these flashing fortune machines are the final alarm bell of the Rooster Coop. ~ Aravind Adiga, #NFDB
284:From a psychological perspective, there can be returns to focus or concentration when people ignore signals below a certain threshold (called a “salience effect” in psychology) or when they believe in momentum—that success leads to success. ~ Richard P Rumelt, #NFDB
285:Mankind in Amnesia has to do not only with the past, like my other books -- primarily it has to do with the future, a future not removed by thousands or tens of thousands of years, but the imminent future, on whose threshold we now stand. ~ Immanuel Velikovsky, #NFDB
286:Though this marriage is a sham, what we share tonight will be real, my lady. I said I'd treat you wi' the same respect I'd show my own true bride, and I meant it. I'd no' be able to call myself a Scotsman if I let you walk across this threshold. ~ Pamela Clare, #NFDB
287:No matter how much I appeared to have changed—how illustrious my education, how altered my appearance—I was still her. At best I was two people, a fractured mind. She was inside, and emerged whenever I crossed the threshold of my father’s house. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
288:Loving someone to the threshold of marriage doesn't mean the difficulties of life are suddenly going to disappear. You're both going to do a lot of forgiving and overlooking each other's faults over the years if you truly want a happy marriage. ~ E A Bucchianeri, #NFDB
289:Three things have a limited threshold:
Time, pain, and death.
While truth, love, and knowledge -
Are boundless.
Three things are needed
For humanity to co-exist:
Truth, peace and basic needs.
Everything else -
Is irrelevant. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
290:Please open your eyes now, but keep attention in the inner energy field of the body as you look around the room. The inner body lies at the threshold between your form identity and your essence identity, your true nature. Never lose touch with it. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
291:The Gospel lives in conversation with culture, and if the Church holds back from the culture, the Gospel itself falls silent. Therefore, we must be fearless in crossing the threshold of the communication and information revolution now taking place. ~ John Paul II, #NFDB
292:It is well known that theoretical physicists cannot handle experimental equipment; it breaks whenever they touch it. Pauli was such a good theoretical physicist that something usually broke in the lab whenever he merely stepped across the threshold. ~ George Gamow, #NFDB
293:Once you know how often users should use your product, dig into the numbers and identify how many and which type of users meet this threshold. As a best practice, use cohort analysis to measure changes in user behavior through future product iterations. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
294:He is not in the habit of explaining himself. He is not in the habit of discussing his successes. But whenever good fortune has called on him, he has been there, planted on the threshold, ready to fling open the door to her timid scratch on the wood. ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
295:I do believe that we stand at a threshold, as Bonhoeffer did, and that the example of his life obliges me to speak about the gravity of our historical moment as I see it, in the knowledge that no society is at any time immune to moral catastrophe. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
296:The Gospel lives in conversation with culture, and if the Church holds back from the culture, the Gospel itself falls silent. Therefore, we must be fearless in crossing the threshold of the communication and information revolution now taking place. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
297:The further the system moves away from its thermodynamic equilibrium, the more numerous become the possible structures. The possible paths of evolution resemble a decision tree with branchings at each instability threshold. ~ Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, #NFDB
298:Dying is so simple. A fleeting moment of suffering. In the blink of an eye you are over the threshold, into another world. No more pain, no more fears. You sleep so well there. Dying is like rubbing snow together, setting fire to a whole winter of cold and ice. ~ Shan Sa, #NFDB
299:Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a 'real' war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other's heads and fingers trembling on the trigger? ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
300:He had crossed the threshold into that room, where a single promise threw a thousand bolts: I'll find you. That promise, like all promises, created its own morality. To keep it, he would have to cross a sea of blood.
The world unloosed. The planets bound. ~ Rick Yancey,#NFDB
301:Live every day as if the Son of Man were at the door, and gear your thinking to the fleeting moment. Just how can it be redeemed? Walk as if the next step would carry you across the threshold of Heaven. Pray. That saint who advances on his knees never retreats. ~ Jim Elliot, #NFDB
302:The day of one's birth is a good day for the believer, but the day of death is the greatest day that a Christian can ever experience in this world because that is the day he goes home, the day he walks across the threshold, the day he enters the Father's house. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
303:To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.
Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside. ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
304:I wanted to make good records. But my problem is I've got a low boredom threshold, so I wanted it to look and sound different with each album, which is really tantamount to suicide, cause people lose it, they lose it - they say: 'I like that, and that's not this.' ~ Adam Ant, #NFDB
305:My world was one of only broken images, like I was standing always on the threshold of a mirror, unable to tell the reflection from the real. The shining city and the blasted heath-the truth lay somewhere between, a thin grey line, slender as the edge of knife. ~ Alexis Hall, #NFDB
306:Harry Reid employed the so-called nuclear option, broke the Senate rules to change the Senate rules, lowered the threshold for confirmation from 60 votes to 51 votes. And it is a direct result of Harry Reid that we now have the most conservative Cabinet in decades. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
307: "Is there something between the two of you?” I pause at the threshold, waiting.
“No! I hate the wretch.” His face, crisscrossed with lacework shadows, grows somber. “I hate her with the same changeless passion with which I love you.” ~ A G Howard,#NFDB
308:This suggests to me that there are two ‘vocabularies’ that the learners need to acquire: the 6,000+ high-frequency lexical words (and chunks) that provide the threshold into fluency, and the 150 or so common functors that cement these lexical words together. ~ Scott Thornbury, #NFDB
309:Happy endings are absolutely ludicrous, they're not true at all. We see the guy carry the girl across the threshold and everybody lives happily ever after -- that's bullshit. Three weeks later he's beating her up and she's suing for divorce and he's got cancer. ~ Robert Altman, #NFDB
310:The knowledge that she could learn to love a man had always meant more to her than loving him effortlessly, more even than falling in love, and that was why she now felt that she was on the threshold of a new life, a happiness bound to endure for a very long time. ~ Orhan Pamuk, #NFDB
311:He had crossed the threshold into that room, where a single promise threw a thousand bolts: I'll find you. That promise, like all promises, created its own morality. To keep it, he would have to cross a sea of blood.
The world unloosed. The planets bound. ~ Rick Yancey,#NFDB
312:Then the 1956 Peace Prize went to Eisenhower and Khrushchev for agreeing not to build the hydrogen bomb. That agreement was now also called the Szilard Treaty. Today the H-bomb was a threshold no one dared cross without exciting hostile moves by all other powers. ~ Gregory Benford, #NFDB
313:As the second half of our life advances, we always seem to be traveling on a threshold, whether we realize it or not. This threshold divides the outer world from the inner. Gradually, if we are reflective, we begin to see the world through our senses rather than with them. ~ Harris, #NFDB
314:Isolationists believed that the ancient civilizations all developed independent of one another. Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, China, Egypt—all crossed a threshold into civilization about the same time: around the third or fourth century before the birth of Christ. ~ Robert Doherty, #NFDB
315:[T]he daemonic is that moment when an unconscious content of seemingly overwhelming power appears on the threshold of consciousness. It can cross this threshold & seize hold of the personality. Then it is possession, which can naturally be personified in many forms. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
316:Around two years of age, your child starts to develop a fascination with saying the word “no.” Early childhood experts call this the threshold between the sensorimotor stage and the preoperational stage of cognitive development. The rest of us call it “the terrible twos. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
317:In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself. ~ Kate Williams, #NFDB
318:You are on the threshold of a great journey, and you must begin to think in terms of what you can do as a powerful spiritual and biological being. Stop with the self-loathing. Stop with imagery of ‘the damned’ this and ‘the damned’ that! We are not damned. We never were. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
319:A tightening in her chest almost stopped her. It was a foreign feeling, to be so afraid of words addressed to her own son. And, in another very real way, familiar. She had stood at this threshold many times, and each time she had let that clench of fear stop her. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde, #NFDB
320:“I will not enter your heart to limit it’s memory. I will not hold your mouth to prevent it from opening on the blue of the air... I want to be for you... the wind of life that crosses the threshold forever before the night becomes untraceable.” ~ René Char twitter.com/crossmansusann…, #NFDB
321:We all watched Al open the door. Turning, he waved to us, then passed the threshold. The door shut behind him. I waited for something to happen. Nothing did. “This isn’t good,” Quen said. I choked back my burst of laughter, knowing it would come out sounding hysterical. ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
322:I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny. ~ Julian Huxley, #NFDB
323:The approaches and entrances to temples are flanked & defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. These are the threshold guardians to ward away all incapable of encountering the higher silences within. ~ Campbell, #NFDB
324:Kathleen paused at the threshold. As tense silence filled the distance between them, a wave of excruciating shyness caused her to blush. It didn’t help that he was staring at her in a way he never had before…bold and vaguely proprietary. Something had changed, she thought. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
325:Once it builds up in the victim's system, a threshold is reached, the organs begin to fail, and the degeneration is irreversible. It's not a killer. It's a thief. It steals years. And he will never get them back."
I felt a little chill at the satisfaction in her voice. ~ Leigh Bardugo,#NFDB
326:Reading is at the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it. It does not constitute it ... There are certain cases of spiritual depression in which reading can become a sort of curative discipline ... reintroducing a lazy mind into the life of the Spirit. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
327:There is something else that is trying to come through - that lure of becoming - and it does come from the realm of spirit, it does come from the quantum universe, it does come from the great spark that is the threshold of time and history trying to emerge and electrify us. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
328:From his angle, the curtain seems to form itself into a shrouded, wavering figure, indescribably terrifying in its very indistinctness. Something waiting, hovering on the threshold of the visible world. Some half-embodied fear gradually assuming a hideous outer form. ~ Christopher Isherwood, #NFDB
329:In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold. ~ Charles Holland Duell, #NFDB
330:Inviting a goblin to cross your threshold was a recipe for disaster, and certainly worse than doing the same with a vampire. With the latter all you got was a nasty bite, but the company, the extraordinarily good sex and the funny stories more than made up for it—apparently. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
331:Human attention, in the best of circumstances, is a fluid but fragile entity. Beyond a certain threshold, the more that is asked of it, the less well it performs. When this happens in a psychological experiment, it is interesting. When it happens in traffic, it can be fatal. ~ Tom Vanderbilt, #NFDB
332:Jacob Grimm notes that “someone who wants to say something and then forgets what he intended to say, should go over the threshold then return, it will come back to him.”61 Might this not be a plunge back into the protective sphere where one enjoys the aid of the invisibles? ~ Claude Lecouteux, #NFDB
333:our threshold of survival-prone behavior is so high it takes the prospect of total extermination to activate modes of placation and compromise, may there not be other processes, equally life-preserving, which can similarly be triggered off only at a far higher level of stimulus ~ John Brunner, #NFDB
334:THREE BASIC TRUTHS
Three things have a limited threshold:
Time, pain, and death.
While truth, love, and knowledge –
Are boundless.
Three things are needed
For humanity to co-exist:
Truth, peace and basic needs.
Everything else -
Is irrelevant. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
335:My threshold for human contact had worn painfully thin. I felt like a car that had been running its lights too long on battery alone. I felt fresh out of charge, and as though I needed to plug in for days before I could have one more conversation with one more human being. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde, #NFDB
336:Mama operated under the assumption that I was eight years old and incapable of feeding myself. It was physically impossible for her to cross my threshold without some form of nourishment. She once offered me cheese and crackers from her while we were standing in my kitchen. ~ Molly Harper, #NFDB
337:We always tend to keep within ourselves threshold reactions such as a little doubt, or a little impulse not to do something. If the impulses are not very strong we are inclined to put them aside in a one-sided way and by this we have hurt an animal or a spirit within us. ~ Marie Louise von Franz, #NFDB
338:I'm supposed to carry you over the threshold, right?"
I laugh. "If that's what you're doing, I must've slept through something important," I say dryly.
He quirks one eyebrow and shoots me a cocky grin.
"Oh trust me, I won't let you sleep through any of the good stuff. ~ Michelle Leighton,#NFDB
339:A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. ~ William James, #NFDB
340:One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do anything that makes others happy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
341:When the man touches through
to the exact center of the woman,
he lies motionless, in equilibrium,
in absolute desire, at the threshold
of the world to which the Creator Spirit
knows the pass-whisper, and whispers it,
and his loving friend becomes his divinity. ~ Galway Kinnell,#NFDB
342:To Borody and a small band of like-minded brethren who believe in the power of poop, we are standing at the threshold of a new era in medicine. Borody sees the benefits of fecal therapy as “equivalent to the discovery of antibiotics.” But first, there is much skepticism to overcome. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
343:Everywhere and continually it is in your power to be reverently content with your present circumstance, to behave to men who are present with you according to right and to handle skillfully the present impression, that nothing you have not mastered may cross the threshold of the mind. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
344:What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go. ~ Friedrich H lderlin, #NFDB
345:I don’t run from these worries though. I invite each one into my heart and mind. At the doorstep of my emotional threshold I greet them like a perfect host. Each worry tracks mud into my home and dirties the furniture. I grit and bear my houseguests. Their time with me will be short-lived. ~ Sarah Noffke, #NFDB
346:We all watched Al open the door. Turning, he waved to us, then passed the threshold. The door shut behind him. I waited for something to happen.
Nothing did.
“This isn’t good,” Quen said.
I choked back my burst of laughter, knowing it would come out sounding hysterical. ~ Kim Harrison,#NFDB
347:Ageing, slightly mad and on the threshold of retirement, it was an uneasy combination and it was no wonder that people shied away from her or made only the most perfunctory remarks. It was difficult to imagine what her retirement would be like—impossibe and rather gruesome to speculate on it. ~ Barbara Pym, #NFDB
348:We still have a long way to go. But we are moving in the right direction. If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution—and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity. ~ Jane Goodall, #NFDB
349:Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit awhile in his unobtrusive company, practicing for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
350:I still didn’t know quite what the witches were capable of. The threshold could be booby-trapped or enchanted. I could be walking into a cage fight with a demon. Hell, she could open the door with a Glock 9 in her hand and put a bullet in my ear, or throw a cat at me, or call me a damn hippie. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
351:It is as though the moon changed every thing -
Myself and all that I can hear and see;
For when the heavy body has grown weak,
There is nothing that can tether the wild mind
That, being moonstruck and fantastical,
Goes where it fancies.
From The King's Threshold ~ W B Yeats,#NFDB
352:Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit a while in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
353:The poorest man may, in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow though it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement. ~ William Pitt, #NFDB
354:The poorest man in his cottage may bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter; the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
355:THREE BASIC TRUTHS
THREE BASIC TRUTHS
Three things have a limited threshold:
Time, pain, and death.
While truth, love, and knowledge –
Are boundless.
Three things are needed
For humanity to co-exist:
Truth, peace and basic needs.
Everything else -
Is irrelevant. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
356:But he knew from reading true crime books about mistakes that other killers had made and he was not about to join that club. He finished in time to greet his wife as she came home from work. To her, he acted the same as usual. But he knew he had crossed a significant threshold—the "death path. ~ Katherine Ramsland, #NFDB
357:But he knew from reading true crime books about mistakes that other killers had made and he was not about to join that club. He finished in time to greet his wife as she came home from work. To her, he acted the same as usual. But he knew he had crossed a significant threshold(—the "death path. ~ Katherine Ramsland, #NFDB
358:Once upon a time, I too dreamed different dreams. My horizon was bolder and grander and more beautiful than the threshold of my own fucking flat. And now I lived in a world so narrow and so colourless that getting out of bed in the morning was a victory. That not actively wanting to die was happiness. ~ Alexis Hall, #NFDB
359:I have always loved books for their reassuring heft, for their promise of new words, for their air of mystery, for their characters who lived in them, for the sublime pleasure of disappearing. But not until now, at the threshold of this perilous summer, have I ever turned to storybooks for instruction. ~ Monica Wood, #NFDB
360:For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
361:He tugged her over the threshold with his good arm, barely cognizant of her startled squeak before his mouth swooped down to cover hers. She tasted pepperminty, as if she’d been sucking on a candy cane again. He swept his tongue between her lips to taste more of her while her arms locked around his neck. ~ Cari Quinn, #NFDB
362:Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
363:There’s just something terrifying about admitting you like someone. In a way, it’s actually easier when there’s no chance of anything happening. But there’s this threshold where things suddenly become possible. And then your cards are on the table. And there you are, wanting, right out in the open. ~ Becky Albertalli, #NFDB
364:You had to exert yourself to see this world. But if you did, if you had that kind of curiosity, if you had an innate interest in the welfare of your fellow human beings, and if you went through that door, a strange thing happened: you left your petty troubles on the threshold. It could be addictive ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
365:ZANE stood on the bathroom threshold, looking out into the shadowed hotel room at the man he’d left sprawled across the bed in a mess of sheets and sweat. The light shining from behind Zane lit Ty’s face, highlighting long lashes that lay against flushed cheeks and lips Zane could tell were swollen. He ~ Abigail Roux, #NFDB
366:Though the rooms were deserted, there was no speck of dust, and I would learn that none could cross the marble threshold. However I tracked upon it, the floor was always clean, the tables gleaming. The ashes vanished from the fireplace, the dishes washed themselves, and the firewood regrew overnight. ~ Madeline Miller, #NFDB
367:To every man of great age - to Sir Wlater Bentham himself - the idea of suicide has once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope.
The Man of Property, p. 363 ~ John Galsworthy,#NFDB
368:With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta's arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
369:Pleasanter surprise,” he managed, backing us away from the threshold. There’s the idea. I pushed him gently against the wall and started tugging on his shirt.
“About to get even pleasanter,” I murmured against his neck as my fingers found the drawstring of his pants.Bad grammar is such a turn- on. ~ Diana Peterfreund,#NFDB
370:As they crossed the threshold, a barrage of questions about Mr. Winterborne filled the parlor. “Let’s go upstairs,” Helen told the twins uncomfortably as they paused to listen. “Eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves.” “Yes,” Pandora conceded, “but they hear fascinating things about other people.” “Hush, ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
371:However much one hears about individuals, the picture formed in the mind rarely approximates to the reality. So it was with Mrs Maclintick. I was not prepared for her in the flesh. When she opened the door to us, her formidable discontent with life swept across the threshold in scorching, blasting waves. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
372:Suddenly there was a humming in the air, and the bees were there too. They flowed out of Granny Weatherwax’s hive, circling Tiffany like a halo, crowning her, and swarm and girl stood on the threshold of the cottage and Tiffany reached out her arms and the bees settled along them, and welcomed her home. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
373:We live at the threshold of a universal recognition that the human being is not mere matter, but a potent, energetic field of consciousness. Modalities of the past millennium are quickly giving way to breakthrough technologies wherein we heal ourselves at the level of all true healing, which is spirit. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
374:With scarcely a pause for a mouthful of roti, Deeti stepped outside, on to the flat threshold of beaten earth that divided the mud-walled dwelling from the poppy fields beyond. By the light of the newly risen sun, she saw, greatly to her relief, that some of her flowers had at last begun to shed their petals. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
375:Ever since she was small, she’d found delight and comfort in books. For her, a story was so much more than words on a page. Opening a book was like opening a door to another world, and once she stepped across the threshold, she was transported. When she was reading a story, she lived inside a different skin. ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
376:Nor will God force any door to enter in. He may send a tempest about the house; the wind of His admonishment may burst doors and windows, yea, shake the house to its foundations; but not then, not so, will He enter. The door must be opened by the willing hand, ere the foot of Love will cross the threshold. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
377:We stand on a great threshold in the human history of space exploration. If life is prevalent in our neighborhood of the galaxy, it is within our resources and technological reach to be the first generation in human history to finally cross this threshold, and to learn if there is life of any kind beyond Earth. ~ Sara Seager, #NFDB
378:Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very, very good. Spending $1,000 for a ham sandwich would feel very, very bad. Spending $19,000 for a small family car would feel, well, more or less right. But as with physical pain, fiscal pain can depend on the individual, and everyone has a different threshold. ~ Jeffrey Kluger, #NFDB
379:In contrast we let go of existence, meaning, and the sublime as categories to describe the object “God.” Instead these become ways in which we engage with the world. Yet, as we affirm the world in love, we indirectly sense that in letting go of God we have, in fact, found ourselves at the very threshold of God. ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
380:Princess Diana holds in the threshold for a second longer, checks over her shoulder that her Prince is out of earshot and whispers softly in my ear, ‘Sorry to leave early, though secretly I’m quite glad. It’s Spitting Image tonight, and I want to watch it in my room. They hate it of course. I absolutely adore it. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
381:Cecy, what are you doing here?" She took a step forward, then paused on the threshold, glancing down at her bare feet. “I could ask of you the same.” “I like to talk to the horses at night. They make good company. And you should not be out and about in your nightgown. There are Lightwoods wandering these halls. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
382:Principal Principal stormed in yesterday, smelling pleasure. His mustache moved up and down, a radar sweep for all things unruly. An unseen hand turned off the radio as he crossed the threshold, and bags of potato chips vanished, leaving the faint scent of salt to mix with vermilion oil paint and wet clay. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
383:The Falls of the Tsangpo had offered turn-of-the-century explorers a geographical quest to rival the search for the headwaters of the Nile. But the Tibetans—who knew of it already—did not view the falls as a topographical trophy but as a sacrament, a threshold between the physical universe and the world of the spirit. ~ Ian Baker, #NFDB
384:The soldiers closest to the door on each side flip their flashbangs into the apartment and quickly turn away from the threshold. A second later, the stun grenades detonate, producing a concussive blast of 180 decibels and a searing, blinding light. For five seconds, the occupants will be blind, deaf, and unbalanced. ~ Bill Clinton, #NFDB
385:Some individual frames took up to 100 hours to render, the computation overtaxed by the bendy bits of distortion caused by an Einsteinian effect called gravitational lensing. In the end the movie brushed up against 800 terabytes of data. “I thought we might cross the petabyte threshold on this one,” von Tunzelmann says. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
386:We were kind of never one of CBS favorites [with Threshold], even though we'd gotten really good reviews for the pilot. We were on at, what was it, 10 o'clock on a Friday night? That's kind of where you bury a show if you don't want it to last. But, wow, what a cast, huh? You could never get that cast together again. ~ Brent Spiner, #NFDB
387:There was a term some of Clive’s friends used, the ones who did a lot of computer gaming—”the uncanny valley.” It was a psychological threshold where things looked very human, but still weren’t quite human enough. It was why some mannequins were creepy and others weren’t, and CGI monsters looked better than CGI people. ~ Peter Clines, #NFDB
388:When we are succeeding - that is, when we have begun to overcome our self-doubt and self-sabotage, when we are advancing in our craft and evolving to a higher level - that's when panic strikes. When we experience panic, it means that we're about to cross a threshold. We're poised on the doorstep of a higher plane. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
389:A few minutes later his XO appeared, saluting the marine guard as she crossed the threshold to the bridge, which sensibly resided deep within the armored core of the ship rather than being perched precariously on the top of the vessel like an old-style soda can on the fence, ready to be picked off as alien target practice. ~ Nick Webb, #NFDB
390:Long periods of peace and quiet favor certain optical illusions. Among them is the assumption that the invulnerability of the home is founded upon the constitution and safeguarded by it. In reality, it rests upon the father of the family who, accompanied by his sons, appears with the ax on the threshold of his dwelling. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB
391:The chronicle of a man, the account of his life, his historiography, written as he lived out his life formed part of the rituals of his power. The disciplinary methods reversed this relation, lowered the threshold of describable individuality and made of this description a means of control and a method of domination. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
392:Given that the dreaming brain must perform these remarkable contortions - creating a world, living in it, responding to it, and then carefully blocking all the responses in a manner that does not cross the threshold of awareness - it is no wonder that this dreaming brain seems to be more active than the waking brain. ~ William C Dement, #NFDB
393:Then the same painless generosity spread to everything in a giddy hurtling rush, like that little threshold you cross when cleaning out closets, and suddenly, instead of agonizing over every heel-worn but still wearable pair of boots, parting with all the junk you’ll never use anyway is no longer a sacrifice but a joy. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
394:Entropy production, in this context, is nothing else but the production of structure, implying at the same time more information and more confirmation. Immediately beyond the “chaos” of the instability threshold maximum entropy production is needed to attain a certain degree of confirmation. ~ Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, #NFDB
395:If every auditorium were razed to the ground, theatre would still survive, because the hunger in each of us to act and be acted to, is genetic. This intense hunger even crosses the threshold of sleep. For we direct, perform and witness performances every night - theatre cannot die before the last dream has been dreamt. ~ Declan Donnellan, #NFDB
396:scores of scientists working in widely separated unrelated disciplines are crossing the threshold into the world of ancient science. We call it progress, but Merlin will have the last laugh. Science is inching into magic, and the science of the twenty-first century will probably be nothing more than a revival of alchemy. In ~ John A Keel, #NFDB
397:Wherever she was, at work, in the food line, in the dormitory, Betsie spoke to those around her about His nearness and His yearning to come into their lives. As her body grew weaker, her faith seemed to grow bolder. And sick call was "such and important place, Corrie! Some of these people are at the threshold of heaven! ~ Corrie ten Boom, #NFDB
398:The remainder of the long story of Kamar al-Zaman is a history of the slow yet wonderful operation of a destiny that has been summoned into life. Not everyone has a destiny: only the hero who has plunged to touch it, and has come up again-with a ring. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, #NFDB
399:How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
400:Not many people realize this, but I'm a really squeamish guy. When I watch other horror films that are really over-the-top with their blood and guts, I cannot watch it. So if my threshold to something onscreen is at that level, you can imagine how my threshold is to all the pain and suffering that is happening in the real world. ~ James Wan, #NFDB
401:I am almost thanking God that I was never educated, for it seems to me that 999 of those who are so, expensively and laboriously, have lost all before they arrive at my age-& remain like Swift's Stulbruggs-cut and dry for life, making no use of their earlier-gained treasures:-whereas, I seem to be on the threshold of knowledge. ~ Edward Lear, #NFDB
402:Society in its full sense ... is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual. ~ Ruth Benedict, #NFDB
403:Crossing the threshold of faith means that we work out of a sense of dignity and see service as a vocation. It means we serve selflessly and are prepared to begin over time and time again without giving in to weariness — as if all that has been done so far were only a step on the journey toward the Kingdom, the fullness of life. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
404:Cecy, what are you doing here?"
She took a step forward, then paused on
the threshold, glancing down at her bare
feet.
“I could ask of you the same.”
“I like to talk to the horses at night. They make good company. And you should not be out and about in your nightgown. There are Lightwoods wandering these halls. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
405:The new shift in thinking is the gateway to human transformation. And because of the sheer number of people involved in this shift, and the growing magnitude of the crises that are driving us to change the way we think, we are standing on the threshold of human transformation at a level unlike anything ever before known on Earth. ~ Gregg Braden, #NFDB
406:On the threshold of the moral world we meet the idea of Freedom, 'one of the weightiest concepts man has ever formed,' once a dogma, in the course of time a hypothesis, now in the eyes of many a fiction, yet we cannot do without it, even although we may be firmly convinced that our acts are determined by laws that cannot be broken. ~ Havelock Ellis, #NFDB
407:By being human, I was actually being inhumane. My hesitation to embrace my new abilities was causing needless suffering. Once you cross that moral threshold—once you decide to kill a man who hasn’t threatened or wronged you—better to do it quickly, or whatever moral high ground you’re standing on gets washed away by their blood. ~ Seth Grahame Smith, #NFDB
408:Three things have a limited threshold:
Time, pain, and death.
While truth, love, and knowledge -
Are boundless.
Three things are needed
For humanity to co-exist:
Truth, peace and basic needs.
Everything else -
Is irrelevant.
THREE BASIC TRUTHS by Suzy Kassem
Taken from "The Spring For Wisdom", 1993 ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
409:We have all been brought up with an ethical system of 2,000 years ago, an industrial-managerial system of 200-300 years ago, a statecraft system of 200 years ago, and so on. None of this is working very well for the requirements of a time as complex and variegated as our own. So we stand shuttering at the threshold, with no clear map. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
410:Never go in, miss. Never say a prayer at its door. If you are angry, do not seek revenge by the Laughing Maiden stone, or at the threshold of the Tombs. There be those who listen for oaths and vows, and them that takes it quite to heart. What may be said in innocence and ire becomes flesh and blood should it be uttered in such places. ~ Douglas Clegg, #NFDB
411:I was, like, "Wow, is this ever going to happen again? Am I ever going to work with another bunch of people I get along with this well?" And then, sure enough, Threshold was just a great bunch of people, and I thought, "Hey, I could hang with these people for a long time!" But, unfortunately, it was 13 episodes and we were out of there. ~ Brent Spiner, #NFDB
412:Corny as it sounds, I believe that unless we try to familiarize ourselves with the best that human beings have thought and accomplished, we doom ourselves to be little more than mindless consumer-wraiths, docile sheep waiting to be shorn by corporation or government, sad and confused dwellers on the threshold of a palace we never enter. ~ Michael Dirda, #NFDB
413:I have wanted you for so long now,” he said roughly, “I’ve no memory of how it feels to be devoid of the craving. But you must know what you do. I need you to think of who you are and where you are and who I am. Think of how things will be once we’ve crossed this threshold. Think of how you will leave this cabin—disheveled and well fucked. ~ Sylvia Day, #NFDB
414:Turn your eyes whither you will, enter into whatever temple you please, you will find there on the very threshold Prophecy and Sacrament .... whoever despises these two things, infallibly bends towards earth, knowing nothing of God but his name, and holding with him no other relations than ingratitude and forgetfulness. ~ Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, #NFDB
415:You are on the threshold of a great journey, and you must begin to think in terms of what you can do as a powerful spiritual and biological being. Stop with the self-loathing. Stop with imagery of ‘the damned’ this and ‘the damned’ that! We are not damned. We never were. Who under the sun has the right to damn any living breathing creature? ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
416:As the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show, God has a high threshold of tolerance for what appropriate to say in a prayer. God can "handle" my unsuppressed rage. I may well find that my vindictive feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those feelings to God will I have the opportunity for correction and healing. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
417:In the interim, in the void between the moment he opens the door and the moment he begins to reconquer the emptiness, his mind flails in a wordless panic. It is as if he were being forced to watch his own disappearance, as if, by crossing the threshold of his room, he were entering another dimension, taking up residence inside a black hole. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
418:True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
419:Human beings could be defined as the keepers of a wall of separation dwelling at the threshold between dimensions longing to meet. As long as we insist being attached to the wall, these dimensions will keep on causing destruction and misery in our life. All human pain and troubles are basically due to our stubbornness in preserving this wall. ~ Franco Santoro, #NFDB
420:He stopped and looked at her. "Your eyes are leaking."
"It's the flowers. They make me sneeze."
"Then let us be away from the garden. Open the door, love, if you will."
She obeyed, then froze halfway over the threshold. "What did you call me?"
"The first of countless endearments if you'll but stir yourself to hold our current course. ~ Lynn Kurland,#NFDB
421:There are types of energy which lie outside the electromagnetic spectrum. Unfortunately, these research efforts have not been given recognition. For the most part, they have been performed by individuals without any support, whose work lies at the threshold of present-day science, and who are years ahead of science which is already established. ~ Edgar Mitchell, #NFDB
422:still couldn’t believe that Kibii could cross the most momentous threshold of his life without my hearing a whisper of it. I scanned the area for Buller, wanting to be gone as quickly as possible, but didn’t see him. I made off anyway, and had reached the edge of the ridge, readying myself for the steep descent, when I heard Kibii calling my name. ~ Paula McLain, #NFDB
423:but I do take an enormous interest in the personal aspects of what archaeology reveals. I like to find a little dog buried under the threshold, inscribed on which are the words: ‘Don’t stop to think, Bite him!’ Such a good motto for a guard-dog; you can see it being written on the clay, and someone laughing. The contract tablets are interesting, ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
424:Don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have the compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight; we are always on the threshold of a new dawn. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
425:I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven-a temporary heaven-in this room for me if I chose. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
426:The psychologist Barry Schwartz recently proposed that elite schools give up their complex admissions process and simply hold a lottery for everyone above the threshold. “Put people into two categories,” Schwartz says. “Good enough and not good enough. The ones who are good enough get put into a hat. And those who are not good enough get rejected. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
427:He is merely the first to cross an important boundary of behavior, a tactic boundary that, recognized by everyone there, separates one kind of conduct from another. He is prepared to commit this ‘threshold’ act – an act which, created by the crowd, would have been impossible without the crowd, even though the crowd itself is not prepared to follow: yet. ~ Bill Buford, #NFDB
428:I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
429:Dr. Greenfield, predictably, goes further. He deems young people who are raised on digital devices “Generation D.” “They’re so amped up on dopamine that when it’s not firing, they feel dull, dead,” he says. And that means they need to move on to the next thing, quickly, rather than staying with something. “They have no threshold for attentional capacity. ~ Matt Richtel, #NFDB
430:How to teach again what has been taught correctly it incorrectly 1000 thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task. How to render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark? Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
431:In Shubert Alley that night, I had unwittingly reached the threshold of an entire landscape of alleys that would lead to a world of theaters, each a house packed with strangers both generous and mean, shabby and grand. It was to be a life full of the transitory moments, double-edged with ecstasy and loss, that I had already come to think of as the theater. ~ Frank Rich, #NFDB
432:And I shall resemble the wretches famed in fable, crushed beneath the weight of their wish come true. And I even feel a strange desire come over me, the desire to know what I am doing, and why. So I near the goal I set myself in my young days and which prevented me from living. And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another. Very pretty. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
433:The "door of faith" (Acts 14:27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. It is possible to cross that threshold when the word of God is proclaimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming grace. To enter through that door is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
434:Truth is, nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness. She may never love you, not now or ever. And if you are courageous in initiating, extending, or deepening a difficult conversation, you may feel even more anxious and uncomfortable, at least in the short run. ~ Harriet Lerner, #NFDB
435:while personal income in the U.S. more than doubled between i 96o and the 19gos in constant dollars, the proportion of people saying they are very happy remained a steady 30 percent. One conclusion that the findings seem to justify is that beyond the threshold of poverty, additional resources do not appreciably improve the chances of being happy. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
436:I probably coughed self-pityingly in response, little aware that I was about to cross a tremendous threshold beyond which there would be no return, that in my hands I held an object whose simple appearance belied its profound power. All true readers have a book, a moment, like the one I describe, and when Mum offered me that much-read library copy mine was upon me. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
437:Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
438:Dreamworlds can maintain themselves only as glimpses. Once the writer transports the reader across the threshold, nothing that was promised can be delivered. What was ominous becomes ordinary; what was bizarre, quotidian. Unless you simply keep upping the ante, piling on the bullshit, the only way to revive things is to switch perspectives as quickly as you can. ~ M John Harrison, #NFDB
439:In reality," he told Paulina, after knowing her a short time, "endings are unworthy of art. Works of art are always unfinished. Whoever creates them is never sure of having finished them. The same is true of all the best things in life. Goethe, even though he was a German, was right about this: 'Every beginning is beautiful, but one must stop on the threshold. ~ ngeles Mastretta, #NFDB
440:The moment she entered she felt wrapped in a fragile golden light like a radiant mist that seemed to settle around her. What was it about the mews? she often wondered. It seemed to transform the simplest things, like stone and wood and the very air one breathed, into something different. When she crossed the threshold, she felt as if she had entered another world. ~ Kathryn Lasky, #NFDB
441:Race is still a powerful force in this country. Any African American candidate, or any Latino candidate, or Asian candidate or woman candidate confronts a higher threshold in establishing himself to the voters ... Are some voters not going to vote for me because I'm African American? Those are the same voters who probably wouldn't vote for me because of my politics. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
442:An icy gust of air rose from the open doors. Blackness. I cannot be locked in blackness. I cannot!
And finally he screamed. He couldn't hold it back any longer. He screamed, the terrible cry begun before he was pushed forward, before he felt himself topple from the threshold, before he realized he was plunging down and down into the blackness, into the nothingness... ~ Anne Rice,#NFDB
443:I returned to the waiting area. For the first time, I was conscious of being widowed, of lacking the prosecution of a man, it was an entirely atavistic sensation. Here in the lobby of this police station in Greece, I suddenly felt extraneous to the workings of the world, which is to say the world of men, I had grown invisible, standing at the threshold of that door. ~ Katie Kitamura, #NFDB
444:Jupiter instead cooled down below the threshold for fusion, but it maintained enough heat and mass and pressure to cram atoms very close together, to the point they stop behaving like the atoms we recognize on earth. Inside Jupiter, they enter a limbo of possibility between chemical and nuclear reactions, where planet-sized diamonds and oily hydrogen metal seem plausible. ~ Sam Kean, #NFDB
445:I need to quit," Elvira announced. "I gotta turn in my resignation. I can't work with a man knowin' his capacity to give pleasure. I mean, I can work with a man guessin' his capacity to give pleasure but not knowin' it. This is it. I hit the threshold. I never understood TMI. In my opinion, no amount of information is too much information but I've found it. I'm here. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
446:If you’ve made the decision to make the kind of money you’ve never made before, blasting through this terror threshold is critical. So keep an eye out for the rallying cry to retreat, understand that you have arrived at the magical door to the other side, focus on this truth instead of the desire to get into bed and read magazines, and break on through to the other side. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
447:Suppose we received from another planet a message made up of pure facts, facts of such clarity as to be merely obvious: we wouldn't pay attention, we would hardly even notice; only a message containing something unexpressed, something doubtful and partially indecipherable, would break through the threshold of our consciousness and demand to be received and interpreted. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
448:No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
449:I will say, Penelope, that while it is unnecessary for you to be afraid of the dark, you are quite correct to be afraid of the things that thrive in it."
Penelope squinted into the darkness, trying to make out the room beyond, nervousness coiling deep within. She hovered on the threshold, her breath coming fast and shallow. Things that thrived in the dark... like him. ~ Sarah MacLean,#NFDB
450:The limits of endurance running, according to physiologists, could be quantified with three parameters: aerobic capacity, also known as VO2max, which is analogous to the size of a car’s engine; running economy, which is an efficiency measure like gas mileage; and lactate threshold, which dictates how much of your engine’s power you can sustain for long periods of time. ~ Alex Hutchinson, #NFDB
451:We have all heard the forlorn refrain “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!” This phrase has come to stand for the rueful reflection of an idiot, a sign of stupidity, but in fact we should appreciate it as a pillar of wisdom. Any being, any agent, who can truly say, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!” is standing on the threshold of brilliance. We ~ Daniel C Dennett, #NFDB
452:Curt carried Faith into her house. Her hair tumbled loose, surrounding him with the fragrance of rose oil. He savored the softness of her body against his chest. For a moment, he pretended he was carrying her across a threshold as his wife. Baxter could go hang. Until there was an official engagement, he had an equal chance with Faith. One day soon, he’d be ready to ask her. ~ Ann Shorey, #NFDB
453:The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Classira pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion. ~ Michael Cunningham, #NFDB
454:This intercourse between God and the soul is known to us in conscious personal awareness. It is personal: that is, it does not come through the body of believers, as such, but is known to the individual, and to the body through the individuals which compose it. And it is conscious: that is, it does not stay below the threshold of consciousness and work there unknown to the soul ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
455:In folktales a vampire couldn’t enter your home unless you invited him in. Without your consent the beast could never cross your threshold. Well, what do you think your computer is? Your phone? You live inside those devices so those devices are your homes. But at least a home, a physical building, has a door you can shut, windows you can latch. Technology has no locked doors. ~ Victor LaValle, #NFDB
456:You needed a guide. You had to know what to look for, but also how to look. You had to exert yourself to see this world. But if you did, if you had that kind of curiosity, if you had an innate interest in the welfare of your fellow human beings, and if you went through that door, a strange thing happened: you left your petty troubles on the threshold. It could be addictive. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
457:Reading is at the threshold of spiritual life; it can introduce us to it; it does not constitute it. There are, however, certain cases, certain pathological cases, so to speak, of spiritual depression in which reading can become a sort of curative discipline and assume the task, through repeated stimulation, of continuously reintroducing a lazy mind into the life of the spirit. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
458:They paid the deposit immediately and appeared to be good tenants although they were reluctant to invite him over the threshold once they had moved in. “There is no need for you to come in,” he had been told by a burly Russian who answered the door when he had called to see whether all was well. “There is nothing wrong. Everything functions. We are very happy. Goodbye. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
459:I am writing a book on how to be in life, on the path to take in order to live on two levels. It will show how to find a balance, to go from one to the other, or rather to find the way in between. We have to see beyond, and through, our ordinary thinking in order to open to another mind. Otherwise, we remain at the threshold in front of the door, and the door does not open. ~ Jeanne De Salzmann, #NFDB
460:I want to build you a house with my bare hands and carry you over the threshold. I want too cook for you every evening and bring you tea in bed in the mornings. I want to read with you in front of an open fire, sipping a glass of wine. I want to drive you to the beach and lie next to you in the sun. I may not be a man of means, bit I want to take care of you as best I can. ~ Catherine Sanderson, #NFDB
461:Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
462:If I'm doing something I do like to take it to the limit. I've got a high ceiling. A wide threshold for seeing what those boundaries are for myself. I'm very resilient inside. I find things that I like and do and boy, I do like to stick to them. I'm not necessarily a guy who gets addicted to more of certain things, but if I find something I like to do, I like to stick to it. ~ Matthew McConaughey, #NFDB
463:We feel very strongly that our own wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off and we could like him to provide us with desires... That is the value of reading and is also its inadequacy. To make it into discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
464:That was a really interesting series [Threshold ] that I think would've been really great had it continued. I know Brannon Braga, who was running the show at the time, had a lot of really interesting ideas for what was going to happen the second, third, fourth, and fifth seasons, and they had it really planned out what was going to go on. But CBS just decided to pull the plug on it. ~ Brent Spiner, #NFDB
465:I felt that I had crossed some threshold, out of the foyer of my life and into the living room. Everything that was the past seemed to be another life. There was before you, and then there was after, and in this after, you were the God I'd never had. I submitted before your needs, and I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival's sake. I must survive for you. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
466:one can speculate that the tardiness and wobbliness of humanity’s progress on many of the “eternal problems” of philosophy are due to the unsuitability of the human cortex for philosophical work. On this view, our most celebrated philosophers are like dogs walking on their hind legs—just barely attaining the threshold level of performance required for engaging in the activity at all. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
467:queasiness. Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals—that body of psychic custom and public sanctions that draws a vague boundary between what is emotionally and spontaneously intolerable and what is not. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
468:Yes, and the body has memory. The physical carriage hauls more than its weight. The body is the threshold across which each objectionable call passes into consciousness—all the unintimidated, unblinking, and unflappable resilience does not erase the moments lived through, even as we are eternally stupid or everlastingly optimistic, so ready to be inside, among, a part of the games. ~ Claudia Rankine, #NFDB
469:one can speculate that the tardiness and wobbliness of humanity’s progress on many of the “eternal problems” of philosophy are due to the unsuitability of the human cortex for philosophical work. On this view, our most celebrated philosophers are like dogs walking on their hind legs—just barely attaining the threshold level of performance required for engaging in the activity at all.18 ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
470:Yes, and the body has a memory. The physical carriage hauls more than its weight. The body is the threshold across which each objectionable call passes into consciousness—all the unintimidated, unblinking, and unflappable resilience does not erase the moments lived through, even as we are eternally stupid or everlastingly optimistic, so ready to be inside, among, a part of the games. ~ Claudia Rankine, #NFDB
471:To oppose knowledge is ignorant, and he who detests knowledge and science is not a man, but rather an animal without intelligence. For knowledge is light, life, felicity, perfection, beauty and the means of approaching the Threshold of Unity. It is the honor and glory of the world of humanity, and the greatest bounty of God. Knowledge is identical with guidance, and ignorance is real error ~ Abdu l Bah, #NFDB
472:To the Jews the age of 13 (the Sumerian unit of 12 plus 1) marks the threshold of adulthood. It is curious how significant multiples of 13 are in the individual’s life. At 2 x 13 the mind catches up with the body. 3 x 13 marks the beginning of a change of life. At 4 x 13 creative people catch their second breath. 5 x 13 is the age of retirement, and 6 x 13 most often marks the end of life. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
473:He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of the life we had been meant to lead all along. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
474:I went through a living room crowded with overstuffed furniture in a green-and-white jungle design from which eyes seemed to watch me, down a short hallway past a pink satin bedroom which reminded me of the inside of a coffin in disarray, to the open door of a bathroom. Tom's jacket lay across the threshold like the headless torso of a man, flattened by the passage of some enormous engine. ~ Ross Macdonald, #NFDB
475:My niceness has a very low threshold and that little girl just sucked it dry, so don’t push me, Olympain. I don’t want so much as a single Atlantean stone overturned. Guard it with your life because the next time I come here, that’s the price I’m going to demand for your incompetence. (ZT) Nice talking to you, ZT. I so look forward to your visits. Next time we’ll do pastries, ‘kay? (Kat) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
476:kill him, this would likely end with him making it back to settled space in one piece. Therefore, other than ensuring she felt enough goodwill toward him to not throw him out the airlock—which seeing as she had gone out of her way to rescue him in the first place, he suspected was a fairly low threshold—he really didn’t need to play her. He had been trained to always be looking for an opening, ~ G S Jennsen, #NFDB
477:No matter what you're doing, you're never 100 percent about anything. Every choice is always accompanied by a certain amount of worry or doubt. Until it reaches a certain threshold, you don't act on it; you just sort of carry it with you, and wait to see if it reaches the threshold when you should act. Otherwise, you just become one of those worrywarts, a nervous Nellie who isn't very helpful. ~ Glen Berger, #NFDB
478:The Devil takes no holiday; he never rests. If beaten, he rises again. If he cannot enter in front, he steals in the rear. If he cannot enter at the rear, he breaks through the roof or enters by tunneling under the threshold. He labors until he is in. He uses great cunning and many a plan. When one miscarries, he has another at hand and continues in his attempts until he wins. MARTIN LUTHER ~ Mark Hitchcock, #NFDB
479:Computer pioneer Alan Turing famously proved that if a computer can perform a certain bare minimum set of operations, then, given enough time and memory, it can be programmed to do anything that any other computer can do. Machines exceeding this critical threshold are called universal computers (aka Turing-universal computers); all of today’s smartphones and laptops are universal in this sense. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
480:Mostly, however, I am a mystic. A mystic is someone who understands, contacts, and maps the invisible roads inside of us. Since I was a child, I’ve always felt as comfortable navigating these inner highways as I have moving on the external plane of existence. It seems that I show up in people’s lives when they’re ready to cross a threshold into more consciousness, healing, and awakening. ~ Barbara De Angelis, #NFDB
481:our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of supreme lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of a bold new life that we had been meant to lead all along. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
482:My niceness has a very low threshold and that little girl just sucked it dry, so don’t push me, Olympain. I don’t want so much as a single Atlantean stone overturned. Guard it with your life because the next time I come here, that’s the price I’m going to demand for your incompetence. (ZT)
Nice talking to you, ZT. I so look forward to your visits. Next time we’ll do pastries, ‘kay? (Kat) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
483:He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of supreme lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of the life we had been meant to lead all along. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
484:A home isn't just a roof over our heads. A home is a place where we feel loved and where we love others. It's a place we belong. Love is what makes a home, not the contents inside the house or the number on the door. It's the people waiting for us across the threshold, the people who will take us in their arms after a ad day and kiss us good night and good morning everyday for the rest of our lives. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
485:typical modern households live in urban environments where they earn incomes through some form of wage work and buy food produced by others. In the more industrialized economies, ca. 65 percent of populations lived in towns in 1980, and globally, ca. 38 percent; it is probable that even global levels of urbanization will cross the symbolic threshold of 50 percent early in the twenty-first century. ~ David Christian, #NFDB
486:He presses his lips against my ear and whispers low and fierce, as if he’s sharing the most important secret in the world, which maybe he is. “It’s hopeless. And it’s stupid. It’s suicidal. But love is a weapon they have no answer for. They know how you think, but they can’t know what you feel.” Not we. They. A threshold has been crossed, and he isn’t stupid. He knows it’s the kind you can’t cross back over. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
487:Preconceived ideas are like searchlights which illumine the path of the experimenter and serve him as a guide to interrogate nature. They become a danger only if he transforms them into fixed ideas-this is why I should like to see these profound words inscribed on the threshold of all the temples of science: 'The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.' ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
488:A set point is simply a bare-minimum threshold you establish for yourself that you promise you will not go below. A set point differs from a goal. Goals pull you forward, while set points help you maintain what you have. You need both. You can establish set points for anything important to you. And here’s a secret: You can use set points not only to prevent or reverse slipping but also to improve over time. ~ Vishen Lakhiani, #NFDB
489:He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of supreme lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of a bold new life that we had been meant to lead all along. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
490:Ok," he says. "First lesson."
Noah broadens his stance, taking his place firmly on the embassy side of the threshold. "in the United States," he says. Then, with both feet, he leaps on to the sidewalk. "Out of the United States." Quickly, he jumps back toward me. "In the United States." Another jump across the threshold. "Out of the United States. In. Out. In --"
"Is this the part where I hit you? ~ Ally Carter,#NFDB
491:Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearthstone. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
492:He and all the other Weasleys froze on the threshold, gazing at the scene in front of them, which was also suspended in mid-action, both Sirius and Snape looking toward the door with their wands pointing into each other’s faces and Harry immobile between them, a hand stretched out to each of them, trying to force them apart. “Merlin’s beard,” said Mr. Weasley, the smile sliding off his face, “what’s going on here? ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
493:You didn’t have to spend long in Rust’s company to realise that he had no threshold. He would escalate any situation with startling rapidity to the point where he could count it as a victory, which meant the other party had to lose. His wasn’t a personality built to last. At least, not in a society with laws and police to enforce them. But he would make quite a mess before he was finished. I was pretty sure of that! ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
494:There it is,” he’d say reverentially. “The box represents the mysterious threshold between reality and make-believe. [..] Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you do everything for, strive for, wound everything around you. And if it were opened, would anything be set free? No. For the impenetrable prison with the impossible lock is your own head. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
495:A major way that threats change arousal is via outputs of the CeA to neuromodulatory systems (Figure 8.7).73 (By the way, the amygdala also processes appetitive stimuli and the CeA also activates neuromodulatory systems in their presence74). The consequence of CeA activation of neuromodulatory systems is an increase in attention and vigilance, which may be achieved by lowering the threshold to detect sensory stimuli. ~ Joseph E LeDoux, #NFDB
496:In the last century and a half the most prodigious event, perhaps, ever recorded by history since the threshold of reflection has been taking place in our minds: the definitive access of consciousness to a scale of new dimensions; and in consequence the birth of an entirely renewed universe, without any change of line or feature by the simple transformation of its intimate substance. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB
497:i learned that predators don't intentionally choose the weak or old or sick. they kill what they can, which means the slow members of the pack. thus, they strengthen the very gene pool they're feeding from. the threshold for what is weak, old or sick gets raised, and the strength, speed and instincts of new generations of hunters grow. a beautiful, self-perpetuating system where evolution is the antithesis of entropy. ~ Craig Clevenger, #NFDB
498:It’s the color scheme of that first afternoon—that white panorama full of potential, that threshold white—that Marina understands as whomise. And that’s what she’s trying to recreate now, a year and a bit later, with a series of expensive light bulbs. ‘White light,’ the packaging promised. She fits them one by one throughout the house, and unbeknown to her, choreographs the slow dance of light-over-puddle in the passageway. ~ Laia Jufresa, #NFDB
499:The unbroken realization that you are indivisible from the universe, from universal consciousness, from the source of everything - that you are that source, that there is no other, no second, nothing that is not part of that unity, except as transitory illusion. If you could maintain that realization at all times, through waking and sleeping states of consciousness, across the threshold of death itself, what would you be? ~ Daniel Pinchbeck, #NFDB
500:We surely stand at the threshold of a great adventure of the human spiritó a new synthesis of knowledge, a potential integration of art and science, a deeper grasp of human psychology, a deepening of the symbolic representations of our existence and feelings as given in religion and culture, the formation of an international order based on cooperation and nonviolent competition. It seems not too much to hope for these things. ~ Heinz Pagels, #NFDB
501:When he held a candle across the threshold, the black swallowed the fire completely. When he tried to step across it, he felt nothing beneath his foot. Sometimes he heard rain, a bird-cry, wind soughing through tall trees; mostly he was aware only of an intimation of vastness, silence, as though he stood at the edge of a world.
He saw nothing. So he let the charcoal imagine what might lie on the other side of the door. ~ Patricia A McKillip,#NFDB
502:If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
503:I walked up the ramp and stood in the van, trying to decide where to begin my inspection of the concealed words whose bones were molded together by men to make either an awesome vision of truth that would guard any door of the mind, or a creature that would stand for a while, deceptively whole, then collapse, scattering across the threshold the dry dead bones that did not even burst into flame at their friction one with the other. ~ Janet Frame, #NFDB
504:May I have the honor . . . Mrs. Caradon?” Mrs. Caradon. Mrs. Wyatt Caradon. She leaned down and he lifted her into his arms. She kept her eyes averted as he carried her up the stairs and across the threshold of the cabin, yet she was aware of every place their bodies touched, and of where his hands were on her—chaste and proper—which only accentuated what he was probably thinking about. And what she was trying her best not to. ~ Tamera Alexander, #NFDB
505:Stories of cannibalism among castaways were so common that British sailors considered the practice of choosing and sacrificing a victim to be an established “custom of the sea.” To well-fed men on land, the idea of cannibalism has always inspired revulsion. To many sailors who have stood on the threshold of death, lost in the agony and mind-altering effects of starvation, it has seemed a reasonable, even inescapable solution. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
506:At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
507:They said no man was an island, and Anita figured that was probably true. But women were; they had to be. And even if someone bothered to sail over and disembark, he'd soon discover that there was always a castle at the center of the island, surrounded by a deep moat, with a rickety drawbridge and archers manning the battlements and a big pot of oil posed above the gate, ready to boil alive anyone who dared to cross the threshold. ~ Tommy Wallach, #NFDB
508:Well, here he was. They could save each other, the way the poets promised lovers should. He was mystery, he was darkness, he was all she had dreamed of. And if she would only free him he would service her - oh yes - until her pleasure reached that threshold that, like all thresholds, was a place where the strong grew stronger, and the weak perished. Pleasure was pain there, and vice versa. And he knew it well enough to call it home. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
509:When she got out of the car, my world had shifted. I felt that I had crossed some threshold, out of the foyer of my life and into the living room. Everything that was the past seemed to be another life. There was before you, and then there was after, and in this after, you were the God I’d never had. I submitted before your needs, and I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival’s sake. I must survive for you. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
510:After 1945 we lost our blind faith in the inevitability of human progress. A threshold was crossed, and something important changed when humanity gained possession of what previously only God possessed: the capacity for complete annihilation. In yielding to the temptation to harness the fundamental physics of the universe for the purpose of building city-destroying bombs, have we again heard the serpent whisper, “You will be like God”? ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
511:It further appeared that the experience of living below the $2-a-day threshold didn’t discriminate by family type or race. While single-mother families were most at risk of falling into a spell of extreme destitution, more than a third of the households in $2-a-day poverty were headed by a married couple. And although the rate of growth was highest among African Americans and Hispanics, nearly half of the $2-a-day poor were white. One ~ Kathryn Edin, #NFDB
512:I pull out my laptop, which is probably the most advanced piece of technology that has ever crossed the threshold of Lapin's lair, and set it up on a stack of heavy books, all from the Wayback-list. The shiny MacBook looks like a hapless alien trying to blend in with the quiet stalwarts of human civilization I crack it open - glowing alien guts revealed! - and cue the visualization as Lapin crosses the room with two cups in two saucers. ~ Robin Sloan, #NFDB
513:From July of his sophomore year in college until the following January, all Tsukuru Tazaki could think about was dying. He turned twenty during this time, but this special watershed—becoming an adult—meant nothing. Taking his own life seemed the most natural solution, and even now he couldn’t say why he hadn’t taken this final step. Crossing that threshold between life and death would have been easier than swallowing down a slick, raw egg. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
514:Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
515:Gasm was one of the first to put a warning label on their record.” Lucas saw the sticker on the shrink-wrap of Pain Threshold. WARNING! This record contains music that has been SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN to pollute your precious bodily fluids, grow hair on your hands, kill your goldfish, and cause mass starvation in the Third World. If you subject yourself to this music, your soul will fry in hell forever, world without end, PLAY IT LOUD!!! ~ Chet Williamson, #NFDB
516:They reason that once the number of neurons in the human brain passed some unspecified threshold, syntactic processing – ordering and grouping of bits of information – might have just ‘happened.’ As these folks rightly remind us, we just do not know what kind of chain reaction the compression of 1010 (100 billion) neurons, with all their attendant axons, dendrites, and synapses, into a brain the size of a grapefruit might have caused. ~ Daniel L Everett, #NFDB
517:A device that “intuitively” alters its actions based on how we feel could offer tremendous potential benefits and uses. A vehicle that notifies its driver when alertness falls below a certain threshold. Educational software that recognizes when a student is becoming frustrated and alters the lesson accordingly in real time. A counseling program that detects the events that tend to trigger an individual’s anger or self-destructive behavior. ~ Richard Yonck, #NFDB
518:Miss Rook,” he said, “you should go. Be with Charlie. Bring them back. I will hold the threshold as long as I can, but I cannot leave now. The war has begun, and we are already losing it.”
“You’re losing it if you think I’m going to let you go marching into that mess alone! With all due respect, sir, you can’t handle a hot breakfast without me—do you really intend to save the world on your own?”
“Miss Rook.” He looked pained. ~ William Ritter,#NFDB
519:But when a man draws a lifeless thing into his passionate longing for dialogue, lending it independence and as it were a soul, then there may dawn in him the presentiment of a world-wide dialogue with the world-happening that steps up to him even in his environment, which consists partially of things. Or do you seriously think that the giving and taking of signs halts on the threshold of that business where an honest and open spirit is found? ~ Martin Buber, #NFDB
520:Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace. ~ Dennis Lehane, #NFDB
521:Some say an army of horsemen
some an army on foot
others say ships laden for war
are the fairest things on earth.
But I say the fairest sight
on this dark earth
is the face of the one you love.
Nor is it hard to understand:
love has humbled the hearts
of the proudest queens.
And I would rather see you now
stepping over my threshold
than any soldier greaved in gold
or any iron-beaked ship. ~ Alison Croggon,#NFDB
522:Furious and ashamed, Kathleen turned and went to the door. She flung it open without pausing to consider the need for discretion, and ran across the threshold. The breath was nearly knocked from her as she collided with a sturdy form.
“What the--” she heard West say, while he reached out to steady her. “What is it? Can I help?”
“Yes,” she snapped, “you can throw your brother back into that river.” She strode away before he could respond. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
523:Perhaps the problem is the seeming need that people have of making black-and-white cutoffs when it comes to certain mysterious phenomena, such as life and consciousness. People seem to want there to be an absolute threshold between the living and the nonliving, and between the thinking and the "merely mechanical," ... But the onward march of science seems to force us ever more clearly into accepting intermediate levels of such properties. ~ Douglas Hofstadter, #NFDB
524:The charity that begins at home cannot rest there but draws one inexorably over the threshold and off the porch and down the street and so out and out and out and out into the world which becomes the home wherein charity begins until it becomes possible, in theory at least, to love the whole of creation with the same patience, affection, and amusement one first practiced, in between the pouts and tantrums, with parents, siblings, spouse, and children. ~ Nancy Mairs, #NFDB
525:My step-dad started playing hockey in Detroit so we moved and I had to start home school. I started watching movies since I had a bunch of free time and then I was like, 'You know what? I want to give this a shot, move back to L.A., and audition.' The first show I booked was a show called Threshold with Carla Gugino and it was obviously a terrifying experience and I felt out of my comfort zone, but it made me want to keep going because it was fun. ~ Steven R McQueen, #NFDB
526:Justineau laughs–a harsh and ugly spasming of breath that hurts her coming out. It’s got to be said. There’s no way around it. “You carved up two children, Caroline. And you did it without anaesthetic.” “They don’t respond to anaesthetic. Their brain cells have a lipid fraction so small that alveolar concentrations never cross the action threshold. Which in itself ought to tell you that the subjects’ ontological status is to some extent in doubt.” “You’re ~ M R Carey, #NFDB
527:The building was certainly innocuous in appearance, with its clean cream-colored wood and small-paned windows, its balconies and widow’s walk. It looked a perfectly peaceful habitation from the outside, and it wasn’t until one walked into the house that its sinister aspects became discernible. One passed the threshold and walked into a dark domain, a place that breathed of the past with its antique furnishings, its old oak paneling, its dead silence. ~ W H Pugmire, #NFDB
528:Once through the door Edmund pulled me roughly aside. The big yeoman at the threshold lowered the blade of his halberd an inch and frowned at the bastard. Edmund released me and looked bewildered, as if his own hand had betrayed him.
(I bring food and drink to the guards when they are on post during feasts. I believe it is written in the Obfuscations of St. Pesto: In nine cases out of ten, a large friend with a poleax shall truly a blessing be.) ~ Christopher Moore,#NFDB
529:When I teach a new group of students, I introduce some yoga philosophy, but I don't overload them with information. Just enough so they understand the real tradition behind this ancient practice and that it's not a stretching class. Guys come in and they're a little nervous. I tell them that when they cross the threshold of the door, they're crossing to a different dimension. They're moving from an externally-oriented reality to an internally-oriented one. ~ James Fox, #NFDB
530:In trying to explain our political paralysis, analysts cite President Obama's tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for important legislation. These are large factors to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit of all: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large. ~ Jacob Weisberg, #NFDB
531:her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. “Augrh!” said Father Wolf, “it is time to hunt again”; and he was going to spring downhill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: “Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves; and good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children, that they may never forget the hungry in this world. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
532:The real excitement of being a girl - of being, that is, a woman in embryo - was that life was such a wonderful gamble. You didn't know what was going to happen to you. That was what made being a woman so exciting. No worry about what you should be or do - Biology would decide. You were waiting for The Man, and when the man came, he would change your entire life, you can say what you like, that is an exciting point of view to hold at the threshold of life. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
533:The really valuable thing about documenting coral bleaching is that it is this straight, very direct visual indicator of how hot the oceans are getting. If the temperature of the water passes a certain threshold, the corals turn white. It's that simple. There's nothing natural about the cycle that's going on right now. In 2016, we lost 29 percent of the Great Barrier Reef. So 29 percent of the Great Barrier Reef died in a single year, because the water was hot. ~ Jeff Orlowski, #NFDB
534:The two impeachment articles charged President Clinton with perjury and obstruction of justice.16 The charges satisfied the “high crimes and misdemeanors” threshold, for it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that a president who corruptly impedes the administration of justice is not fit for office. After all, his responsibilities include ensuring the administration of justice and otherwise faithfully executing the laws. Clinton, moreover, was clearly guilty. ~ Andrew McCarthy, #NFDB
535:see her hesitating at the threshold as if she cannot bear to leave him, and I give her a smile, and I stretch out my hand and rest it lightly on her son’s shoulder, a gentle proprietorial touch. “Good night, Lady Mother,” I say. “Good night from us both.” I let her see me take her son’s fine linen collar in my fingers, the collar she embroidered herself in white-on-white embroidery, and I hold it as if it were the leash of a hunting dog who is wholly mine. For ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
536:Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!" He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
537:Of all the spirits I have seen, only Elvis and Mr. Sinatra are able to manifest in the garments of their choice. Others haunt me always in whatever they were wearing when they died.
This is one reason I will never attend a costume party dressed as the traditional symbol of the New Year, in nothing buy a diaper and a top hat. Welcomed into either Hell or Heaven, I do not want to cross the threshold to the sound of demonic or angelic laughter. ~ Dean KoontzOdd Thomas ~ Dean Koontz,#NFDB
538:In our artificial civilization many young people at twenty-five are still on the threshold of activity. As one looks back then, over eight or nine years, one sees a panorama of seemingly formidable length. So many crises, so many startling surprises, so many vivid joys and harrowing humiliations and disappointments, that one feels startlingly old; one wonders if one will ever feel so old again. —Youth and Life, Randolph S. Bourne (1886–1918) Even now, when I have come ~ Megan McCafferty, #NFDB
539:This is the essence of learning. The lecturer says something, and it goes in one ear and out the other. The factoid is repeated; same thing. It’s repeated enough times and—aha!—the lightbulb goes on and suddenly you get it. At a synaptic level, the axon terminal having to repeatedly release glutamate is the lecturer droning on repetitively; the moment when the postsynaptic threshold is passed and the NMDA receptors first activate is the dendritic spine finally getting it. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
540:We speak with the lip, and we dream in the soul,
Of some better and fairer day;
And our days, the meanwhile, to that golden goal
Are gliding and sliding away.
Now the world becomes old, now again it is young,
But "The better" 's forever the word on the tongue.
At the threshold of life hope leads us in
Hope plays round the mirthful boy;
Though the best of its charms may with youth begin,
Yet for age it reserves its toy.
~ Friedrich Schiller, Hope
,#NFDB
541:Whoever you are: in the evening step out of your room, where you know everything; yours is the last house before the far-off: whoever you are. With your eyes, which in their weariness barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold, you lift very slowly one black tree and place it against the sky: slender, alone. And you have made the world. And it is huge and like a word which grows ripe in silence. And as your will seizes on its meaning, tenderly your eyes let it go. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
542:...you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
543:She was halfway through the book, her eyes heavy with sleep, when the bedroom door opened. Brishen stood at the threshold, dressed down to undertunic and trousers, his feet bare and his hair damp. He leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms. “Woman of day, you waited for me.”
Ildiko closed her book and offered him a drowsy smile. Relief and happiness coursed through her. “Prince of night, you’ve come back to me—your head intact.”
“I promised I’d try.” ~ Grace Draven,#NFDB
544:When people are too present, too familiar or too in our face, something happens to us psychologically. We begin to tune them out, we begin to get sick of them, we begin to know them so well and become so familiar with who they are that we loose a bit of respect for them. You pass a certain threshold with the fact that you're too present in their lives, too much in their face and once that threshold is passed you're never going to repair it they have lost a certain respect for you. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
545:He swept a hand back through his dark hair, and in that moment Ceony saw a flicker in his eyes and a thinning of his lips. He was worried.
“Is everything . . . all right?” she asked, hesitating at the threshold of the library, unsure of her bounds.
“Hm?” he asked, his countenance smoothing between ticks of the library clock. “Quite fine. Do take care, Ceony.” He walked down the hallway as far as the lavatory, where he turned around and added, “And keep the doors locked. ~ Charlie N Holmberg,#NFDB
546:The standardized Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) for 2013 paint an equally grim picture. Only 43 percent of the 1.66 million students who took the test scored high enough to be classified as “college ready.” What is worse, this is the fifth year in a row that fewer than half of the young people who took the test scored above 1550, the threshold for demonstrating the capability to maintain a grade point average (GPA) of B-minus or better in a four-year degree college or university.10 ~ Mark R Levin, #NFDB
547:The call is to leave a certain social situation, move into your own loneliness and find the jewel, the center that’s impossible to find when you’re socially engaged. You are thrown off-center, and when you feel off-center, it’s time to go. This is the departure when the hero feels something has been lost and goes to find it. You are to cross the threshold into new life. It’s a dangerous adventure, because you are moving out of the sphere of the knowledge of you and your community. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
548:A science-based example of a positive externality is vaccinations. Vaccinations work based on the number of people in the population who are vaccinated. Once a certain threshold is reached, the disease can’t spread effectively and is essentially eliminated. As long as enough people are vaccinated—i.e., conform with the regulation requiring vaccinations—others who choose not to be still get to enjoy that positive externality at no cost. These are what economists call freeloaders ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
549:Crossing the threshold of faith means that we keep our eyes filled with wonder and do not let our hearts grow accustomed to laziness. It means that we are able to recognize that each time a woman gives birth to a child it is yet another bet placed for life and for the future; that, when we show concern for the innocence of children, we guarantee the truth of tomorrow; and that, when we esteem an unselfish elderly person, we are performing an act of justice and embracing our own roots. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
550:When it is time to leave the sun and moon behind, how will you react? [34] Will you sit down and cry, like an infant? Did nothing that you heard and studied in school get through to you? Why did you advertise yourself as a philosopher when you might have told the truth: ‘I made it through a couple of primers, then read a little Chrysippus – but I hardly crossed the threshold of philosophy.’ [35] How can you associate yourself with Socrates, who lived and died as he did, or with Diogenes? ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
551:If I let you, you would make me destroy myself. In order to survive you, I must first survive myself. I can sink no further, and I cannot forgive you. There's no choice but to confront you, to engage you, to erase you. I've gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. I will use my mistakes against you. There's no other choice. Shameless now. Nameless now. Nothing now. No one now. But my soul must be iron, 'cause my fear is naked. I'm naked and fearless, and my fear is naked. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
552:Clearly people should meet an acceptable threshold of appropriateness! But I think that for many women in the public eye, it just seems that the burden is so heavy. We're doing a job that is not a celebrity job or an entertainment or fashion job.... In a professional setting, treat us as professionals.... And it takes a lot of time. I've often laughed with my male colleagues, like, "What did you do? You took a shower, you combed your hair, you put your clothes on. I couldn't do that." ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
553:The Spirit's Depths
Not in the crisis of events
Of compass'd hopes, or fears fulfill'd,
Or acts of gravest consequence,
Are life's delight and depth reveal'd.
The day of days was not the day;
That went before, or was postponed;
The night Death took our lamp away
Was not the night on which we groan'd.
I drew my bride, beneath the moon,
Across my threshold; happy hour!
But, ah, the walk that afternoon
We saw the water-flags in flower!
~ Coventry Patmore,#NFDB
554:And Thou, O Lord, who art all this made one and much more, O sovereign Master, extreme limit of our thought, who standest for us at the threshold of the Unknown, make rise from that Unthinkable some new splendour, some possibility of a loftier and more integral realisation, that Thy work may be accomplished and the universe take one step farther towards the sublime Identity, the supreme Manifestation.
And now my pen falls mute and I adore Thee in silence.*
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, 270,#NFDB
555:I think there’s a lot of threshold weeping. Like, am I doing this? Am I really wearing this out in the world? My daughter is very much like that. She will put clothes on and her clothes just make her beside herself. They make her so sad sometimes. And you do realize you feel betrayed sometimes by your own clothing. You put something on that usually protects you and makes you OK, and sometimes you’re just not fit for the world and even your best pants can’t overcome that feeling for you. ~ Heidi Julavits, #NFDB
556:In the Alco Ward a dispute had broken out over plagiarism. Incidentally, when I arrived there for the first time I did not have the slightest notion that I was crossing the threshold of a creative writing program, that I was entering a community of people of the pen, of writers who were incessantly creating their alcoholic autobiographies, recording their innermost feeling in cheap sixty-page notebooks that were called emotional journals, laboriously assembling their drunkard's confessions. ~ Jerzy Pilch, #NFDB
557:Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth. Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos. ~ Martin Rees, #NFDB
558:From here on," Kanin said, "you will have to decide what kind of demon you will be. Not all meals will come to you so easily, ignorant and seeking to do you harm. What will you do if your prey invites you inside, offers you a place at the table? What will you do if they flee, or cower down, begging you not to hurt them? How you stalk your prey is something you must come to terms with, or you will quickly drive yourself mad. And once you cross that threshold, there is no coming back from it. ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
559:From here on,” Kanin said, “you will have to decide what kind of demon you will be. Not all meals will come to you so easily, ignorant and seeking to do you harm. What will you do if your prey invites you inside, offers you a place at the table? What will you do if they f lee, or cower down, begging you not to hurt them? How you stalk your prey is something you must come to terms with, or you will quickly drive yourself mad. And once you cross that threshold, there is no coming back from it. ~ Julie Kagawa, #NFDB
560:I heard the bells from the future churches, the children playing and laughing in the schoolyards [...] and here was an almond tree in bloom before me: I must reach out and cut a flowering branch. For, by believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired, whatever we have not irrigated with our blood to such a degree that it becomes strong enough to stride across the somber threshold of nonexistence. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
561:I had a strong sense of the mystery: I'd seen Donald physically shudder at the altar as the familiar words he was chanting suddenly gripped him. I'd heard my spiritual director say his breath was still taken away every time he celebrated the Eucharist. “The Table's a threshold, a paper-thin place, luminous, where heaven and humans meet,” Jeff told me. “It could be anywhere—a room, a jail cell; I could be ego-focused or doing a shitty job remembering the prayers; but I still cross that threshold. ~ Sara Miles, #NFDB
562:West, are we quite certain that Cousin Theo perished in a fall?” he asked coolly. “It seems far more likely that he froze to death in the marital bed.”
West chuckled, not above the enjoyment of a malicious quip.
Totthill and Fogg, for their part, kept their gazes down.
Kathleen crossed the threshold and sent the door shuddering with a violent slam.
“Brother,” West said with mock chiding, “that was beneath you.”
“Nothing’s beneath me,” Devon replied, stone-faced. “You know that. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
563:Here in my heart, my happiness, my house. Here inside the lighted window is my love, my hope, my life. Peace is my companion on the pathway winding to the threshold. Inside this portal dwells new strength in the security, serenity, and radiance of those I love above life itself. Here two will build new dreams--dreams that tomorrow will come true. The world over, these are the thoughts at eventide when footsteps turn ever homeward. In the haven of the hearthside is rest and peace and comfort. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
564:It was fear. Fear that, after all the years of protecting his health, his heart, his mind, setting bedtimes and boundaries, giving warnings about strangers and looking both ways before crossing the street, it wouldn't be enough. Fear that, as he stood on the threshold of adulthood, forces beyond their control would take him down a path where they could no longer reach him. Fear that he'd be seduced by something ugly and would choose it. And that there would be nothing they could do but let him go. ~ Lisa Unger, #NFDB
565:Let me twine Mine arms about that body, where against My grained ash an hundred times hath broke And scarr'd the moon with splinters: here I clip The anvil of my sword, and do contest As hotly and as nobly with thy love As ever in ambitious strength I did Contend against thy valour. Know thou first, I loved the maid I married; never man Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here, Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart Than when I first my wedded mistress saw Bestride my threshold. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
566:Part of this is related to the vast apparatus created to administer the criminal-justice system; part is related to the new laws that mandate longer sentences and keep the prisons full of older inmates for longer periods; part is due to the rules governing release and reentry—parole policies that lower the threshold for violations and ensure recidivism; and part is the result of lasting damage done to the families and the social fabric of the communities from which most prisoners are drawn. ~ David Cay Johnston, #NFDB
567:But those right above or right below the sharp numerical threshold had virtually identical criminal histories and backgrounds. This one measly point, however, meant a very different prison experience. The result? The economists found that prisoners assigned to harsher conditions were more likely to commit additional crimes once they left. The tough prison conditions, rather than deterring them from crime, hardened them and made them more violent once they returned to the outside world. ~ Seth Stephens Davidowitz, #NFDB
568:No one leaves life anywhere, all lives seem to be portable. They are naturally so. To be practical about it and drop the metaphysics, having a life is equivalent to having business, affairs, interests. And how can anyone strip himself of all that? Very well. But then how did I do it?
I don’t know.
I’ve stood on the threshold of all the beauties, all the dangers. And the sums did not add up. The remainders did not remain, the multiplications were not multiplied, the divisions were not divided. ~ C sar Aira,#NFDB
569:The reward of commercial civilization is the ability to consume a never-ending array of products.There are limits beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without preventing their consumers from affirming themselves through the exercise of their personal freedom.When market dependence reaches a certain threshold it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is expressed with difficulty. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
570:The day of one's birth is a good day for the believer, but the day of death is the greatest day that a Christian can ever experience in this world because that is the day he goes home, the day he walks across the threshold, the day he enters the Father's house. That is the day of ultimate triumph for the Christian in this world, and yet it is a day we fear and a day that we postpone as long as we possibly can because we don't really believe that the day of our death is better than the day of our birth. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
571:If I let you, you would make me destroy myself. In order to survive you, I must first survive myself. I can sink no further, and I cannot forgive you. There's no choice but to confront you, to engage you, to erase you. I've gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. I will use my mistakes against you. There's no other choice. I'm shameless now, I'm nameless now. I'm nothing now, I'm no one now. But my soul must be iron, 'cause my fear is naked. I'm naked and fearless, and my fear is naked. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
572:We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This declaration may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere. We hope its proclamation by the General Assembly will be an event comparable to the proclamation in 1789 [of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man], the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the people of the U.S., and the adoption of comparable declarations at different times in other countries. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
573:She should pull away, even though she had begged for it with her smart mouth. She should punish him for every crime he’d perpetrated. For being too good-looking, too sexy, too everything. But the kiss was like him—just too damn good. Warm and brutal, providing answers to questions she never knew she had. He teased with his tongue along the seam of her mouth, seeking that last nudge of acceptance as if it was his God-given right.
She parted her lips, and like a predator hinged on her threshold, he took. ~ Kate Meader,#NFDB
574:99. "If I let you, you would make me destroy myself. in order to survive you, I must first survive myself.
I can sink no further, and I cannot forgive you, there's no choice but to confront you, to engage you, to erase you. I've gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. I will use my mistakes against you, there's no other choice. Im shameless now, im nameless now, im nothing now, im no one now but my soul must be iron 'cause my fear is naked
im naked and fearless and my fear is naked ~ Maynard James Keenan,#NFDB
575:I said, my phone."
I stand at the threshold and look in. The princess has her back to me, and Lor is beyond noticing anything. Ryodan and Barrons are another matter. They're too observant by far. There is also the small matter of the enormous possessiveness I feel where Barrons is concerned.
I step inside and place my palm on the interior panel.
Two males roar in unison.
"Ms. Lane, you will not close-"
"Mac, you will give me my f*ucking-"
The door hisses closed behind me. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
576:The light from the hallway spilled inside her bedroom. She’d barely stepped over the threshold when he caught her. Kenton spun her around and yanked her up in his arms. Two steps, and they were on the bed. Crashing down. Falling hard into the soft mattress.
He caged her arms over her head, holding them with one hand even as he took her mouth.
That other hand—yes!—drifted down her stomach and pushed between her legs. He’d find her wet, she knew it. One kiss, and she’d been wet for him. Creamy, hot. Ready. ~ Cynthia Eden,#NFDB
577:Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person. Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. In it God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayers is a corollary—not necessarily the most important one—from that revelation. What He does is learned from what He is. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
578:Here in my heart, my happiness, my house.
Here inside the lighted window is my love, my hope, my life.
Peace is my companion on the pathway winding to the threshold.
Inside this portal dwells new strength in the security, serenity, and radiance of those I love above life itself.
Here two will build new dreams--dreams that tomorrow will come true.
The world over, these are the thoughts at eventide when footsteps turn ever homeward.
In the haven of the hearthside is rest and peace and comfort. ~ Abraham Lincoln,#NFDB
579:He turned away, walked to the kitchen, and stopped at the threshold. The bloodstain was still there, and even if he replaced the floorboards, he would always know it had been there. He had seen her standing at that spot a thousand times, rinsing a glass, getting water for a recipe, or filling a vase of roses from their garden. Chloe had died in her own kitchen, and Mike realized all of a sudden that he could never live in this house again. He’d price the house to sell and take the first offer that came along. ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
580:His decision was preordained, and derived from a perverse quirk in his mentality. At his deepest, most essential level, Hack knew himself for an insipid mediocrity, of no intellectual distinction and no particular competence in any direction. This was an insight so shocking that Hack never allowed it past the threshold of consciousness, and he conducted himself as if the reverse were true. So, while his innermost elements winced and grimaced, Hack, outwardly easy and composed, made plans to cope with the situation. ~ Jack Vance, #NFDB
581:Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up. Dad gets drunk, Mom gets sick, Janie shows up for church with an Oakland Raiders tattoo. It's more fun than a movie. And it works: Nobody gets a damn thing done. Sometimes ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
582:Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow." Ken Mierke says. "So they're just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last." -The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold--your hard-breathing point--during your endurance runs. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
583:Yes, I lay in my grave. But if you lie in a grave long enough, you get accustomed to it and you don't want to part from it. He had given me a pill of cyanide, He and his wife and their son also carried such pills. We all lived with death, and I want you to know that one can fall in love with death. Whoever has loved death cannot love anything else any more. When the liberation came and they told me to leave, I didn't want to go. I clung to the threshold like an ox being dragged to the slaughter. ("Hanka") ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer, #NFDB
584:Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything;
yours is the last house before the far-off:
whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is huge
and like a word which grows ripe in silence.
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let it go... ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
585:Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow." Ken Mierke says. "So they're just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last."
-The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold--your hard-breathing point--during your endurance runs. ~ Christopher McDougall,#NFDB
586:Will you want an estimate of all the livestock, my lord?”
“Naturally.”
“Not my horse.” A new voice entered the conversation. All four men looked to the doorway, where Kathleen stood as straight and rigid as a blade. She stared at Devon with open loathing. “The Arabian belongs to me.”
Everyone rose to his feet except for Devon, who remained seated at the desk. “Do you ever enter a room the ordinary way?” he asked curtly, “or is it your usual habit to slink past the threshold and pop up like a jack-in-the-box? ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
587:giving me the stethoscope, was saying, Marion, you can be you. It’s okay. He invited me to a world that wasn’t secret, but it was well hidden. You needed a guide. You had to know what to look for, but also how to look. You had to exert yourself to see this world. But if you did, if you had that kind of curiosity, if you had an innate interest in the welfare of your fellow human beings, and if you went through that door, a strange thing happened: you left your petty troubles on the threshold. It could be addictive. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
588:A cold supper, were you thinking? I asked dubiously. I was not, he said firmly, I mean to light a roaring fire in the kitchen hearth, fry up a dozen eggs in butter, and eat them all, then lay ye down on the hearth rug and roger ye 'till you - is that all right? he inquired, noticing my look. 'Til I what? I asked fascinated by his description of the evening's program. 'Til ye burst into flame and take me with ye, I suppose, he said, and stooping, swooped me up into his arms and carried me across the darkened threshold. ~ Diana Gabaldon, #NFDB
589:[There] are cases where there is no dishonesty involved but where people are tricked into false results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can do to themselves in the way of being led astray by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions. These are examples of pathological science. These are things that attracted a great deal of attention. Usually hundreds of papers have been published upon them. Sometimes they have lasted for fifteen or twenty years and then they gradually die away. ~ Irving Langmuir, #NFDB
590:Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it too good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling—he shed it over me now. “Pass, Janet,” said he, making room for me to cross the stile: “go up home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend’s threshold.” All ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
591:There comes a time when the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping. At that moment, a threshold is crossed. What seemed unthinkable becomes thinkable. Slowly, the realization emerges that the choice to continue what you have been doing is the choice to live in discomfort, and the choice to stop what you have been doing is the choice to breathe deeply and freely again. Once that realization has emerged, you can either honor it or ignore it, but you cannot forget it. What has become known can not become unknown again. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
592:Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting. Sometimes you hear a distant refrain. What does it mean, you ask, who is singing? A childlike sun grows warm. A grandson and a great-grandson are born. You are led by the hand once again. The names of the rivers remain with you. How endless those rivers seem! Your fields lie fallow, The city towers are not as they were. You stand at the threshold mute. ~ Czeslaw Milosz, #NFDB
593:Both Cohen and Fierst told me that many parents at Riverdale, while pushing their children to excel, inadvertently shield them from exactly the kind of experience that can lead to character growth. As Fierst put it, “Our kids don’t put up with a lot of suffering. They don’t have a threshold for it. They’re protected against it quite a bit. And when they do get uncomfortable, we hear from their parents. We try to talk to parents about having to sort of make it okay for there to be challenge, because that’s where learning happens. ~ Paul Tough, #NFDB
594:On The Threshold
O God, my dream! I dreamed that you were dead;
Your mother hung above the couch and wept
Whereon you lay all white, and garlanded
With blooms of waxen whiteness. I had crept
Up to your chamber-door, which stood ajar,
And in the doorway watched you from afar,
Nor dared advance to kiss your lips and brow.
I had no part nor lot in you, as now;
Death had not broken between us the old bar;
Nor torn from out my heart the old, cold sense
Of your misprision and my impotence.
~ Amy Levy,#NFDB
595:The Way of Bayes is also an imprecise art, at least the way I'm holding forth upon it. These blog posts are still fumbling attempts to put into words lessons that would be better taught by experience. But at least there's underlying math, plus experimental evidence from cognitive psychology on how humans actually think. Maybe that will be enough to cross the stratospherically high threshold required for a discipline that lets you actually get it right, instead of just constraining you into interesting new mistakes. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky, #NFDB
596:Entrance"
Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything;
yours is the last house before the far-off:
whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is huge
and like a word which grows ripe in silence.
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let it go … ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
597:Ghosh, in giving me the stethoscope, was saying, Marion, you can be you. It’s okay. He invited me to a world that wasn’t secret, but it was well hidden. You needed a guide. You had to know what to look for, but also how to look. You had to exert yourself to see this world. But if you did, if you had that kind of curiosity, if you had an innate interest in the welfare of your fellow human beings, and if you went through that door, a strange thing happened: you left your petty troubles on the threshold. It could be addictive. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
598:Furious and ashamed, Kathleen turned and went to the door. She flung it open without pausing to consider the need for discretion, and ran across the threshold. The breath was nearly knocked from her as she collided with a sturdy form.
“What the--” she heard West say, while he reached out to steady her. “What is it? Can I help?”
“Yes,” she snapped, “you can throw your brother back into that river.” She strode away before he could respond.
West wandered into the master bedroom. “Back to your usual charming self, I see. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
599:The Worldwatch Institute’s 2011 State of Consumption report also found that wealth won’t help you on your way to having a satisfying life and new research shows that there’s even a cut-off point for the amount of income we need to be content. A combined study from the Universities of Warwick and Minnesota found that there was a basic threshold beyond which any extra money added nothing to levels of well-being. The figure is around 197,000 DKK a year (£22,000 or $36,000), after which we apparently get wealthier but less contented. ~ Helen Russell, #NFDB
600:Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke
And scarr'd the moon with splinters: here I clip
The anvil of my sword, and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,
I loved the maid I married; never man
Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
601:Analogously, I like to think of the critical intelligence threshold required for AI design as the threshold for universal intelligence: given enough time and resources, it can make itself able to accomplish any goal as well as any other intelligent entity. For example, if it decides that it wants better social skills, forecasting skills or AI-design skills, it can acquire them. If it decides to figure out how to build a robot factory, then it can do so. In other words, universal intelligence has the potential to develop into Life 3.0. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
602:At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
603:Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
604:Henry
We met on an airplane (economy class) and kissed most of the flight home. Over the Atlantic, we decided to fall in love. When the plane touched down at JFK, he hadn’t changed his mind. When he carried me over the threshold of my apartment, no Mrs. Wattlesbrook lurked in the shadows. While he was in the kitchen, I picked Pride and Prejudice out of my (miraculously) sill-living houseplant and tucked it into a harmless spot beside all the other DVDs, spine out and proud.
We’re going to order in tonight. ~ Shannon Hale,#NFDB
605:So far as we know, the gray-mustached working class approved these executions. So far as we know, from the blazing Komsomols right up to the Party leaders and the legendary army commanders, the entire vanguard waxed unanimous in approving these executions. Famous revolutionaries, theoreticians, and prophets, seven years before their own inglorious destruction, welcomed the roar of the crowd, not guessing then that their own time stood on the threshold, that soon their own names would be dragged down in that roar of "Scum!" "Filth! ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
606:Put him, blindfold, into a closed room anywhere in the world, and he could tell if Sybilla was with him. It had to do, perhaps, with her scent. To him, it was more: a breath from the sweetness and peace of his childhood; a sense of light; of understanding; of loving amusement; an air from the flower-filled walls of pairidza.
Nothing, even now, took from him that first moment as he stood on her threshold. Until the second moment came, and with it his years and his memory. He closed the door, and then turned calmly and looked for her. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,#NFDB
607:A phrase (it often happened when he was exhausted) kept cycling round and round, preconsicously, just under the threshold of lip and tongue movement: “Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic.” It repeated itself automatically and Stencil improved upon on it each time, placing emphasis on different words—“events seem”; “seem to be ordered”; “ominous logic”—pronouncing them differently, changing the “tone of voice” from sepulchral to jaunty: round and round and round. Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
608:Museum labels are positively not allowed to say ‘halfway between Australopithecus africanus and Homo habilis’. History-deniers seize upon this naming convention as though it were evidence of a lack of intermediates in the real world. You might as well say there is no such thing as an adolescent because every single person you look at turns out to be either a voting adult (eighteen or over) or a non-voting child (under eighteen). It’s tantamount to saying that the legal necessity for a voting age threshold proves that adolescents don’t exist. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
609:Worth Four Crores
"(i) Not crossing the threshold
of those that disrespect you
is worth a crore indeed;
(ii) Not partaking of food
in the homes of those
that do not with full heart
invite you to do so,
is worth a crore indeed;
(iii) Expending crores even
in order to cultivate
association with those
of noble lineage
is worth a crore indeed;
(iv) Not allowing your tongue
ever to swerve from Truth,
even if you are offered
crores and crores as bribe
is worth a crore indeed;
~ Avvaiyar,#NFDB
610:The assignment of meanings [in music] is a shifting, kaleidoscopic play, probably below the threshold of consciousness, certainly outside the pale of discursive thinking. The imagination that responds to music is personal and associative and logical, tinged with affect, tinged with bodily rhythm, tinged with dream, but concerned with a wealth of formulations for its wealth of wordless knowledge, its whole knowledge of emotional and organic experience, of vital impulse, balance, conflict, the ways of living and dying and feeling. ~ Susanne K Langer, #NFDB
611:It was nothing I hadn't thought of, plenty, and in far less taxing circumstances; the urge shook me grandly and unpredictably, a poisonous whisper that never wholly left me, that on some days lingered just on the threshold of my hearing but on others roared up uncontrollably into a sort of lurid visionary frenzy, why I wasn’t sure, sometimes even a bad movie or a gruesome dinner party could trigger it, short term boredom and long term pain, temporary panic and permanent desperation striking all at once and flaring up in such an ashen desolate light ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
612:So he spoke, and her knees and the heart within her went slack as she recognized the clear proofs that Odysseus had given; but then she burst into tears and ran straight to him, throwing her arms around the neck of Odysseus, and kissed his head, saying: ‘Do not be angry with me, Odysseus, since, beyond other men, 210 you have the most understanding. The gods granted us misery, in jealously over the thought that we two, always together, should enjoy our youth, and then come to the threshold of old age. Then do not now be angry with me nor blame me, because ~ Homer, #NFDB
613:Before she could take a step, he lifted her and carried her into the house. “What are you doing? I can walk, put me down.” “It’s good luck to carry the bride over the threshold of her new home,” Davis said, grinning. “Have you looked at me?” Emma patted her stomach. “I’m no bride.” “Yes, you are, darlin’, you’re my bride and this is our home.” Then he kissed her gently and set her on her feet. “But,” he added with laughter in his eyes, “you’re a mite heavier than you were when we said those vows on the wagon train.” He ducked as she swatted at him. ~ Callie Hutton, #NFDB
614:Must we always be warned, and can we only fall on our knees when some one is there to tell us that God is passing by? If you have loved profoundly you have needed no one to tell you that your soul was a thing as great in itself as the world; that the stars, the flowers, the waves of night and sea were not solitary; that it was on the threshold of appearances that everything began, but nothing ended, and that the very lips you kissed belonged to a creature who was loftier, much purer, and much more beautiful than the one whom your arms enfolded. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck, #NFDB
615:My pulse sped up as I opened our front door and stood in the hallway waiting for him. He was up the three flights of stairs in no time, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers in one hand and a bag in the other. “These are for your Mamie,” he said, leaning over to give me a quick, soft kiss on the lips. The pounding of my heart went into overdrive. Vincent lifted his eyebrows suggestively. “Are you going to ask me in, or were you testing to see if I could cross your threshold without the invitation?” Then he whispered , “I’m a revenant , not a vampire, chérie. ~ Amy Plum, #NFDB
616:When a Pueblo Indian does not feel in the right mood, he stays away from the men's council. When an ancient Roman stumbled on the threshold as he left the house, he gave up his plans for the day. This seems to us senseless, but under primitive conditions of life such an omen inclines one at least to be cautious. When I am not in full control of myself, my bodily movements may be under a certain constraint; my attention is easily distracted; I am somewhat absent-minded. As a result I knock against something, stumble, let something fall, or forget something. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
617:For all the unpleasant suggestion that it conjured, it was the one room in the inn that had vitality, and was not morne and drear. The other rooms appeared neglected or unused; even the parlor by the entrance-porch had a solitary air, as though it were many months since an honest traveler had stepped upon the threshold and warmed his back before a glowing fire. The guest-rooms upstairs were in an even worse state of repair. One was used for lumber, with boxes piled against the wall, and old horse-blankets chewed and torn by families of rats or mice. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
618:We all have habitual places where we stop—a certain threshold where something gets too intimate or too expensive or too close to success for our comfort. Crossing this threshold is exactly what we need to do to exit our comfort zones and transform our lives, which is why it’s so terrifying to us and why our subconscious minds gather all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to make sure we run away, run away! We’re usually totally oblivious to this stopping point, and have a lifetime’s worth of excellent excuses we use to back our way out of greatness, ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
619:Crossing the threshold of faith means that we work out of a sense of dignity and see service as a vocation. It means we serve selflessly and are prepared to begin over time and time again without giving in to weariness — as if all that has been done so far were only a step on the journey toward the Kingdom, the fullness of life. It is the quiet time of waiting after the daily sowing and contemplation of the harvest that has been gathered. It is giving thanks to the Lord because he is good and asking him not to forsake the work of his hands (see Ps 138:8). ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
620:she yet heard in her dreams. Though it’d been little over a week, it seemed like forever ago when she’d been trapped inside the hold of that ship, an eternity since Alex’s arms held her protected—and far too long since he’d kissed her. He said he’d come for her. But when? Oh, that it would be today. Staring at the front door, she willed a full-shouldered, tawny-headed man to cross the threshold Tap, tap. Pulling her gaze away, she picked at a thread on the hem of her sleeve, trying to push the thing back into the fabric with her nail. A futile endeavor, ~ Michelle Griep, #NFDB
621:The Ancestral Spirit speaks to us from the blood flowing through our veins, for it contains the memory of our lineage. There are other voices willing to inform us, and they whisper in the quiet times when we are receptive. We are connected to them when our spirits embrace the same things. A kindred connection forms when we emanate with the love of the plant realm, when we sense the moon's light as sacred, and when we understand Nature as self-aware. These are the stepping stones that lead from the Witches' garden to the threshold of the Otherworld. What ~ Raven Grimassi, #NFDB
622:Google’s TensorFlow, an open-source software ecosystem for building deep learning-models, offers an early version of this but still requires some AI expertise to operate. The goal of the grid approach is to both lower that expertise threshold and increase the functionality of these cloud-based AI platforms. Making use of machine learning is nowhere near as simple as plugging an electric appliance into the wall—and it may never be—but the AI giants hope to push things in that direction and then reap the rewards of generating the “power” and operating the “grid. ~ Kai Fu Lee, #NFDB
623:According to her data, “no campaigns failed once they’d achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population—and lots of them succeeded with far less than that.” Further, she notes, “Every single campaign that did surpass that 3.5 percent threshold was a nonviolent one. In fact, campaigns that relied solely on nonviolent methods were on average four times larger than the average violent campaign. And they were often much more representative in terms of gender, age, race, political party, class, and urban-rural distinctions. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
624:The Cardinal Secretary of State was a Vietnamese priest named Pierre Nguyen Van Nho, a former Vincentian missionary into the People’s Republic of China. He had been considered something of a bomb thrower with the press. After living in China under threat of harsh reprisals if caught evangelizing, his idiocy-tolerance threshold had dropped down to that of most career army personnel. He also had a degree in communications before going into the Church, so the two allowed him to tell reporters to go to Hell with all of the best in psycholinguistics he could throw. ~ Declan Finn, #NFDB
625:Each month our bodies go through a series of changes, many of which we may be unconscious of. These include: shifts in levels of hormones, vitamins and minerals, vaginal temperature and secretions, the structure of the womb lining and cervix, body weight, water retention, heart rate, breast size and texture, attention span, pain threshold... The changes are biological. Measurable. They are most definitely not ‘all in your head’ as many would have us believe. This is why it is so crucial to honour these changes by adapting our lives to them as much as possible. ~ Lucy H Pearce, #NFDB
626:No one ever inhabited the threshold more thoroughly than Kafka. On the threshold of happiness; of the beyond; of Canaan; of the door only open for us. On the threshold of escape, of transformation. Of an enormous and final understanding. No one made so much art of it. And yet if Kafka is never sinister or nihilistic, it's because to even reach the threshold requires a susceptibility to hope and vivid yearning. There is a door. There's a way up or over. It's just that one almost certainly won't manage to reach it, or recognize it, or pass through it in this life. ~ Nicole Krauss, #NFDB
627:Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness—to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
628:There is no greater moment in life than that when we discover the unique design which has shaped our lives from the moment of birth, save one:
The instant we recognize destiny, accept it and then begin to create the rest of our own lives within it using the power of free will.
When this threshold has been crossed, nothing can stop our inevitable journey into the highest good for ourselves and all around us.
This is healing.
This is actualization.
This is integration.
This is joy.
And it is the birthright of every incarnated soul on this planet. ~ Jacob Nordby,#NFDB
629:Because so many poets have chosen a political idiom right now in the US and so many poets have assigned value and inherent knowledge to their racial identity and used that as a form of argumentation, I'm thinking now's a good time to buy low for my own poems and write poems that are deeply in the interior and the psyche. There are plenty of people out there working on subjects of political poetry, partisan poetry, all the way through to crossing the threshold of propaganda. I start thinking now's a good time for me to start writing about the myths of my own psyche. ~ David Biespiel, #NFDB
630:On the threshold stood Aunt Marge. She was very like Uncle Vernon; large, beefy and purple-faced, she even had a moustache, though not as bushy as his. In one hand she held an enormous suitcase, and tucked under the other was an old and evil-tempered bulldog. ‘Where’s my Dudders?’ roared Aunt Marge. ‘Where’s my neffy poo?’ Dudley came waddling down the hall, his blond hair plastered flat to his fat head, a bow-tie just visible under his many chins. Aunt Marge thrust the suitcase into Harry’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him, seized Dudley in a tight one-armed hug ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
631:The Procrustean bed. . .suggests itself with dispiriting aptness as a metaphor for the Culture Wars, right down to the blandishments with which Procrustes must have lured his guests over the threshold. (I picture him as a handsome fellow with a large vocabulary and an oleaginous tongue, not unlike the chairmen of many English departments.) There's just one crucial difference. Sometimes Procrustes lopped off his victims, and sometimes he stretched them, but the Culture Wars always lop. I have never seen cultural politics enlarge a work of literature, only diminish it. ~ Anne Fadiman, #NFDB
632:There was another thing I heartily disbelieved in - work. Work, it seemed to me even at the threshold of life, is an activity reserved for the dullard. It is the very opposite of creation, which is play… The part of me which was given up to work, which enabled my wife and child to live in the manner which they unthinkingly demanded, this part of me which kept the wheel turning - a completely fatuous, ego-centric notion! - was the least part of me. I gave nothing to the world in fulfilling the function of breadwinner; the world exacted its tribute of me, that was all. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
633:If you blink, you might miss it. You might miss the wet floor at the threshold, symbolically cleansing you before the meal begins. You might overlook the flower arrangement in the corner, a spare expression of the passing season. You might miss the scroll on the wall drawn with a single unbroken line, signaling the infinite continuity of nature. You might not detect the gentle current of young ginger rippling through the dashi, the extra sheet of Hokkaido kelp in the soup, the mochi that is made to look like a cherry blossom at midnight.
You might miss the water. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
634:Stranger still is how the very core issues we avoid return, sometimes with different faces, but still, we are brought full circle to them, again and again. Regardless of how we may try to skip over or sidestep what we need to face, we humbly discover that no other threshold is possible until we use our courage to open the door before us. Perhaps the oldest working truth of self-discovery is that the only way out is through. That we are returned repeatedly to the same circumstance is not always a sign of avoidance, but can mean our work around a certain issue is not done. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
635:Now that little problem of yours, this business of not knowing good men from bad men and villains from heroes and so forth...There's still plenty for you to do. And you'll do it. And when you fall in love and have a mistress or a wife and children to look after, it will all seem easier." He opened the door but stopped on the threshold. "Surround yourself with human beings, my dear. They are easier to fight for than principles." He laughed. "But don't let me down and become human yourself. We would lose such a wonderful machine." With a wave of his hand he shut the door. ~ Ian Fleming, #NFDB
636:nodded. With most people, almost everyone, there’s some level at which enough is enough. The level varies from one person to another, but there is a level. You didn’t have to spend long in Rust’s company to realise that he had no threshold. He would escalate any situation with startling rapidity to the point where he could count it as a victory, which meant the other party had to lose. His wasn’t a personality built to last. At least, not in a society with laws and police to enforce them. But he would make quite a mess before he was finished. I was pretty sure of that! ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
637:stood for a while and looked about him, but when he had looked long enough he crossed the threshold and went within the precincts of the house. There he found all the chief people among the Phaeacians making their drink offerings to Mercury, which they always did the last thing before going away for the night. 61 He went straight through the court, still hidden by the cloak of darkness in which Minerva had enveloped him, till he reached Arete and King Alcinous; then he laid his hands upon the knees of the queen, and at that moment the miraculous darkness fell away from him and ~ Homer, #NFDB
638:On the fifth night of this solitude, she falls asleep with a candle burning and dreams herself a mermaid with a thick and golden tail, a crown of shimmering conch shells, then awakens with a start. Whether the ship hit something or something hit the ship, another change has come. The ship is dying; she can feel it slipping away. She waits beneath the blanket for icy water to greet her. But instead of the sea, it's a bear that opens the door.
A great white bear up on its hind legs steps across the threshold.
'Good morning,' he says, and reaches out a paw. ~ Danielle Dutton,#NFDB
639:I can’t think about failure. If I do, I’ll be doomed from the start.”
“You’re already doomed. You’ll preen and posture as lord of the manor while the roof caves in and the tenants starve, and I’m damned if I’ll have any part of your narcissistic folly.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Davon retorted, heading for the door. “Since you’re usually as drunk as a boiled owl, you’re of no use to me.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” West called after him.
Pausing at the threshold, Devon gave him a cold glance. “I’m the Earl of Trenear,” he said, and left the room. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
640:When a person begins to recognize the sickness in their soul, when the Holy Spirit—the Grace of God—acts within them and moves their heart toward an initial recognition of their own sins, he needs to find an open door, not a closed one. He needs to find acceptance, not judgment, prejudice, or condemnation. He needs to be helped, not pushed away or cast out. Sometimes, when Christians think like scholars of the law, their hearts extinguish that which the Holy Spirit lights up in the heart of a sinner when he stands at the threshold, when he starts to feel nostalgia for God. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
641:He has crossed the threshold of self-consciousness to a new mode of thought, and as a result has achieved some degree of conscious integration—integration of the self with the outer world of men and nature, integration of the separate elements of the self with each other. He is a person, an organism which has transcended individuality in personality. This attainment of personality was an essential element in man’s past and present evolutionary success: accordingly its fuller achievement must be an essential aim for his evolutionary future. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB
642:Careful observation will confirm that virtually all spontaneous parapsychological events occur through some form of sleight of mind. It is invariably something hovering just below the threshold of awareness that initiated an unusual event or gave one a curious half sensed feeling that something was about to happen just before it did. The magician seeks to exploid this effect deliberately, but in doing so he must avoid doing it deliberately as it were. Conscious lust of result destroys magical effect, so trickery must be employed to annul it and to activate the subconscious. ~ Peter J Carroll, #NFDB
643:Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.
Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.
The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute. ~ Czes aw Mi osz,#NFDB
644:Old Age
The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
~ Edmund Waller,#NFDB
645:The advances of science and technology will bring us to the greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham: how much to retrofit the human genotype. Shall it be a lot, a little bit, or none at all? The choice will be forced on us because our species has begun to cross what is the most important yet still least examined threshold in the technoscientific era. We are about to abandon natural selection, the process that created us, in order to direct our own evolution by volitional selection—the process of redesigning our biology and human nature as we wish them to be. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
646:The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
647:Writing is often a perilous journey. Low self-esteem or confusion about goals may be the Shadows that chill our work, an editor or one’s own judgemental side may be the Threshold Guardians that block our way. Accidents, computer problems, and difficulties with time and discipline may torment us and taunt like Tricksters. Unrealistic dreams of success or distractions may be the Shapeshifters who tempt, confuse, and dazzle us. Deadlines, editorial decisions, or the struggle to sell our work may be the Tests and Ordeals from which we seem to die but are Resurrected to write again. ~ Christopher Vogler, #NFDB
648:You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last.
The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold--your hard-breathing point--during your endurance runs. Respecting that speed limit was a lot easier before the birth of cushioned shoes and paved roads; diet, and those tumors may never appear in the first place. Eat like a poor person, as Coach Joe Vigil likes to say, and you'll only see your doctor on the golf course. ~ Christopher McDougall,#NFDB
649:Is this what is called remorse of conscience or repentance? I do not know, and I cannot tell to this day. Perhaps this remembrance even now contains something pleasurable for my passions. No--what is unbearable to me is only this image alone, and precisely on the threshold, with its raised and threatening little fist, only that look alone, only that minute alone, only that shaking head. This is what I cannot bear, because since then it appears to me almost every day. It does not appear on its own, but I myself evoke it, and cannot help evoking it, even though I cannot live with it. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
650:APOLLO
WHICH of the fairest three
To-day will ride with me?
My steeds are all pawing at the threshold of the morn:
Which of the fairest three
To-day will ride with me
Across the gold Autumn's whole Kingdom of corn?
THE GRACES all answer
I will, I - I - I
young Apollo let me fly
Along with thee,
I will- I, I, I,
The many wonders see
I - I - I - I
And thy lyre shall never have a slackened string:
I, I, I, I,
Thro' the golden day will sing.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Apollo And The Graces
,#NFDB
651:At nightfall I return home and enter my study. There on the threshold I remove my dirty, mud-spattered clothes, slip on my regal and courtly robes, and thus fittingly attired, I enter the ancient courts of bygone men where, having received a friendly welcome, I feed on the food that is mine alone and that I was born for. I am not ashamed to speak with them and inquire into the reasons for their actions; and they answer me in kindly fashion. And so for four hours I feel no annoyance; I forget all troubles; poverty hold no fears, and death loses its terrors. I become entirely one of them. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
652:She rose and washed and dressed herself and braided her hair freshly, and having made her room neat for the day she went into the peach-tree garden. It lay in the silence of the spring morning. Under the early sun the dew still hung in a bright mist on the grass, and the pool in the center of the garden was brimming its stone walls. The water was clear and the fish were flashing their golden sides near the surface. The great low-built house that surrounded the garden was still in sleep. Birds twittered in the eaves undisturbed and a small Pekingese dog slept on the threshold like a small lioness. ~ Pearl S Buck, #NFDB
653:And as the train whistled its imminent departure, a small girl wearing neat plaits and someone else's shoes climbed its iron stairs. Smoke filled the platform, people waved and hollered, a stray dog ran barking through the crowds. Nobody noticed as the little girl stepped over the shadowed threshold; not even Aunt Ada, who some might've expected to be sheperherding her orphaned niece towards her uncertain future. And so, when the essence of light and life that had been Vivien Longmeyer contracted itself for safekeeping and disappeared deep inside her, the world kept moving and nobody saw it happen. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
654:the invention of deep learning means that we are moving from the age of expertise to the age of data. Training successful deep-learning algorithms requires computing power, technical talent, and lots of data. But of those three, it is the volume of data that will be the most important going forward. That’s because once technical talent reaches a certain threshold, it begins to show diminishing returns. Beyond that point, data makes all the difference. Algorithms tuned by an average engineer can outperform those built by the world’s leading experts if the average engineer has access to far more data. ~ Kai Fu Lee, #NFDB
655:This Proto-Indo-European term ghosti (from which we get the words guest, host and ghost) referred to a kind of unspoken etiquette, a notion that on seeing strangers on the horizon, rather than choose to fell them with spears or sling-shots, instead we should take the risk of welcoming them across our threshold – on the chance that they might bring new notions, new goods, fresh blood with them.
Over time this word-idea evolved into the Greek xenia – ritualised guest–host friendship, an understanding that stitched together the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. ~ Bettany Hughes,#NFDB
656:But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.
***
Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.
***
...perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! ~ Joseph Conrad,#NFDB
657:When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
658:Forget
Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.
Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.
The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute.
~ Czeslaw Milosz,#NFDB
659:When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty clothes of everyday, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
660:My sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she knew them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but with them, she rarely exchanged a word.
(On her sister, Emily) ~ Charlotte Bront,#NFDB
661:I need the place where everything is hidden, Harry begged of it inside his head, and the door materialized on their third run past.
The furor of the battle died the moment they crossed the threshold and closed the door behind them: All was silent. They were in a place the size of a cathedral with the appearance of a city, its towering walls built of objects hidden by thousands of long-gone students.
“And he never realized anyone could get in?” said Ron, his voice echoing in the silence.
“He thought he was the only one,” said Harry. “Too bad for him I’ve had to hide stuff in my time… ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
662:Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of Man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness -to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook: -
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forgo his mortal nature. ~ John Keats,#NFDB
663:The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth. On ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
664:As time passed, stories of Nicholas the gift giver spread. German lore, for example, says that when St. Klaus (Nicholas) became a priest, family members in the woolen trade presented him with a fine red woolen cape. Sometime later, a period of famine struck Lycia, and many poor people suffered from scurvy for lack of fruit. Nicholas had his red cape and other woolen material cut into pieces to make stockings. He filled the stockings with dried fruit treats and delivered them to needy children to help stem the scurvy. For families who had no firewood, he left charcoal, bundled with string, at the threshold. ~ William J Bennett, #NFDB
665:Evidently, evildoing also has a threshold magnitude. Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme danger or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
666:In 1868, the Georgia legislature voted to expel all its Negro members-two senators, twenty-five representatives-and Turner spoke to the Georgia House of Representatives (a black woman graduate student at Atlanta University later brought his speech to light):
Mr. Speaker. . . I wish the members of this House to understand the position that I take. I hold that I am a member of this body. Therefore, sir, I shall neither fawn or cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg them for my rights. . . I am here to demand my rights, and to hurl thunderbolts at the men who would dare to cross the threshold of my manhood. ~ Howard Zinn,#NFDB
667:At a certain point the farthest galaxies that had seen me (or had seen the I SAW YOU sign from a galaxy closer to us, or the I SAW THE I SAW YOU from a bit farther on) would reach the ten-billion-light-year threshold, beyond which they would move off at three hundred thousand kilometers per second, the speed of light, and no image would be able to overtake them after that. So there was the risk that they would remain with their temporary mistaken opinion of me, which from that moment on would become definitive, no longer rectifiable, beyond all appeal and therefore, in a sense, correct, corresponding to the truth. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
668:She had somehow given over the thinking to him, and in his absences her every action seemed automatically governed by what he would like, so that now she felt inadequate to match her intentions against his. Yet think she must; she knew at last the number on the dreadful door of fantasy, the threshold to the escape that was no escape; she knew that for her greatest sin now and in the future was to delude herself. It had been a long lesson but she had learned it. Either you think—or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
669:there are also two kinds of error. The first is when a doctor diagnoses a tumor that isn’t actually there. This is sometimes called a Type One error: an error of commission. The second kind is when a doctor fails to diagnose a tumor that is there. This is called a Type Two error: an error of omission. It is possible to reduce one kind of error while simultaneously increasing the other kind by altering the “evidence threshold,” as in the criminal justice system. But this trade-off should not obscure the fact that it is possible to reduce both kinds of error at the same time. That is what progress is ultimately about. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
670:We can no longer pretend that the organized, state-sponsored killing that is war is compatible with the kingdom of Christ. Jesus did not come to help us win our wars—no matter what Constantine thought. Jesus came to lead us out of the dark and demonic world of war into the light of his peaceable kingdom. Did it require seventeen centuries for us to learn this lesson? I don’t know. I do know that on August 6, 1945, the world crossed a threshold. Human capacity for killing is now totalized. We can kill the whole world if we want to. Will we continue to believe the lie that we have to kill the world in order to save it? ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
671:the sequester would cost the economy 750,000 jobs a year and hurt millions of Americans who were reliant on public services. Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit rating for the first time in the country’s history. The stock market plummeted, falling 635 points on the spot. The public, meanwhile, was so disgusted with Congress that polls registered the lowest approval rating in the history of such measurements. Obama’s popularity also took a hit, dropping below the all-important 50 percent threshold for the first time. He was derided and belittled by both the Left and the Right. Internal polls called him “weak. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
672:Till they arrived no other lives had been lived here. It made the air that much thinner, harder to breathe. She had not understood, till she came to a place where it was lacking, the extent to which her sense of the world had to do with the presence of those who had been there before, leaving signs of their passing and spaces still warm with their breath - a threshold worn with the coming and going of feet, hedges between fields that went back a thousand years, and the names even further; most of all, the names on headstones, which were their names, under which lay the bones that had made their bones and given them breath. ~ David Malouf, #NFDB
673:When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
674:This Desirable Mansion
THE long white windows blankly stare
Across the sodden, tangled grass,
Weed-covered are the pathways where
No footsteps ever pass;
No whispers wake, no kisses die,
No laughter thrills the dwindling flowers,
Only the night hears sigh on sigh
From ghosts of long-dead hours.
None come here now to laugh or weep;
The spider spins on stair and hall,
And round the windows shadows creep,
And loathly creatures crawl.
Cold is the hearth; the door is fast;
No guest the silent threshold sees
Save ghosts out of the happy past,-And one who is as these.
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
675:Her Mother's obituary... her last physical link to the woman who helped for the soul of who she was to become, who she remains, who she will always be. She has read the obituary so many times that it looks as if the piece of paper has been through the wash a dozen times. She wonders if she will ever stop reading it. She holds it, as she held her Mother, finally held her Mother once she crossed over the threshold of adulthood herself, & realized the power of a Mother's love for a child. The sacrifices her Mother made that she never appreciated, & that great gift of patience that can only be learned by becoming a mother. ~ Kris Radish, #NFDB
676:The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
677:When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing, and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them, and to ask them to explain their actions. And they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty, or frightened of death. I live entirely through them. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
678:Loving him wasn’t a surprise. What was, however, was the realization that ultimately, that was all that mattered between us. I’d been trying to figure out what it was that was holding me back from sex. It wasn’t Jill. It wasn’t some physical threshold I was afraid to cross. There was nothing, nothing except an anxiety my love had banished to the winds. And standing there, in that improbable location, the full force of how much I wanted him nearly knocked me over. A desire that was as much spiritual as physical burned through me, and I suddenly felt as though there was no way I could go a moment longer without having all of him. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
679:Manufacturers are not allowed to enforce retail prices for their products. But they can decide which retailers to sell to, and one way they wield that power is by setting price floors with a tool called MAP, or minimum advertised price. MAP requires offline retailers like Walmart to stay above a certain price threshold in their circulars and newspaper ads. Online retailers have a higher burden. Their product pages are considered advertisements, so they have to set their promoted prices at or above MAP or else face the manufacturer’s wrath and risk the firm’s limiting the number of products allocated or withdrawing them altogether. ~ Brad Stone, #NFDB
680:In Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, Cruel Fellowship
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
"The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
"And all the phantom, Nature, stands-With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,-A hollow form with empty hands."
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
681:I lost my chance with you then, and maybe I deserved to, for being too scared to speak up and tell you how I felt. Maybe I deserved to watch you fall in love with my brother instead of me. But maybe it just wasn’t our time then. Maybe it’s our time now.”
Her eyes opened slowly. They were wet with tears.
“Tell me you feel nothing for me, and I’ll go. Tell me you could never be happy with me. Tell me I could never be what you want.”
“I can’t.” Her voice quavered.
She hadn’t invited me in, but that didn’t stop me from crossing the threshold and taking her face in my hands. “Then let me love you, the way I’ve always wanted to. ~ Melanie Harlow,#NFDB
682:Vi
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore-Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,#NFDB
683:You asked me to outline three things that I hope to achieve during my training which is to begin in 3 months. I had time to reflect upon them on the way home, a bit. Here goes: 1. Above all, I want to learn how best to serve you. I want to learn your needs and your wants and make sure they’re fulfilled at all times. I don’t ever want there to be any voids in your life that I could have filled had I been more in tune with what you were seeking from me. 2. I want to push the envelope of my pain threshold. I want to build with you in such a way that I trust you to help me dig deeper into my craving for it and how I am able to manage it. ~ Feminista Jones, #NFDB
684:If you forced me to give you a step-by-step method for creativity, I’d point you to the one defined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.23 You probably won’t like it, but that’s what happens when you force people to give you things. He defines it in five steps: 1. Preparation: Study a subject, identify ideas, become immersed in the topic or subject that aroused your curiosity. 2. Incubation: Ideas churn around below the threshold of consciousness. 3. Insight: Your subconscious mind makes connections. 4. Evaluation: Decide which, if any, of the insights are worth pursuing. 5. Elaboration: Develop the ideas into the final work. ~ Scott Berkun, #NFDB
685:Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts but brothers, not rivals by fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence. Yet that is what I see, or yearn to see. The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged but in the creature judging, and when we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
686:Sonnet Vi
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore-Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,#NFDB
687:Still, hypocrisy — the practice of professing an ideal while consciously violating it — is rarely an adequate explanation for social ideologies. The blatant contradiction between flowery word painting about domestic goddess and the obstructions women faced every day is, rather, a clue to besetting problems below the threshold of awareness. The notion of female power radiating out from the hearth to the world, of recessive, modest mothers and wives determining the careers of men, was an obscure recognition of a fact in male lives. It exhibited, in distorted, almost unrecognizable form, men’s buried dependence on women, beginning with their mothers. ~ Peter Gay, #NFDB
688:I’ll do whatever you say, Cassie,” he says helplessly. His eyes shine brighter than the stars overhead. “I understand why you have to go. If it were you inside that camp, I would go. A hundred thousand Silencers couldn’t stop me.”
He presses his lips against my ear and whispers low and fierce, as if he’s sharing the most important secret in the world, which maybe he is.
“It’s hopeless. And it’s stupid. It’s suicidal. But love is a weapon they have no answer for. They know how you think, but they can’t know what you feel.”
Not we. They.
A threshold has been crossed, and he isn’t stupid. He knows it’s the kind you can’t cross back over. ~ Rick Yancey,#NFDB
689:Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.
I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.
And the wind says “What?” to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel. ~ Charles Wright,#NFDB
690:Clare is silent. Her pragmatism and her romantic feelings about Jesus and Mary are, at thirteen, almost equally balanced. A year ago she would have said God without hesitation. In ten years she will vote for determinism, and ten years after that Clare will believe that the universe is arbitrary, that if God exists he does not hear our prayers, that cause and effect are inescapable and brutal, but meaningless. And after that? I don't know. But right now Clare sits on the threshold of adolescence with her faith in one hand and her growing skepticism in the other, and all she can do is try to juggle them, or squeeze them together until they fuse. ~ Audrey Niffenegger, #NFDB
691:How had he acquired such confidence? His birth had given him privileges, of course, and so had his sex. But there was more to it than that. Eyes were always on him. The newspapers dissected his smallest shenanigan. Yet he bore such attentions as though they hardly concerned him. She could not imagine him hesitating on the threshold of a room for fear he’d be judged and found wanting. If someone tried to cut him, he would only laugh. To live a life of such bold assurance, never caring what others thought . . . why, it must be another species of living, entirely. No uncertainty. Invulnerable to jibes and slanders. What could one not do, when so free ~ Meredith Duran, #NFDB
692:In Memoriam A. H. H. Obiit Mdcccxxxiii: 3. O Sorrow,
Cruel
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
"The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
"And all the phantom, Nature, stands-With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,-A hollow form with empty hands."
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
693:Sonnet Vi: Go From Me
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforth in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore-Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,#NFDB
694:The combat profiling threshold is called the Combat Rule of Three: When you observe three anomalies or indicators, you must make a decision. Do not wait for more information. Three indicators are enough information with which to act. Does this mean that you must have three anomalies to make a decision? No. In some situations, one anomaly or indicator is sufficient. For instance, following the usual rules of engagement, if an individual exhibits a hostile act or hostile intent, one indicator is enough. Someone presenting a weapon in a hostile way toward a Marine on patrol or cop on the street is all it takes to engage that individual with deadly force. ~ Patrick Van Horne, #NFDB
695:Der Spiegel quotes former Guantánamo inmate Ruhal Ahmed on the general incredulousness among the public when confronted with the idea of music as torture. Considering the tunes involved, it’s not clear why the concept is so difficult to grasp. According to Ahmed, this sort of psychological punishment is in fact worse than physical torture: [W]hen I was beaten, I could use my imagination to forget the pain. But the music makes you completely disoriented. It takes over your brain. You lose control and start to hallucinate. You’re pushed to a threshold, and you realize that insanity is lurking on the other side. And once you cross that line, there’s no going back. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
696:Modern thought is at last getting used once more to the idea of the creative value of synthesis in evolution. It is beginning to see that there is definitely more in the molecule than in the atom, more in the cell than in the molecule, more in society than in the individual, and more in mathematical construction than in calculations and theorems. We are now inclined to admit that at each further degree of combination something which is irreducible to isolated elements emerges in a new order. And with this admission, consciousness, life and thought are on the threshold of acquiring a right to existence in terms of science. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB
697:Yes, now my mind is easy, I know the game is won, I lost them all till now, but it's the last that counts. A very fine achievement I must say, or rather would, if I did not fear to contradict myself. Fear to contradict myself! If this continues it is myself I shall lose and the thousand ways that lead there. And I shall resemble the wretches famed in fable, crushed beneath the weight of their wish come true. And I even feel a strange desire come over me, the desire to know what I am doing, and why. So I near the goal I set myself in my young days and which prevented me from living. And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another. Very pretty. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
698:Marxism must be eliminated root and branch. . . What matters above all is our defence policy, as one thing's certain: that our last battles will have to be fought by force. The [Nazi Party] organization was not created by me to bear arms, but for the moral education of the individual; this I achieve by combatting Marxism. . . National Socialism will not emulate Fascism: in Italy a militia had to be created as they were on the very threshold of a Bolshevik menace. My organization will solely confine itself to the ideological education of the masses, in order to satisfy the army's domestic and foreign policy needs. I am committed to the introduction of conscription ~ David Irving, #NFDB
699:Sonnets From The Portuguese Iii
GO from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore-Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,#NFDB
700:Bluebeard
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed... Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see... Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,#NFDB
701:More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world--a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward. . . . .
Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.
And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good. ~ Barack Obama,#NFDB
702:These three “pointers”—in the world around us, in the world within us, and in our inter-personal relationships—can serve together as a way of approach, bringing us to the threshold of faith in God. None of these “pointers” constitutes a logical proof. But what is the alternative? Are we to say that the apparent order in the universe is mere coincidence; that conscience is simply the result of social conditioning; and that, when life on this planet finally becomes extinct, all that humankind has experienced and all our potentialities will be as though they had never existed? Such an answer seems to me not only unsatisfying and inhuman, but also extremely unreasonable. ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
703:Right. I look fine. Except I don't,' said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
704:Not For That City
Not for that city of the level sun,
Its golden streets and glittering gates ablaze—
The shadeless, sleepless city of white days,
White nights, or nights and days that are as one—
We weary, when all is said , all thought, all done.
We strain our eyes beyond this dusk to see
What, from the threshold of eternity
We shall step into. No, I think we shun
The splendour of that everlasting glare,
The clamour of that never-ending song.
And if for anything we greatly long,
It is for some remote and quiet stair
Which winds to silence and a space for sleep
Too sound for waking and for dreams too deep.
~ Charlotte Mary Mew,#NFDB
705:Stop this. You're amusing yourself at my expense, as usual. You are a dissipated scoundrel, an unprincipled cad, and-"
"Don't forget 'lecherous libertine,'" he said. "That's one of my favorites."
"Get out!"
He pushed away lazily from the dressing table. "All right. I'll go. Obviously you fear that if I stay, you won't be able to control your desire for me."
"The only desire I have for you," she said, "involves maiming and dismemberment."
Leo grinned and went to the door. Pausing at the threshold, he glanced over his shoulder. "Your spectacles are fogging again," he said helpfully, and slipped through the door before she could find something to throw. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
706:Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt and his mouth tasted evil and his eyes were too tight in his head and all his teeth twinged and his stomach burned and his back was aching in a way that started around his knees and went up to his forehead and his brains had been removed and replaced with cotton balls and needles and pins which was why it hurt to try and think, and his eyes were not just too tight in his head but they must have rolled out in the night and been reattached with roofing nails; and now he noticed that anything louder than the gentle Brownian motion of air molecules drifting softly past each other was above his pain threshold. Also, he wished he were dead. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
707:Sonnet 06: Bluebeard
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed.... Here is no treasure hid
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress
But only what you see.... Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,#NFDB
708:In Altdorfer's painting, infinitude acquires a special pathos and beauty through its religious associations, but in principle, as Nietzsche knew, all claims to copy nature must lead to the demand of representing the infinite. The amount of information reaching us from the visible world is incalculably large, and the artist's medium is inevitably restricted and granular. Even the most meticulous realist can accommodate only a limited number of marks on his panel, and though he may try to smooth out the transition between his dabs of paint beyond the threshold of visibility, in the end he will always have to rely on suggestion when it comes to representing the infinitely small. ~ E H Gombrich, #NFDB
709:The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form-all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Ultimate Boon, #NFDB
710:There is a mathematical underpinning that you must first acquire, mastery of each mathematical subdiscipline leading you to the threshold of the next. In turn you must learn arithmetic, Euclidian geometry, high school algebra, differential and integral calculus, ordinary and partial differential equations, vector calculus, certain special functions of mathematical physics, matrix algebra, and group theory. For most physics students, this might occupy them from, say, third grade to early graduate school—roughly 15 years. Such a course of study does not actually involve learning any quantum mechanics, but merely establishing the mathematical framework required to approach it deeply. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
711:When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
712:A cripple, on the threshold of manhood, returning from the wars with a broken body, with no thought of telling of brave deeds done, but only eager to tell his father that with his own eyes he had seen the man who years ago he had not had the opportunity of seeing, a man whose only claim to remembrance was that he had fired one accurate shot.
A typical son of Garhwal, of that simple and hardy hill-folk; and of that greater India, whose sons only those few who live among them are privileged to know. It is these big-hearted sons of the soil, no matter what their caste or creed, who will one day weld the contending factions into a composite whole, and make of India a great nation. ~ Jim Corbett,#NFDB
713:It was strange, he said, but standing there on the sidewalk with the great grey chasms of Toronto's streets extending away to every side of him and the leash dangling from his hand, he had felt for the first time that he was at home: the feeling of having unwittingly caused an irreversible change, of his failure being the force that broke new ground, was, he realized standing there, the deepest and most familiar thing he knew. By failing he created loss, and loss was the threshold to freedom: an awkward and uncomfortable threshold, but the only one he had ever been able to cross; usually, he said, because he was shoved across it as a consequence of the events that had brought him there. ~ Rachel Cusk, #NFDB
714:Sonnet Vi: This Door You Might Not Open
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed.... Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see.... Look yet again-An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,#NFDB
715:On the last day of her visit I drove your grandmother to the airport. Your mother was her only child, as you are my only child, and having watched you grow I know that nothing could possibly be more precious to her. She said to me, "You take care of my daughter."
When she got out of the car my world had shifted. I felt that I had crossed some threshold out of the foyer of my life and into the living room. Everything that was the past seemed to be another life. There was before you and then there was after and in this after you were the god I'd never had. I submitted before your needs and I knew then that I must survive for something more than survival's sake. I must survive for you. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates,#NFDB
716:A Triad
Three sang of love together: one with lips
Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow,
Flushed to the yellow hair and finger-tips;
And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow
Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show;
And one was blue with famine after love,
Who like a harpstring snapped rang harsh and low
The burden of what those were singing of.
One shamed herself in love; one temperately
Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife;
One famished died for love. Thus two of three
Took death for love and won him after strife;
One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee:
All on the threshold, yet all short of life.
~ Christina Georgina Rossetti,#NFDB
717:It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!” said Father Wolf. “It is time to hunt again.” He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: “Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
718:What triggered these hallucinations? I suggest it was even the slight stress of making a decision in a novel circumstance, whereas in ourselves in modern times the stress threshold for such triggering of a verbal hallucination is much higher. The reason they are so prevalent in all cultures today, in the hospital patients and homeless I have talked about, in children and speechless quadriplegics, is because they were once the genetic basis of this ancient mentality, and the genes for this potentiality are with us today. Verbal hallucinations, we think, evolved along with the evolution of language during the late Pleistocene10 as the response part of the brain register of all admonitory information. ~ Marcel Kuijsten, #NFDB
719:In answer to the question, "How shall we overcome temptation," a noted writer said, "Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is the second, and cheerfulness is the third." A habit of cheerfulness, enabling one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is a fortune to a young man or young woman just crossing the threshold of active life. He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright, happy side of things, who sees the glory in the grass, the sunshine in the flowers, sermons in stones, and good in everything, has a great advantage over the chronic dyspeptic, who sees no good in anything. His habitual thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his manner with grace. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
720:Contrary to Stimson’s highly influential but totally misleading account in Harper’s in February 1947, “The Decision to Use the Atom Bomb”—written for Stimson by McGeorge Bundy177 while he was in the Society of Fellows, and a successful propaganda counter to the impact of John Hersey’s New Yorker report “Hiroshima” in August 1946—there was no moral agonizing at all among Truman’s civilian or military advisors about the prospect of using the atom bomb on a city.† That moral threshold had been crossed long before. There was, in reality, no debate or even discussion whatever in official circles as to whether the bomb would or should be used, if it were ready in time before the war ended for other reasons. ~ Daniel Ellsberg, #NFDB
721:Sonnet 06 - Go From Me. Yet I Feel That I Shall Stand
VI
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,#NFDB
722:We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It was the last time you were going to have Lake Tung Ting shrimp in that kinda shady Chinese restaurant and you had no idea. If you had known, perhaps you would have stepped behind the counter and shaken everyone's hand, pulled out the disposable camera and issued posing instructions. But you had no idea. There are unheralded tipping points, a certain number of times that we will unlock the front door of an apartment. At some point you were closer to the last time than you were to the first time, and you didn't even know it. You didn't know that each time you passed the threshold you were saying goodbye. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
723:Fragment I
I round the threshold wandering here,
Vainly the tempest and the rain invoke,
That they may keep my lady prisoner.
And yet the wind was howling in the woods,
The roving thunder bellowing in the clouds,
Before the dawn had risen in the sky.
O ye dear clouds! O heaven! O earth! O trees!
My lady goes! Have mercy, if on earth
Unhappy lovers ever mercy find!
Awake, ye whirlwinds! storm-charged clouds, awake,
O'erwhelm me with your floods, until the sun
To other lands brings back the light of day!
Heaven opens; the wind falls; the grass, the leaves
Are motionless, around; the dazzling sun
In my tear-laden eyes remorseless shines.
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
724:Love Encompasses All
Love encompasses all
The eternal end of our closeness
Metaphor of our being,
Your beauty beacons,
Inevitable inflictions,
How sweetly befall,
Love encompasses all.
With the break of dawn,
Dewdrops shine on rose petals,
A moth hovers around around the tree branch,
The flower, moth, turbulent oceans
Serenity, rise and fall,
Love encompasses all.
For the dreams we shared?
For the plans we carved?
But the waves do not stop,
On the threshold of time
In the dance of dust,
Colours fade away fast,
Impressions do not last
Clouds vanish on horizon,
Shrinking distances enthrall,
Love encompasses all.
~ Amjad Islam Amjad,#NFDB
725:Another Love
OF her I thought who now is gone so far:
And, the thought passing over, to fall thence
Was like a fall from spirit into sense
Or from the heaven of heavens to sun and star.
None other than Love's self ordained the bar
'Twixt her and me; so that if, going hence,
I met her, it could only seem a dense
Film of the brain,—just nought, as phantoms are.
Now when I passed your threshold and came in,
And glanced where you were sitting, and did see
Your tresses in these braids and your hands thus,—
I knew that other figure, grieved and thin,
That seemed there, yea that was there, could not be,
Though like God's wrath it stood dividing us.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
726:The kitchen door opened and the entire Weasley family, plus Hermione, came inside, all looking very happy, with Mr Weasley walking proudly in their midst dressed in a pair of striped pyjamas covered by a mackintosh.
"Cured!" he announced brightly to the kitchen at large. "Completely cured!"
He and all the other Weasleys froze on the threshold, gazing at the scene in front of them, which was also suspended in mid-action, both Sirius and Snape looking towards the door with their wands pointing into each other's faces and Harry immobile between them, a hand stretched out to each, trying to force them apart.
"Merlin's beard," said Mr Weasley, the smile sliding off his face, "what's going on here? ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
727:Xli Through Death To Love
Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,-Like multiform circumfluence manifold
Of night's flood-tide,--like terrors that agree
Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,-Even such, within some glass dimm'd by our breath,
Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.
Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
Tell me, my heart,--what angel-greeted door
Or threshold of wing-winnow'd threshing-floor
Hath guest fire-fledg'd as thine, whose lord is Love?
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
728:The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero. The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness. As in the stories of the cannibal ogresses, the fearfulness of this loss of personal individuation can be the whole burden of the transcendental experience for unqualified souls. But the hero-soul goes boldly in-and discovers the hags converted into goddesses and the dragons into the watchdogs of the gods. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, #NFDB
729:Still, I'm not convinced that you were right, Dai--that it's such a bad thing, a useless enterprise to reel and reel out my memory at night. Some part of me, the human part of me, is kept alive by this, I think. Like water flushing a wound, to prevent it from closing. I am a lucky one, like Chiyo says. I made a terrible mistake. In Gifu, in my raggedy clothes, I had an unreckonable power. I didn't know it at the time. But when I return to the stairwell now, I can feel them webbing around me: my choices, their infinite variety, spiraling out of my hands, my invisible thread. Regret is a pilgrimage back to the place where I was free to choose. It's become my sanctuary here in Nowhere Mill. A threshold where I still exist. ~ Karen Russell, #NFDB
730:Will there be anything else, sir?” the maid asked. “Yes. I want you to accompany this lady to her suite. And come back to inform me when she is safely returned.” “Yes, Mr. Rutledge.” Mr. Rutledge? Poppy felt her heart stop. She looked back at the stranger. Deviltry glittered in his green eyes. He seemed to relish her open astonishment. Harry Rutledge . . . the mysterious and reclusive owner of the hotel. Who was nothing at all as she had imagined him to be. Bewildered and mortified, Poppy turned from him. She crossed the threshold and heard the door close, the latch clicking smoothly shut. How wicked he was, to have amused himself at her expense! She consoled herself with the knowledge that she would never see him again. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
731:And her master rose up in the morning, and when he opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, behold, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, “Get up, let us be going.” But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey, and the man rose up and went away to his home. And when he entered his house, he took a knife, and taking hold of his concubine he divided her, limb by limb, into twelve pieces, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. And all who saw it said, “Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
732:There were pools of light among the stacks, directly beneath the bulbs which Philip had switched on, but it was now with an unexpected fearfulness that he saw how the books stretched away into the darkness. They seemed to expand as soon as they reached the shadows, creating some dark world where there was no beginning and no end, no story, no meaning. And if you crossed the threshold into that world, you would be surrounded by words; you would crush them beneath your feet, you would knock against them with your head and arms, but if you tried to grasp them they would melt away. Philip did not dare turn his back upon these books. Not yet. It was almost, he thought, as if they had been speaking to each other while he slept. ~ Peter Ackroyd, #NFDB
733:I was not aware of the moment
when I first crossed the threshold of this life.
What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery
like a bud in the forest at midnight!
When in the morning I looked upon the light
I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world,
that the inscrutable without name and form
had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother.
Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me.
And because I love this life,
I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out
when from the right breast the mother takes it away,
in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, Threshold
,#NFDB
734:He slowed down when the house was in sight, despite the cries of his parents, despite the terror in their voices. This was the time of day he felt most alive. He watched the sun dip in the sky, eclipsed by the turning of the world beneath him. Shadows began to lengthen. He waited until the last minute, and then ran to his house as fast as he could, the exhilarating tingle of fear sweeping over him, making his heart pound and his hands shake. Air tasted better in those few seconds, his body alive with sensation. No sight was more beautiful than the reds and oranges of dusk, no sound more exciting than his parents' warnings. He tumbled over the threshold, careful not to disturb the wards, and turned to watch the corelings rise. ~ Peter V Brett, #NFDB
735:Sonnet Xli : Through Death To Love
Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,—
Like multiform circumfluence manifold
Of night's flood-tide,—like terrors that agree
Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,—
Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath,
Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.
Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor
Hath guest fire-fledged as thine, whose lord is Love?
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
736:Alea Jacta
Dearest, I know thee wise and good,
Beloved by all the best;
With fancy like Ithuriel's spear,
A judgment proof 'gainst rage or fear,
Heart firm through many a stormy year,
And conscience calm in rest.
Why should I let my wayward feet
Cross the fair threshold of thy life?
My hopes and cares of little worth
Drag down thy heavenlier part to earth,
And, like strange discord marring mirth,
Fill thy sweet soul with strife?
But though such fears will cloud my brain,
Nay, though stern Time their truth should prove,
Yet none the less I bid thee take
My life into thine own, forsake
Thy high heart, bid it beat and break,
Like mine, but, like mine, love!
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB
737:The House Of Life: 41. Through Death To Love
Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,-Like multiform circumfluence manifold
Of night's flood-tide,--like terrors that agree
Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,-Even such, within some glass dimm'd by our breath,
Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.
Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
Tell me, my heart,--what angel-greeted door
Or threshold of wing-winnow'd threshing-floor
Hath guest fire-fledg'd as thine, whose lord is Love?
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
738:I watched Aaron collapse on the daybed, weeping into his palms. “But I don’t want to say goodbye.” “It’s the hardest thing for anyone to do,” she acknowledged. “Either in life or death, it doesn’t matter. Saying goodbye is the most difficult, yet most common unfinished business bestowed upon us ghosts. But, Rupert, once you cross through your door’s threshold, you’ll understand that there is no such thing as a ‘goodbye’. Though a powerful word, it is only just that: a word. I believe it was J.M. Barrie who had said it himself: ‘Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.’ You and Aaron, even though you are parting ways now, it’s not really a goodbye, but merely a, ‘I’ll see you soon’.” I ~ Jonathan L Ferrara, #NFDB
739:The most terrifying burden of the creature is to be isolated, which is what happens in individuation: one separates himself out of the herd. This move exposes the person to the sense of being completely crushed and annihilated because he sticks out so much, has to carry so much in himself. These are the risks when the person begins to fashion consciously and critically his own framework of heroic self-reference. Here is precisely the definition of the artist type, or the creative type generally. We have crossed a threshold into a new type of response to man’s situation. No one has written about this type of human response more penetratingly than Rank; and of all his books, Art and Artist is the most secure monument to his genius. I ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
740:Dedication To The Edition Of 1876 To H.J.A.
Three graces still attend me, since the day
Your step across my graceless threshold came:
Reverence, and Gratitude, and Love, their name.
Reverence, whose gaze fears from the ground to stray,
And bows its head, and sues to you to lay
Your foot thereon, and keep my base self down:
Next, Gratitude, that, bolder, by degrees
Creeps up the folds of wedlock's rescuing gown,
To make a circling fondness round your knees;
And lastly, Love, which from that low perch sees
Chaste lips, and tender eyes, and tresses brown,
And, darting upward, finds a home with these.
So stand we level in that high embrace,
And I have all your glory on my face.
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB
741:When he awakened from sleep, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it.... This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16–17). In the Celtic world that gateway is present everywhere. In every place is the immediacy of heaven. In every moment we can glimpse the Light that was in the beginning and from which all things have come. As Oliver says, “The threshold is always near.”3 We can step over this threshold and back again in the fleeting span of a second. In a single step we can find ourselves momentarily in that other world, the world of eternal Light, which is woven inseparably through this world—the world of matter that is forever unfolding like a river in flow. ~ John Philip Newell, #NFDB
742:While Dr. Weeks attended to Devon’s injuries, Kathleen went to visit West.
Even before she reached the open door of his room, she heard noise and laughter drifting into the hallway. She stood at the threshold, watching with a touch of fond resignation as she saw West sitting up in bed, regaling a group that included a half-dozen servants, Pandora, Cassandra, both dogs, and Hamlet. Helen stood beside a lamp, reading the temperature of a glass thermometer.
Thankfully West no longer appeared to be shivering, and his color had improved.
“…then I glimpsed a man wading back out into the river,” he was saying, “toward a half-submerged railway carriage with people trapped inside. And I said to myself, ‘That man is a hero. Also an idiot. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
743:Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild. (241) ~ Michael Pollan, #NFDB
744:The de-spiritualization of asceticisms is probably the event in the current intellectual history of mankind that is the most comprehensive and, because of its large scale, the hardest to perceive, yet at once the most palpable and atmospherically powerful. Its counterpart is the informalization of spirituality - accompanied by its commercialization in the corresponding subcultures. The threshold values for these two tendencies provide the intellectual landmarks for the twentieth century: the first tendency is represented by sport, which has become a metaphor for achievement as such, and the second by popular music, that devotio postmoderna which covers the lives of contemporary individuals with unpredictable flashes of inner emergency. ~ Peter Sloterdijk, #NFDB
745:But you knew my mother. She was your neighbor—” “This is an official Clave investigation.” Jace cut her off. “I can always come back with the Silent Brothers.” “Oh, for the—” Dorothea glanced at her door, then at Jace and Clary. “I suppose you might as well come in,” she said, finally. “I’ll tell you what I can.” She started toward the door, then halted on the threshold, glaring. “But if you tell anyone I helped you, Shadowhunter, you’ll wake up tomorrow with snakes for hair and an extra pair of arms.” “That might be nice, an extra pair of arms,” Jace said. “Handy in a fight.” “Not if they’re growing out of your . . .” Dorothea paused and smiled at him, not without malice. “Neck.” “Yikes,” said Jace mildly. “Yikes is right, Jace Wayland. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
746:FAT CHARLIE WAS THIRSTY. Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt. Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt and his mouth tasted evil and his eyes were too tight in his head and all his teeth twinged and his stomach burned and his back was aching in a way that started around his knees and went up to his forehead and his brains had been removed and replaced with cotton balls and needles and pins which was why it hurt to try and think, and his eyes were not just too tight in his head but they must have rolled out in the night and been reattached with roofing nails; and now he noticed that anything louder than the gentle Brownian motion of air molecules drifting softly past each other was above his pain threshold. Also, he wished he were dead. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
747:Oh, who has grasped hold of my soul this night? He found himself unhitching the sword, heard himself saying, "I don’t know if you have a weapon, Acquitor," and knew his own disbelief at the absurdity of his own words, the shallowness of his reasoning, "so I will give you mine ..." And he was holding the sheathed sword out to her.
At the threshold of her home.
Fear turned, studied him, but Trull could not look away from her, not even to see what must be realization dawning in his face.
Letherii though she was, Seren Pedac clearly understood, her gaze becoming confused, then clearing. "Just that, I take it. A weapon ... for me to use."
No. "Yes ... Acquitor. A weapon ..."
She accepted it, but the gesture was without meaning now. ~ Steven Erikson,#NFDB
748:The Door
A prophet half brought down.
from the cross
a dangling martyr.
since one hinge broke
the heavy medievel door
flangs on one hinge alone.
one corner drags in dust on the road.
the other knocks
against the high threshold.
like a memory that nly gets sharper.
with the passage of time,
the grain stands out on the wood.
as graphic in detail
as a flayed man of muscles hwo could not find
his way back into the anatomy book.
as is leaning against
any old doorway to sober up
like teh local drunk
helll with the hinge and damn the jab
the door would have walked out
long long ago
if it weren`t for
that pairs of shorts
left to dry upon its shoulders.
~ Arun Kolatkar,#NFDB
749:In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help.
You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom. ~ Tara Brach,#NFDB
750:A Hall
The road led straight to the temple.
Notre Dame, though not Gothic at all.
The huge doors were closed. I chose one on the side,
Not to the main building-to its left wing,
The one in green copper, worn into gaps below.
I pushed. Then it was revealed:
An astonishing large hall, in warm light.
Great statues of sitting women-goddesses,
In draped robes, marked it with a rhythm.
Color embraced me like the interior of a purple-brown flower
Of unheard-of size. I walked, liberated
From worries, pangs of conscience, and fears.
I knew I was there as one day I would be.
I woke up serene, thinking that this dream
Answers my question, often asked:
How is it when one passes the last threshold?
~ Czeslaw Milosz,#NFDB
751:Just as she began to consider the idea of venturing to the front threshold, Rohan and Frost emerged from the house with the emptied canisters and were immediately approached by Captain Swansea. Amelia hurried forward with a cry of gladness, fully intending to stop once she reached them. Which was why it was a surprise when her legs insisted on carrying her forward. Rohan dropped the canister and caught her tightly. “Easy, hummingbird.” She had lost his coat and her shawl somewhere amid the impetuous dash. The cold night air pierced the thin layer of her gown, causing her to shiver hard. He gripped her more closely, easing her into the pungent fragrance of smoke and sweat. His heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, his hand tracing warm circles on her back. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
752:A city uninhabited is different. Different from what a "normal" observer, straggling in the dark - the occasional dark - would see. It is a universal sin among the false-animate or unimaginative to refuse to let well enough alone. Their compulsion to gather together, their pathological fear of loneliness extends on past the threshold of sleep; so that when they turn the corner, as we all must, as we all have done and do - some more than others - to find ourselves on the street... You know the street I mean, child. The street of the 20th Century, at whose far end or turning - we hope - is some sense of home or safety. But no guarantees. A street we are put at the wrong end of, for reasons best known to the agents who put us there. But a street we must walk. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
753:Then the ice on the black pathways through the park fixed an unreflecting gaze upward month after month, the cold unwavering through what should have been spring, so that even in April, in the Bowery in New York City, the braziers still glowed on street corners, and a man trying to warm his hands could watch the firelight picked up and carried in the windows above his head and imagine the glow traveling all the way along the avenues, square by square above the streets, all the way uptown and into the warm apartments of those who, pausing on the threshold to turn off the light, left their rooms and descended in woolens and furs, grumbling about the cold—good god, when will it end?—until it turned without fanfare one morning in May, and spring let loose at last. ~ Sarah Blake, #NFDB
754:Doorkeepers He was not merely of the salt of the earth, but of the leaven of the kingdom, contributing more to the true life of the world than many a thousand far more widely known and honoured. Such as this man are the chief springs of thought, feeling, inquiry, action, in their neighbourhood; they radiate help and breathe comfort; they reprove, they counsel, they sympathize; in a word, they are doorkeepers of the house of God. Constantly upon its threshold, and every moment pushing the door to peep in, they let out radiance enough to keep the hearts of men believing in the light. They make an atmosphere about them in which spiritual things can thrive, and out of their school often come men who do greater things, better they cannot do, than they. Malcolm, ch. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
755:I don't believe that humans can be reduced to homo economicus, but as a group, government officials are remarkably sensitive to financial, political, and reputational costs. Thus, when new technologies appear to reduce the costs of using lethal force, their threshold for deciding to use lethal force correspondingly drops.
If killing a suspected terrorist in Yemen or Somalia or Libya will endanger expensive manned aircraft, the lives of U.S. troops, and/or the lives of many innocent civilians, officials will reserve such killings for situations of extreme urgency and gravity (stopping another 9/11, getting Osama bin Laden). But if all that appears to be at risk is a an easily replaceable drone, officials will be tempted to use lethal force more and more casually. ~ Rosa Brooks,#NFDB
756:was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world." It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of India ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
757:It had played out when, for reasons I don’t understand, I was unable to climb through the mirror and send out my sixteen-year-old self in my place. Until that moment she had always been there. No matter how much I appeared to have changed—how illustrious my education, how altered my appearance—I was still her. At best I was two people, a fractured mind. She was inside, and emerged whenever I crossed the threshold of my father’s house. That night I called on her and she didn’t answer. She left me. She stayed in the mirror. The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
758:Panic Is Good Creative panic is good. Here’s why: Our greatest fear is fear of success. When we are succeeding—that is, when we have begun to overcome our self-doubt and self-sabotage, when we are advancing in our craft and evolving to a higher level—that’s when panic strikes. It did for me when my book crashed, and it was the best thing that happened to me all year. When we experience panic, it means that we’re about to cross a threshold. We’re poised on the doorstep of a higher plane. Have you ever watched a small child take a few bold steps away from its mother? The little boy or girl shows great courage. She ventures forth, feels exhilaration, and then … she realizes what she has done. She freaks. She bolts back to Mommy. That’s you and me when we’re growing. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
759:Let’s face it: life is pretty overwhelming for most people, even those who don’t have ADHD. If, like most people with ADHD, you’re notoriously poor at self-observation, you may not notice when stress is creeping up on you and you’re on the threshold of feeling overwhelmed. Learning to recognize this before the feeling of being overwhelmed sabotages you requires ongoing vigilance and being proactive. The first step is to notice the signs. Tune in to how you’re feeling physically: Does being overwhelmed show up as a nauseous feeling in your stomach? Maybe you feel dizzy or anxious. You might have a headache or tend to sweat. Observe your mental state: Are you worrying? Confused? Anxious? What thoughts do you have before you’re enveloped by the feeling of being overwhelmed? ~ Zoe Kessler, #NFDB
760:Glutamate signaling works in a fancier way that is essential to learning.2 To simplify considerably, while dendritic spines typically contain only one type of receptor, those responsive to glutamate contain two. The first (the “non-NMDA”) works in a conventional way—for every little smidgen of glutamate binding to these receptors, a smidgen of sodium flows in, causing a smidgen of excitation. The second (the “NMDA”) works in a nonlinear, threshold manner. It is usually unresponsive to glutamate. It’s not until the non-NMDA has been stimulated over and over by a long train of glutamate release, allowing enough sodium to flow in, that this activates the NMDA receptor. It suddenly responds to all that glutamate, opening its channels, allowing an explosion of excitation. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
761:One morning indeed, I felt a sudden misgiving that she not only had left the house but had gone for good: I had just heard the sound of a door which seemed to me to be that of her room. On tiptoe I crept towards the room, opened the door, stood upon the threshold. In the dim light the bedclothes bulged in a semi-circle, that must be Albertine who, with her body bent, was sleeping with her feet and face to the wall. Only, overflowing the bed, the hair upon that head, abundant and dark, made me realise that it was she, that she had not opened her door, had not stirred, and I felt that this motionless and living semi-circle, in which a whole human life was contained and which was the only thing to which I attached any value, I felt that it was there, in my despotic possession. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
762:There’s nothing wrong with focusing on your dreams instead—both Alli and I did that before we met Jamie and Nick. But the truth is, the main reason was because we’d been hurt and wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again.” She parked the teddy bear in Meg’s lap. “And fear is never the right motivation, Megs, so, yes, focus on your dreams. But you’re a beautiful girl on the threshold of womanhood, so don’t be surprised if God throws a monkey wrench in your plans.” “As long as the ‘wrench’ has nothing to do with a ‘monkey’ named Devin Caldwell,” Alli said with a scrunch of her nose. Meg grinned. “No, Al, monkeys are cute,” she said with a tilt of her head, employing a trace of French spunk along with the sass. She gave her sister a wink. “Our Mr. Caldwell is more of a baboon. ~ Julie Lessman, #NFDB
763:Osama bin Laden wanted to coax just the right response out of the United States by creating a situation in which the United States could not ignore him. His goal was to cross a threshold that Americans would deem intolerable (something bin Laden had failed to do with his previous attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa or the USS Cole in Yemen), causing a massive attack to be launched on the Islamic world that used the most advanced and sophisticated methods available. Bin Laden was confident that if the U.S. plunged into the Islamic world, he would get the uprising he wanted. He had studied the Afghan war against the Soviets carefully. He felt he knew how to survive the initial American attack and, over time, defeat the Americans. But first, he needed the Americans to attack. ~ George Friedman, #NFDB
764:There was a feeling of inevitability when I met you. The sense that we would be together; that there would be a moment when you would look at me in a certain way, and we could cross the threshold from friendship into something so much more.
We spoke once about lovers who kept finding each other, no matter how many times the world came between them. And I think I had to break your heart, and you had to break mine. How else could we know the worth of what we were given?
I think you were always meant to know me a little better than anyone else. And our lives were fated to converge like some cosmic dance. I know there is terrible distance between us. But our bodies are made of celestial light, and we are hurtling through space and time, toward the most beautiful collision. ~ Lang Leav,#NFDB
765:One evening while at prayer, wrapped in those threads, I saw my entire life flash before me. This was not like my pretty dream; it was actually rather ugly. I saw my life as vitiated by pride, by the inordinate desire to be liked, loved, approved, applauded, and accepted . . . My motives were peeled away to reveal complete self-centred yuck.
. . . Brother Dominique Voillaume saw my exit from the chapel and asked me what happened. So I told him, told him everything, about my disgust with my own motives and my thoughts of walking away from it all. In that moment he said a powerful thing, a life-changing thing: "You are on the threshold of receiving the greatest grace of your life. You are discovering what it means to be poor in spirit. Brother Brennan, it's okay not to be okay. ~ Brennan Manning,#NFDB
766:A brawl was in progress near the threshold of the tavern, a writhing mixture of arms, legs, flying hats, and bottles and canes. Anytime there was a fight, the greatest likelihood was that her brother had started it.
“Merripen,” she said anxiously, “you know how Leo is when he’s foxed. He’s probably in the middle of the fray. If you would be so kind—”
Before she had even finished, Merripen made to leave the carriage.
“Wait,” Rohan said. “You’d better let me handle it.”
Merripen gave him a cold glance. “You doubt my ability to fight?”
“This is a London rookery. I’m used to the kind of tricks they employ. If you—” Rohan broke off as Merripen ignored him and left the carriage with a surly grunt. “So be it,” Rohan said, exiting the carriage and standing beside it to watch. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
767:Perhaps suspense has been one of the most trying features of my case. Just as I have unclasped my hand from my dear Ernest's; just as I have let go my almost frantic hold of my darling children; just as heaven opened before me and I fancied my weariness over and my wanderings done; just then almost every alarming sympathy would disappear and life recall me from the threshold of heaven itself. Thus I have been emptied from vessel to vessel, till I have learned that he only is truly happy who has no longer a choice of his own and lies passive in God's hand.
Even now, no one can foretell the issue of this sickness. We live a day at a time, not knowing what shall be on the morrow. But whether I live or die, my happiness is secure, and so, I believe, is that of my beloved ones. ~ Elizabeth Payson Prentiss,#NFDB
768:Against Whatever It Is That's Encroaching"
Best of all is to be idle,
And especially on a Thursday,
And to sip wine while studying the light:
The way it ages, yellows, turns ashen
And then hesitates forever
On the threshold of the night
That could be bringing the first frost.
It's good to have a woman around just then,
And two is even better.
Let them whisper to each other
And eye you with a smirk.
Let them roll up their sleeves and unbutton their
shirts a bit.
As this fine old twilight deserves,
And the small schoolboy
Who has come home to a room almost dark
And now watches wide-eyed
The grownups raise their glasses to him,
The giddy-headed, red-haired woman
With eyes tightly shut,
As if she were about to cry or sing. ~ Charles Simic,#NFDB
769:Someone told me I'd find a princess of great worth here. One with the strength to be the hero this realm needs."
He stared at me with those unsettling blue eyes. They were cold, like ice water - made me shiver from head to toe. Then his gaze seemed to search even deeper. Finally, he looked through me, like I was nothing. In brisk steps, he strode across the marble to the courtyard. But before crossing the threshold, he turned back to glare at me with his lip curled ever so slightly. "It seems she was mistaken."...
I felt my own lip curl in response. How rude! Who the Grimm was this peasant to judge me? I was wearing a Glenda original. Original! Not some fairy-godmother knockoff worn by those servant girls turned royal. I was a crown princess, for the love of fairy, and no one dismissed me. ~ Betsy Schow,#NFDB
770:The Soul Of April
OVER the wintry threshold
Who comes with joy to-day,
So frail, yet so enduring,
To triumph o'er dismay?
Ah, quick her tears are springing,
And quickly they are dried,
For sorrow walks before her,
But gladness walks beside.
She comes with gusts of laughter,—
The music as of rills;
With tenderness-and sweetness, —
The wisdom of the hills.
Her hands are strong to comfort,
Her heart is quick to heed.
She knows the signs of sadness,
She knows the voice of need.
There is no living creature,
However poor or small,
But she will know its trouble,
And hasten to its call.
Oh, well they fare forever,
By mighty dreams possessed,
Whose hearts have lain a moment
On that eternal breast.
~ Bliss William Carman,#NFDB
771:Over The Wintry Threshold
Over the wintry threshold
Who comes with joy today,
So frail, yet so enduring,
To triumph o'er dismay?
Ah, quick her tears are springing,
And quickly they are dried,
For sorrow walks before her,
But gladness walks beside.
She comes with gusts of laughter, The music as it rills;
With tenderness and sweetness,
The wisdom of the hills.
Her hands are strong to comfort,
Her heart is quick to heed;
She knows the signs of sadness,
She knows the voice of need;
There is no living creature,
However poor or small,
But she will know its trouble,
And hearken to its call.
Oh, well they fare forever,
By mighty dreams possessed,
Whose hearts have lain a moment
On that eternal breast.
~ Bliss William Carman,#NFDB
772:Scalable Social Network Analysis. The SSNA would monitor telephone calls, conference calls, and ATM withdrawals, but it also sought to develop a far more invasive surveillance technology, one that could “capture human activities in surveillance environments.” The Activity Recognition and Monitoring program, or ARM, was modeled after England’s CCTV camera. Surveillance cameras would be set up across the nation, and through the ARM program, they would capture images of people as they went about their daily lives, then save these images to massive data storage banks for computers to examine. Using state-of-the-art facial recognition software, ARM would seek to identify who was behaving outside the computer’s pre-programmed threshold for “ordinary.” The parameters for “ordinary” remain classified. ~ Annie Jacobsen, #NFDB
773:If close local control and supervision of operations is essential to success the small firm may have an edge. In some industries, particularly services like nightclubs and eating places, an intense amount of close, personal supervision seems to be required. Absentee management works less effectively in such businesses, as a general rule, than an owner-manager who maintains close control over a relatively small operation.1 Smaller firms are often more efficient where personal service is the key to the business. The quality of personal service and the customer’s perception that individualized, responsive service is being provided often seem to decline with the size of the firm once a threshold is reached. This factor seems to lead to fragmentation in such industries as beauty care and consulting. ~ Michael E Porter, #NFDB
774:Heather squinted as Emma passed ahead of them into sunlight. She followed carefully over the threshold and into a vision of green, gold, and white. The persistent mist hung about the edges of a green hillside, lit with glittering sunlight. There was a surprisingly wide, mostly flat area, but this soon gave way to the ever-tilting hillside. Around the rim of the village green, the hillside slanted up into stony outcroppings, ending in the mountain peaks that showed about the ring of Cloud Mountain. It looked like a broken bowl, with the green being the bowl’s inside bottom. Heather saw row upon row of vegetables of every kind—cabbage and corn, potatoes and turnips. Her mouth watered, and she felt a little lightheaded. After the confining corridors of stone, it was unsettling to be out in the open like this. ~ S D Smith, #NFDB
775:It is, in fact, much like a coastline, and like a coastline its exact orientation in space and time ebbs and flows. At the moment the threshold is crossed, at the moment when self-organization occurs, the new living system enters a state of dynamic equilibrium. From that point on, the self-organized system retains an elegant sensitivity to that threshold point; it exists just on the balanced side of that threshold and so constantly monitors any incoming energy flows that touch it, for each incoming energy flow causes the system to move slightly too close to the line again—a process that can cause it to lose organization entirely if allowed to go too far. As that occurs, the system analyzes the nature of the flow it has encountered and crafts a response to it which will restore the balance point. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner, #NFDB
776:Lay Back The Darkness
My father in the night shuffling from room to room
on an obscure mission through the hallway.
Help me, spirits, to penetrate his dream
and ease his restless passage.
Lay back the darkness for a salesman
who could charm everything but the shadows,
an immigrant who stands on the threshold
of a vast night
without his walker or his cane
and cannot remember what he meant to say,
though his right arm is raised, as if in prophecy,
while his left shakes uselessly in warning.
My father in the night shuffling from room to room
is no longer a father or a husband or a son,
but a boy standing on the edge of a forest
listening to the distant cry of wolves,
to wild dogs,
to primitive wingbeats shuddering in the treetops.
~ Edward Hirsch,#NFDB
777:Make love to me. Make me forget every moment of my life before you."
"Oh, God." Ross released her with a savage groan and left the bed as if it were a torture rack. "I want you more than I can bear. Don't make this even more difficult."
Sophia knew that she should help him in his resolve, but she couldn't seem to keep herself from saying recklessly, "Come lie with me. We won't sleep together, if that is what you want. Just hold me for a while."
He growled in frustration and headed to the door. "You know what would happen if we tried that. In about five minutes I would have you on your back with your heels in the air."
The crude image caused her stomach to tighten deliciously. "Ross-"
"Lock the door behind me," he muttered, opening the door and crossing the threshold, without a backward glance. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
778:saw my sweetheart wandering about the house; he had taken a rebec and was playing a melody.
With a plectrum like fire he was playing a sweet melody, drunken and dissolute and charming from the Magian wine.
He was invoking the saqi in the air of Iraq2 ; the wine was his object, the saqi was his excuse.
The moonfaced saqi pitcher in his hand, entered from a corner and set it in the middle.
He filled the first cup with that flaming wine; did you ever see water sending out flames?
He set it on his hand for the sake of the lovers, then prostrated and kissed the threshold.
My sweetheart seized it from him and quaffed the wine; flames from that wine went running over his face.
He was beholding his own beauty, and saying to the evil eye, "Never has there been, nor shall there come in this age, another like me. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
779:The Electric Slide Boogie
New Year's Day 1:16 AM
and my body is weary beyond
time to withdraw and rest
ample room allowed me in everyone's head
but community calls
right over the threshold
drums beating through the walls
children playing their truck dramas
under the collapsible coatrack
in the narrow hallway outside my room
The TV lounge next door is wide open
it is midnight in Idaho
and the throb easy subtle spin
of the electric slide boogie
step-stepping
around the corner of the parlor
past the sweet clink
of dining room glasses
and the edged aroma of slightly overdone
dutch-apple pie
all laced together
with the rich dark laughter
of Gloria
and her higher-octave sisters
How hard it is to sleep
in the middle of life.
~ Audre Lorde,#NFDB
780:The rate of taxation to supposedly “fund” Social Security has been increasing over time. Currently workers pay 6.2 percent of their first $117,000 of earnings in Social Security taxes and their employers pay an additional 6.2 percent. The self-employed pay the full 12.4 percent themselves.6 When the program started in the 1930s, however, the tax rate was only 1 percent of income on a much lower income threshold and did not reach 3 percent until 1960.7 In fact, the amount of money subject to the Social Security payroll tax has grown significantly over time. From the 1930s until 1950, workers paid tax on the first $3,000 of their income. That cap did not reach $10,000 until the 1970s. Presently, workers pay FICA taxes on the first $117,000 of their income, and that amount will continue to rise with increases in the average wage. ~ Mark R Levin, #NFDB
781:When I look up at Heaven,
I see the souls of those who died
Beaming down at me,
Wanting to scream: “I'm still alive!”,
Wishing to scribble across the sapphire sky -
Letters to their loved ones,
But a million dark oceans stand between us,
Between those who passed and the living,
Between those of us still stuck below,
And those who have crossed over the threshold of time -
Where what seems like eternity to us,
Is really only a few minutes to them.
So you see, there is no reason to weep over the shining ones -
For even though the space that separates us is limitless,
The wall of time that divides us is only paper-thin.
And one day, we shall all reunite with them,
When our souls are released like fish
Back into the vast shimmering sea
To shine together like
Glittering diamonds. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
782:She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together, like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she’d opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. There’d seemed no limit to what the printed circuit could have told her (if she had tried to find out); so in her first minute of San Narciso, a revelation also trembled just past the threshold of her understanding. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
783:Pandora, who had left the parlor a few minutes earlier, rushed to the threshold and announced dramatically, “Mr. Winterborne can see!”
Helen drew in a quick breath, her heart clattering. “How do you know, dear?” she asked calmly.
“I overheard him reading letters from an eye chart.”
Kathleen gave Pandora a chiding glance. “I asked you not to listen at the door, Pandora.”
“I didn’t.” Pandora held up an empty glass. “I went into the adjoining room and put this against the wall. When you bring your ear close enough, you can make out what they’re saying.”
“I want to try!” Cassandra exclaimed.
“You will do no such thing,” Kathleen told her, motioning for Pandora to come into the parlor and sit. “Mr. Winterborne is entitled to his privacy. We’ll learn soon enough if his vision is intact.”
“It is,” Pandora said smugly. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
784:Before he could explain further, however, Rhys happened to catch sight of a slim, dark shape walking past the doorway. It was only a fleeting glimpse…but it was enough to send a jolt of awareness through him.
“You,” he said in a voice that carried out into the hallway. “Whoever just passed by the door. Come here.”
In the riveting silence, a young woman appeared at the threshold. Her features were delicately angular, her silver-blue eyes round and wide-set. As she stood at the edge of the lamplight, her fair skin and pale blond hair seemed to hold their own radiance, an effect he’d seen in paintings of Old Testament angels.
“There’s a grain about it,” Rhys’s father had always said when he’d wanted to describe something fine and polished and perfect, something of the highest quality. Oh, there was a grain about this woman. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
785:SAPPHIRE AND DIAMONDS
When I look up at Heaven,
I see the souls of those who died
Beaming down at me,
Wanting to scream: “I'm still alive!”,
Wishing to scribble across the sapphire sky -
Letters to their loved ones,
But a million dark oceans stand between us,
Between those who passed and the living,
Between those of us still stuck below,
And those who have crossed over the threshold of time -
Where what seems like eternity
Is really only a few minutes.
So you see, there is no reason to weep over the shining ones -
For even though the space that separates us is limitless,
The wall of time that divides us is only paper-thin.
And one day, we shall all reunite with them,
When our souls are released like fish
Back into the vast shimmering sea
To shine together like
Glittering diamonds. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
786:Girls, be good to these spirits of music and poetry
that breast your threshold with their scented gifts.
Lift the lyre, clear and sweet, they leave with you.
As for me, this body is now so arthritic
I cannot play, hardly even hold the instrument.
Can you believe my white hair was once black?
And oh, the soul grows heavy with the body.
Complaining knee-joints creak at every move.
To think I danced as delicate as a deer!
Some gloomy poems came from these thoughts:
useless: we are all born to lose life,
and what is worse, girls, to lose youth.
The legend of the goddess of the dawn
I’m sure you know: how rosy Eos
madly in love with gorgeous young Tithonus
swept him like booty to her hiding-place
but then forgot he would grow old and grey
while she in despair pursued her immortal way. ~ Sappho,#NFDB
787:I SLEPT,--'twas midnight,--in my bosom woke,
As though 'twere day, my love-o'erflowing heart;
To me it seemed like night, when day first broke;
What is't to me, whate'er it may impart?
She was away; the world's unceasing strife
For her alone I suffer'd through the heat
Of sultry day; oh, what refreshing life
At cooling eve!--my guerdon was complete.
The sun now set, and wand'ring hand in hand,
His last and blissful look we greeted then;
While spake our eyes, as they each other scann'd:
"From the far east, let's trust, he'll come again!"
At midnight!--the bright stars, in vision blest,
Guide to the threshold where she slumbers calm:
Oh be it mine, there too at length to rest,--
Yet howsoe'er this prove, life's full of charm!
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Bridegroom
,#NFDB
788:No matter how daring or cautious you may choose to be, in the course of your life you are bound to come into direct physical contact with what’s known as Evil. I mean here not a property of the gothic novel but, to say the least, a palpable social reality that you in no way can control. No amount of good nature or cunning calculations will prevent this encounter. In fact, the more calculating, the more cautious you are, the greater is the likelihood of this rendezvous, the harder its impact. Such is the structure of life that what we regard as Evil is capable of a fairly ubiquitous presence if only because it tends to appear in the guise of good. You never see it crossing your threshold announcing itself: “Hi, I’m Evil!” That, of course, indicates its secondary nature, but the comfort one may derive from this observation gets dulled by its frequency. ~ Joseph Brodsky, #NFDB
789:When she hit the threshold to the portego, she pulled up, bracing her arms against the door frame to keep from spilling into the big open room.
Luca sat on a divan facing the Last Supper mosaic. Two unfamiliar men in mud-caked boots sat opposite him. Red woolen doublets peeked out from underneath tarnished breastplates. Silver broadswords dangled from their waists. They all stopped speaking when she appeared in the doorway. The two men immediately averted their eyes.
Luca reddened. “Cassandra,” he said haltingly, as if it were a struggle to merely form the three syllables of her name.
Cass realized she was standing in the portego in only her nightdress, having left Siena’s cloak in the kitchen. “Molte scuse,” she said, and darted for her room. Much as she was curious about the men, she had no desire to stand there being gawked at. ~ Fiona Paul,#NFDB
790:Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world." It was the jackal—Tabaqui, the Dish-licker—and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
791:But the real drama had already played out in the bathroom. It had played out when, for reasons I don’t understand, I was unable to climb through the mirror and send out my sixteen-year-old self in my place. Until that moment she had always been there. No matter how much I appeared to have changed—how illustrious my education, how altered my appearance—I was still her. At best I was two people, a fractured mind. She was inside, and emerged whenever I crossed the threshold of my father’s house. That night I called on her and she didn’t answer. She left me. She stayed in the mirror. The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education. This story is not about Mormonism. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
792:A gentleman shouldn't give personal items to a lady he's courting." He lowered his voice, mindful of being overheard by Poppy and the housekeeper, who were talking by the threshold of the Rutledge apartments. "But I can't take it back- no other woman could do it justice. And Marks, you have no idea of the self-restraint I exercised, I wanted to buy you a pair of embroidered stockings with little flowers running that run all the way up the insides of your-"
"My lord," Catherine whispered, a light blush covering her face. "You forget yourself."
"I haven't forgotten a thing, actually. Not one detail of your beautiful body. Soon I may start sketching you naked again. Every time I put a pencil to paper, the temptation nearly overwhelms me."
She tried to look severe. "You promised not to do that again."
"But my pencil has a will of its own," he said gravely. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
793:Echo and Shadow
A room
and a room. And between them
she leans in the doorway
to say something,
lintel bright above her face,
threshold dark beneath her feet,
her hands behind her head gathering
her hair to tie and tuck at the nape.
A world and a world.
Dying and not dying.
And between them
the curtains blowing
and the shadows they make on her body,
a shadow of birds, a single flock,
a myriad body of wings and cries
turning and diving in complex unison.
Shadow of bells,
or the shadow of the sound
they make in the air, mornings, evenings,
everywhere I wait for her,
as even now her voice
seems a lasting echo
of my heart’s calling me home, its story
an ocean beyond my human beginning,
each wave tolling the whole note
of my outcome and belonging. ~ Li Young Lee,#NFDB
794:I was too much taken up with another interest to care; I felt beneath my feet the threshold of the strange door, in my life, which had suddenly been thrown open and out of which came an air of a keenness I had never breathed and of a taste stronger than wine. I had heard all my days of apparitions, but it was a different thing to have seen one and to know that I should in all likelihood see it familiarly, as I might say, again. I was on the lookout for it as a pilot for the flash of a revolving light and ready to generalise on the sinister subject, to answer for it to all and sundry that ghosts were much less alarming and much more amusing than was commonly supposed. There's no doubt that I was much uplifted. I couldn't get over the distinction conferred on me, the exception - in the way of mystic enlargement of vision - made in my favour.
("Sir Edmund Orme") ~ Henry James,#NFDB
795:Our aim for ever must be the pursuit of the knowledge of Man in his entirety. To study the flesh, the skin, the bones, the organs, the nerves of Man, is to equip our minds with a knowledge that will enable us to search beyond the body. The noble profession at whose threshold you stand as neophytes is not an end in itself. The science of Anatomy contributes to the great sum of all Knowledge, which is the Truth: the whole Truth of the Life of Man upon this turning earth. And so: Observe precisely. Record exactly. Neglect nothing. Fear no foe. Never swerve from your purpose. Pay no heed to Safety.
For I believe that all men can be happy and that the good life can be led upon this earth.
I believe that all men must work towards that end.
And I believe that that end justifies any means….
Let no scruples stand in the way of the progress of medical science! ~ Dylan Thomas,#NFDB
796:Of The Last Verses In The Book
When we for age could neither read nor write,
The subject made us able to indite.
The soul, with nobler resolutions deckt,
The body stooping, does herself erect:
No mortal parts are requisite to raise
Her, that unbodied can her Maker praise.
The seas are quiet, when the winds give o'er,
So calm are we, when passions are no more:
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness, which age descries.
The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home:
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
~ Edmund Waller,#NFDB
797:Hodge says he's on his way and he hopes you can both manage to cling to your flickering sparks of life until he gets here," she told Simon and Jace. "Or something like that."
"I wish he'd hurry," Jace said crossly. He was sitting up in bed against a pair of fluffed white pillows, still wearing his filthy clothes.
"Why? Does it hurt?" Clary asked.
"No. I have a high pain threshold. In fact, it's less of a threshold and more of a large and tastefully decorated foyer. But I do get easily bored." He squinted at her. "Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you'd get dressed up in a nurse's outfit and give me a sponge bath?"
"Actually, I think you misheard," Clary said. "It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath."
Jace looked involuntarily over at Simon, who smiled at him widely. "As soon as I'm back on my feet, handsome. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
798:I want a name.”
“Only if you swear that you will not hurt this woman.”
“I swear it.”
“Swear it on John’s grave,” she insisted.
A long silence passed.
“I knew it,” Audrey said grimly. “If you can’t be trusted not to hurt her, I certainly can’t tell you who she is.”
“Is she married?” A hoarse note had entered his voice.
“No.”
“Is she in Hampshire?”
Audrey hesitated before giving him a wary nod.
“Tell her that I’ll find her,” he said. “And she’ll regret it when I do.”
In the tense silence, he went to the threshold and glanced over his shoulder. “In the meantime, you can be the first to congratulate me,” he said. “Prudence and I are nearly betrothed.”
Audrey looked ashen. “Christopher…what kind of game are you playing?
“You’ll find out,” came his cold reply. “You and your mysterious friend should enjoy it--you both seem to like games. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
799:She started in on him the second he crossed the threshold from the living room. “I was wrong about you all these years. I always thought you were a smart boy, but you don’t have the brains God gave a jackass.”
“Aunt Mary, I—”
“Don’t you Aunt Mary me, Sean Michael Kowalski. I should go get my wooden spoon and thunk some sense into that thick head of yours.”
Sean sighed and tried to school his expression into something closer to contrition than belligerence. Not that she wouldn’t see through it, but he made the effort regardless. “I’m just helping her out for a few weeks so that—”
“Helping her lie to her grandmother, you mean.”
“I know it sounds bad, but—”
“Because you were raised better than that.”
He’d known this wouldn’t be easy, but he’d been hoping to at least finish a sentence or two. “Can I talk? Please?”
“When you have something sensible to say. ~ Shannon Stacey,#NFDB
800:By 1950, he had come to view the pedestrian as a threshold or indicator species capable of foretelling things to come—if the rights of the pedestrian were threatened, it would be an early indicator that broader freedoms of thought and action were also at risk. This conclusion was deeply rooted in personal experience. In 1941, while walking through Pershing Square late at night with friend and occasional coauthor Henry Hasse, Bradbury had his first relatively mild encounter with police. The specific incident that sparked “The Pedestrian” involved a similar late-night walk with a friend along Wilshire Boulevard near Western Avenue sometime in late 1949. Bradbury often wrote and spoke about being questioned that evening by a passing patrolman, and usually described as well his somewhat confrontational response (“What am I doing? Just putting one foot in front of the other . . .”). ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
801:It would have been like losing me, like losing my own soul, Rob said, but it wasn't really like him saying it to her, it was as if he were simply realizing these things himself. And now it's like finding my soul again. The other half of me.
Kaitlyn felt it again, the universe around her hushed and waiting, enclosing the two of them. This time, though, there was a trembling joy to the hush, a certainty. They weren't on the threshold anymore. They were passing through. Everything being said between them, without spoken words or even words of the mind. It was simply as if their souls were mingling, joining in an embrace that wasn't quite the web and wasn't quite Rob's healing power, although it had elements of both.
It was beyond all that. It was a union, a togetherness, that Kaitlyn had never dreamed of.
I'm with you. I belong to you.
I'm a part of you. I will be forever. ~ L J Smith,#NFDB
802:What do you want from me?” Leo took a long time to answer, his fingers trailing to her earlobe, massaging lightly. “I want your secrets. And I’ll get them out of you one way or another.” That gave her the impetus to swat his hand away. “Stop this. You’re amusing yourself at my expense, as usual. You are a dissipated scoundrel, an unprincipled cad, and—” “Don’t forget ‘lecherous libertine,—” he said. “That’s one of my favorites.” “Get out!” He pushed away lazily from the dressing table. “All right. I’ll go. Obviously you fear that if I stay, you won’t be able to control your desire for me.” “The only desire I have for you,” she said, “involves maiming and dismemberment.” Leo grinned and went to the door. Pausing at the threshold, he glanced over his shoulder. “Your spectacles are fogging again,” he said helpfully, and slipped through the door before she could find something to throw. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
803:The Appeal
ALL summer-time you said:
'Love has no need of shelter nor of kindness,
For all the flowers take pity on his blindness,
And lead him to his scented rose-soft bed.'
'He is a king,' you said.
'That I bow not the knee will never grieve him,
For all the summer-palaces receive him.'
But now Love has not where to lay his head.
'He is a god,' you said.
'His altars are wherever roses blossom.'
And summer made his altar of her bosom,
But now the altar is ungarlanded.
Take back the words you said:
Out in the rain he shivers broken-hearted;
Summer who bore him has with tears departed,
And o'er her grave he weeps uncomforted.
And you, for all you said,
Would weep too, if when dawn stills the wind's riot,
You found him on your threshold, pale and quiet,
Clasped him at last, and found the child was dead.
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
804:My mother was waiting for us in the parlor, occupying an armchair across from the sofa, intending to let Narian and I sit next to each other.
Once over the threshold, Narian began shooting me looks that I found humorous, as though he regretted being pulled into this and was wondering if he could fake illness to escape. He could lead an army, face down the Overlord and challenge the High Priestess, but apparently he had qualms about spending time with my kind and demure mother.
“Alera, Narian, I’m so glad you’re here--both of you. Please, have a seat.” She motioned to the sofa and we complied.
“Good afternoon, Queen Elissia,” Narian greeted her, deliberately choosing to address her according to Hytanican custom, for he had a gentleman’s manners. In fact, one of my earliest impressions of him was that he was a chameleon, with a knack for having exactly the effect he wanted on people. ~ Cayla Kluver,#NFDB
805:Lovers do not realize what they are doing when they conceal their feelings from one another. It is not easy to love, and if you do not boldly build a strong foundation, you cannot hope to build successfully upon it. They say that the most difficult part is crossing the threshold. I wish to teach you about love, for I am quite aware that love is driving you crazy. This is why I have decided to instruct you, so be careful to hide nothing from me, since it is evident on both your faces that your two hearts have joined as one. Hide nothing from me! You are both behaving very foolishly in not revealing your thoughts, for by concealing them you will each be the death of the other, and murderers of Love. Now I urge you not to seek to dominate one another, nor merely to satisfy your desires, but rather join together honourably in marriage. In this way, it seems to me, your love will long endure. ~ Chr tien de Troyes, #NFDB
806:Local fog in Venice has a name: nebbia. It obliterates all reflections ... and everything that has a shape: buildings, people, colonnades, bridges, statues. Boat services are canceled, airplanes neither arrive, nor take off for weeks, stores are closed and mail ceases to litter one’s threshold. The effect is as though some raw hand had turned all those enfilades inside out and wrapped the lining around the city... the fog is thick, blinding, and immobile... this is a time for reading, for burning electricity all day long, for going easy on self-deprecating thoughts of coffee, for listening to the BBC World Service, for going to bed early. In short, a time for self-oblivion, induced by a city that has ceased to be seen. Unwittingly, you take your cue from it, especially if, like it, you’ve got company. Having failed to be born here, you at least can take some pride in sharing its invisibility... ~ Joseph Brodsky, #NFDB
807:By what judgment am I judged? What is the accusation against me? Am I to be accused of my own betrayal? Am I to blame because you are my enemies? Yours is the responsibility, the knowledge, the power. I trusted you, you played with me as a cat plays with a mouse, and now you accuse me. I had no weapon against you, not realizing that there was need for weapons until too late. This is your place; you are at home here. I came as a stranger, alone, without a gun in my hand, bringing only a present that I wanted to give you. Am I to blame because the gift was unwelcome? Am I accused of the untranslated indictment against myself? Is it my fault that a charge has been laid against me in a different language? Is my offense that I stood too long on your threshold, holding a present that was unsuitable? Am I accused because you, wanting a victim and not a friend, threw away the only thing which I had to give? ~ Anna Kavan, #NFDB
808:I couldn’t see the end of the corridor, so I stared at the entrance. The ship was a magnificent piece of living technology. Third Fish was a Miri 12, a type of ship closely related to a shrimp. Miri 12s were stable calm creatures with natural exoskeletons that could withstand the harshness of space. They were genetically enhanced to grow three breathing chambers within their bodies. Scientists planted rapidly growing plants within these three enormous rooms that not only produced oxygen from the CO2 directed in from other parts of the ship, but also absorbed benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene. This was some of the most amazing technology I’d ever read about. Once settled on the ship, I was determined to convince someone to let me see one of these amazing rooms. But at the moment, I wasn’t thinking about the technology of the ship. I was on the threshold now, between home and my future. ~ Nnedi Okorafor, #NFDB
809:I Send You Here A Sort Of Allegory
I send you here a sort of allegory,
(For you will understand it) of a soul,
A sinful soul possess'd of many gifts,
A spacious garden full of flowering weeds,
A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain,
That did love Beauty only, (Beauty seen
In all varieties of mould and mind)
And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good,
Good only for its beauty, seeing not
That beauty, Good, and Knowledge, are three sisters
That doat upon each other, friends to man,
Living together under the same roof,
And never can be sunder'd without tears.
And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be
Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie
Howling in outer darkness. Not for this
Was common clay ta'en from the common earth,
Moulded by God, and temper'd with the tears
Of angels to the perfect shape of man.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
810:Where my soul went during that swoon I cannot tell. Whatever she saw, or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling imagination by an indissoluble silence. She may have gone upward, and come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and deeming that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. While she so deemed, an angel may have warned her away from heaven's threshold, and, guiding her weeping down, have bound her, once more, all shuddering and unwilling, to that poor frame, cold and wasted, of whose companionship she was grown more than weary.
I know she re-entered her prison with pain, with reluctance, with a moan and a long shiver. The divorced mates, Spirit and Substance, were hard to re-unite: they greeted each other, not in an embrace, but a racking sort of struggle. ~ Charlotte Bront,#NFDB
811:Alexander Rostov was neither scientist nor sage; but at the age of sixty-four he was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve- if not glacially, then at least gradually. Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew. And yet, for the Count, when the doors to Anna's bedroom opened and Sofia stepped forward in her gown, at that very moment she crossed the threshold into adulthood. On one side of that divide was a girl of five or ten or twenty with a quiet demeanor and a whimsical imagination who relied upon him for companionship and counsel; while on the other side was a young woman of discernment and grace who need rely on no one but herself. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
812:Catastrophe! Of course! Last judgement! Horseshit! It's you that are the catastrophe, you're the bloody last judgement, your feet don't even touch the ground, you bunch of sleepwalkers. I wish you were dead, the lot of you. Let's make a bet,' and here he shook Nadaban by the shoulders, ‘that you don't even know what I'm talking about!! Because you don't talk, you "whisper" or "expostulate"; you don't walk down the street but "proceed feverishly"; you don't enter a place but "cross its threshold", you don't feel cold or hot, but "find yourselves shivering" or "feeling the sweat pour down you"! I haven't heard a straight word for hours, you can only mew and caterwaul; because if a hooligan throws a brick through your window you invoke the last judgement, because your brains are addled and filled up with steam, because if someone sticks your nose in shit all you do is sniff, stare and cry "sorcery! ~ L szl Krasznahorkai, #NFDB
813:Tell me the story of the locket.'
'Once upon a time, my lord, in the best and the worst of all possible words, a princess fell in love with a young man who loved to draw pictures.'
'Like Ducon.'
'Very like your cousin. Every day for a year, she gave him a rose. She would pick it at dawn from her father's gardens and then take it to the highest place in the castle, a place so high that everyone had forgotten about it except for the doves that nested beneath the broken roof. There, she had found a secret door between the best and the worst of the worlds. Every day, they would meet on the threshold of that door. She would give him a rose, and he would give her a drawing of the city he lived in. They loved each other very much, but of course they could never marry, because they were from different worlds: she was a princess and he an artist who had to paint tavern signs to keep himself fed. ~ Patricia A McKillip,#NFDB
814:Even the beauteous must die! This vanquishes men and immortals;
But of the Stygian god moves not the bosom of steel.
Once and once only could love prevail on the ruler of shadows,
And on the threshold, e'en then, sternly his gift he recalled.
Venus could never heal the wounds of the beauteous stripling,
That the terrible boar made in his delicate skin;
Nor could his mother immortal preserve the hero so godlike,
When at the west gate of Troy, falling, his fate he fulfilled.
But she arose from the ocean with all the daughters of Nereus,
And o'er her glorified son raised the loud accents of woe.
See! where all the gods and goddesses yonder are weeping,
That the beauteous must fade, and that the perfect must die.
Even a woe-song to be in the mouth of the loved ones is glorious,
For what is vulgar descends mutely to Orcus' dark shades.
~ Friedrich Schiller, Naenia
,#NFDB
815:To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk,—to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a “too easy chair” to take a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my circumstances, as it would be under his. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
816:For I imagine the devil, when he goes to walk in the world, spruces himself in his dressing room, where the fire burns blue
in its grate and the mirrors are draped with black. I imagine how he sleeks his rough fur with babies’ fat, polishes his teeth with ground bones, and swills his mouth with blood; then taking from its peg his tall shiny hat, he sets it upon his head to hide his horns. Its riband is trimmed with plucked feathers from the wings of screaming angels that he chuckles over each day, moribund cherubs who he tickles with a scaly finger as he inspects his toothed steel traps. He pauses on the threshold, patting for his wallet, checking his pockets for his whips and stings. Anxious for respectability, he pulls kid gloves over his claws, but the claws split them. He squints up at God’s sky, shakes out his umbrella of skin, and closes behind him the doors of hell: trapping in its sulfur reek. ~ Hilary Mantel,#NFDB
817:Devon was sitting up in bed, propped on pillows. The thick locks of his hair looked damp and clean, his skin gleaming from a recent shave. Even there in a sickbed, he looked robust and a bit restless, as if he were chafing at his confinement.
Kathleen paused at the threshold. As tense silence filled the distance between them, a wave of excruciating shyness caused her to blush. It didn’t help that he was staring at her in a way he never had before…bold and vaguely proprietary. Something had changed, she thought.
A faint smile touched Devon’s lips as he glanced over her, his gaze lingering at the colorful shawl.
Kathleen closed the door but hesitated, feeling nervous about approaching him. “Why are you awake so early?”
“I woke up hungry, and I needed a wash and shave, so I rang for Sutton.”
“Are you in pain?” she asked in concern.
“Yes,” he said emphatically. “Come here and make me feel better. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
818:Iris," came a low, smoky snarl from the doorway. "Come here."
She felt Hugh's arms tighten around her as she glanced over her shoulder.
Raphael stood on the threshold, Ubertino, Bardo, and Ivo behind him. Her husband's eyes were so icy a gray that from where she stood they nearly shone.
'Oh.'
His gaze flickered from her to the man holding her. "Unhand. My. Wife."
Raphael's face was set and stern, entirely frozen over and it occurred to her- strange thought at the moment- that she'd never heard him really laugh. He'd made only that cawing sound- not joyous laughter at all. Had he ever laughed since he was a boy? Or had his father destroyed all laughter in Raphael that night?
It was a terrible thought.
Out of the corner of her eye, Iris saw Riley and Jenkins, Hugh's men, sidle closer to her and Hugh.
Raphael tracked their movement.
The potential for violence seemed suddenly very high. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,#NFDB
819:The only veggies allowed when trying to become keto-adapted are: red leaf lettuce, cabbage, celery, zucchini and cucumbers. I know this sounds crazy, but even non-starchy vegetables may hold you back while trying to become keto-adapted. I used to be more passive in my office and tell clients to take “baby steps” but not anymore. People want results. Rip that band-aid off! Whether you are dealing with inflammation showing externally where people can see it (weight gain, acne, eczema, and rosacea) or internally (heart disease, joint pain, nerve damage, high blood sugar), the faster you can get to be keto-adapted the better. Once adapted or near your weight loss and healing goals, you can begin to re-introduce other low starch veggies. When in maintenance, you can find your bodies threshold for carbs by introducing psyllium breads and nut flours and monitoring your weight (typically 30-50 grams of total carbs per day). ~ Maria Emmerich, #NFDB
820:[W]e may now be on the threshold of a new kind of genetic takeover. DNA replicators built 'survival machines' for themselves — the bodies of living organisms including ourselves. As part of their equipment, bodies evolved onboard computers — brains. Brains evolved the capacity to communicate with other brains by means of language and cultural traditions. But the new milieu of cultural tradition opens up new possibilities for self-replicating entities. The new replicators are not DNA and they are not clay crystals. They are patterns of information that can thrive only in brains or the artificially manufactured products of brains — books, computers, and so on. But, given that brains, books and computers exist, these new replicators, which I called memes to distinguish them from genes, can propagate themselves from brain to brain, from brain to book, from book to brain, from brain to computer, from computer to computer. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
821:Having worked as a clinician for almost 40 years, I have seen some young adults, who had the classic, clear and conspicuous signs of Asperger’s syndrome in early childhood, achieve over decades a range of social abilities and improvements in behaviour such that the diagnostic characteristics became sub-clinical; that is, the person no longer has a clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important area of functioning. There may still be very subtle signs of Asperger’s syndrome, but when the diagnostic tests are re-administered, the person achieves a score below the threshold to maintain the diagnosis. There is now longitudinal research that is starting to confirm clinical experience that about 10 per cent of those who originally had an accurate diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome in childhood no longer have sufficient impairments to justify the diagnosis (Cederlund et al. 2008; Farley et al. 2009). ~ Tony Attwood, #NFDB
822:I probably coughed self-pityingly in response, little aware that I was about to cross a tremendous threshold beyond which there would be no return, that in my hands I held an object whose simple appearance belied its profound power. All true readers have a book, a moment, like the one I describe, and when Mum offered me that much-read library copy mine was upon me. For although I didn't know it then, after falling deep inside the world of the Mud Man, real life was never going to be able to compete with fiction again. I've been grateful to Miss Perry ever sense, for when she handed that novel over the counter and urged my harried mother to pass it on to me, she'd either confused me with a much older child or else she'd glimpsed deep inside my soul and perceived a hole that needed filling. I've always chosen to believe the latter. After all, it's the librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
823:There!” Ermengarde heard her say. “Take it and go home, Melchisedec! Go home to your wife!”
Almost immediately Sara opened the door, and when she did so she found Ermengarde standing with alarmed eyes upon the threshold.
“Who--who are you talking to, Sara?” she gasped out.
Sara drew her in cautiously, but she looked as if something pleased and amused her.
“You must promise not to be frightened--not to cream the least bit, or I can’t tell you,” she answered.
Ermengarde felt almost inclined to scream on the spot, but managed to control herself. She looked all round the attic and saw no one. And yet Sara had certainly been speaking to someone. She thought of ghosts.
“Is it--something that will frighten me?” she asked timorously.
“Some people are afraid of them,” said Sara. “I was at first--but I am not now.”
“Was it--a ghost?” quaked Ermengarde.
“No,” said Sara, laughing. “It was my rat. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett,#NFDB
824:Signior Antonio, many a time and oft In the Rialto you have rated me About my moneys and my usances; Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, For suff’rance is the badge of all our tribe; You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine, And all for use of that which is mine own. Well then, it now appears you need my help; Go to, then; you come to me, and you say ‘Shylock, we would have moneys.’ You say so: You that did void your rheum upon my beard, And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold; moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not say ‘Hath a dog money? Is it possible A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ Or Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness, Say this:— ‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last; You spurn’d me such a day; another time You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies I’ll lend you thus much moneys? ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
825:Our world, seemingly global, is in reality a planet of thousands of the most varied and never intersecting provinces. A trip around the world is a journey from backwater to backwater, each of which considers itself, in its isolation, a shining star. For most people, the real world ends on the threshold of their house, at the edge of their village, or, at the very most, on the border of their valley. That, which is beyond is unreal, unimportant, and even useless, whereas that which we have at our fingertips, in our field of vision, expands until it seems an entire universe, overshadowing all else. Often, the native and the newcomer have difficulty finding a common language, because each looks at the same place through a different lens. The newcomer has a wide-angle lens, which gives him a distant diminished view, although with a long horizon line, while the local always employs a telescopic lens that magnifies the slightest detail. ~ Ryszard Kapu ci ski, #NFDB
826:Even more important is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative for change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call “the edge of chaos.” We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and new are constantly at war. Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter—if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. . . . Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.8 This threshold line, that edge between anarchy and frozen rigidity, is not a like a fence line, it is a fractal line; it possesses nonlinearity. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner, #NFDB
827:[W]e may now be on the threshold of a new kind of genetic takeover. DNA replicators built 'survival machines' for themselves — the bodies of living organisms including ourselves. As part of their equipment, bodies evolved onboard computers — brains. Brains evolved the capacity to communicate with other brains by means of language and cultural traditions. But the new milieu of cultural tradition opens up new possibilities for self-replicating entities. The new replicators are not DNA and they are not 158 The Blind Watchmaker clay crystals. They are patterns of information that can thrive only in brains or the artificially manufactured products of brains — books, computers, and so on. But, given that brains, books and computers exist, these new replicators, which I called memes to distinguish them from genes, can propagate themselves from brain to brain, from brain to book, from book to brain, from brain to computer, from computer to computer. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
828:Athletes train 15 years for 15 seconds of performance. Ask them if they got lucky. Ask an athlete how he feels after a good workout. He will tell you that he feels spent. If he doesn't feel that way, it means he hasn't worked out to his maximum ability.
Losers think life is unfair. They think only of their bad breaks. They don't consider that the person who is prepared and playing well still got the same bad breaks but overcame them. That is the difference. His threshold for tolerating pain becomes higher because in the end he is not training so much for the game but for his character. Alexander Graham Bell was desperately trying to invent a hearing aid for his partially deaf wife. He failed at inventing a hearing aid but in the process discovered the principles of the telephone. You wouldn't call someone like that lucky, would you?Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Without effort and preparation, lucky coincidences don't happen. ~ Shiv Khera,#NFDB
829:Cyrano: I can see him there---he grins---
He is looking at my nose---that skeleton
---What's that you say? Hopeless?---Why, very well!---
But a man does not fight merely to win!
No---no---better to know one fights in vain!...
You there---Who are you? A hundred against one---
I know them now, my ancient enemies---
Falsehood!...There! There! Prejudice---Compromise---Cowardice---
What's that? No! Surrender? No!
Never---never!...
Ah, you too, Vanity!
I knew you would overthrow me in the end---
No! I fight on! I fight on! I fight on!
Yes, all my laurels you have riven away
And all my roses; yet in spite of you,
There is one crown I bear away with me,
And to-night, when I enter before God,
My salute shall sweep all the stars away
From the blue threshold! One thing without stain,
Unspotted from the world, in spite of doom
Mine own!---
And that is...
Roxane: ---That is...
Cyrano: My white plume.... ~ Edmond Rostand,#NFDB
830:So what is the answer? How can you stand your ground when you are weak and sensitive to pain, when people you love are still alive, when you are unprepared?
What do you need to make you stronger than the Interrogator and the whole trap?
From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: "My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die—now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me."
Confronted by such a prisoner, the Interrogation will tremble.
Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,#NFDB
831:Seth, we can't...not again...it's..."
"I know," he said. At last, he crossed the threshold. "And I told myself...told myself I'd let it go...but I haven't stopped thinking about you since yesterday. And after tonight." Hesitantly, as though afraid someone might be lurking, he shut the door behind him. "Just the way you looked out there. It was...amazing. Believe me, I didn't screw up dancing because I'm bad at it-which I am. It's because I wasn't thinking about it at all. I was thinking about you. God, I couldn't stop. And it's not just how sexy you are tonight. It was more. It was the way you lit up the room, the way you charmed everyone and made them happy. You don't need any special powers to do that, Georgina. It's just in you, part of who you are. How funny you are, how smart. It's what made me fall in love you back then, and it's what..." He didn't finish, and I was glad. If he had said "...makes me love you now," I wouldn't have been able to handle it. ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
832:hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turned the bronze handle. The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate table. The room’s usual furniture had been pushed carelessly up against the walls. Illumination came from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gilded mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment on the threshold. As their eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, they were drawn upward to the strangest feature of the scene: an apparently unconscious human figure hanging upside down over the table, revolving slowly as if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and in the bare, polished surface of the table below. None of the people seated underneath this singular sight was looking at it except for a pale young man sitting almost directly below it. He seemed unable to prevent himself from glancing upward every minute or so. “Yaxley. Snape,” said a high, clear voice from the ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
833:Observers of the Fair had remarked how, as one moved up and down its Midway, the more European, civilized, and . . . well, frankly, white exhibits located closer to the center of the “White City” seemed to be, whereas the farther from that alabaster Metropolis one ventured, the more evident grew the signs of cultural darkness and savagery. To the boys it seemed that they were making their way through a separate, lampless world, out beyond some obscure threshold, with its own economic life, social habits, and codes, aware of itself as having little if anything to do with the official Fair. . . . As if the half-light ruling this perhaps even unmapped periphery were not a simple scarcity of streetlamps but deliberately provided in the interests of mercy, as a necessary veiling for the faces here, which held an urgency somehow too intense for the full light of day and those innocent American visitors with their Kodaks and parasols who might somehow happen across this place. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
834:Sometimes a big event happens that changes everything. When it does, it tends to affirm the human tendency to treat big events as fundamentally different from smaller ones. That’s a problem, inside companies. When we put setbacks into two buckets—the “business as usual” bucket and the “holy cow” bucket—and use a different mindset for each, we are signing up for trouble. We become so caught up in our big problems that we ignore the little ones, failing to realize that some of our small problems will have long-term consequences—and are, therefore, big problems in the making. What’s needed, in my view, is to approach big and small problems with the same set of values and emotions, because they are, in fact, self-similar. In other words, it is important that we don’t freak out or start blaming people when some threshold—the “holy cow” bucket I referred to earlier—is reached. We need to be humble enough to recognize that unforeseen things can and do happen that are nobody’s fault. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
835:4. Crossing the First Threshold:With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the 'threshold guardian' at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in four directions-also up and down-standing for the limits of the hero's present sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is darkness, the unknown and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the members of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored. The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
836:Good powerlessness (because there is also a bad powerlessness) allows you to “fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). You stop holding yourself up, so you can be held. There, wonderfully, you are not in control and only God needs to be right. That is always the very special space of any positive powerlessness and vulnerability, but it is admittedly rare.
Faith can only happen in this very special threshold space. You don’t really do faith, it happens to you when you give up control and all the steering of your ship. Frankly, we often do it when we have no other choice. Faith hardly ever happens when we rush to judgment or seek too-quick resolution of anything. Thus you see why faith will invariably be a minority and suspect position. And you also see why the saints always said that faith is a gift. You fall into it more than ever fully choosing it, and only then do you know how grace, love, and God can sustain you and strengthen you at very deep levels. ~ Richard Rohr,#NFDB
837:Travis came up behind her, his hat brim bumping her head as he nuzzled her neck. She giggled and danced away, feeling playful yet oddly shy at the same time. Travis gave chase, his husky laughter blending with hers as the two of them darted out of the barn. When they neared the porch, he grabbed her about the waist and lifted her off her feet. Meredith squealed. “You can’t escape me,” Travis murmured in her ear as he gently settled her back on the ground. Meredith turned in his arms to face the man she loved. “I’ve no desire to.” His eyes darkened, and for a moment she thought he would kiss her. But then he scooped her into his arms and carried her up the porch steps. The front door proved more of a challenge to conquer. Travis had to juggle his hold on her a bit before he could get the latch open. Meredith laughed in delight, endeared by his awkward efforts. Once the door was cracked, he kicked it wide with his boot and carried her over the threshold. “Welcome home, Mrs. Archer. ~ Karen Witemeyer, #NFDB
838:Part 2 - Initiation
6. The Road of Trials:Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed-again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unsustainable ecstasies and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land. ~ Joseph Campbell,#NFDB
839:Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idlenessto let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
'This sonnet and that to Ailsa Rock were first published, with the signature "I," in Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book; or, Companion for the Lover of Nature and Art, -- the first number, that for 1819.'
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ John Keats, Sonnet. The Human Seasons
,#NFDB
840:Drink Out Thy Glass
Drink out thy glass! See, on thy threshold, nightly,
Staying his sword, stands Death, awaiting thee.
Be not alarmed; the grave-door, opened slightly,
Closes again; a full year it may be
Ere thou art dragged, poor sufferer, to the grave.
Pick the octave!
Tune up the strings! Sing of life with glee!
Golden's the hue thy dull, wan cheeks are showing;
Shrunken's thy chest, and flat each shoulder-blade.
Give me thy hand! Each dark vein, larger growing,
Is, to my touch, as if in water laid.
Damp are these hands; stiff are these veins becoming.
Pick now, and strumming,
Empty thy bottle! Sing! drink unafraid.
.....
Skal, then, my boy! Old Bacchus sends last greeting;
Freya's farewell receive thou, o'er thy bowl.
Fast in her praise thy thin blood flows, repeating
Its old-time force, as it was wont to roll.
Sing, read, forget; nay, think and weep while thinking.
Art thou for drinking
Another bottle? Thou art dead? No Skal!
~ Carl Michael Bellman,#NFDB
841:Miranda froze where she sat. As Etienne slid into the shadows beside the door, she caught the quick movement of his left hand--the glint of something sharp.
“Well.” Parker grinned, creeping slowly across the threshold. “This is cozy!”
A stream of undecipherable words burst from Etienne’s mouth. Parker immediately looked offended.
“Hey, I don’t have a clue what you just said to me, but it wasn’t very polite.”
“Good way to get yourself killed,” Etienne muttered.
Parker stared at him, incredulous. “Is that your knife You were actually going to stab me?”
“Knife?” Miranda echoed. Startled, she craned her neck for a better view, but as suddenly as it had appeared, Etienne’s knife had vanished.
“I told you not to sneak up on him. You know he always has that hunting knife when he’s not in school.” Behind Parker, Roo poked her head in. “Hey, mind if we join you?”
As Parker, Roo, Ashley, and Gage crowded into the room, Etienne threw up his hands, turned his back, and continued his muttering. ~ Richie Tankersley Cusick,#NFDB
842:Betrayed
I WENT back to our home to-day
That still its robe of roses wore;
My feet took the old easy way,
And led me to our door.
And you are gone and never more
Those little feet of yours will come
To meet me at the open door,
The threshold of our home.
The door unlatched did not protest:
I entered, and the silence drew
My steps towards the little nest
That once I shared with you.
There lay your fan, your open book,
Your seam half-sewn, and I could see
The window whence you used to look-Yes, once you looked--for me.
Print of your little head caressed
Our pillow still, and on the floor
Still lay, dropped there when last you dressed,
The scarf and rose you wore.
All should have spoken of you plain,
Yet, when I bade the silence tell
Of you, my bidding was in vain,
I could not break its spell.
The silence would not speak, my dear,
Till the last level light grew dim;
Then, in the twilight I could hear;
80
The silence spoke--of him.
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
843:It was nothing I hadn’t thought of, plenty, and in far less taxing circumstances; the urge shook me grandly and unpredictably, a poisonous whisper that never wholly left me, that on some days lingered just on the threshold of my hearing but on others roared up uncontrollably into a sort of lurid visionary frenzy, why I wasn’t sure, sometimes even a bad movie or a gruesome dinner party could trigger it, short term boredom and long term pain, temporary panic and permanent desperation striking all at once and flaring up in such an ashen desolate light that I saw, really saw, looking back down the years and with all clear-headed and articulate despair, that the world and everything in it was intolerably and permanently fucked and nothing had ever been good or okay, unbearable claustrophobia of the soul, the windowless room, no way out, waves of shame and horror, leave me alone, my mother dead on a marble floor, stop it stop it, muttering aloud to myself in elevators, in cabs, leave me alone, I want to die, a cold, intelligent, self-immolating fury ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
844:Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us with those wondrous, half vertical, scimitar-shaped slats of whalebone, say three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of the head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
845:Robert gestured Lydia ahead of him across the threshold of number nineteen. Once inside, the atmosphere was entirely different from his previous visits. Silent calm had been replaced by chatter, laughter, and scolding that bounced into the three-story entrance from various regions of the house. There was a smell of newly lit fires, and the accompanying puffs of smoke, as well as the enticing aroma of cooking wafting up from the kitchens. It was a bustling, busy household.
Shodster stepped into the hall and rushed toward Robert, hands outstretched ready to take Robert’s hat and cane.
“Thank you, no. Miss Whitfield and I are going for a walk.” Robert took a half step back. “We will be leaving shortly.”
Looking to Lydia for confirmation, Shodster nodded. “I do beg your pardon, Miss Whitfield. I was not here for the door. It will not happen again.”
“Worry not, Shodster.” Lydia shrugged. “I learned how to open a door some time ago. The trick is to turn the handle.”
The butler blinked at Lydia’s lightheartedness. “Yes. That would, indeed, be the trick. ~ Cindy Anstey,#NFDB
846:Hotmail enhanced its spreading rate by eliminating the adoption threshold individuals experience. First, it is free; thus you do not have to think about whether you are making a wise investment. Second, the Hotmail interface makes it very easy to sign up. In two minutes you have an account; thus there is no time investment. Third, once you sign up, every time you send an e-mail, you offer free advertisement for Hot-mail. Combine these three features, and you get a service that has a very high infection rate, a build-in mechanism to spread. Traditional marketing theories will tell you that the combination of free service, low learning path, and rapid reach through consumer marketing has put the product above the threshold, and that is why it reached everybody. Based on our new understanding of diffusion in complex networks, we now know that this is only partially correct. It is true that you have a very high rate of spread. But you have no threshold either. Products and ideas spread by being adapted by hubs, the highly connected nodes of the consumer network. ~ Albert L szl Barab si, #NFDB
847:Evolutionarily, the function of attachment has been to protect the organism from danger. The attachment figure, an older, kinder, stronger, wiser other (Bowlby, 1982), functions as a safe base (Ainsworth et al., 1978), and is a presence that obviates fear and engenders a feeling of safety for the younger organism. The greater the feeling of safety, the wider the range of exploration and the more exuberant the exploratory drive (i.e., the higher the threshold before novelty turns into anxiety and fear). Thus, the fundamental tenet of attachment theory: security of attachment leads to an expanded range of exploration. Whereas fear constricts, safety expands the range of exploration. In the absence of dyadically constructed safety, the child has to contend with fear-potentiating aloneness. The child will devote energy to conservative, safety enhancing measures, that is, defense mechanisms, to compensate for what's missing. The focus on maintaining safety and managing fear drains energy from learning and exploration, stunts growth, and distorts personality development. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
848:When they finally left the bed, they were giddy. Christopher made a project of bathing her, drying her, even brushing her hair. She brought his robe and sat beside the bathtub as he washed. Occasionally she leaned downward to steal a kiss. They invented endearments for each other. Small marital intimacies that meant nothing and everything. They were collecting them, just as they were collecting words and memories, all of it containing special resonance for the two of them.
Beatrix turned down all the lamps except the one on the night table. “Time for bed,” she murmured.
Christopher stood at the threshold, watching his wife slip beneath the covers, her hair falling in a loose braid over one shoulder. She gave him the look that by now had become familiar…patiently encouraging. A Beatrix look.
A lifetime with such a woman was not nearly enough.
Taking a deep breath, Christopher made a decision.
“I want the left side,” he said, and turned down the last lamp.
He got into bed with his wife, taking her into his arms.
And together they slept until morning. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
849:African Americans weren’t the only ones who took a hit. The states of the Deep South, which fought Brown tooth and nail, today all fall in the bottom quartile of state rankings for educational attainment, per capita income, and quality of health.139 Prince Edward County, in particular, bears the scars of a place that saw fit to fight the Civil War right into the middle of the twentieth century. Certainly it is no accident that, in 2013, despite a knowledge-based, technology-driven global economy, the number one occupation in the county seat of Farmville was “cook and food preparation worker.” Nor is it any accident that in 2013, while 9.9 percent of white households in the county made less than ten thousand dollars in annual income, fully 32.9 percent of black households fell below that threshold.140 The insistence on destroying Brown, and thus the viability of America’s schools and the quality of education children receive regardless of where they live, has resulted in “the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession” for wide swaths of the American public. ~ Carol Anderson, #NFDB
850:In His free grace, God is for man in every respect; He surrounds man from all sides. He is man's Lord who is before him, above him, after him, and thence also with him in history, the locus of man's existence. Despite man's insignificance, God is with him as his Creator who intended and made mankind to be very good. Despite man's sin, God is with him, the One who was in Jesus Christ reconciling the world, drawing man unto Himself in merciful judgment. Man's evil past is not merely crossed out because of its irrelevancy. Rather, it is in the good care of God. Despite man's life in the flesh, corrupt and ephemeral, God is with him. The victor in Christ is here and now present through His Spirit, man's strength, companion, and comfort. Despite man's death God is with him, meeting him as redeemer and perfecter at the threshold of the future to show him the totality of existence in the true light in which the eyes of God beheld it from the beginning and will behold it evermore. In what He is for man and does for man, God ushers in the history leading to the ultimate salvation of man. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
851:contemporary strategists emphasize that modern victory results from conquering the hearts of the members of a population rather than their territory. Submission must be gained through adherence and adherence through esteem.Indeed, it’s a matter of imposing one’s purpose on the inner individual, where the social contact between human collectivities is established at present. Stripped bare by world homogenization, contacted by globalisation, and penetrated by telecommunication, henceforth the front will be situated in the inner being of each of the members that make up the collectivities.(... ) This sort of fabrication of passive partisans can be summed up by the catchphrase: ‘The front within every person, and no one on any front. ’ (... ) The whole politico-strategic challenge of a world that is neither at war or at peace, which precludes all settlement of conflict by means of the classic military juridical voices, consists in preventing passive partisans on the verge of action, at the threshold of belligerence, from becoming active partisans. ” (Laurent Danet, “La polémosphère”) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
852:author class:Sri Aurobindo
The Vedantin's Prayer
Spirit Supreme
Who musest in the silence of the heart,
Eternal gleam,
Thou only Art!
Ah, wherefore with this darkness am I veiled,
My sunlit part
By clouds assailed?
Why am I thus disfigured by desire,
Distracted, haled,
Scorched by the fire
Of fitful passions, from thy peace out-thrust
Into the gyre
Of every gust?
Betrayed to grief, o'ertaken with dismay,
Surprised by lust?
Let not my grey
Blood-clotted past repel thy sovereign ruth,
Nor even delay,
O lonely Truth!
Nor let the specious gods who ape Thee still
Deceive my youth.
These clamours still;
For I would hear the eternal voice and know
The eternal Will.
This brilliant show
Cumbering the threshold of eternity
Dispel, - bestow
The undimmed eye,
The heart grown young and clear. Rebuke in me
These hopes that cry
So deafeningly,
Remove my sullied centuries, restore
My purity.
O hidden door
Of Knowledge, open! Strength, fulfil thyself!
Love, outpour!
~ Sri Aurobindo, - Vedantin.s Prayer
,#NFDB
853:I wonder if I know him
In whose speech is my voice,
In whose movement is my being,
Whose skill is in my lines,
Whose melody is in my songs
In joy and sorrow.
I thought he was chained within me,
Contained by tears and laughter,
Work and play.
I thought he was my very self
Coming to an end with my death.
Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him
In the sight and touch of my beloved?
This 'I' beyond self I found
On the shores of the shining sea.
Therefore I know
This 'I' is not imprisoned within my bounds.
Losing myself, I find him
Beyond the borders of time and space.
Through the Ages
I come to know his Shining Self
In the life of the seeker,
In the voice of the poet.
From the dark clouds pour the rains.
I sit and think:
Bearing so many forms, so many names,
I come down, crossing the threshold
Of countless births and deaths.
The Supreme undivided, complete in himself,
Embracing past and present,
Dwells in Man.
Within Him I shall find myself -
The 'I' that reaches everywhere.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, I
,#NFDB
854:To An Athlete Dying Young
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
~ Alfred Edward Housman,#NFDB
855:If there was a single moment when the breach between us, which had been cracking and splintering for two decades, was at last too vast to be bridged, I believe it was that winter night, when I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, while, without my knowing it, my father grasped the phone in his knotted hands and dialed my brother. Diego, the knife. What followed was very dramatic. But the real drama had already played out in the bathroom. It had played out when, for reasons I don’t understand, I was unable to climb through the mirror and send out my sixteen-year-old self in my place. Until that moment she had always been there. No matter how much I appeared to have changed—how illustrious my education, how altered my appearance—I was still her. At best I was two people, a fractured mind. She was inside, and emerged whenever I crossed the threshold of my father’s house. That night I called on her and she didn’t answer. She left me. She stayed in the mirror. The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
856:How long is the mourning period?” he surprised her by asking abruptly.
Kathleen blinked, disconcerted. “For a widow? There are four mourning periods.”
“Four?”
“The first one lasts a year, the second for six months, the third for three months, and then half mourning lasts for the rest of one’s life.”
“And if the widow wishes to marry again?”
“She may do so after a year and a day, although it is frowned upon to marry so quickly unless she has children, or lacks income.”
“Frowned upon but not forbidden?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
Devon shrugged casually. “I’m merely curious. Men are required to mourn only for six months--probably because we wouldn’t tolerate anything longer than that.”
She shrugged. “A man’s heart is different from a woman’s.”
His gaze turned quizzical.
“Women love more,” she explained. Seeing his expression, she asked, “You think I’m wrong?”
“I think you know little of men,” he said gently.
“I’ve been married: I know all I wish to.” She went to the threshold and paused to look back at him. “Thank you,” she said, and left before he could reply. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
857:Good night, Mr. Bronson.” She rose to her feet, and Bronson followed immediately. “There's no need to leave,” he coaxed. “I'll behave from now on. I promise.” “It's late,” Holly said firmly, retreating to the door. “Again, sir, good night—” Somehow he reached the threshold before she did, without any appearance of haste. His large hand pressed lightly on the door, closing it with a quiet click. “Stay,” he murmured, “and I'll open a bottle of that Rhenish wine you liked so much the other evening.” Frowning, Holly turned to face him. She was prepared to point out that a gentleman did not argue with a lady when she wished to leave, nor would it be proper for them to remain in the room with the door closed. But as she stared into his dark, teasing eyes, she found herself relenting. “If I stay, we'll find some proper subject to discuss,” she said warily. “Anything you like,” came his prompt reply. “Taxes. Social concerns. The weather.” She wanted to smile as she saw his deliberately bland expression. He looked like a wolf trying to pretend he was a sheep. “All right, then,” she said, and returned to the settee. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
858:O nightingale! Bewail if my love thou desire.
For, we are weeping lovers; yet, tear is our task dire.
Where bloweth a perfumed breeze from the Friend's hair,
The Tartary musk-pods lose the aroma once so rare.
Give wine so we may the robe of hypocrisy dye;
For we are intoxicated with pride; yet, sober are we, aye.
To devise a fancy for Thy tress, fools do not care
To get into the chains of love is what the bold souls dare.
'Tis a deep charm which wakes the lover's flame
Not ruby lip, nor verdant down its name
Beauty is not the eye, lock, cheek and mole
A thousand subtle points the heart control.
The wayfarers purchase not for half a corn,
The satin coat that void of skill is born.
Difficult it seemeth to reach the Threshold of Thy Love:
Aye, difficult as ascending to the rooftop of the heaven above
At dawn, in a dream, to the abode of the Beloved did I wend:
Oh happy the dream in which one mayest see the Darling Friend.
HAFIZ! Wound not His heart with tears, and end:
For, eternal salvation in love doth bend
(Translated by Ismail Salami)
~ Hafiz, Bold Souls
,#NFDB
859:There comes an inevitable time in every life when we must cross a threshold and encounter that invisible divider between who we are and who we must become. Sometimes, the passage is evident - a sudden catastrophe that tests our mettle, a tragic loss that opens our eyes to the bane of our mortality, or a personal triumph that instills in us the confidence we need to cast aside our fears. Other times, our passage is obscured by the minutiae of an overcrowded life until we catch it in a glimpse of forbidden desire; in an inexplicable sense of melancholic emptiness or a craving for more, always more, than what we already possess.
Sometimes we embrace the chance to embark on our passage, welcoming it as a chance to finally shed the adolescent skin and prove our worth against the incessant vagaries of fate. Other times, we rail against its unexpected cruelty, against the sharp thrust into a world we're not ready to explore, one we do not know or trust. For us, the past is a haven that we are loathe to depart, lest the future corrupt our soul.
Better not to change at all, rather than become someone we will not recognize. ~ C W Gortner,#NFDB
860:15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold:The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world. Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided" The hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
861:Those kids would have accepted My Little Pony into their heart that day if it would have ended the chain saw sin massacre. The emotion they learned, the threshold they had to cross that led to God, was raw fear. He’s terrifying. He wants to hurt you. He wants to cut you in half to remove your sin. I think sometimes this happens because we want to take a shortcut to salvation for someone. We want them to be saved right this second and right this moment, and love can feel like it’s taking too long. Love is messy and slow. It unravels at God’s speed, not ours. Shame is faster. Fear is faster. And if the goal is to get them in the door, then fear becomes a pretty good method. To tell you the truth, terrifying someone into a relationship with God is also easier. Love makes us vulnerable. I have to throw myself out there and be honest and naked and open to getting rejected if love is what I give to you. But fear doesn’t require any of that. I can yell and scream and try to intimidate you without getting hurt or taking any real risks. Love is harder because it demands that I get personally involved in your life. Fear doesn’t carry those same requirements. ~ Jon Acuff, #NFDB
862:no matter how intensely we desire certainty, we should understand that whether because of our limits or randomness or future unknowable confluences of events, something will inevitably come, unbidden, through that door. Some of it will be uplifting and inspiring, and some of it will be disastrous. We all know people who eagerly face the unknown; they engage with the seemingly intractable problems of science, engineering, and society; they embrace the complexities of visual or written expression; they are invigorated by uncertainty. That’s because they believe that, through questioning, they can do more than merely look through the door. They can venture across its threshold. There are others who venture into the unknown with surprising success but with little understanding of what they have done. Believing in their cleverness, they revel in their brilliance, telling others about the importance of taking risks. But having stumbled into greatness once, they are not eager for another trip into the unknown. That’s because success makes them warier than ever of failure, so they retreat, content to repeat what they have done before. They stay on the side of the known. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
863:He was so tall that Lottie had to stand on her toes to reach his mouth, and even then she couldn’t quite manage it. Catching her waist in his hands, he compacted her gently against his body. Suddenly there was a strange, lost look in his eyes, as if he were drowning. Hesitantly Lottie slid her hand around the back of his neck, where the interlaced muscles had gone rigid.
He let her tug his head lower, lower, until their breath mingled and their lips touched in a sweet, supple kiss. His mouth remained warm and still against hers, and then his lips began to move in soft brushes. Disoriented, Lottie swayed in his grasp, and his arm slid around her back to hold her securely. Instinctively she nudged upward, straining on her toes as she sought to deepen the tender pressure. But he was careful to keep his passion under tight rein, refusing to take any more.
Gradually she eased away from him, sinking back to her heels. She dared to touch the side of his face, relishing the warmth of his skin against her palm. “I’ve paid the toll,” she whispered. “May I pass through the gate now?”
He nodded gravely and moved away from the threshold.
-Nick & Lottie ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
864:I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don’t know, that’s all words), never wake (all words, there’s nothing else).
You must go on, that’s all I know.
They’re going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They’re going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts? It will be I?
You must go on.
I can’t go on.
You must go on.
I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it’s done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.)
It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know.
You must go on.
I can’t go on.
I’ll go on. ~ Samuel Beckett,#NFDB
865:Squatter's Children
On the unbreathing sides of hills
they play, a specklike girl and boy,
alone, but near a specklike house.
The Sun's suspended eye
blinks casually, and then they wade
gigantic waves of light and shade.
A dancing yellow spot, a pup,
attends them. Clouds are piling up;
a storm piles up behind the house.
The children play at digging holes.
The ground is hard; they try to use
one of their father's tools,
a mattock with a broken haft
the two of them can scarcely lift.
It drops and clangs. Their laughter spreads
effulgence in the thunderheads,
Weak flashes of inquiry
direct as is the puppy's bark.
But to their little, soluble,
unwarrantable ark,
apparently the rain's reply
consists of echolalia,
and Mother's voice, ugly as sin,
keeps calling to them to come in.
Children, the threshold of the storm
has slid beneath your muddy shoes;
wet and beguiled, you stand among
the mansions you may choose
out of a bigger house than yours,
whose lawfulness endures.
It's soggy documents retain
your rights in rooms of falling rain.
~ Elizabeth Bishop,#NFDB
866:I believe we need wilderness in order to be more complete human beings, to not be fearful of the animals that we are, an animal who bows to the incomparable power of natural forces when standing on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, an animal who understands a sense of humility when watching a grizzly overturn a stump with its front paw to forage for grubs in the lodgepole pines of the northern Rockies, an animal who weeps over the sheer beauty of migrating cranes above the Bosque del Apache in November, an animal who is not afraid to cry with delight in the middle of a midnight swim in a phospherescent tide, an animal who has not forgotten what it means to pray before the unfurled blossom of the sacred datura, remembering the source of all true visions.
As we step over the threshold of the twenty-first century, let us acknowledge that the preservation of wilderness is not so much a political process as a spiritual one, that the language of law and science used so successfully to define and defend what wilderness has been in the past century must now be fully joined with the language of the heart to illuminate what these lands mean to the future. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,#NFDB
867:Florence lives alone in the great dreary house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone; and the blank walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty into stone.
No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut up in the heart of a thick wood, was ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her father's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood lowering on the street: always by night, when lightd were shining from neighbouring windows, a blot upon its scanty brightness; always by day, a frown upon its never-smiling face.
There were not two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of this above, as in magic legend are usually found on duty over the wronged innocence imprisoned; but besides a glowering visage, with its thin lips parted wickedly, that surveyed all comers from above the archway of the door, there was a monstrous fantasy of rusty iron, curling and twisting like a petrification of an arbour over threshold, budding in spikes and corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either side, two ominous extinguishers, that seemed to say, 'Who enter here, leave light behind! ~ Charles Dickens,#NFDB
868:The Tears Expressive
Death crossed his threshold yesterday
And left the glad voice of his loved one dumb.
To him the living now will come
And cross his threshold in the self-same way
To clasp his hand and vainly try to say
Words that shall soothe the heart that's stricken numb.
And I shall be among them in that place
So still and silent, where she used to sing—
The glad, sweet spirit that has taken wing—
Where shone the radiance of her lovely face,
And where she met him oft with fond embrace,
I shall step in to share his sorrowing.
Beside the staircase that has known her hand
And in the hall her presence made complete,
The home her life endowed with memories sweet
Where everything has heard her sweet command
And seems to wear her beauty, I shall stand
Wondering just how to greet him when we meet.
I dread the very silence of the place,
I dread our meeting and the time to speak—
Speech seems so vain when sorrow's at the peak!
Yet though my words lack soothing power or grace,
Perhaps he'll catch their meaning in my face
And read the tears which glisten on my cheek.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
869:Pausing at the threshold of the billiards room, she peered around the doorframe as gentlemen milled lazily around the table with drinks and cue sticks in hand. The clicks of ivory balls provided an arrhythmic undertone to the hum of masculine conversation.
Her attention was caught by the sight of Matthew Swift in his shirtsleeves, leaning over the table to execute a perfect bank shot.
His hands were deft on the cue stick, his blue eyes narrowed as he focused on the layout of balls on the table. Those ever-rebellious locks of hair had fallen over his forehead once more, and Daisy longed to push them back.
As Swift sank a ball neatly into a side pocket, there was a scattering of applause, some low laughs, and a few coins changing hands. Standing, Swift produced one of his elusive grins and made a remark to his opponent, who turned out to be Lord Westcliff.
Westcliff laughed at the comment and circled the table, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth as he considered his options.
The air of relaxed masculine enjoyment in the room was unmistakable.
As Westcliff rounded the table, he caught sight of Daisy peeking around the doorframe.
He winked at her. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
870:3. Meeting the Mentor:For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass. What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance-promise that the peace of Paradise, which was known first within the mother womb, is not to be lost; that it supports the present and stands in the future as well as in the past (is omega as well as alpha); that though omnipotence may seem to be endangered by the threshold passages and life awakenings, protective power is always and ever present within or just behind the unfamiliar features of the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side. Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task. And in so far as the hero's act coincides with that for which his society is ready, he seems to ride on the great rhythm of the historical process. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
871:Either it falls on your head like a roof tile or it attaches itself to your insides like a tapeworm. Afterward, you no longer see the world in the same way. You’ve got only one thing on your mind: the thing that has taken you over, body and soul. You want to lift it so you can see what’s under it. And from that point on, you can never turn back. Besides, you’re no longer giving the orders. You think you’re in control, doing what you want to do, but it’s not true. You’re nothing but the instrument of your own frustrations. For you, life and death come down to the same thing, Somewhere, you must have renounced everything that could have given you a chance of returning to earth, to the real world. You’re an extraterrestrial. You live in a kind of limbo, stalking houris and unicorns. As for this world, you don’t even want to hear about it anymore. You’re just waiting for the right moment to cross the threshold. The only way to get back what you’ve lost or to fix what you’ve screwed up -- in other words, the only way to make something of your life -- is to end it with a flourish. … The way you see it, the day of your funeral procession will be the day when you’re exalted in other people’s eyes. ~ Yasmina Khadra, #NFDB
872:Perfidy
Hollow rang the house when I knocked on the door,
And I lingered on the threshold with my hand
Upraised to knock and knock once more:
Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor,
Hollow re-echoed my heart.
The low-hung lamps stretched down the road
With shadows drifting underneath,
With a music of soft, melodious feet
Quickening my hope as I hastened to meet
The low-hung light of her eyes.
The golden lamps down the street went out,
The last car trailed the night behind;
And I in the darkness wandered about
With a flutter of hope and of dark-shut doubt
In the dying lamp of my love.
Two brown ponies trotting slowly
Stopped at a dim-lit trough to drink:
The dark van drummed down the distance slowly;
While the city stars so dim and holy
Drew nearer to search through the streets.
A hastening car swept shameful past,
I saw her hid in the shadow,
I saw her step to the curb, and fast
Run to the silent door, where last
I had stood with my hand uplifted.
She clung to the door in her haste to enter,
Entered, and quickly cast
It shut behind her, leaving the street aghast.
~ David Herbert Lawrence,#NFDB
873:Syrinx
Like the foghorn that's all lung,
the wind chime that's all percussion,
like the wind itself, that's merely air
in a terrible fret, without so much
as a finger to articulate
what ails it, the aeolian
syrinx, that reed
in the throat of a bird,
when it comes to the shaping of
what we call consonants, is
too imprecise for consensus
about what it even seems to
be saying: is it o-ka-lee
or con-ka-ree, is it really jug jug,
is it cuckoo for that matter? —
much less whether a bird's call
means anything in
particular, or at all.
Syntax comes last, there can be
no doubt of it: came last,
can be thought of (is
thought of by some) as a
higher form of expression:
is, in extremity, first to
be jettisoned: as the diva
onstage, all soaring
pectoral breathwork,
takes off, pure vowel
breaking free of the dry,
the merely fricative
husk of the particular, rises
past saying anything, any
more than the wind in
the trees, waves breaking,
or Homer's gibbering
Thespesiae iache:
those last-chance vestiges
27
above the threshold, the allbut dispossessed of breath.
~ Amy Clampitt,#NFDB
874:I knew when I first saw you, what you would mean to me,” Win murmured eventually. “Wild, angry boy that you were. I loved you at once. You felt it, too, didn’t you?” He nodded slightly, luxuriating in the feel of her. Her skin smelled sweet like plums, with an arousing hint of feminine musk. “I wanted to tame you,” she said. “Not all the way. Just enough that I could be close to you.” She threaded her fingers through his hair. “Outrageous man. What possessed you to kidnap me, when you knew I would have come willingly?” “I was making a point,” he said in a muffled voice. She chuckled and stroked his scalp, the scrape of her oval fingernails nearly causing him to purr. “Your point was well-taken. Must we go back now?” “Do you want to?” Win shook her head. “Although … I wouldn’t mind having something to eat.” “I brought food to the cottage before I went to get you.” She ran a flirtatious fingertip around the rim of his ear. “What an efficient villain you are. May we stay all day, then?” “Yes.” Win wriggled with delight. “Will anyone come for us?” “I doubt it.” Kev drew the bed linens lower and nuzzled into the lush valley between her breasts. “And I would kill the first person who approached the threshold. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
875:Where is Florence’s imagination? He identified the most common and most functional uses for bricks and blankets and simply stopped. Florence’s IQ is higher than Poole’s. But that means little, since both students are above the threshold. What is more interesting is that Poole’s mind can leap from violent imagery to sex to people jumping out of buildings without missing a beat, and Florence’s mind can’t. Now which of these two students do you think is better suited to do the kind of brilliant, imaginative work that wins Nobel Prizes? That’s the second reason Nobel Prize winners come from Holy Cross as well as Harvard, because Harvard isn’t selecting its students on the basis of how well they do on the “uses of a brick” test—and maybe “uses of a brick” is a better predictor of Nobel Prize ability. It’s also the second reason Michigan Law School couldn’t find a difference between its affirmative action graduates and the rest of its alumni. Being a successful lawyer is about a lot more than IQ. It involves having the kind of fertile mind that Poole had. And just because Michigan’s minority students have lower scores on convergence tests doesn’t mean they don’t have that other critical trait in abundance. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
876:Behind the last door is oblivion. Standing before it, one can go forwards or backwards; but beside it are not the places of exquisite pleasure: the faces of pure ones confined to pavilions, reclining on green cushions and beautiful carpets amid thornless lote-trees and banana trees, one over another; for these have gone with the smoke of the opium.
What remains, four years afterwards, are the haunted rooms of the departed: of a young, vigorous man with red hair and an old man left in his blood in a bothy; of a henchman dragged from his horse with an arrow in him, and another, darker of skin, dead of fighting in a Greek courtyard. Of a man returning from perilous seas to drown, seeking his son, near his homeland; of a girl dying blind behind yellow silk curtains, and another burning at night in an African pavilion. And a child, a son … an only son … playing with shells at the feet of the father who shortly would kill it.
One does not, of set purpose, linger long on such a threshold. Sooner or later, the chains must give way; the accusing, querulous voices cease; and the insistent, imperious summons, saying over and over, ‘Aucassins, damoisiax, sire! Ja sui jou li vostre amie, Et vos ne me haés mie! ~ Dorothy Dunnett,#NFDB
877:This is nothing. And you are nothing.
She took another step, and stumbled. The ground was plummeting downward now.
You are nothing. There was a starving girl. You gave her things and then left her like a beggar on the street, and for what?
There was a couple in the cottage. You could have given them something, but you left. And for what?
There was a dancing girl in the marketplace. You could have helped her, but you left. And for what?
There was a boy and his bird sister. He helped you, and you gave him nothing.
There was a swanskin, and you thought it might make you beautiful.
There were red shoes, and you thought they might make you graceful.
There was a threshold and a magical woods, and you thought they might make you a hero.
There was a boy, and he was your best friend.
Your father left you. You left your mother.
Come, the wind said, and I will blow you away.
Come, the snow said, and I will bury you.
Come, the cold said, and I will embrace you.
Come. Come.
And so she did. ~ Anne Ursu,#NFDB
878:When one is born into a religion that is not too unsuitable for pronouncing the name of the Lord, when one loves that native religion, well-oriented and pure, it is difficult to conceive of a legitimate motive to abandon it before direct contact with God offers the soul to the divine will itself. Beyond this threshold, the change is only legitimate as an act of obedience. In fact history shows how this rarely happens. More often— perhaps always— the soul that reaches the highest spiritual regions is confirmed in the love of the tradition that served as its ladder. If the imperfection of the native religion is too great, or if it appears in a native environment under a form that is too corrupt, or if circumstances prevent that religion from being born or even kills it, the adoption of a strange religion is legitimate. Legitimate and necessary for certain people; not, without a doubt, for all. It is the same for those who have been raised without any religious practice. In all other cases, to change religions is an extremely grave (serious) decision and it is even more serious to push someone else to do so. It is still an infinitely more serious exercise, in this sense, to officially apply such pressure upon conquered lands. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
879:Goliath said with somber voice, “Since it is our custom to grant defeated deities some amount of vassal-like privilege, the Lord of Ashdod, Mutallu, thought it only gracious to allow this Yahweh an audience in Dagon’s presence. But the next morning when the priests opened the temple, the image of Dagon was on the floor, face down before the Israelite ark.” Lahmi and Ittai gasped. Warati sighed. Ishbi said, “That is only the beginning of the pranks that malevolent deity has pulled.” Goliath said, “They returned Dagon to his position, but the very next morning, he was prostrate before the ark yet again. Only this time, Dagon’s head and hands had been cut off lying on the threshold.” “Holy father of Ba’al,” whispered Warati. The cutting off of heads and hands of enemy combatants was a peculiar tactic of victory in war. It was a denigration of one’s conquered foes into complete powerlessness. Warati continued, “It would take great strength to cut through that diorite. No one was seen in or near the temple?” “It was locked and guarded,” said Goliath. “The guards never even heard the sound of the fall or the breaking.” Ishbi added, “That abomination was followed by an infestation of rats as well as a plague of boils, tumors, and hemorrhoids. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
880:The “IQ fundamentalist” Arthur Jensen put it thusly in his 1980 book Bias in Mental Testing (p. 113): “The four socially and personally most important threshold regions on the IQ scale are those that differentiate with high probability between persons who, because of their level of general mental ability, can or cannot attend a regular school (about IQ 50), can or cannot master the traditional subject matter of elementary school (about IQ 75), can or cannot succeed in the academic or college preparatory curriculum through high school (about IQ 105), can or cannot graduate from an accredited four-year college with grades that would qualify for admission to a professional or graduate school (about IQ 115). Beyond this, the IQ level becomes relatively unimportant in terms of ordinary occupational aspirations and criteria of success. That is not to say that there are not real differences between the intellectual capabilities represented by IQs of 115 and 150 or even between IQs of 150 and 180. But IQ differences in this upper part of the scale have far less personal implications than the thresholds just described and are generally of lesser importance for success in the popular sense than are certain traits of personality and character. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
881:In conclusion, I return to Einstein. If we find a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, its image, captured by a camera travelling at a fifth of light speed, will be slightly distorted due to the effects of special relativity. It would be the first time a spacecraft has flown fast enough to see such effects. In fact, Einstein’s theory is central to the whole mission. Without it we would have neither lasers nor the ability to perform the calculations necessary for guidance, imaging and data transmission over twenty-five trillion miles at a fifth of light speed.
We can see a pathway between that sixteen-year-old boy dreaming of riding on a light beam and our own dream, which we are planning to turn into a reality, of riding our own light beam to the stars. We are standing at the threshold of a new era. Human colonisation on other planets is no longer science fiction. It can be science fact. The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilisation began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before.
I hope for the best. I have to. We have no other option. ~ Stephen Hawking,#NFDB
882:...when my sons were the ages of those two leaping boys, they were so intimate it would have been hard to disentangle their separate natures. They used to play together without pause from the moment they opened their eyes in the morning to the moment they closed them again. Their play was a kind of shared trance in which they created whole imaginary worlds, and they were forever involved in games and projects whose planning and execution were as real to them as they were invisible to everyone else: sometimes I would move or throw away some apparently inconsequential item, only to be told that it was a sacred prop in the ongoing make-believe, a narrative which seemed to run like a magic river through our household, inexhaustible, and which they could exit and re-enter at will, moving over that threshold which no one else could see into another element. And then one day the river dried up: their shared world of imagination ceased, and the reason was that one of them - I can't even recall which one it was - stopped believing in it. In other words, it was nobody's fault; but all the same it was brought home to me how much of what was beautiful in their lives was the result of a shared vision of things that strictly speaking could not have been said to exist. ~ Rachel Cusk, #NFDB
883:An era was over and a new Europe was being born. This much was obvious. But with the passing of the old order many longstanding assumptions would be called into question. What had once seemed permanent and somehow inevitable would take on a more transient air. The Cold-War confrontation; the schism separating East from West; the contest between ‘Communism’ and ‘capitalism’; the separate and non-communicating stories of prosperous western Europe and the Soviet bloc satellites to its east: all these could no longer be understood as the products of ideological necessity or the iron logic of politics. They were the accidental outcomes of history—and history was thrusting them aside.
Europe’s future would look very different—and so, too, would its past. In retrospect the years 1945-89 would now come to be seen not as the threshold of a new epoch but rather as an interim age: a post-war parenthesis, the unfinished business of a conflict that ended in 1945 but whose epilogue had lasted for another half century. Whatever shape Europe was to take in the years to come, the familiar, tidy story of what had gone before had changed for ever. It seemed obvious to me, in that icy central-European December, that the history of post-war Europe would need to be rewritten. ~ Tony Judt,#NFDB
884:To -- -Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
In the mad pride of intellectuality,
Maintained "the power of words"- denied that ever
A thought arose within the human brain
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:
And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
Two words- two foreign soft dissyllablesItalian tones, made only to be murmured
By angels dreaming in the moonlit "dew
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,"
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,
Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
Richer, far wilder, far diviner visions
Than even seraph harper, Israfel,
(Who has "the sweetest voice of all God's creatures,")
Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.
The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.
With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee,
I cannot write- I cannot speak or thinkAlas, I cannot feel; for 'tis not feeling,
This standing motionless upon the golden
Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams.
Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
Upon the left, and all the way along,
Amid empurpled vapors, far away
To where the prospect terminates- thee only.
~ Edgar Allan Poe,#NFDB
885:Lohengrin: Proem
THE alert and valiant faith that could respond,
Upon life's threshold, to the highest call,
Unquestioning of what might lie beyond,—
Courage afield and courtesy in hall,
And sweet, unbroken patience therewithal,
And simple loyalty,— can these things be
The virtues that have died with chivalry?
The lapsing stream that leads to love and fate,
Now mystic-shadowed, and now broad and free,
Reflecting all the gold of heaven's gate;
The snowy bird's symbolic purity,
The toilsome contest and the victory,
The troubled joy of life, and after these,
The crowning guerdon of the perfect peace,—
These dreams have filled my dazzled sense and brain,
With images so vivid that at last
I wake to life and find them all again
Repeated in the present as the past,
The hues recolored and the forms recast;
And in familiar eyes I see outshine
The old heroic faith in love divine.
No empty fable of a day long dead,
No baseless vision of some sanguine saint,
No legend, only half rememberéd,
Of prowess obsolete and virtues quaint;
But be this rather a reflection faint
Of that which taught me how the near and real
Surpass in strength and beauty the ideal.
~ Emma Lazarus,#NFDB
886:Photographer
It began with the first baby, the house
disappearing threshold by threshold, rooms
milky above the floor only her heel,
the ball of her foot perceived. The one thing real
was the crying; it had a low ceiling
she ducked beneath—but unscalable walls.
Then she found with the second child
a safer room in the camera obscura, handheld,
her eye to them a petaled aperture,
her voice inside the darkcloth muffled
as when they first learned it. Here, too, she steadied,
stilled them in black and white, grayscaled the beestung
eye, the urine-wet bedsheet, vomit, pox,
pout, fever, measles, stitches fresh-black,
bloody nose—the expected shared mishap
and redundant disease. In the evenings
while they slept, she developed the day's film
or printed in the quiet darkroom, their images
under the enlarger, awash in the stopbath,
or hanging from the line to dry. Sometimes
she manipulated their nakedness, blonde hair
and bodies dodged whiter in a mountain stream
she burned dark, thick as crude oil or tar. The children's
expressions fixed in remedial reversals,
she sleeved and catalogued them, her desire,
after all, not so different from any other mother's.
19
~ Claudia Emerson,#NFDB
887:This book is not specifically addressed to Christians who are firmly established in their faith and have nothing more to learn about its beliefs. It is written for the waverers, both inside and outside; that is to say for those who, instead of giving themselves wholly to the Church, either hesitate on its threshold or turn away in the hope of going beyond it.
As a result of changes which, over the last century, have modified our empirically based pictures of the world and hence the moral value of many of its elements, the "human religious ideal" inclines to stress certain tendencies and to express itself in terms which seem, at first sight, no longer to coincide with the "christian religious ideal."
Thus it is that those whose education or instinct leads them to listen primarily to the voices of the earth, have a certain fear that they must be false to themselves or diminish themselves if they follow the Gospel path.
So the purpose of this essay--on life or on inward vision--is to prove by a sort of tangible confirmation that this fear is unfounded, since the most traditional Christianity, expressed in Baptism, the Cross and the Eucharist, can be interpreted so as to embrace all that is best in the aspirations peculiar to our times. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,#NFDB
888:There is no such thing as fear until you allow it to enter your heart. If I told you what really happens to your soul when it is put to eternal sleep, you would not fear death; hence, you would never have fear — or fear Fear. But this is something I will share with you another day and time, in another story. We are taught to fear anything that can bring us closer to death — to keep us from taking huge leaps that involve risk. The only thing you should fear in this lifetime is not taking risks while you are living. I do not mean to go jump off a bridge. I mean, to go all out to reach your dreams, to dare to do things you typically would not do out of fear.
Pain has a threshold and so does death. Fear neither, and never fear what has no right to be feared. Fear only the Almighty, for he is the only one who can terminate a soul forever. No man can do that. No leader can do that. Only the Creator can do that. As long as the heart is good, a soul can live forever. The body is simply a coating for the soul, and when you die, your soul takes the soul of your heart along with it. Love strengthens both, while fear cripples both. Starting today, train your mind and heart to reject fear. Once you reject fear, you will become the perfect candidate to receive and reflect Truth. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
889:A Pauper
. . . and the children's teeth shall be set on edge.
I see him old, trapped in a burly house
Cold in the angry spitting of a rain
Come down these sixty years.
Why vehemently
Astride the threshold do I wait, marking
The ice softly pendent on his broken temple?
Upon the silence I cast the mesh of rancor
By which the gentler convergences of the flesh
Scatter untokened, mercilessly estopped.
Why so illegal these tears?
The years' incertitude and
The dirty white fates trickling
Blackly down the necessary years
Define no attitude to the present winter,
No mood to the cold matter.
(I remember my mother, my mother,
A stiff wind halted outside,
In the hard ear my country
Was a far shore crying
With invisible seas)
When tomorrow pleads the mortal decision
Sifting rankly out of time's sieve today,
No words differently will be uttered
Nor stuttered, like sheep astray.
A pauper in the swift denominating
Of a bald cliff with a proper name, having words
As strumpets only, I cannot beat off
Invincible modes of the sea, hearing:
Be a man my son by God.
He turned again
To the purring jet yellowing the murder story,
Deaf to the pathos circling in the air.
~ Allen Tate,#NFDB
890:A Soldier's Dream
Last night as I toasted
My wet feet and roasted
A small bit of beef by a similar blaze,
While nought but the wheezings,
The snorings, and sneezings
Of comrades grouping in Dreamland's haze
Disturbed the fine vision The picture Elysian That Fancy's weird wand conjured up to my thought,
As she stood like a spooke,
In a garb of blue smoke,
And amid the hot embers her wonders she wrought.
Adown a highway
We were marching so gay
An army with banners bedecked o'er and o'er
With the brightest garlands
Wove by fairest of hands,
While a flaming bouquet stuck in each musket bore.
Each triumphal arch
It met on the march
Was blazoned with 'Peace'; 'Welcome home each loved one';
While maid, wife, and mother
Would with rapture discover
And rush out to meet lover, husband, and son!
I forgot all my sore toes Nay, all of my woes As I sprang to the threshold and clasped her dear waist;
And every campaign
I'd gone over again
To get from those ripe lips another such taste.
But as I flew to her
I dropped my fine skewer,
And with it my supper. I mastered my grief
As the vanishing vision
of joy's Elysian,
But I couldn't get over the loss of the beef!
19
~ Anonymous Americas,#NFDB
891:Will you reconsider your decision?” Beatrix asked. “About letting me take Albert?”
“No,” Christopher said brusquely.
“No?” she repeated, as if his refusal were inconceivable.
Christopher scowled. “You needn’t worry about him. I’ve left the servants specific instructions. He will be well cared for.”
Beatrix’s face was taut with indignation. “I’m sure you believe so.”
Nettled, he snapped, “I wish I took the same enjoyment in hearing your opinions that you take in airing them, Miss Hathaway.”
“I stand by my opinions when I know I’m right, Captain Phelan. Whereas you stand by yours merely because you’re stubborn.”
Christopher gave her a stony stare. “I will escort you out.”
“Don’t bother. I know the way.” She strode to the threshold, her back very straight.
Albert began to follow, until Christopher commanded him to come back.
Pausing at the threshold, Beatrix turned to give Christopher an oddly intent stare. “Please convey my fondness to Audrey. You both have my hopes for a pleasant journey to London.” She hesitated. “If you wouldn’t mind, please relay my good wishes to Prudence when you see her, and give her a message.”
“What is it?”
“Tell her,” Beatrix said quietly, “that I won’t break my promise.”
“What promise is that?”
“She’ll understand. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
892:On The Turn
Like the twang of an old complaint, the pong
of decomposing swan songs hit him
as a jangle rose
from the dee-jay equipment
and the gates groaned open on Hullabaloo. The threshold
yawned like something out of Jaws. “Je t’adore, flophead.
Jette this way, s’il vous plait.”
She didn’t actually say
she was charmed, but he knew she was. They all were.
Adjusting his tie in a mirror, the old goat
stared fixedly ahead.
Just then a knock
knock joke surfaced and submerged him, Eurydice
felt, in a funk
band fantasy — part enactment, part cow.
Then without warning a ding-a-ling
effect.
“Hello? Yes, it’s true
Riff-Raff, I’m a virgin. When the black priest comes
for eight days I will offer you a candle.”
Muttering
“Attaboy” intermittently, the big-eared gimmick
held out his hands to Chaste Lily
for example.
“Swiftly,
I’ve been a swine too long. To change ...” is what
he thought they might have wanted him to say —
tingling, softly, in a flutter.
He was a bit of a looker
into dark places and the artless. He often
plucked arrangements people
up to their old tricks
pulled apart and attached strings to. Later he’d
call them names of course — Chouchou,
Oh Rarefied, Nix.
~ Chris Edwards,#NFDB
893:O WHAT has made that sudden noise?
What on the threshold stands?
It never crossed the sea because
John Bull and the sea are friends;
But this is not the old sea
Nor this the old seashore.
What gave that roar of mockery,
That roar in the sea's roar?
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
John Bull has stood for Parliament,
A dog must have his day,
The country thinks no end of him,
For he knows how to say,
At a beanfeast or a banquet,
That all must hang their trust
Upon the British Empire,
Upon the Church of Christ.
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
John Bull has gone to India
And all must pay him heed,
For histories are there to prove
That none of another breed
Has had a like inheritance,
Or sucked such milk as he,
And there's no luck about a house
If it lack honesty.
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
I poked about a village church
And found his family tomb
And copied out what I could read
In that religious gloom;
Found many a famous man there;
But fame and virtue rot.
Draw round, beloved and bitter men,
Draw round and raise a shout;
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
~ William Butler Yeats, The Ghost Of Roger Casement
,#NFDB
894:Abalone stared into the fizzing glass. “My father served yours.”
“Yeah. Very well, I might add.”
“Through your blood’s generosity, mine has prospered.” Abalone took another sip, his shaking hand making the ice tinkle. “May I say something about your father?”
The King seemed to stiffen. “Yeah.”
Abalone looked up to the sunglasses. “The night he and your mother were killed, a part of my father died, too. He was never the same thereafter. I can remember our house being in mourning for a full seven years, the mirrors draped in black cloth, the incense burning, the threshold marked with a black jamb.”
Wrath rubbed his face. “They were good people, my parents.”
Abalone put the soda aside and shifted off the armchair, getting on his knees before his King. “I will serve you just as my father did, down to the bone and marrow.” Abalone was dimly aware that others had filed into the room and were looking at him. He cared naught. History had come full circle . . . and he was prepared to carry forward with pride.
Wrath nodded once. “I’m making you my chief cleric. Right here and now. Saxton,” he barked out. “What do I need to do?”
A cultured voice answered smoothly, “You just did it all. I’ll draw up the paperwork.”
The King smiled and put out his palm. “You’re the first member of my court. Boom! ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
895:Beauty always made a target of its possessor. Every other human quality was hidden easily enough --- intelligence, talent, selfishness, even madness --- but beauty could not be concealed.
"Do you ever wish you didn't look the way you did?" Anita asked.
"All the time," Misery said. "I hate the way I look."
[...]
"No, I didn't mean like that. I just meant---"
"Having to be afraid," Eliza said.
"Yeah."
No need to say more. No need to describe all the things you had to do to keep the eyes away. No need to discuss how hard it was to get the attention of the person you wanted attention from without being seen as desperate for everyone's attention. No need to catalog all the walls you had to put up; not just the walls that protected you from physical danger --- though there were plenty of those, too --- but the walls you had to build around your heart. They said no man was an island, and Anita figured that was probably true. But women were; they had to be. And even if someone bothered to sail over ad disembark, he'd soon discover that there was always a castle at the center of the island, surrounded by a deep moat, with a rickety drawbridge and archers manning the battlements and a big pot of oil poised above the gate, ready to boil alive anyone who dared to cross the threshold. ~ Tommy Wallach,#NFDB
896:Indeed."
The word, uttered softly, reached her as she halted before the side door; Patience felt a cool tingle slither down her spine. And felt the touch of his grey gaze on her cheek, on the sensitive skin of her throat. She stiffened, resisting the urge to wriggle. She looked down, determined not to turn and meet his eyes. Jaw firming, she reached for the door handle; he beat her to it.
Patience froze. He'd stopped directly behind her, and reached around her to grasp the handle; she watched his long fingers slowly close about it. And stop.
She could feel him behind her, mere inches away, could sense his strength surrounding her. For one definable instant, she felt trapped.
Then the long fingers twisted; with a flick, he set the door swinging wide.
Heart racing, Patience sucked in a breath and sailed into the dim passage. Without slowing her pace, she inclined her head in regal, over-the-shoulder dismissal. "I'll speak to Masters directly- I'm sure my aunt won't keep you long." With that, she swept on, down the passage and into the dark hallway beyond.
Poised on the threshold, Vane watched her retreat through narrowed eyes. He'd sensed the awareness that had flared at his touch, the quiver of consciousness she hadn't been able to hide. For gentlemen such as he, that was proof enough of what might be. ~ Stephanie Laurens,#NFDB
897:We are in the Kali Yuga [a Sanskrit term meaning Dark Age] and its fatal influence is a thousand-fold more powerful in the West than it is in the East; hence the easy preys made by the Powers of the Age of Darkness [evil] in this cyclic struggle, and the many delusions under which the world is now laboring. One of these is the relative facility with which men fancy they can get at the "Gate" and cross the threshold of Occultism without any great sacrifice. It is the dream of most Theosophists, one inspired by desire for Power and personal selfishness, and it is not such feelings that can ever lead them to the coveted goal. For, as well said by one believed to have sacrificed himself for Humanity--"Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life" eternal, and therefore "few there be that find it." (Matthew 7:14) So strait indeed, that at the bare mention of some of the preliminary difficulties the affrighted Western candidates turn back and retreat with a shudder... Let them stop here and attempt no more in their great weakness. For if, while turning their backs on the narrow gate, they are dragged by their desire for the Occult one step in the direction of the broad and more inviting gates of that golden mystery which glitters in the light of illusion, woe to them! ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in Studies in Occultism, (1888), #NFDB
898:She paused at the threshold of the room and looked back at the pair on the settee with a troubled frown. Lillian had fallen fast asleep, her head centered heavily on Westcliff’s chest. As the earl met Daisy’s unhappy gaze, one of his brows raised in silent inquiry.
“My father…” Daisy began, then bit her lip. This man was her father’s business partner. It was not appropriate to run to Westcliff with complaints. But the patience in his expression encouraged her to continue. “He called me a parasite,” she said, keeping her voice soft to avoid disturbing Lillian. “He asked me to tell him how the world has benefitted from my existence, or what I had ever done for anyone.”
“And your reply?” Westcliff asked.
“I…couldn’t think of anything to say.”
Westcliff’s coffee-colored eyes were unfathomable. He made a gesture for her to approach the settee, and she obeyed. To her astonishment, he took her hand in his and gripped it warmly. The usually circumspect earl had never done such a thing before.
“Daisy,” Westcliff said gently, “most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without Daisy Bowman in it. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
899:The Church-Porches
(To M.F.R.)
SISTER, first shake we off the dust we have
Upon our feet, lest it defile the stones
Inscriptured, covering their sacred bones
Who lie i' the aisles which keep the names they gave,
Their trust abiding round them in the grave;
Whom painters paint for visible orisons,
And to whom sculptors pray in stone and bronze;
Their voices echo still like a spent wave.
Without here, the church-bells are but a tune,
And on the carven church-door this hot noon
Lays all its heavy sunshine here without:
But having entered in, we shall find there
Silence, and sudden dimness, and deep prayer,
And faces of crowned angels all about.
II
(To C.G.R.)
SISTER, arise: We have no more to sing
Or say. The priest abideth as is meet
To minister. Rise up out of thy seat,
Though peradventure 'tis an irksome thing
To cross again the threshold of our King
Where His doors stand against the evil street,
And let each step increase upon our feet
The dust we shook from them at entering.
Must we of very sooth go home? The air,
Whose heat outside makes mist that can be seen,
Is very clear and cool where we have been.
The priest abideth ministering. Lo!
As he for service, why not we for prayer?
It is so bidden, sister, let us go.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
900:The bird of gardens sang unto the rose,
New blown in the clear dawn: 'Bow down thy head!
As fair as thou within this garden close,
Many have bloomed and died.' She laughed and said
'That I am born to fade grieves not my heart
But never was it a true lover's part
To vex with bitter words his love's repose.'
The tavern step shall be thy hostelry,
For Love's diviner breath comes but to those
That suppliant on the dusty threshold lie.
And thou, if thou would'st drink the wine that flows
From Life's bejewelled goblet, ruby red,
Upon thine eyelashes thine eyes shall thread
A thousand tears for this temerity.
Last night when Irem's magic garden slept,
Stirring the hyacinth's purple tresses curled,
The wind of morning through the alleys stept.
'Where is thy cup, the mirror of the world?
Ah, where is Love, thou Throne of Djem?' I cried.
The breezes knew not; but 'Alas,' they sighed,
'That happiness should sleep so long!' and wept.
Not on the lips of men Love's secret lies,
Remote and unrevealed his dwelling-place.
Oh Saki, come! the idle laughter dies
When thou the feast with heavenly wine dost grace.
Patience and wisdom, Hafiz, in a sea
Of thine own tears are drowned; thy misery
They could not still nor hide from curious eyes.
Translated by: Gertrude Bell
~ Hafiz, The Bird Of Gardens
,#NFDB
901:Developing Conviction It sounds simple: “Think like an owner.” In fact, it is hard to do. It requires you to put yourself in the shoes of the decision maker. You may realize that you prefer not to be in those shoes. There’s too much pressure; there are too many considerations; there are too many constituencies. With all the complexity, constant change, and myriad of issues in the modern world, it may be easier to rationalize more narrow thinking: Dammit, it’s not my job! Yes, it is your job, if you want to be a leader. If it frustrates you, or makes you agonize, or even creates a heightened level of stress for you, then you need to get used to experiencing those feelings. The more you practice this, the better you’ll get at doing it. I would urge you to begin to believe and internalize the view that thinking like an owner is central to your effectiveness in your job. Thinking like an owner means getting to conviction. “Conviction” is meant to describe a threshold level beyond which you feel a high level of confidence about what you truly believe should be done. Many leaders spend their lives striving to get to conviction about what they would do in a particular situation. The reality is that, much of the time, they may not have a strong point of view. They keep gathering information, agonizing, and assessing until they reach a threshold level of confidence. ~ Robert S Kaplan, #NFDB
902:To Poesy
These vessels of verse, O Great Goddess, are filled with invisible tears,
With the sobs and sweat of my spirit and her desolate brooding for years;
See, I lay them -- not on thine altar, for they are unpolished and plain,
Not rounded enough by the potter, too much burnt in the furnace of pain;
But here in the dust, in the shadow, with a sudden wild leap of the heart
I kneel to tenderly kiss them, then in silence arise to depart.
I linger awhile at the portal with the light of the crimsoning sun
On my wreathless brow bearing the badges of battles I've fought in not won.
At the sound of the trumpet I've ever been found in thy thin fighting line,
And the weapons I've secretly sharpened have flashed in defence of thy shrine.
I've recked not of failure and losses, nor shrunk from the soilure of strife
For thy magical glamour was on me and art is the moonlight of life.
I move from the threshold, Great Goddess, with steps meditative and slow;
Night steals like a dream to the landscape and slips like a pall
o'er its glow.
I carry no lamp in my bosom and dwindling in gloom is the track,
No token of man's recognition to prompt me to ever turn back.
I strike eastward to meet the great day-dawn with the soul of my soul
by my side,
My goal though unknown is assured me, and the planet of Love is my guide.
~ Arthur Bayldon,#NFDB
903:As with most thoughtful natures, Odo's first disillusionment was to come from discovering not what his God condemned, but what He condoned. Between Cantapresto's coarse philosophy of pleasure and the refined complaisances of his new confessor he felt the distinction to be one rather of taste than of principle; and it seemed to him that the religion of the aristocracy might not unfairly be summed up in the ex-soprano's cynical aphorism: "As respectful children of our Heavenly Father it behoves us not to speak till we are spoken to." Even the religious ceremonies he witnessed did not console him for that chill hour of dawn, when, in the chapel at Donnaz, he had served the mass for Don Gervaso, with a heart trembling at its own unworthiness yet uplifted by the sense of the Divine Presence. In the churches adorned like aristocratic drawing-rooms, of which some Madonna, wreathed in artificial flowers, seemed the amiable and indulgent hostess, and where the florid passionate music of the mass was rendered by the King's opera singers before a throng of chattering cavaliers and ladies, Odo prayed in vain for a reawakening of the old emotion. The sense of sonship was gone. He felt himself an alien in the temple of this affable divinity, and his heart echoed no more than the cry which had once lifted him on wings of praise to the very threshold of the hidden glory — Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuae et ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
904:The Wren
Early each spring the little wren
Came scolding to his nest of moss;
We knew him by his peevish cry,
He always sung so very cross.
His quiet little mate would lay
Her eggs in peace, and think all day.
He was a sturdy little wren;
And when he came in spring, we knew,
Or seemed to know, the flowers would grow
To please him, where they always grew,
Among the rushes, cheerfully;
But not a rush so straight as he!
All summer long that little wren
Would chatter like a saucy thing;
And in the bush attack the thrush
That on the hawthorn perched to sing.
Like many noisy little men,
Lived, bragged, and fought that little wren.
There was a thoughtful maid, and I,
We used to play along the shore,
Searching for shells, and culling flowers,
As at the threshold of life's door,
Through which we had to pass, we stood,
Twin types of childish hardihood.
Year after year we gathered flowers,
And grew apace, as children do;
And each returning spring we marked
The little wrens, they never grew;
One over-quiet and sedate,
The other, a bird-reprobate.
But now the marsh is overflowed,
The rushes rot beneath the sand;
No spring brings back the little wrens,
No children loiter hand in hand;
176
The maiden rose-bud, pure and good,
Grown to the flower of womanhood.
~ Charles Sangster,#NFDB
905:Labor Is Prayer
LABORARE est orare:
We, black-visaged sons of toil,
From the coal-mine and the anvil
And the delving of the soil,-From the loom, the wharf, the warehouse,
And the ever-whirling mill,
Out of grim and hungry silence
Raise a weak voice small and shrill;-Laborare est orare:
Man, dost hear us? God, He will.
We, who just can keep from starving
Sickly wives,--not always mild:
Trying not to curse Heaven's bounty
When it sends another child,-We who, worn-out, doze on Sundays
O'er the Book we strive to read,
Cannot understand the parson
Or the catechism and creed.
Laborare est orare:-Then, good sooth, we pray indeed.
We, poor women, feeble-natured,
Large of heart, in wisdom small,
Who the world's incessant battle
Cannot understand at all,
All the mysteries of the churches,
All the troubles of the state,-Whom child-smiles teach 'God is loving,'
And child-coffins, 'God is great':
Laborare est orare:-We too at His footstool wait.
Laborare est orare;
Hear it, ye of spirit poor,
Who sit crouching at the threshold
While your brethren force the door;
Ye whose ignorance stands wringing
Rough hands, scamed with toil, nor dares
102
Lift so much as eyes to Heaven,-Lo! all life this truth declares,
Laborare est orare;
And the whole earth rings with prayers.
~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik,#NFDB
906:When we entered a classroom we always tossed our caps on the floor, to free our hands; as soon as we crossed the threshold we would throw them under the bench so hard that they struck the wall and raised a cloud of dust; this was "the way it should be done."
But the new boy either failed to notice this maneuver or was too shy to perform it himself, for he was still holding his cap on his lap at the end of the prayer. It was a head-gear of composite nature, combining elements of the busby, the lancer cap, the round hat, the otter-skin cap and the cotton nightcap--one of those wretched things whose mute ugliness has great depths of expression, like an idiot's face. Egg-shaped and stiffened by whalebone, it began with three rounded bands, followed by alternating diamond-shaped patches of velvet and rabbit fur separated by a red stripe, and finally there was a kind of bag terminating in a cardboard-lined polygon covered with complicated braid. A network of gold wire was attached to the top of this polygon by a long, extremely thin cord, forming a kind of tassel. The cap was new; its visor was shiny.
"Stand up," said the teacher.
He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh.
He bent down and picked it up. A boy beside him knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once again.
"Will you please put your helmet away?" said the teacher, a witty man. ~ Gustave Flaubert,#NFDB
907:5. Belly of the Whale:The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. Instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again. The disappearance corresponds to the passing of a worshipper into a temple-where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal. The temple interior, the belly of the whale, and the heavenly land beyond, above, and below the confines of the world, are one and the same. That is why the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. The devotee at the moment of entry into a temple undergoes a metamorphosis. Once inside he may be said to have died to time and returned to the World Womb, the World Navel, the Earthly Paradise. Allegorically, then, the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both denoting in picture language, the life-centering, life-renewing act. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
908:Long Odds
How many million galaxies there are
Who knows? and each has countless stars in it,
And each rolls through eternities afar
Beneath the threshold of the Infinite.
How is it that will all that space to roam
I should have found this mote that spins and leaps
In what unutterable sunlight, foam
Of what unfathomable starry deeps
Who knows!? And how this thousand million souls
And half a thousand million souls of earth
That swarm, all bound for unimagined goals,
All pioneers of death enrolled at birth,
How were they swept away before my sight,
That I might stand upon the single prick
Of infinite space and time as infinite,
Who knows? Yet here I stand, climacteric,
Having found you. Was it by fall of chance?
Then what a stake against what odds I have won!
Was it determined in God's ordinance?
Then wondrous love and pity for His son!
Or was it part of an eternal law?
Then how ineffably beneficent!
Each thought excites an ecstasy of awe,
A rapture rending the mind's firmament.
Infinity -yet you and I have met.
Eternity -yet hand in hand we run.
All odds that I should lose you or forget,
But, soul and spirit and body, we are one.
Is this the child of Chance, or Law, or Will?
Is None or All or One to thank for this?
It will not matter if thanksgiving fill
The endless empyrean with a kiss.
43
~ Aleister Crowley,#NFDB
909:He looks out the window at the falling snow, then turns and takes his wife in his arms, feeling grateful to be here even as he wonders what he is going to do with his life in strictly practical terms. For years he had trained himself to do one thing, and he did it well, but he doesn't know whether he wants to keep doing it for the rest of his life, for that matter, whether anyone will let him. He is still worrying when they go to bed.
Feeling his wife's head nesting in the pillow below his shoulder, he is almost certain that they will find ways to manage. They've been learning to get by with less, and they'll keep learning. It seems to him as if they're taking a course in loss lately. And as he feels himself falling asleep he has an insight he believes is important, which he hopes he will remember in the morning, although it is one of those thoughts that seldom survive translation to the language of daylight hours: knowing that whatever plenty befalls them together or separately in the future, they will become more and more intimate with loss as the years accumulate, friends dying or slipping away undramatically into the crowded past, memory itself finally flickering and growing treacherous toward the end; knowing that even the children who may be in their future will eventually school them in the pain of growth and separation, as their own parents and mentors die off and leave them alone in the world, shivering at the dark threshold. ~ Jay McInerney,#NFDB
910:They taught that men have two souls, of separate and quite different natures: the one perishable--the Astral Soul, or the inner, fluidic body--the other incorruptible and immortal--the Augoeides, or portion of the Divine Spirit; that the mortal or Astral Soul perishes at each gradual change at the threshold of every new sphere, becoming with every transmigration more purified. The astral man, intangible and invisible as he might be to our mortal, earthly senses, is still constituted of matter, though sublimated. Aristotle, notwithstanding that for political reasons of his own he maintained a prudent silence as to certain esoteric matters, expressed very clearly his opinion on the subject. It was his belief that human souls are emanations of God, that are finally re-absorbed into Divinity. Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, taught that there are "two eternal qualities throughout nature: the one active, or male; the other passive, or female: that the former is pure, subtile ether, or Divine Spirit; the other entirely inert in itself till united with the active principle. That the Divine Spirit acting upon matter produced fire, water, earth, and air; and that it is the sole efficient principle by which all nature is moved. The Stoics, like the Hindu sages, believed in the final absorption. St. Justin believed in the emanation of these souls from Divinity, and Tatian, the Assyrian, his disciple, declared that "man was as immortal as God himself." * ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, #NFDB
911:Come Down, O Maid
COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
912:This estate supports hundreds of people. Without it, many of them won’t survive. Tell me you’d be willing to stand face-to-face with one of the tenants and tell him that he has to move his family to Manchester so they can all work in a filthy factory.”
“How can the factory be any worse than living on a muddy scrap of farmland?”
“Considering urban diseases, crime, slum alleys, and abject poverty,” Devon said acidly, “I’d say it’s considerably worse. And if my tenants and servants all leave, what of the consequences to the village of Eversby itself? What will become of the merchants and businesses once the estate is gone? I have to make a go of this, West.”
His brother stared at him as if he were a stranger. “Your tenants and servants.”
Devon scowled. “Yes. Who else’s are they?”
West’s lips curled in a derisive sneer. “Tell me this, oh lordly one…what do you expect will happen when you fail?”
“I can’t think about failure. If I do, I’ll be doomed from the start.”
“You’re already doomed. You’ll preen and posture as lord of the manor while the roof caves in and the tenants starve, and I’m damned if I’ll have any part of your narcissistic folly.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Davon retorted, heading for the door. “Since you’re usually as drunk as a boiled owl, you’re of no use to me.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” West called after him.
Pausing at the threshold, Devon gave him a cold glance. “I’m the Earl of Trenear,” he said, and left the room. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
913:...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another. ... When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ... There are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The first is of young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details & modifications which a further progress would bring to their knoledge. The other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics. ... Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
914:The Princess: A Medley: Come Down, O Maid
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
915:Thoughts of the Brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements -- change -- in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and information-processing which we substantialize. We do not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the movement, or, more precisely, the placement of objects: how they become linked to one another. But we cannot read the patterns of arrangement; we cannot extract the information in it -- i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself). [...] We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can't read outside and can't hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is a language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the word "idiot" is the word "private." Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of consciousness. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
916:The incident had occurred and was gone for me: itwasan incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a sense; yet it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life. (...) The new face, too, was like a new picture introduced to the gallery of memory; and it was dissimilar to all the others hanging there: firstly, because it was masculine; and, secondly, because it was dark, strong, and stern. I had it still before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the letter into the post-office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all the way home. When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked round and listened, with an idea that a horse's hoofs might ring on the causeway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like Newfoundland dog, might be again apparent: I saw only the hedge and a pollard willow before me, rising up still and straight to meet the moonbeams; I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among the trees round Thornfield, a mile distant; and when I glanced down in the direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught a light kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I hurried on.
I did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; (...) to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk, - to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. ~ Charlotte Bront,#NFDB
917:Chicago Zen
Now tidy your house,
dust especially your living room
and do not forget to name
all your children.
II
Watch your step. Sight may strike you
blind in unexpected places.
The traffic light turns orange
on 57th and Dorchester, and you stumble,
you fall into a vision of forest fires,
enter a frothing Himalayan river,
rapid, silent.
On the 14th floor,
Lake Michigan crawls and crawls
in the window. Your thumbnail
cracks a lobster louse on the windowpane
from your daughter's hair
and you drown, eyes open,
towards the Indies, the antipodes.
And you, always so perfectly sane.
III
Now you know what you always knew:
the country cannot be reached
by jet. Nor by boat on jungle river,
hashish behind the Monkey-temple,
nor moonshot to the cratered Sea
of Tranquillity, slim circus girls
on a tightrope between tree and tree
with white parasols, or the one
and only blue guitar.
Nor by any
other means of transport,
migrating with a clean valid passport,
no, not even by transmigrating
without any passport at all,
but only by answering ordinary
black telephones, questions
walls and small children ask,
and answering all calls of nature.
IV
Watch your step, watch it, I say,
especially at the first high
threshold,
and the sudden low
one near the end
of the flight
of stairs,
and watch
for the last
step that's never there.
~ A. K. Ramanujan,#NFDB
918:The Dead Poet
Never again shall he with wizard sleight
Ensare on threshold of his soul the bright
Unearthly splendors that would oft alight,
And in the magic web of melody
Display them flashing as when they were free.
Never again shall he be inflamed by Spring
Soar to the gods to hear Apollo sing
Songs ah! so sweet and with so tense a lyre
They seemed as nectar flowing through white fire.
Never again shall he fold truths in rhyme
And thrust them clinging 'neath the wings of Time,
Shape a fine fancy with unfaltering taste,
Fondling the colors that the sounds embraced;
Or with eyes dim from dreaming watch the slow
Ascending sun's plume on a fervid glow,
And pinions palely spreading far away;
Or hear at night, when on his couch he lay,
The moaning of the moonlit toiling sea
With burden of o'erwhelming memory,
Seeming to carry in an undertone
Rumors of dauntless heroes he had known,
Who bearded even gods to glut desire
And fought beneath the thunder of their ire.
Lured by the glamor of translunar dreams
He chased through mist the ever-fleeting gleams.
Aloof from wealth's red bubbled vanities,
Contented to be thought not worldly wise
Since he, when flamed the mantle of the seer,
In mood majestic trod the magian sphere
Where nature's veil at his authentic glance
Fell quivering from her fire-bright countenance,
And heard, like an abysmal heaving sea,
The movement of the Eternal Harmony.
~ Arthur Bayldon,#NFDB
919:Regret
SOFTLY Death touched her and she passed away
Out of this glad, bright world she made more fair,
Sweet as the apple-blossoms, when in May
The orchards flush, of summer grown aware.
All that fresh delicate beauty gone from sight,
That gentle, gracious presence felt no more!
How must the house be emptied of delight,
What shadows on the threshold she passed o’er!
She loved me. Surely I was grateful, yet
I could not give her back all she gave me, —
Ever I think of it with vain regret,
Musing upon a summer by the sea;
Remembering troops of merry girls who pressed
About me, — clinging arms and tender eyes,
And love, like scent of roses. With the rest
She came to fill my heart with new surprise.
The day I left them all and sailed away,
While o’er the calm sea, ‘neath the soft gray sky
They waved farewell, she followed me, to say
Yet once again her wistful, sweet “good by.”
At the boat’s bow she drooped; her light green dress
Swept o’er the skiff in many a graceful fold,
Her glowing face, bright with a mute caress,
Crowned with her lovely hair of shadowy gold:
And tears she dropped into the crystal brine
For me, unworthy, as we slowly swung
Free of the mooring. Her last look was mine,
Seeking me still the motley crowd among.
O tender memory of the dead I hold
So precious through the fret and change of years
Were I to live till Time itself grew old,
The sad sea would be sadder for those tears.
23
~ Celia Thaxter,#NFDB
920:SLAVES of thy shining eyes are even those
That diadems of might and empire bear;
Drunk with the wine that from thy red lip flows,
Are they that e'en the grape's delight forswear.
Drift, like the wind across a violet bed,
Before thy many lovers, weeping low,
And clad like violets in blue robes of woe,
Who feel thy wind-blown hair and bow the head.
Thy messenger the breath of dawn, and mine
A stream of tears, since lover and beloved
Keep not their secret; through my verses shine,
Though other lays my flower's grace have proved
And countless nightingales have sung thy praise.
When veiled beneath thy curls thou passest, see,
To right and leftward those that welcome thee
Have bartered peace and rest on thee to gaze!
But thou that knowest God by heart, away!
Wine-drunk, love-drunk, we inherit Paradise,
His mercy is for sinners; hence and pray
Where wine thy cheek red as red erghwan dyes,
And leave the cell to faces sinister.
Oh Khizr, whose happy feet bathed in life's fount,
Help one who toils afoot-the horsemen mount
And hasten on their way; I scarce can stir.
Ah, loose me not! ah, set not Hafiz free
From out the bondage of thy gleaming hair!
Safe only those, safe, and at liberty,
That fast enchained in thy linked ringlets are.
But from the image of his dusty cheek
Learn this from Hafiz: proudest heads shall bend,
And dwellers on the threshold of a friend
Be crownd with the dust that crowns the meek.
~ Hafiz, Slaves Of Thy Shining Eyes
,#NFDB
921:Ah, who was it coloured that little frock, my child, and covered
your sweet limbs with that little red tunic?
You have come out in the morning to play in the courtyard,
tottering and tumbling as you run.
But who was it coloured that little frock, my child?
What is it makes you laugh, my little life-bud?
Mother smiles at you standing on the threshold.
She claps her hands and her bracelets jingle, and you dance
with your bamboo stick in your hand like a tiny little shepherd.
But what is it makes you laugh, my little life-bud?
O beggar, what do you bed for, clinging to your mother's neck
with both your hands?
O greedy heart, shall I pluck the world like a fruit from the
sky to place it on your little rosy palm?
O beggar, what are you begging for?
The wind carries away in glee the tinkling of your anklet
bells.
The sun smiles and watches your toilet.
The sky watches over you when you sleep in your mother's arms,
and the morning comes tiptoe to your bed and kisses your eyes.
The wind carried away in glee the tinkling of your anklet
bells.
The fairy mistress of dreams is coming towards you, flying
through the twilight sky.
The world-mother keeps her seat by you in your mother's heart.
He who plays his music to the stars is standing at your window
with his flute.
And the fairy mistress of dreams is coming towards you, flying
through the twilight sky.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Unheeded Pageant
,#NFDB
922:Yet I have reflected on the fact that for most of use, there is a hard, impassable barrier between the most imaginatively detailed depravity and its real-life execution. It's the same solid steel wall that inserts itself between a kinife and my wrist even when I'm at my most disconsolate. So how was Kevin able to raise that crossbow, point it at Laura's breastbone, and then really, actually, in time and space, squeeze the release? I can only assume that he discovered what I never wish to. That there is no barrier. That like my trips abroad or this ludicrous scheme of bike locks and invitations on school stationaery, the very squeezing of that release can be broken down into a series of simple constituent parts. It may be no more miraculous to pull the trigger of a bow or a gun than it is to reach for a glass of water. I fear that crossing into the "unthinkable" turns out to be no more athletic than stepping across the threshold of an ordinary room; and that, if you will, is the trick. The secret. As ever, the secret is that there is no secret. He must almost have wanted to giggle, though that is not his style; those Columbine kids did giggle. And once you have found out that there is nothing to stop you—that the barrier, so seemingly uncrossable, is all in your head—it must be possible to step back and forth across that threshold again and again, shot after shot, as if an unintimidating pipsqueak has drawn a line across the carpet that you must not pass and you launch tauntingly over it, back and over it, in a mocking little dance. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
923:I found Lord Emsworth, Lady Constance, and told him the car was in readiness.’ ‘Oh, thank you, Miss Briggs. Where was he?’ ‘Down at the sty. Would there be anything furthah?’ ‘No thank you, Miss Briggs.’ As the door closed, the Duke exploded with a loud report. ‘Down at the sty!’ he cried. ‘Wouldn’t you have known it! Whenever you want him, he’s down at the sty, gazing at that pig of his, absorbed, like somebody watching a strip-tease act. It’s not wholesome for a man to worship a pig the way he does. Isn’t there something in the Bible about the Israelites worshipping a pig? No, it was a golden calf, but the principle’s the same. I tell you …’ He broke off. The door had opened again. Lord Emsworth stood on the threshold, his mild face agitated. ‘Connie, I can’t find my umbrella.’ ‘Oh, Clarence!’ said Lady Constance with the exasperation the head of the family so often aroused in her, and hustled him out towards the cupboard in the hall where, as he should have known perfectly well, his umbrella had its home. Left alone, the Duke prowled about the room for some moments, chewing his moustache and examining his surroundings with popping eyes. He opened drawers, looked at books, stared at pictures, fiddled with pens and paper-knives. He picked up a photograph of Mr Schoonmaker and thought how right he had been in comparing his head to a pumpkin. He read the letter Lady Constance had been writing. Then, having exhausted all the entertainment the room had to offer, he sat down at the desk and gave himself up to thoughts of Lord Emsworth and the Empress. Every ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
924:The mythological hero setting forth from his common-day hut or castle is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There, he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother battle, dragon battle, offering, charm) or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifiction). Beyond this threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamilir yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give him magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divination (apotheosis), or again - if the powers have remained unfriendly to him - his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft), intrinsically, it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformational flight). At the return threshold, the transcendental powers must remain behind;; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (resurrection, return). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir, eternal life). ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
925:Seventeen years ago, wading aimlessly through one campo after another, a pair of green boots brought me to the threshold of a smallish pink edifice. On its wall I saw a plaque saying that Antonio Vivaldi, prematurely born, was baptized in this church. In those days I was still reasonably red-haired; I felt sentimental about bumping into the place of baptism of that “red cleric” who has given me so much joy on so many occasions and in so many godforsaken parts of the world. And I seemed to recall that it was Olga Rudge who had organized the first-ever Vivaldi settimana in this city - as it happened, just a few days before World War II broke out. It took place, somebody told me, in the palazzo of the Countess Polignac, and Miss Rudge was playing the violin. As she proceeded with the piece, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that a gentleman had entered the salone and stood by the door, since all the seats were taken. The piece was long, and now she felt somewhat worried, because she was approaching a passage where she had to turn the page without interrupting her play. The man in the corner of her eye started to move and soon disappeared from her field of vision. The passage grew closer, and her nervousness grew, too. Then, at exactly the point where she had to turn the page, a hand emerged from the left, stretched to the music stand, and slowly turned the sheet. She kept playing and, when the difficult passage was over, lifted her eyes to the left to acknowledge her gratitude. “And that,” Olga Rudge told a friend of mine, “is how I first met Stravinsky. ~ Joseph Brodsky, #NFDB
926:Instead of the carriage Beatrix had expected, there was a single horse on the drive, Christopher’s large bay gelding.
Beatrix turned to give him a questioning look. “Don’t I get a horse? A pony cart? Or am I to trot along behind you?”
His lips twitched. “We’ll ride together. If you’re willing. I have a surprise for you.”
“How unconventional of you.”
“Yes, I thought that would please you.” He helped her to mount the horse, and swung up easily behind her.
No matter what the surprise was, Beatrix thought as she leaned back into his cradling arms, this moment was bliss. She savored the feel of him, all his strength around her, his body adjusting easily to every movement of the horse. He bade her to close her eyes as they went into the forest. Beatrix relaxed against his chest. The forest air turned sweeter as it cooled, infused with scents of resin and dark earth.
“Where are we going?” she asked against his coat.
“We’re almost there. Don’t look.”
Soon Christopher reined in the horse and dismounted, helping her down.
Viewing their surroundings, Beatrix smiled in perplexity. It was the secret house on Lord Westcliff’s estate. Light glowed through the open windows. “Why are we here?”
“Go upstairs and see,” Christopher said, and went to tether the horse.
Picking up the skirts of her blue dress, Beatrix ascended the circular staircase, which had been lit with strategically placed lamps in the wall brackets where ancient torches had once hung. Reaching the circular room upstairs, Beatrix crossed the threshold.
The room had been transformed. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
927:Joe nudged Sean’s arm. “I swear, I could tell time by how often Emma looks at you just by counting off the seconds.”
Sean resisted the urge to turn and look. “She’s nervous, that’s all.”
“That’s not nerves.”
“I think I know her better than you do.”
Joe laughed. “You’ve known her a week.”
“Ten days.”
“Hate to burst your bubble, but I’ve known her longer than ten days. Not well, but I’ve run into her at Mike and Lisa’s. Not that it matters. That look on a woman’s face is pretty universal.”
“There’s no look.”
“Oh, there’s a look,” Kevin said.
“There might be a look,” Leo added.
“Mike and I can’t see,” Evan added. “We’re facing the wrong way. We could turn around, but she might wonder why we’re all staring at her.”
Even though he figured his cousins were pulling his leg, Sean angled his body a little so he could see her in his peripheral vision.
Okay, so she was looking at him. A lot. But Joe and Kevin were still full of crap because there was no look.The glances were too quick to read anything into, never mind the kind of message they were implying she was sending.
He watched her watching him for a while, and then Aunt Mary told them to get the meat ready so they could fire the grill. Since his cousins made for more than enough chefs stirring the soup and he needed a break from the visual game of tag he and Emma were playing he grabbed a beer and made his way to the big toolshed. It was the unofficial Kowalski man cave, where females feared to tread. Even Aunt Mary would just stand outside and bellow rather than cross the threshold. ~ Shannon Stacey,#NFDB
928:Confession
Life returned with a cause-the way
Some strange chance once interrupted it.
Just as on that distant summer day,
I am standing in the same old street.
People are the same, and people's worries,
And the sunset's still a fireball,
Just the way death's night once in a hurry
Nailed it to the ancient mansion's wall.
Women, in the same cheap clothes attired,
Are still wearing down their shoes at night.
Afterwards, against the roofing iron
They are by the garrets crucified.
Here is one of them. She looks so weary
As she steps across the threshold, and
Rising from the basement, drab and dreary,
Walks across the courtyard on a slant.
And again I'm ready with excuses,
And again it's all the same to me.
And the neighbour in the backyard pauses,
Then goes out of sight, and leaves us be.
_____
Don't cry, do not purse your lips up,
They're puffy as it is, dear.
Mind you don't break the drying scab
Of smouldering spring fever.
Your hand is on my breast. Let go!
We are like two live wires.
If we aren't careful, we'll be thrown
Together unawares.
The years will pass, you'll marry yet
40
And you'll forget this squalor.
To be a woman is a feat,
To drive men mad, that's valour.
And as for me, I've been in thrall
For ages-begged like alms,
And worshipped the great miracle
Of woman's neck, back, arms.
Though bound tight, at the end of day,
By the anguished darkness' loop,
I'm ever lured to get awayI long to break things up.
~ Boris Pasternak,#NFDB
929:Kathleen.” He made no attempt to hide the lust in his gaze. “If you hold still, I’ll help you with your skirt. But if you run from me, you’re going to be caught.” He took an unsteady breath before adding softly, “And I’ll make you come for me again.”
Her eyes turned huge.
He took a deliberate step forward. She bolted across the nearest threshold and fled to the carriage room. Devon was at her heels instantly, following her past the workshop with its long carpenter’s benches and tool cupboards. The carriage room smelled pleasantly of sawdust, axle grease, lacquer varnish, and leather polish. It was quiet and shadowy, illuminated only by a row of skylights over massive hinge-strapped doors that could be opened onto the estate’s carriage drive.
Kathleen darted through rows of vehicles used for different purposes; carts, wagons, a light brougham, a landau with a folding top, a phaeton, a hooded barouche for summer. Devon circled around and intercepted her beside the family coach, a huge, stately carriage that could only be pulled by six horses. It had been designed as a symbol of power and prestige, with the Ravenel family crest--a trio of black ravens on a white and gold shield--painted on the sides.
Halting abruptly, Kathleen stared at him through the semidarkness.
Taking the overskirt from her, Devon dropped it to the floor, and pinned her against the side of the carriage.
“My riding skirt,” she exclaimed in dismay. “You’ll ruin it.”
Devon laughed. “You were never going to wear it anyway.” He began to unbutton her riding jacket, while she sputtered helplessly. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
930:I remember, for instance, the first time I went to the great palace of Versailles outside Paris and how, as I wandered around among all those gardens and fountains and statues, I had a sense that the place was alive with ghosts which I was just barely able to see, that somewhere just beneath the surface of all that was going on around me at that moment, the past was going on around me too with such reality and such poignance that I had to have somebody else to tell about it if only to reassure myself that I wasn’t losing my mind. I wanted and sorely needed to name to another human being the sights that I was seeing and the thoughts and feelings they were giving rise to. I thought that in a way I could not even surely know what I was seeing physically until I could speak of it to someone else, could not come to terms with what I was feeling as either real or unreal until I could put it into words and speak those words and hear other words in response to mine. But there was nobody to speak to, as it happened, and I can still remember the frustration of it: the sense I had of something trying to be born in me that could not be born without the midwifery of expressing it; the sense, it might not be too much to say, of my self trying to be born, of a threshold I had to cross in order to move on into the next room of who I had it in me just then to become. “in the beginning was the Word,” John writes, and perhaps part of what that means is that until there is a word, there can be no beginning.
Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, in an essay called The Speaking and Writing of Words. ~ Frederick Buechner,#NFDB
931:The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again-if the powers have remained unfriendly to him-his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir). ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Keys, #NFDB
932:SELF-ASSESSMENTAre You an Empath? To find out, take the following empath self-assessment, answering “mostly yes” or “mostly no” to each question. •Have I ever been labeled overly sensitive, shy, or introverted? •Do I frequently get overwhelmed or anxious? •Do arguments and yelling make me ill? •Do I often feel like I don’t fit in? •Do crowds drain me, and do I need alone time to revive myself? •Do noise, odors, or nonstop talkers overwhelm me? •Do I have chemical sensitivities or a low tolerance for scratchy clothes? •Do I prefer taking my own car to places so that I can leave early if I need to? •Do I overeat to cope with stress? •Am I afraid of becoming suffocated by intimate relationships? •Do I startle easily? •Do I react strongly to caffeine or medications? •Do I have a low threshold for pain? •Do I tend to socially isolate? •Do I absorb other people’s stress, emotions, or symptoms? •Am I overwhelmed by multitasking, and do I prefer to do one thing at a time? •Do I replenish myself in nature? •Do I need a long time to recuperate after being with difficult people or energy vampires? •Do I feel better in small towns or the country rather than large cities? •Do I prefer one-to-one interactions and small groups to large gatherings? Now calculate your results. •If you answered yes to one to five questions, you’re at least a partial empath. •If you answered yes to six to ten questions, you have moderate empath tendencies. •If you answered yes to eleven to fifteen questions, you have strong empath tendencies. •If you answered yes to more than fifteen questions, you are a full-blown empath. ~ Judith Orloff, #NFDB
933:While Dr. Weeks attended to Devon’s injuries, Kathleen went to visit West.
Even before she reached the open door of his room, she heard noise and laughter drifting into the hallway. She stood at the threshold, watching with a touch of fond resignation as she saw West sitting up in bed, regaling a group that included a half-dozen servants, Pandora, Cassandra, both dogs, and Hamlet. Helen stood beside a lamp, reading the temperature of a glass thermometer.
Thankfully West no longer appeared to be shivering, and his color had improved.
“…then I glimpsed a man wading back out into the river,” he was saying, “toward a half-submerged railway carriage with people trapped inside. And I said to myself, ‘That man is a hero. Also an idiot. Because he’s already been in the water for too long, and he won’t be able to save them, and he’s about to sacrifice his life for nothing.’ I proceeded to climb down the embankment and found Sutton. ‘Where is the earl?’ I asked.” West paused for dramatic effect, relishing the rapt attention of his audience. “And where do you think Sutton pointed? Out to the river, where that reckless fool had just saved a trio of children, and was wading after them with a baby in one arm and a woman on the other.”
“The man was Lord Trenear?” one of the housemaids gasped.
“None other.”
The entire group exclaimed with pleasure and possessive pride.
“Nothing to it, for a bloke as big as his lordship,” one of the footmen said with a grin.
“I should think he’ll be put in the papers for this,” another exclaimed.
“I hope so,” West said, “if only because I know how he would loathe it. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
934:Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor any one society alone among the others, so man is not alone in the universe. When the spectrum or rainbow of human cultures has finally sunk into the void created by our frenzy; as long as we continue to exist and there is a world, that tenuous arch linking us to the inaccessible will still remain, to show us the opposite course to that leading to enslavement; many may be unable to follow it, but its contemplation affords him the only privilege of which he can make himself worthy; that of arresting the process, of controlling the impulse which forces him to block up the cracks in the wall of necessity one by one and to complete his work at the same time as he shuts himself up within his prison; this is a privilege coveted by every society, whatever its beliefs, its political system or its level of civilization; a privilege to which it attaches its leisure, its pleasure, its peace of mind and its freedom; the possibility, vital for life, of unhitching, which consists - Oh! fond farewell to savages and explorations! - in grasping, during the brief intervals in which our species can bring itself to interrupt its hive-like activity, the essence of what it was and continues to be, below the threshold of thought and over and above society: in the contemplation of a mineral more beautiful than all our creations; in the scent that can be smelt at the heart of a lily and is more imbued with learning than all our books; or in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat. ~ Claude L vi Strauss, #NFDB
935:Inside the church, the bondsmaids were walking slowly down the aisle,
with the little petal girls. Trinity turned to give Mimi her last words of
motherly advice: 'Walk straight. Don't slouch. And for heavens's sake,
smile! It's your bonding!?' Then she too walked through the door and
down the aisle. The door shut behind her, leaving Mimi alone.
Finally, Mimi heard the orchestra play the first strains of the 'Wedding
March.' Wagner. Then the ushers opened the doors and Mimi moved to the threshold. There was an appreciative gasp from the crowd as they took in the sight of Mimi in her fantastic dress. But instead of acknowledging her triumph as New York?s most beautiful bride, Mimi looked straight ahead, at Jack, who was standing so tall and straight at the altar. He met her eyes and did not smile.
'Let's just get this over with.'
His words were like an ice pick to the heart. He doesn't love me. He has
never loved me. Not the way he loves Schuyler. Not the way he loved Allegra. He has come to every bonding with this darkness. With this regret and hesitation, doubt and despair. She couldn't deny it. She knew her twin, and she knew what he was feeling, and it wasn't joy or even relief.
What am I doing?
"Ready" Forsyth Llewellyn suddenly appeared by her side. Oh, right, she
remembered, she had said yes when Forsyth had offered to walk her
down the aisle.
Here goes nothing. As if in a daze, Mimi took his arm, Jack's words still
echoing in her head. She walked, zombie-like, down the aisle, not even
noticing the flashing cameras or the murmurs of approval from the
hard-to-impress crowd. ~ Melissa de la Cruz,#NFDB
936:PRAYER OF COMMUNION We who are about to partake of each other, shall walk past all amorous sickness and deaths, for we are within the magical equinox. Amen We who proudly make unto ourselves every graven image, shall have great copulations and are allowed to love our Gods, for we know the Sacred Alignments. Amen We who do not crucify—nothing shall hurt us that is of the 'Nature'; neither our comings and goings from the womb, for we have the Key to all aesthetics. Amen In this sacred moment (here occurs the symbolic eating of flesh and blood) we forget our enemies: therefore let our dead children sleep. And let our dead loves arise, so they too may watch and enjoy our ecstasies. Let their animation be power to our memories and so resurge all ecstasy, for in this day there shall be no inhibitions. Amen Thou insatiable peripheral quadriga of sex. Amen PRAYER OF ADORATION Thou lambent spirit of Erh! Thou hast kindled the sacred fire from dead ashes, so my torch lightens all darknesses. Thou hast become the fulcrum of my will. Everlastingly in Thee I know not respite: Except in the sensuous impact of flesh, there are no meanings. Thou hast awakened me into eternities. Thou makest all things beautiful unto the grotesque. Whom thou succour hath no sterility. I am reborn and reborn into desirous becomings: I have recreated my Soul by birthing pleasure. Through Thee my will, desire, belief and word become the law That carries me into the Catastrophic beyond becoming: Thou the emissary of Neither-Neither! Ever Silent Watcher! Thou hast shown me the new sexualities And all the mysteries of the Threshold! Only Thee I adore in my Soul and my everlasting body. Alpha-Omega—Amen! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
937:[Dedicated to K.M.Ward]
"I will arise and go unto my father"
MALKUTH
Dark, dark all dark! I cower, I cringe.
Only above me is a citron tinge
As if some echo of red, gold and lue
Chimed on the night and let its shadow through.
Yet I who am thus prisoned and exiled
Am the right heir of glory, the crowned child.
I match my might against my Fate's
I gird myself to reach the ultimate shores,
I arm myself the war to win:-
Lift up your heads, O mighty gates!
Be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors!
The King of Glory shall come in.
TAU
I pass from the citrine eep indigo
Is this tall column. Snakes and vultures bend
Their hooted hate on him that would ascend.
O may the Four avail me ! Ageless woe,
Fear, torture, throng the threshold. LO1 The end
Of Matter ! The immensity of things
Let loose -new laws, new beings, new conditions;-
Dire chaos; see ! these new-fledged wings
Fail in its vagueness and initiations.
Only my circle saves me from the hate
Of all these monsters dead yet animate.
I match, &c.
YESOD
Hail, thou full moon, O flame of Amethyst !
Stupendous mountain on whose shoulders rest
The Eight Above. More stable is my crest
Than thine -and now I pierce thee, veil of mist!
Even as an arrow from the war-bow springs
I leap -my life is set with loftier things.
I match, & c.
SAMECH ( and the crossing of the Path of Pe)
Now swift, thou azure shaft of fading fire,
Pierce through the rainbow! Swift, O swift! how streams
The world by! Let Sandalphon and his quire
Of Angels ward me!
Ho! what
~ Aleister Crowley, The Ladder
,#NFDB
938:Imagine that you were on the threshold of this fairytale, sometime billions of years ago when everything was created. And you were able to choose whether you wanted to be born to a life on this planet at some point. You wouldn’t know when you were going to be born, nor how long you’d live for, but at any event it wouldn’t be more than a few years. All you’d know was that, if you chose to come into the world at some point, you’d also have to leave it again one day and go away from everything. This might cause you a good deal of grief, as lots of people think that life in the great fairytale is so wonderful that the mere thought of it ending can bring tears to their eyes. Things can be so nice here that it’s terribly painful to think that at some point the days will run out. What would you have chosen, if there had been some higher power that had gave you the choice? Perhaps we can imagine some sort of cosmic fairy in this great, strange fairytale. What you have chosen to live a life on earth at some point, whether short or long, in a hundred thousand or a hundred million years? Or would you have refused to join in the game because you didn’t like the rules? (...) I asked myself the same question maybe times during the past few weeks. Would I have elected to live a life on earth in the firm knowledge that I’d suddenly be torn away from it, and perhaps in the middle of intoxicating happiness? (...) Well, I wasn’t sure what I would have chosen. (...) If I’d chosen never to the foot inside the great fairytale, I’d never have known what I’ve lost. Do you see what I’m getting at? Sometimes it’s worse for us human beings to lose something dear to us than never to have had it at all. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
939:Even if these two didn't share the same short dark hair, the same violet eyes, and the same flawless olive skin, I'd know they were related because of their most dominant feature-their habit of staring.
"I'm Chloe. This is my friend Emma, who apparently just head-butted your boyfriend Galen. We were in the middle of apologizing."
I pinch the bridge of my nose and count to ten-Mississippi, but fifty-Mississippi seems more appropriate. Fifty allows more time to fantasize about ripping one of Chloe's new waves out.
"Emma, what's wrong? Your nose isn't bleeding, is it?" She chirps, enjoying herself.
Tingles gather at my chin as Galen lifts it with the crook of his finger. "Is your nose bleeding? Let me see," he says. He tilts my head side to side, leans closer to get a good look.
And I meet my threshold for embarrassment. Tripping is bad enough. Tripping into someone is much worse. But if that someone has a body that could make sculpted statues jealous-and thinks you've broken your nose on one of his pecs-well, that's when tripping runs a distant second to humane euthanasia.
He is clearly surprised when I swat his hand and step away. His girlfriend/relative seems taken aback that I mimic his stance-crossed arms and deep frown. I doubt she has ever met her threshold for embarrassment.
"I said I was fine. No blood, no foul."
"This is my sister Rayna," he says, as if the conversation steered naturally in that direction. She smiles at me as if forced at knifepoint, the kind of smile that comes purely from manners, like the smile you give your grandmother when she gives you the rotten-cabbage-colored sweater she's been knitting. I think of that sweater now as I return her smile. ~ Anna Banks,#NFDB
940:I didn’t know what had ignited our passion, but with my hands in Narian’s hair and our mouths moving together, I was rapidly losing my ability to think. It was afternoon, and we were in my study, the door closed but not locked, and anyone, Cokyrian or Hytanican, could walk in at any moment.
Narian lifted me and set me on my desk, knocking a few papers to the floor, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. I laughed through our kiss until he was forced to come up for air.
“What?” he asked, cheeks flushed, his visage happy and dazed.
“What are we doing?”
“I don’t know, but I’m enjoying it,” he said, caressing my neck with his lips.
Despite how difficult he was making it for me to form words, I stuttered out a halfhearted objection. “Narian, you realize…we’re going to be caught.”
He was breathing heavily and took a moment to answer, too busy concentrating on the hollow of my throat. “Somehow…I can’t bring myself…to care.”
Still grasping his hair, I pulled his head back, kissing him once more fully on the lips. “That’s a new attitude you’ve adopted.”
He laughed. “The High Priestess and Rava appear to know we’re in love, so even if we’re discovered, it won’t be much of a shock to the powers that be.”
Despite his words, he practically leaped away from me when the door opened. I crossed my legs, giving him a sideways glare for leaving me sitting rather inappropriately on the edge of my desk, and he rubbed the back of his neck in sheepish apology.
Of course it was Rava crossing the threshold, and she took in our postures before slamming the door, her expression particularly unpleasant.
“So this is how the two of you handle the affairs of the province,” she growled. ~ Cayla Kluver,#NFDB
941:NOT all the sum of earthly happiness
Is worth the bowed head of a moment's pain,
And if I sell for wine my dervish dress,
Worth more than what I sell is what I gain!
Land where my Lady dwells, thou holdest me
Enchained; else Fars were but a barren soil,
Not worth the journey over land and sea,
Not worth the toil!
Down in the quarter where they sell red wine,
My holy carpet scarce would fetch a cup
How brave a pledge of piety is mine,
Which is not worth a goblet foaming up!
Mine enemy heaped scorn on me and said
'Forth from the tavern gate!' Why am I thrust
From off the threshold? is my fallen head
Not worth the dust?
Wash white that travel-stained sad robe of thine!
Where word and deed alike one colour bear,
The grape's fair purple garment shall outshine
Thy many-coloured rags and tattered gear.
Full easy seemed the sorrow of the sea
Lightened by hope of gain--hope flew too fast
A hundred pearls were poor indemnity,
Not worth the blast.
The Sultan's crown, with priceless jewels set,
Encircles fear of death and constant dread
It is a head-dress much desired--and yet
Art sure 'tis worth the danger to the head?
'Twere best for thee to hide thy face from those
That long for thee; the Conqueror's reward
Is never worth the army's long-drawn woes,
Worth fire and sword.
Ah, seek the treasure of a mind at rest
And store it in the treasury of Ease;
Not worth a loyal heart, a tranquil breast,
Were all the riches of thy lands and seas!
Ah, scorn, like Hafiz, the delights of earth,
Ask not one grain of favour from the base,
Two hundred sacks of jewels were not worth
Thy soul's disgrace
~ Hafiz, Not Worth The Toil!
,#NFDB
942:Advent Hymn
Another mile—a year
Pass'd by for ever! And the warnings swell
From upper heaven to darkest depths of hell,—
O we are drawing near!
All through the waiting lands
Dim signs and tokens, if unheeded, throng;
We feel them thickening as we pass along,
Holding out fearful hands.
Light! which in love sent down
That tender gleam on Eden's darken'd bowers,
When sin had breathed the blight upon the flowers
Whereof death made his crown:—
Light! which did deign to stamp
The tables on that Arab mountain-crest;—
Light! which, in shrouded glory, once did rest
On Israelitish camp:—
O day! whose dawn was spread,
Golden and clear, on Judaea's terraced hills,—
O shining noon! whose waxèd beauty thrills
Earth and her quick and dead:—
Come to our hearts, we pray!
Through open doors let gracious gleams come in;
Fill us with light and life, and let the sin
And darkness pass away.
Lord, waken us who sleep,
Strengthen the feeble knees and weak hands now;
Teach us, with prayer and work, to measure how
The stealthy minutes creep.
Let not our lamp be dim
When in the night we hear the footsteps fall
Upon our threshold,—let death find us all
Watching in peace for him.
40
Let us lie down to rest
In surest hope of endless life in store,
With happy reverent hands, that strive no more,
Folded across our breast.
And when the angels come,
And the sharp echo of the herald's cry
Pierces the dark and stillness where we lie
Cold in our sleep, and dumb,—
May we arise, O King!
In bridal garments, beautiful and white;
And do Thou, coming in Thy godly might,
Our crown of glory bring.
~ Ada Cambridge,#NFDB
943:At last I came upon the hedge maze. Far from the warm circles of light cast by torch and lamp, the leaves and twigs here were wedged in a silver lacework of starlight and shadow. The entrance was framed by two large trees, their branches still bare of any new growth. In the darkness, they seemed less like garden posts marking the way into the labyrinth than two silent sentinels guarding the doorway to the underworld. Shapes writhed in the shadows beyond the archway of bramble and vine, both inviting and intimidating.
Yet I was not frightened. The hedge maze smelled like the forest outside the inn, a deep green scent of growth and decay, where life and death were intermingled. A familiar scent. A welcoming scent.
The scent of home. Removing my mask, I crossed the threshold, letting darkness swallow me whole.
There were no torches or candles lit upon the paths, and neither moonlight nor starlight penetrated the dense bramble. Yet my footing along these paths was sure, every part of me attuned to the wildness around me. Unlike the maze of Schönbrunn Palace, a meticulously manicured and man-made construction, this labyrinth breathed. Nature creeped in along the edges, reclaiming groomed, orderly, and civilized corridors into a twisting tangle of tunnels and tracks, weeds and wildflowers. Paths grew vague, roots unruly, branches untamed. Somewhere deep in the labyrinth, I could hear the giggles and gasps of illicit encounters in the shrubbery. I was careful of my step, lest I trip over a pair of trysting lovers, but when I came upon no one else, I let myself fall into a meditative state of mind. I wandered the recursive spirals of the hedge maze, turn after turn after turn, feeling a measure of calm for the first time in a long time. ~ S Jae Jones,#NFDB
944:Before he could explain further, however, Rhys happened to catch sight of a slim, dark shape walking past the doorway. It was only a fleeting glimpse... but it was enough to send a jolt of awareness through him.
"You," he said in a voice that carried out into the hallway. "Whoever just passed by the door. Come here."
In the riveting silence, a young woman appeared at the threshold. Her features were delicately angular, her silver blue eyes round and wide-set. As she stood at the edge of the lamplight, her fair skin and pale blond hair seemed to hold their own radiance, an effect he'd seen in paintings of Old Testament angels.
"There's a grain about it," Rhys's father had always said when he'd wanted to describe something fine and polished and perfect, something of the highest quality. Oh, there was a grain about this woman. She was only medium height, but her extreme slenderness gave her the illusion of being taller. Her breasts were high and gently rounded beneath the high-necked dress, and for a pleasurable, disorienting moment Rhys remembered resting his head there as she had given him sips of orchid tea.
"Say something," he commanded gruffly.
The shy glow of her smile gilded the air. "I'm glad to see you in better health, Mr. Winterborne."
Helen's voice.
She was more beautiful than starlight, and just as unattainable. As he stared at her, Rhys was bitterly reminded of the upper-class ladies who had looked at him with contempt when he was a shop boy, holding their skirts back if he passed near them on the street, the way they would seek to avoid a filthy stray dog.
"Is there something I can do for you?" she asked.
Rhys shook his head, still unable to take his gaze from her. "I only wanted a face to go with the voice. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
945:A Night In June
Lady! in this night of June
Fair like thee and holy,
Art thou gazing at the moon
That is rising slowly?
I am gazing on her now:
Something tells me, so art thou.
Night hath been when thou and I
Side by side were sitting,
Watching o'er the moonlit sky
Fleecy cloudlets flitting.
Close our hands were linkèd then;
When will they be linked again?
What to me the starlight still,
Or the moonbeams' splendour,
If I do not feel the thrill
Of thy fingers slender?
Summer nights in vain are clear,
If thy footstep be not near.
Roses slumbering in their sheaths
O'er my threshold clamber,
And the honeysuckle wreathes
Its translucent amber
Round the gables of my home:
How is it thou dost not come?
If thou camest, rose on rose
From its sleep would waken;
From each flower and leaf that blows
Spices would be shaken;
Floating down from star and tree,
Dreamy perfumes welcome thee.
I would lead thee where the leaves
In the moon-rays glisten;
And, where shadows fall in sheaves,
We would lean and listen
65
For the song of that sweet bird
That in April nights is heard.
And when weary lids would close,
And thy head was drooping,
Then, like dew that steeps the rose,
O'er thy languor stooping,
I would, till I woke a sigh,
Kiss thy sweet lips silently.
I would give thee all I own,
All thou hast would borrow;
I from thee would keep alone
Fear and doubt and sorrow.
All of tender that is mine,
Should most tenderly be thine.
Moonlight! into other skies,
I beseech thee wander.
Cruel, thus to mock mine eyes,
Idle, thus to squander
Love's own light on this dark spot;For my lady cometh not!
~ Alfred Austin,#NFDB
946:I know that you regret Theo’s death,” Devon said quietly. “I know that you married him with the best of intentions, and you’ve tried to mourn him sincerely. But Kathleen, love…You’re no more his widow than you ever were his wife.”
The words were like a slap in the face. Shocked and offended, she scrambled from the bed and snatched up her shawl. “I should never have confided in you,” she exclaimed.
“I’m only pointing out that--at least in private--you’re not bound by the same obligations as a true widow.”
“I am a true widow!”
Devon looked sardonic. “You barely knew Theo.”
“I loved him,” she insisted.
“Oh? What did you love most about him?”
Angrily Kathleen parted her lips to reply…but not a single word emerged. She pressed the flat of her hand to her stomach as a sickening realization occurred to her. Now that her guilt over Theo’s death had been at least partially assuaged, she couldn’t identify any particular feeling for him except the distant pity she would have had for a complete stranger who had met such a fate.
Despite that, she had taken her place as Theo’s widow, living in his house, befriending his sisters, enjoying all the benefits of being Lady Trenear. Theo had known that she was a sham. He had known that she didn’t love him, even when she herself hadn’t known it. That was why his last words had been an accusation.
Furious and ashamed, Kathleen turned and went to the door. She flung it open without pausing to consider the need for discretion, and ran across the threshold. The breath was nearly knocked from her as she collided with a sturdy form.
“What the--” she heard West say, while he reached out to steady her. “What is it? Can I help?”
“Yes,” she snapped, “you can throw your brother back into that river.” She strode away before he could respond. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
947:I Am The Living Bread: Meditation Eight: John 6:51
I kening through Astronomy Divine
The Worlds bright Battlement, wherein I spy
A Golden Path my Pensill cannot line,
From that bright Throne unto my Threshold ly.
And while my puzzled thoughts about it pore
I finde the Bread of Life in’t at my doore.
When that this Bird of Paradise put in
This Wicker Cage (my Corps) to tweedle praise
Had peckt the Fruite forbad: and so did fling
Away its Food; and lost its golden dayes;
It fell into Celestiall Famine sore:
And never could attain a morsell more.
Alas! alas! Poore Bird, what wilt thou doe?
The Creatures field no food for Souls e’re gave.
And if thou knock at Angells dores they show
An Empty Barrell: they no soul bread have.
Alas! Poore Bird, the Worlds White Loafe is done
And cannot yield thee here the smallest Crumb.
In this sad state, Gods Tender Bowells run
Out streams of Grace: And he to end all strife
The Purest Wheate in Heaven, his deare-dear Son
Grinds, and kneads up into this Bread of Life.
Which Bread of Life from Heaven down came and stands
Disht on thy Table up by Angells Hands.
Did God mould up this Bread in Heaven, and bake,
Which from his Table came, and to thine goeth?
Doth he bespeake thee thus, This Soule Bread take.
Come Eate thy fill of this thy Gods White Loafe?
Its Food too fine for Angells, yet come, take
And Eate thy fill. Its Heavens Sugar Cake.
What Grace is this knead in this Loafe? This thing
Souls are but petty things it to admire.
Yee Angells, help: This fill would to the brim
Heav’ns whelm’d-down Chrystall meele Bowle, yea and higher.
This Bread of Life dropt in thy mouth, doth Cry.
Eate, Eate me, Soul, and thou shalt never dy.
~ Edward Taylor,#NFDB
948:Winfreda
(A BALLAD IN THE ANGLO-SAXON TONGUE)
When to the dreary greenwood gloam
Winfreda's husband strode that day,
The fair Winfreda bode at home
To toil the weary time away;
"While thou art gone to hunt," said she,
"I'll brew a goodly sop for thee."
Lo, from a further, gloomy wood,
A hungry wolf all bristling hied
And on the cottage threshold stood
And saw the dame at work inside;
And, as he saw the pleasing sight,
He licked his fangs so sharp and white.
Now when Winfreda saw the beast,
Straight at the grinning wolf she ran,
And, not affrighted in the least,
She hit him with her cooking pan,
And as she thwacked him on the head-"Scat! scat!" the fair Winfreda said.
The hills gave answer to their din-The brook in fear beheld the sight.
And all that bloody field within
Wore token of Winfreda's might.
The wolf was very loath to stay-But, oh! he could not get away.
Winfreda swept him o'er the wold
And choked him till his gums were blue,
And till, beneath her iron hold,
His tongue hung out a yard or two,
And with his hair the riven ground
Was strewn for many leagues around.
They fought a weary time that day,
And seas of purple blood were shed,
440
Till by Winfreda's cunning lay
That awful wolf all limp and dead;
Winfreda saw him reel and drop-Then back she went to brewing sop.
So when the husband came at night
From bootless chase, cold, gaunt, and grim,
Great was that Saxon lord's delight
To find the sop dished up for him;
And as he ate, Winfreda told
How she had laid the wolf out cold.
The good Winfreda of those days
Is only "pretty Birdie" now-Sickly her soul and weak her ways-And she, to whom we Saxons bow,
Leaps on a bench and screams with fright
If but a mouse creeps into sight.
~ Eugene Field,#NFDB
949:As she approached the library, she felt her heartbeat quicken uncomfortably. Squaring her shoulders, she crossed the threshold.
Devon appeared to be browsing over a row of books, reaching up to straighten a trio of volumes that had fallen sideways.
“My lord,” Kathleen said quietly.
Devon turned, his gaze finding hers at once. He was stunningly handsome, dressed in a dark suit of clothes that had been tailored in the new looser-fitting fashion, the coat, waistcoat, and trousers all made of matching fabric. The informal cut of the suit did nothing to soften the hard lines of his body. For a moment Kathleen couldn’t help remembering the feel of his arms around her, his solid chest beneath her cheek. Heat swept over her face.
Devon bowed, his face inscrutable. He appeared relaxed at first glance, but a closer look revealed faint shadows beneath his eyes, and finespun tension beneath his calm veneer. “I hope you’re well this morning,” he said quietly.
Her blush deepened uncomfortably. “Yes, thank you.” She curtsied and wove her fingers together in a stiff knot. “You wished to discuss something before you depart?”
“Yes, regarding the estate, I’ve come to some conclusions--”
“I do hope--” she began, and broke off. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to--”
“Go on.”
Kathleen dropped her gaze to her clenched hands as she spoke. “My lord, if you decide to dismiss any of the servants…or indeed all of them…I hope you take into account that some have served the Ravenels for their entire lives. Perhaps you might consider giving small parting sums to the oldest ones who have little hope of securing other employment.”
“I’ll bear it in mind.”
She could feel him looking at her, his gaze as tangible as the heat of sunlight. The mahogany bracket clock on the mantel measured out the silence with delicate ticks.
His voice was soft. “You’re nervous with me. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
950:Composers do not remember this lost fatherland, but each of them remains all his life unconsciously attuned to it; he is delirious with joy when he sings in harmony with his native land, betrays it at times with his thirst for fame, but then, in seeking fame, turns his back on it, and it is only by scorning fame that he finds it when he breaks out into that distinctive strain the sameness of which—for whatever its subject it remains identical with itself—proves the permanence of the elements that compose his soul. But in that case is it not true that those elements—all the residuum of reality which we are obliged to keep to ourselves, which cannot be transmitted in talk, even from friend to friend, from master to disciple, from lover to mistress, that ineffable something which differentiates qualitatively what each of us has felt and what he is obliged to leave behind at the threshold of the phrases in which he can communicate with others only by limiting himself to externals, common to all and of no interest—are brought out by art, the art of a Vinteuil like that of an Elstir, which exteriorises in the colours of the spectrum the intimate composition of those worlds which we call individuals and which, but for art, we should never know? A pair of wings, a different respiratory system, which enabled us to travel through space, would in no way help us, for if we visited Mars or Venus while keeping the same senses, they would clothe everything we could see in the same aspect as the things of Earth. The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we can do with an Elstir, with a Vinteuil; with men like these we do really fly from star to star. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
951:The change will do you good,” she said simply, when he had finished; “and you must be sure to go and see Ellen,” she added, looking him straight in the eyes with her cloudless smile, and speaking in the tone she might have employed in urging him not to neglect some irksome family duty.
It was the only word that passed between them on the subject; but in the code in which they had both been trained it meant: “Of course you understand that I know all that people have been saying about Ellen, and heartily sympathize with my family in their effort to get her to return to her husband. I also know that, for some reason you have not chosen to tell me, you have advised her against this course, which all the older men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree in approving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Ellen defies us all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which Mr. Sillerton Jackson probably gave you this evening, the hint that has made you so irritable… Hints have indeed not been wanting; but since you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you this one myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind can communicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand that I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in Washington, and are perhaps going there expressly for that purpose; and that, since you are sure to see her, I wish you to do so with my full and explicit approval—and to take the opportunity of letting her know what the course of conduct you have encouraged her in is likely to lead to.”
Her hand was still on the key of the lamp when the last word of this mute message reached him. She turned the wick down, lifted off the globe, and breathed on the sulky flame.
“They smell less if one blows them out,” she explained, with her bright housekeeping air. On the threshold she turned and paused for his kiss. ~ Edith Wharton,#NFDB
952:You must give yourself enough time to get better.”
“How much time will that take?” he asked bitterly.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But you have a lifetime.”
A caustic laugh broke from him. “That’s too damned long.”
“I understand that you feel responsible for what happened to Mark. But you’ve already been forgiven for whatever you think your sins are. You have,” she insisted as he shook his head. “Love forgives all things. And so many people--” She stopped as she felt his entire body jerk.
“What did you say?” she heard him whisper.
Beatrix realized the mistake she had just made. Her arms fell away from him.
The blood began to roar in her ears, her heart thumping so madly she felt faint. Without thinking, she scrambled away from him, off the bed, to the center of the room.
Breathing in frantic bursts, Beatrix turned to face him.
Christopher was staring at her, his eyes gleaming with a strange, mad light. “I knew it,” he whispered.
She wondered if he might try to kill her.
She decided not to wait to find out.
Fear gave her the speed of a terrified hare. She bolted before he could catch her, tearing to the door, flinging it open, and scampering to the grand staircase. Her boots made absurdly loud thuds on the stairs as she leaped downward.
Christopher followed her to the threshold, bellowing her name.
Beatrix didn’t pause for a second, knowing he was going to pursue her as soon as he donned his clothes.
Mrs. Clocker stood near the entrance hall, looking worried and astonished. “Miss Hathaway? What--”
“I think he’ll come out of his room now,” Beatrix said rapidly, jumping down the last of the stairs. “It’s time for me to be going.”
“Did he…are you…”
“If he asks for his horse to be saddled,” Beatrix said breathlessly, “please have it done slowly.”
“Yes, but--”
Good-bye.”
And Beatrix raced from the house as if demons were at her heels. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
953:Even though these individuals had seemed perfectly healthy at birth, something that had happened during their development in the womb affected them for decades afterwards. And it wasn’t just the fact that something had happened that mattered, it was when it happened. Events that take place in the first three months of development, a stage when the foetus is really very small, can affect an individual for the rest of their life. This is completely consistent with the model of developmental programming, and the epigenetic basis to this. In the early stages of pregnancy, where different cell types are developing, epigenetic proteins are probably vital for stabilising gene expression patterns. But remember that our cells contain thousands of genes, spread over billions of base-pairs, and we have hundreds of epigenetic proteins. Even in normal development there are likely to be slight variations in the expression of some of these proteins, and the precise effects that they have at specific chromosomal regions. A little bit more DNA methylation here, a little bit less there. The epigenetic machinery reinforces and then maintains particular patterns of modifications, thus creating the levels of gene expression. Consequently, these initial small fluctuations in histone and DNA modifications may eventually become ‘set’ and get transmitted to daughter cells, or be maintained in long-lived cells such as neurons, that can last for decades. Because the epigenome gets ‘stuck’, so too may the patterns of gene expression in certain chromosomal regions. In the short term the consequences of this may be relatively minor. But over decades all these mild abnormalities in gene expression, resulting from a slightly inappropriate set of chromatin modifications, may lead to a gradually increasing functional impairment. Clinically, we don’t recognise this until it passes some invisible threshold and the patient begins to show symptoms. ~ Nessa Carey, #NFDB
954:What’s sacred to me? thought Fate. The vague pain I feel at the passing of my mother? An understanding of what can’t be fixed? Or the kind of pang in the stomach I feel when I look at this woman? And why do I feel a pang, if that’s what it is, when she looks at me and not when her friend looks at me? Because her friend is nowhere near as beautiful, thought Fate. Which seems to suggest that what’s sacred to me is beauty, a pretty girl with perfect features. And what if all of a sudden the most beautiful actress in Hollywood appeared in the middle of this big, repulsive restaurant, would I still feel a pang each time my eyes surreptitiously met this girl’s or would the sudden appearance of a superior beauty, a beauty enhanced by recognition, relieve the pang, diminish her beauty to ordinary levels, the beauty of a slightly odd girl out to have a good time on a weekend night with three slightly peculiar men and a woman who basically seems like a hooker? And who am I to think that Rosita Méndez seems like a hooker? thought Fate. Do I really know enough about Mexican hookers to be able to recognize them at a glance? Do I know anything about innocence or pain? Do I know anything about women? I like to watch videos, thought Fate. I also like to go to the movies. I like to sleep with women. Right now I don’t have a steady girlfriend, but I know what it’s like to have one. Do I see the sacred anywhere? All I register is practical experiences, thought Fate. An emptiness to be filled, a hunger to be satisfied, people to talk to so I can finish my article and get paid. And why do I think the men Rosa Amalfitano is out with are peculiar? What’s peculiar about them? And why am I so sure that if a Hollywood actress appeared all of a sudden Rosa Amalfitano’s beauty would fade? What if it didn’t? What if it sped up? And what if everything began to accelerate from the instant a Hollywood actress crossed the threshold of El Rey del Taco? ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
955:I don’t believe in boundaries, either for what we can do in our personal lives or for what life and intelligence can accomplish in our universe. We stand at a threshold of important discoveries in all areas of science. Without doubt, our world will change enormously in the next fifty years. We will find out what happened at the Big Bang. We will come to understand how life began on Earth. We may even discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. While the chances of communicating with an intelligent extra-terrestrial species may be slim, the importance of such a discovery means we must not give up trying. We will continue to explore our cosmic habitat, sending robots and humans into space. We cannot continue to look inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. Through scientific endeavour and technological innovation, we must look outwards to the wider universe, while also striving to fix the problems on Earth. And I am optimistic that we will ultimately create viable habitats for the human race on other planets. We will transcend the Earth and learn to exist in space.
This is not the end of the story, but just the beginning of what I hope will be billions of years of life flourishing in the cosmos.
And one final point—we never really know where the next great scientific discovery will come from, nor who will make it. Opening up the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery, creating innovative and accessible ways to reach out to the widest young audience possible, greatly increases the chances of finding and inspiring the new Einstein. Wherever she might be.
So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future. ~ Stephen Hawking,#NFDB
956:As Rohan pulled the man upward, he glanced toward the threshold of a door that led into the club, where a club employee waited. “Dawson, escort Lord Latimer to his carriage out front. I’ll take Lord Selway.”
“No need,” said the aristocrat who had just struggled to his feet, sounding winded. “I can walk to my own bloody carriage.” Tugging his clothes back into place over his bulky form, he threw the dark-haired man an anxious glance. “Rohan, I will have your word on something.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“If word of this gets out—if Lady Selway should discover that I was fighting over the favors of a fallen woman—my life won’t be worth a farthing.”
Rohan replied with reassuring calm. “She’ll never know, my lord.”
“She knows everything,” Selway said. “She’s in league with the devil. If you are ever questioned about this minor altercation…”
“It was caused by a particularly vicious game of whist,” came the bland reply.
“Yes. Yes. Good man.” Selway patted the younger man on the shoulder. “And to put a seal on your silence—” He reached a beefy hand inside his waistcoat and extracted a small bag.
“No, my lord.” Rohan stepped back with a firm shake of his head, his shiny black hair flying with the movement and settling back into place. “There’s no price for my silence.”
“Take it,” the aristocrat insisted.
“I can’t, my lord.”
“It’s yours.” The bag of coins was tossed to the ground, landing at Rohan’s feet with a metallic thud. “There. Whether you choose to leave it lying on the street or not is entirely your choice.”
As the gentleman left, Rohan stared at the bag as if it were a dead rodent. “I don’t want it,” he muttered to no one in particular.
“I’ll take it,” the prostitute said, sauntering over to him. She scooped up the bag and tested its heft in her palm. A taunting grin split her face. “Gor’, I’ve never seen a Gypsy what’s afraid o’ blunt.”
“I’m not afraid of it,” Rohan said sourly. “I just don’t need it. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
957:The sorceress walked a short distance away, her rounded hips swaying. She lifted her hands, fingers moving as if plucking invisible strings. Bitter cold flooded out, the sand crackling as if lit by lightning, and the gate that erupted was massive, yawning, towering. Through the billowing icy air flowed out a sweeter, rank smell. The smell of death. A figure stood on the threshold of the gate. Tall, hunched, a withered, lifeless face of greenish grey, yellowed tusks thrusting up from the lower jaw. Pitted eyes regarded them from beneath a tattered woollen cowl. The power cascading from this apparition sent Equity stumbling back. Abyss! A Jaghut, yes, but not just any Jaghut! Calm – can you hear me? Through this howl? Can you hear me? An ally stands before me – an ally of ancient – so ancient – power! This one could have been an Elder God. This one could have been…anything! Gasping, fighting to keep from falling to one knee, from bowing before this terrible creature, Equity forced herself to lift her gaze, to meet the empty hollows of his eyes. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You are Hood.’ The Jaghut stepped forward, the gate swirling closed behind him. Hood paused, regarding each witness in turn, and then walked towards Equity. ‘They made you their king,’ she whispered. ‘They who followed no one chose to follow you. They who refused every war fought your war. And what you did then – what you did—’ As he reached her, his desiccated hands caught her. He lifted her from her feet, and then, mouth stretching, he bit into the side of her face. The tusks drove up beneath her cheek bone, burst the eye on that side. In a welter of blood, he tore away half of her face, and then bit a second time, up under the orbitals, the tusks driving into her brain. Equity hung in his grip, feeling her life drain away. Her head felt strangely unbalanced. She seemed to be weeping from only one eye, and from her throat no words were possible. I once dreamed of peace. As a child, I dreamed of— ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
958:Like you?” My face twisted in abhorrence, spitting the words like they were revolting. Her eyes widened. I shook my head, a dark chuckle on my lips. “You think I fucking like you? Are you kidding me here? I don’t like you. I love you. Even that’s an under-fucking-statement. I live for you. I breathe for you. I will die for you. It. Has. Always. Been. You. Ever since I saw your sorry ass for the first time on that threshold and you fucking poked me in the chest like I was a toy. We’ve been apart for ten years, Rose LeBlanc, and not even one day has passed without me thinking of you. And not just in passing. You know, the occasional she-could-have-been-a-g reat-fuck. I mean really taking my time to think about you. Wondering what you looked like. Where youwere. What you were doing. Who you were with. I stalked you on Facebook. And Twitter—which, by the way, you need to deactivate because you never once bothered to tweet—but you aren’t exactly a social media animal. I asked about you. Every time I was in town. And once I realized you were in New York with Millie…” “Rosie, I bought a new penthouse in TriBeca a few months before you moved into our building.”
“Why are you telling me this?” She blinked away her tears, but fresh ones rolled down to replace them time. “Because I had to sell it and lost a shit-ton of money the moment I realized you were going to be my neighbor if I stayed in my current place. Real talk, Rosie, you are all I ever wanted. Even when you wanted me to be with your sister. She was a comforting candle. You were the dazzling sun. I’d lived in the dark—for your selfish ass. And if you think I’m going to settle for something , you’re dead wrong. I am taking everything . We will have kids, Rose LeBlanc. We will have a wedding. And we will have joy and vacations and days where we just fuck and days where we just fight and days where we just live. Because this is life, Baby LeBlanc, and I love the fuck out of you, so I’m going to give you the best one there is. Got it? ~ L J Shen,#NFDB
959:As Loretta drew near the door, Tom cried, “No! You miserable coward, Henry. You send that girl out there, and you’ll never sleep a whole night through the rest of your life.”
Loretta touched the door planks and froze. Through the cracks she heard bells tinkling, a merry sound, as out of place as cheerful music at a funeral. She made the sign of the cross and squeezed her eyes closed, trying to remember how to make an act of contrition, but the words jumbled in her head.
“Henry, no,” Rachel pleaded. “Loretta, don’t open that door. If they want a woman, I’ll go.”
“It’s not you they’re wantin’,” Henry snapped. “One of ’em spotted Loretta down by the river the other day, and he’s come back for her. They’ll shoot ya down where ya stand.”
Rachel whirled on her husband. “That girl’s my sister’s daughter. I’ll never forgive you if you let her go out there!”
“Ya don’t have to do it, Loretta,” Tom argued. “There’s some things worse than dyin’, and this is one of ’em.”
Loretta hesitated. Then the door squeaked on its leather hinges, swinging open a crack. A shaft of light fell across her face. She stepped across the threshold. Better just me than everyone. Another step. Better the Comanches take me than Amy. It wasn’t so hard, now that she was doing it. She took a deep breath and walked out onto the porch. The door slammed shut behind her, and the bar thudded home with an echo of finality.
Staring at her with impenetrable blue-black eyes, the warrior on the black nudged the animal a pace forward. With that relentless eye-to-eye contact, he held her pinioned where she stood. For what seemed a lifetime, he studied her, not moving, not speaking, his lance still held aloft.
Loretta’s courage disintegrated, and a violent tremor swept the length of her. He noted the shudder, and his observant gaze trailed up her body in its wake. His attention fell to her hips, lingered there with an insulting contempt, then traveled upward to her breasts. Humiliation scorched her cheeks. ~ Catherine Anderson,#NFDB
960: XX - CATHEDRAL
SERVICE, ORGAN and ANTHEM.
(MARGARET among much people: the EVIL SPIRIT behind
MARGARET.)
EVIL SPIRIT
HOW otherwise was it, Margaret,
When thou, still innocent,
Here to the altar cam'st,
And from the worn and fingered book
Thy prayers didst prattle,
Half sport of childhood,
Half God within thee!
Margaret!
Where tends thy thought?
Within thy bosom
What hidden crime?
Pray'st thou for mercy on thy mother's soul,
That fell asleep to long, long torment, and through thee?
Upon thy threshold whose the blood?
And stirreth not and quickens
Something beneath thy heart,
Thy life disquieting
With most foreboding presence?
MARGARET
Woe! woe!
Would I were free from the thoughts
That cross me, drawing hither and thither
Despite me!
CHORUS
Diesira, dies illa,
Solvet soeclum in favilla!
(Sound of the organ.)
EVIL SPIRIT
Wrath takes thee!
The trumpet peals!
The graves tremble!
And thy heart
From ashy rest
To fiery torments
Now again requickened,
Throbs to life!
MARGARET
Would I were forth!
I feel as if the organ here
My breath takes from me,
My very heart
Dissolved by the anthem!
CHORUS
Judex ergo cum sedebit,
Quidquid latet, ad parebit,
Nil inultum remanebit.
MARGARET
I cannot breathe!
The massy pillars
Imprison me!
The vaulted arches
Crush me!Air!
EVIL SPIRIT
Hide thyself! Sin and shame
Stay never hidden.
Air? Light?
Woe to thee!
CHORUS
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,
Quem patronem rogaturus,
Cum vix Justus sit securus
EVIL SPIRIT
They turn their faces,
The glorified, from thee:
The pure, their hands to offer,
Shuddering, refuse thee!
Woe!
CHORUS
Quid sum miser tune dicturus?
MARGARET
Neighbor! your cordial! (She falls in a swoon.)
She falls in a swoon
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, CATHEDRAL
,#NFDB
961:Professor A. H. Maslow, for example, has conducted a series of researches into extremely healthy people that have led him to conclude that health and optimism are far more positive principles in human psychology than Freud would ever have admitted.
Man is a slave to the delusion that he is a passive creature, a creature of circumstance; this is because he makes the mistake of identifying himself with his limited everyday consciousness, and is unaware of the immense forces that lie just beyond the threshold of consciousness. But these forces, although he is unaware of them on a conscious level, are still a far more active influence in his life than any external circumstances. Freudian psychology, for all its achievements, has made a twofold error: it has tried to anatomize the human mind as a pathologist would dissect a corpse, and it has limited its researches to sick human beings. Sick men talk about their illness far more than healthy people talk about their health; in fact, healthy people are usually too absorbed in living to bother with self-revelation. Psychology has consequently been inclined to divide the world into sick people and “normal” people, regarding occasional super-normality as the exception; Maslow has shown that super-normality is a great deal commoner than would be supposed; in fact as common as sub-normality. Ordinarily healthy people often experience a sense of intense life-affirmation (which Maslow calls “peak experiences”); and examination of peak experiences has led Maslow to conclude that the evolutionary drive (which is so clear in art and philosophy) is as basic a part of human psychology as the Freudian libido or the Adlerian will to self-assertion.
— Colin Wilson, “‘Six Thousand Feet Above Men and Time‘: Remarks on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard” (1965)
(Wilson C. “Six Thousand Feet Above Men and Time”: Remarks on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard // Stanley C. (Ed.). Colin Wilson: Collected Essays on Philosophers. — Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. Pp. 110–111.) ~ Colin Wilson,#NFDB
962:Verses Written In An Alcove
NOW the moon-beam's trembling lustre
Silvers o'er the dewy green,
And in soft and shadowy colours
Sweetly paints the checquer'd scene.
Here between the opening branches
Streams a flood of soften'd light,
There the thick and twisted foliage
Spreads the browner gloom of night.
There is sure the haunt of fairies,
In yon cool Alcove they play;
Care can never cross the threshold,
Care was only made for day.
Far from hence be noisy clamour,
Sick disgust and anxious fear;
Pining grief and wasting anguish
Never keep their vigils here.
Tell no tales of sheeted spectres,
Rising from the quiet tomb;
Fairer forms this cell shall visit,
Brighter visions gild the gloom.
Choral songs and sprightly voices
Echo from her cell shall call;
Sweeter, sweeter than the murmur
Of the distant water fall.
Every ruder gust of passion
Lull'd with music dies away,
Till within the charmed bosom
None but soft affections play:
Soft, as when the evening breezes
Gently stir the poplar grove;
Brighter than the smile of summer,
Sweeter than the breath of love.
191
Thee, th' inchanted Muse shall follow,
LISSY! to the rustic cell,
And each careless note repeating
Tune them to her charming shell.
Not the Muse who wreath'd with laurel,
Solemn stalks with tragic gait,
And in clear and lofty vision
Sees the future births of fate;
Not the maid who crown'd with cypress
Sweeps along in scepter'd pall,
And in sad and solemn accents
Mourns the crested heroe's fall;
But that other smiling sister,
With the blue and laughing eye,
Singing, in a lighter measure,
Strains of woodland harmony:
All unknown to fame or glory,
Easy, blith and debonair,
Crown'd with flowers, her careless tresses
Loosely floating on the air.
Then, when next the star of evening
Softly sheds the silent dew,
Let me in this rustic temple,
LISSY ! meet the Muse and you.
~ Anna Laetitia Barbauld,#NFDB
963: I walk away, feeling Brody’s gaze on me. There’s no doubt that as soon as we get back in the car, I’m going to get it—good.
Instead, Brody stays quiet while I assemble the paperwork. He may not be speaking, but he’s saying a whole lot in the silence.
“Just say it,” I mumble and finally look over.
“I’m not saying a word.” He raises his hands. “Clearly, you two know each other, and it ain’t from growing up here. You tell me everything, so there is no way you wouldn’t have told me you know him,” Brody pauses and leans back. “I’m not saying a word about who you may or may not have slept with recently. Even though, it’s pretty obvious.”
“You know, you not saying a word took you a long time.”
“It’s not like you’ve had a five-year drought since your divorce. Or that you slept with a singer/actor. Nope. I have nothing to say about that. Not a thing.”
I groan. “Could you not say anything for real this time?”
“Sure thing, boss. I’ll just be over here, watching Hell start to thaw.”
This is not going to get any better. I’d almost rather hear the questions. This is Brody Webber. My partner, my friend, and the one person who I have enough dirt on to make his life hell if he repeats this.
“Okay, fine. Yes, I slept with Eli Walsh. I was crazy and dumb. I also had about six beers, which is two over my threshold, and I was trying to be in the moment for once. Fucking Nicole and her pep talks.”
Brody coughs a laugh and then recovers. “Sorry, go on.”
“I swear, you better keep this to yourself. If you tell anyone . . .” I give him my best threatening face. “I mean anyone, I’ll make your life a living nightmare.”
He shakes his head and laughs again. “I won’t say a word, but you had a one-night stand with one of the most famous men in the boy band atmosphere. You’re too cool for me, Heather. I don’t think we can be friends. I’m sure you and the band will be happy without me.”
I huff and grab the papers. “I’m getting a new partner.”
I walk back over to the car, praying this will be painless ~ Corinne Michaels,#NFDB
964:Let’s take the threshold idea one step further. If intelligence matters only up to a point, then past that point, other things—things that have nothing to do with intelligence—must start to matter more. It’s like basketball again: once someone is tall enough, then we start to care about speed and court sense and agility and ball-handling skills and shooting touch. So, what might some of those other things be? Well, suppose that instead of measuring your IQ, I gave you a totally different kind of test. Write down as many different uses that you can think of for the following objects: a brick a blanket This is an example of what’s called a “divergence test” (as opposed to a test like the Raven’s, which asks you to sort through a list of possibilities and converge on the right answer). It requires you to use your imagination and take your mind in as many different directions as possible. With a divergence test, obviously there isn’t a single right answer. What the test giver is looking for are the number and the uniqueness of your responses. And what the test is measuring isn’t analytical intelligence but something profoundly different—something much closer to creativity. Divergence tests are every bit as challenging as convergence tests, and if you don’t believe that, I encourage you to pause and try the brick-and-blanket test right now. Here, for example, are answers to the “uses of objects” test collected by Liam Hudson from a student named Poole at a top British high school: (Brick). To use in smash-and-grab raids. To help hold a house together. To use in a game of Russian roulette if you want to keep fit at the same time (bricks at ten paces, turn and throw—no evasive action allowed). To hold the eiderdown on a bed tie a brick at each corner. As a breaker of empty Coca-Cola bottles. (Blanket). To use on a bed. As a cover for illicit sex in the woods. As a tent. To make smoke signals with. As a sail for a boat, cart or sled. As a substitute for a towel. As a target for shooting practice for short-sighted people. As a thing to catch people jumping out of burning skyscrapers. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
965:I am Sebastiano, and your name?” he asks.
“Violet,” I say as we step over the threshold.
“Violetta!” he says, throwing his arms wide. “English girl, Italian name!”
And across the room, I see a dark head turn in our direction. That much taller than the rest of the boys, he stands out, his straight black silky hair falling over his face, his blue eyes as bright and cold as the water of the fjord next to my grandmother’s summer rental cottage. I was looking for him before and couldn’t see him anywhere; now that I’ve been distracted by dancing and a Chianti-drinking donkey, he’s spotted me. His gaze flicks like a knife between me and the boy, who’s at the gigantic wine bottle now, filling cups and handing me one.
“Salute!” Sebastiano says, touching his cup to mine, and I glance up at Luca, seeing that he’s taking this in, too.
A rush of confusion fills me as I toast. I’m glad that Luca’s seen me with someone else, that I haven’t been a wallflower at this party, that I’ve proved him wrong, even a little bit, because there’s a boy here who seems to like me, who’s talking to me, anyway, getting me a drink. In films, in books, flirting with a boy is a surefire way to get the one you actually like interested in you, draw him over to your side. They’re supposed to like competition, the challenge of going after a girl who’s popular.
But maybe real life doesn’t quite work that way. Because Luca arches one black eyebrow, his mouth quirks up on one side in a sneer, and he turns pointedly away sliding a cigarette into his mouth, and lighting it with a flip of his Zippo.
Disgusting habit, I think as firmly as I can. I’m glad he’s not coming over, smoking a nasty stinking cancer stick.
It’s awful when you lie to yourself. I do think smoking is foul, but I’m also more than aware that if Luca strolled over to talk to me, with that cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, I wouldn’t walk away, complaining about the smoke; I’d stand there staring up at him, trying not to grin as widely as a five-year-old meeting Cinderella at Disneyland. ~ Lauren Henderson,#NFDB
966:Come here, you flea-ridden hair wad. You’ll have all the sugar biscuits you want, if you’ll give your new toy to me.” He whistled softly and clicked. But the blandishments did not work. Dodger merely regarded him with bright eyes and stayed at the threshold, clutching the vial in his tiny paws. “Give him one of your garters,” Leo said, still staring at the ferret. “I beg your pardon?” Miss Marks asked frostily. “You heard me. Take off a garter and offer it to him as a trade. Otherwise we’ll be chasing this damned animal all through the house. And I doubt Rohan will appreciate the delay.” The governess gave Leo a long-suffering glance. “Only for Mr. Rohan’s sake would I consent to this. Turn your back.” “For God’s sake, Marks, do you think anyone really wants a glance at those dried-up matchsticks you call legs?” But Leo complied, facing the opposite direction. He heard a great deal of rustling as Miss Marks sat on a bedroom chair and lifted her skirts. It just so happened that Leo was positioned near a full-length looking glass, the oval cheval style that tilted up or down to adjust one’s reflection. And he had an excellent view of Miss Marks in the chair. And the oddest thing happened—he got a flash of an astonishingly pretty leg. He blinked in bemusement, and then the skirts were dropped. “Here,” Miss Marks said gruffly, and tossed it in Leo’s direction. Turning, he managed to catch it in midair. Dodger surveyed them both with beady-eyed interest. Leo twirled the garter enticingly on his finger. “Have a look, Dodger. Blue silk with lace trim. Do all governesses anchor their stockings in such a delightful fashion? Perhaps those rumors about your unseemly past are true, Marks.” “I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, my lord.” Dodger’s little head bobbed as it followed every movement of the garter. Fitting the vial in his mouth, the ferret carried it like a miniature dog, loping up to Leo with maddening slowness. “This is a trade, old fellow,” Leo told him. “You can’t have something for nothing.” Carefully Dodger set down the vial and reached for the garter. Leo simultaneously gave him the frilly circlet and snatched the vial. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
967:The S curve is not just important as a model in its own right; it’s also the jack-of-all-trades of mathematics. If you zoom in on its midsection, it approximates a straight line. Many phenomena we think of as linear are in fact S curves, because nothing can grow without limit. Because of relativity, and contra Newton, acceleration does not increase linearly with force, but follows an S curve centered at zero. So does electric current as a function of voltage in the resistors found in electronic circuits, or in a light bulb (until the filament melts, which is itself another phase transition). If you zoom out from an S curve, it approximates a step function, with the output suddenly changing from zero to one at the threshold. So depending on the input voltages, the same curve represents the workings of a transistor in both digital computers and analog devices like amplifiers and radio tuners. The early part of an S curve is effectively an exponential, and near the saturation point it approximates exponential decay. When someone talks about exponential growth, ask yourself: How soon will it turn into an S curve? When will the population bomb peter out, Moore’s law lose steam, or the singularity fail to happen? Differentiate an S curve and you get a bell curve: slow, fast, slow becomes low, high, low. Add a succession of staggered upward and downward S curves, and you get something close to a sine wave. In fact, every function can be closely approximated by a sum of S curves: when the function goes up, you add an S curve; when it goes down, you subtract one. Children’s learning is not a steady improvement but an accumulation of S curves. So is technological change. Squint at the New York City skyline and you can see a sum of S curves unfolding across the horizon, each as sharp as a skyscraper’s corner. Most importantly for us, S curves lead to a new solution to the credit-assignment problem. If the universe is a symphony of phase transitions, let’s model it with one. That’s what the brain does: it tunes the system of phase transitions inside to the one outside. So let’s replace the perceptron’s step function with an S curve and see what happens. ~ Pedro Domingos, #NFDB
968:The One I Was Searching For On The Earth And In
Heaven
The one I was searching for on the earth and in heaven
Appeared residing in the recesses of my own heart
When the reality of the self became evident to my eyes
The house appeared among residents of my own heart
If it were somewhat familiar with taste of rubbing foreheads
The stone of Ka’ba’s threshold would have joined the foreheads
O Majnun! Have you ever glanced at yourself
That like Layla you are also sitting in the litter
The months of the union continue flying like moments
But the moments of separation linger for months!
O seaman, how will you protect me from being drowned
As those destined to drowning get drowned in the boats also
The one who concealed His Beauty from Kalim Allah
The same Beloved is manifest among beloveds
The breath of Lovers can light up the extinguished candle
O God! What is kept concealed in the breast of the Lovers?
Serve the fakirs if you have the longing for Love
This pearl is not available in the treasures of kings
Do not ask of these Devotees, if you have faith, you should look at them
They have the illuminated palm up their sleeves
The insightful eye for whose spectacle is tantalized
That elegance of congregation is in these very recluses
Burn the produce of your heart with some such spark
That the Last Day’s sun may also be among your gleaners
For Love search for some heart which would become mortified
65
This is the wine which is not kept in delicate wine glasses
The Beauty itself becomes the Lover of whose Beauty
O Heart! Does someone among the beautiful has that beauty?
Someone became highly excited at your grace of Ma’arafna
Your rank remained among the most elegant of all the Lovers
Manifest Thyself and show them Thy Beauty some time
Talks have continued among the sagacious since long time
Silent, O Heart! Crying in the full assembly is not good
Decorum is the most important etiquette among the ways of Love
It is not possible for me to deem my critics bad
Because Iqbal, I am myself among my critics
~ Allama Muhammad Iqbal,#NFDB
969:Slowly and silently, Bentham Rudgutter reached into the bag he carried and brought out the large grey scissors he had had an aide buy in an ironmonger’s on the lowest commercial concourse of Perdido Street Station. He parted the scissors without a noise, held them up in the cloying air. Rudgutter brought the razor edges together. The room reverberated with the unmistakable sound of blade sliding along sharpened blade, and snapping shut with an inexorable division. The echoes trembled like flies in a funnelweb. They slid into a dark dimension at the room’s heart. A gust of cold sent gooseflesh dancing across the backs of those congregated. The echoes of the scissors came back. As they returned and crept up from below the threshold of hearing, they metamorphosed, becoming words, a voice, melodious and melancholy, that first whispered and then grew more bold, spinning itself into existence out of the scissor-echoes. It was not quite describable, heartbreaking and frightening, it tugged the listener close; and it sounded not in the ears but deeper inside, in the blood and bone, in the nerve-clusters. …FLESHSCAPE INTO THE FOLDING INTO THE FLESHSCAPE TO SPEAK A GREETING IN THIS THE SCISSORED REALM I WILL RECEIVE AND BE RECEIVED… In the fearful silence, Rudgutter gesticulated at Stem-Fulcher and Rescue, until they understood, and they raised their scissors as he had done, opened and sharply shut them, slicing the air with an almost tactile sound. He joined in, the three of them opening and closing their blades in macabre applause. At the sound of that snapping susurration, the unearthly voice resonated into the room again. It moaned with an obscene pleasure. Each time it spoke, it was as if what faded into audibility was only a snatch of an unceasing monologue. …AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN DO NOT WITHHOLD THIS BLADED SUMMONS THIS EDGED HYMN I ACCEPT I AGREE YOU SLICE SO NICE AND NICELY YOU LITTLE ENDOSKELETAL FIGURINES YOU SNIP AND SHAVE AND SLIVER THE CORDS OF THE WOVEN WEB AND SHAPE IT WITH AN UNCOUTH GRACE From out of shadows cast by some unseen shapes, shadows that seemed stretched-out and taut, tethered from corner to corner of the square room, something stalked into view. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
970:A winnowing fan was droning away in one of the barns and dust poured out of the open door. On the threshold stood the master himself, Alyokhin, a man of about forty, tall, stout, with long hair, and he looked more like a professor or an artist than a landowner. He wore a white shirt that hadn't been washed for a very long time, and it was tied round with a piece of rope as a belt. Instead of trousers he was wearing underpants; mud and straw clung to his boots. His nose and eyes were black with dust. He immediately recognised Ivan Ivanych and Burkin, and was clearly delighted to see them.
'Please come into the house, gentlemen,' he said, smiling, 'I'll be with you in a jiffy.'
It was a large house, with two storeys. Alyokhin lived on the ground floor in the two rooms with vaulted ceilings and small windows where his estate managers used to live. They were simply furnished and smelled of rye bread, cheap vodka and harness. He seldom used the main rooms upstairs, reserving them for guests. Ivan Ivanych and Burkin were welcomed by the maid, who was such a beautiful young woman that they both stopped and stared at each other.
'You can't imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen,' Alyokhin said as he followed them into the hall. 'A real surprise!' Then he turned to the maid and said, 'Pelageya, bring some dry clothes for the gentlemen. I suppose I'd better change too. But I must have a wash first, or you'll think I haven't had one since spring. Would you like to come to the bathing-hut while they get things ready in the house?'
The beautiful Pelageya, who had such a dainty look and a gentle face, brought soap and towels, and Alyokhin went off with his guests to the bathing-hut.
'Yes, it's ages since I had a good wash,' he said as he undressed. 'As you can see, it's a nice hut. My father built it, but I never find time these days for a swim.'
He sat on one of the steps and smothered his long hair and neck with soap; the water turned brown.
'Yes, I must confess...' Ivan Ivanych murmered, with a meaningful look at his head.
'Haven't had a wash for ages,' Alyokhin repeated in his embarrassment and soaped himself again; the water turned a dark inky blue. ~ Anton Chekhov,#NFDB
971:You’ll seize on any excuse to sell Eversby Priory because you don’t want to take on a challenge.”
“It’s only a challenge when there’s some small hope of success. This is a debacle. The list of creditors is longer than my bloody arm, the coffers are empty, and the annual yields have been cut in half.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re planning to sell the estate to settle personal debts that have nothing to do with Eversby Priory.”
Devon’s hands knotted with the urge to destroy something. His rising bloodlust would only be satisfied with the sound of shattering objects. He had never faced a situation like this, and there was no one to give him trustworthy advice, no kindly aristocratic relation, no knowledgeable friends in the peerage. And this woman could only accuse and insult him.
“I had no debt,” he growled, “until I inherited this mess. God’s bollocks, did your idiot husband never explain any of the estate’s issues to you? Were you completely ignorant of how dire the situation was when you married him? No matter--someone has to face reality, and Christ help us all, it seems to be me.” He turned his back on her and returned to the desk. “Your presence isn’t wanted,” he said without looking back. “You will leave now.”
“Eversby Priory has survived four hundred years of revolutions and foreign wars,” he heard Kathleen say contemptuously, “and now it will take but one self-serving rake to bring it all to ruins.”
As if he were entirely to blame for the situation. As if he alone would be accountable for the estate’s demise. Damn her to hell.
With effort, Devon swallowed back his outrage. Deliberately he stretched out his legs with relaxed indolence and glanced at his brother. “West, are we quite certain that Cousin Theo perished in a fall?” he asked coolly. “It seems far more likely that he froze to death in the marital bed.”
West chuckled, not above the enjoyment of a malicious quip.
Totthill and Fogg, for their part, kept their gazes down.
Kathleen crossed the threshold and sent the door shuddering with a violent slam.
“Brother,” West said with mock chiding, “that was beneath you.”
“Nothing’s beneath me,” Devon replied, stone-faced. “You know that. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
972:My appreciation for order and regularity, even if it inconvenienced me, meant I never had much trouble with one of the main traditional objections to Christianity (or any religion that posits a loving God): the problem of evil - the question of how any pain and suffering could be countenanced by an all-powerful, all-good God.
Consider the simpler problem of natural evils and accidents (falling masonry, flooding, car crashes, virulent flus, etc.). For God to deliver us from all natural pains, the laws of physics would have to be studded with asterisks specifying all the times that flying, twisted metal would need to flout the conservation of linear momentum to stop just short of breaking our bones.
I knew what such a world would look like, for it had already been imagined in the sagas of Norse mythology. In one legend, the godling Baldr prophesies his own death, and all the other gods of the Norse pantheon try to save him. The gods and goddesses of Asgard travel the world, extracting a vow from every natural and created thing, be it bird, plant, stone, or sword, never to do Baldr any harm. Once his safety is secured, the Asgardians amuse themselves at feasts by throwing knives and other weapons at Baldr, in order to watch the objects keep their promises, defy their natures, and leave him unhurt. Blades blunt themselves, stones soften, and poison neutralizes itself, all to avoid inflicting any pain on Baldr.
To preclude the problem of evil, it seemed, any god would have to give us the same guarantee afforded Baldr. The world around us would have to warp itself to shield us from the weather, from accidents, from gravity, until the laws of physics were unworthy of the name. There couldn't be scientists or empiricism in this kind of world, since the nature of matter would be too protean for us to gain intellectual purchase on.
The problem of evil has always seemed to me to be the price we pay for having an intelligible world, one that we can investigate, understand, and love. If miracles were to be possible, they would have to stay below some threshold level of frequency so that they remained clear exceptions to the general course of causality (as in the case of poor, strange Baldr) instead of undoing the rule entirely. ~ Leah Libresco,#NFDB
973:Tell it to me.”
“Why? We both know the tale.”
“Even so. I want to hear it from your lips. Tell the tale. The room will keep rhythm.”
Tell the tale. My heart clenched. I miss you, Gauri. Sinking into my old habit was easy enough. I sat on the floor, crossing my legs in front of me, my gaze flickering between Amar and the pillar. Amar’s eyes were closed, his head tilted back to expose his bronzed throat. I spun my tale and the sky shimmered with images. I told Amar of the demon king who wished to escape death so he performed the most severe penances until he was granted a boon by the gods.
“He prayed that he would not die inside or outside his home. He prayed that he would die neither at night or day nor in the ground or in the sky. He prayed that neither man nor beast could kill him. He prayed no weapon could harm him.”
Amar’s head snapped up. He looked at the pillar with a wicked smile.
“And yet death found its way to him.”
I nodded. “One day, the god appeared as part-man, part-lion and burst forth from the pillar.”
A being of shadow tore through the pillar. A lion’s mane cast a torn shadow across the marble. Fangs lengthened in its mouth.
“He came upon the demon king at twilight--”
“--which is neither night nor day,” said Amar.
“And he appeared on the threshold of a courtyard--”
“Neither indoors nor out.”
“And he spread the king across his lap.”
“Neither above nor below ground.”
The shadow story played out in front of us, a tusked hulking man dragged to his knees and then lifted onto the thighs of the beast god.
“And he used his fingernails.”
“Not a true weapon.”
The shadow being lifted muscled arms above his head and claws erupted from his fingers. Amar grinned.
“And then death took him,” I said.
“Yes,” finished Amar. “He did.”
The shadow beast tore its claws into the demon king. Blood spattered across the walls. Within seconds, the images collapsed and the beast god slunk back into the pillar, one eye slit to the outside world before the marble folded up and swallowed him. I stood up, my hands shaking for no reason.
“Beautiful,” said Amar.
“I found it gruesome,” I said, shivering.
Amar rose and walked to where I stood.
“I was not talking about the story. ~ Roshani Chokshi,#NFDB
974:At The Door
All actors look for them-the defining moments
When what a character does is what he is.
The script may say, He goes to the door
And exits or She goes out the door stage left.
But you see your fingers touching the doorknob,
Closing around it, turning it
As if by themselves. The latch slides
Out of the strike-plate, the door swings on its hinges,
And you're about to take that step
Over the threshold into a different light.
For the audience, you may simply be
Disappearing from the scene, yet in those few seconds
You can reach for the knob as the last object on earth
You wanted to touch. Or you can take it
Warmly like the hand your father offered
Once in forgiveness and afterward
Kept to himself.
Or you can stand there briefly, as bewildered
As by the door of a walk-in time-lock safe,
Stand there and stare
At the whole concept of shutness, like a rat
Whose maze has been rebaffled overnight,
Stand still and quiver, unable to turn
Around or go left or right.
Or you can grasp it with a sly, soundless discretion,
Open it inch by inch, testing each fraction
Of torque on the spindles, on tiptoe
Slip yourself through the upright slot
And press the lock-stile silently
Back into its frame.
Or you can use your shoulder
Or the hard heel of your shoe
And a leg-thrust to break it open.
Or you can approach the door as if accustomed
To having all barriers open by themselves.
You can wrench aside
This unauthorized interruption of your progress
And then leave it ajar
For others to do with as they may see fit.
Or you can stand at ease
And give the impression you can see through
This door or any door and have no need
To take your physical self to the other side.
Or you can turn the knob as if at last
Nothing could please you more, your body language
Filled with expectations of joy at where you're going,
Holding yourself momentarily in the posture
Of an awestruck pilgrim at the gate-though you know
You'll only be stepping out against the scrim
Or a wobbly flat daubed with a landscape,
A scribble of leaves, a hint of flowers,
The bare suggestion of a garden.
~ David Wagoner,#NFDB
975:Dammit, Holly, I'd never have believed you'd do something so harebrained. Do you understand that the building could have collapsed around you and those henwits? I know what condition those places are in, and I wouldn't let a dog of mine venture past the threshold, much less my wife. And the men—good God, when I think of the low-living bastards who were in your vicinity, it makes my blood curdle! Sailors and drunkards on every corner—do you know what would happen if one of them took it into his head to snap up a little treat like you?” As the thought seemed to temporarily render him incapable of speech, Holly took the opportunity to defend herself. “I was with companions, and—” “Ladies,” he said savagely. “Armed with umbrellas, no doubt. Just what do you think they would have been able to do, had you met with bad company?” “The few men we encountered in the neighborhood were harmless,” Holly argued. “In fact, it was the very same place you lived in during your childhood, and those men were no different from you—” “In those days, I'd have played merry hell with you, if I'd managed to get my hands on you,” he said harshly. “Have no illusions, milady… you'd have ended face-to-the wall in Maidenhead Lane with your skirts around your waist. The only wonder is that you didn't meet that fate with some randy sailor yesterday.” “You're exaggerating,” Holly said defensively, but that only roused his temper to a higher pitch. He continued to blister her ears with a lecture that was furious and insulting by turns, naming the various diseases she could have contracted and the vermin she had likely encountered, until Holly couldn't bear another word. “I've heard enough,” she cried hotly. “It's clear to me that I'm not to make a single decision without asking your permission first—I'm to be treated as a child, and you will act as a dictator.” The accusation was unfair, and she knew it, but she was too incensed to care. Suddenly his fury seemed to evaporate, and he stared at her with an inscrutable gaze. A long moment passed before he spoke again. “You wouldn't have taken Rose to such a place, would you?” “Of course not! But she is a little girl, and I'm—” “My life,” he interrupted quietly. “You're my entire life. If anything ever happens to you, Holly, there is nothing left for me. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
976:Here we pause. On the threshold of wedding nights
stands a smiling angel with his finger on his lips.
The soul enters into contemplation before that sanctuary
where the celebration of love takes place.
There should be flashes of light athwart such houses. The
joy which they contain ought to make its escape through
the stones of the walls in brilliancy, and vaguely illuminate
the gloom. It is impossible that this sacred and fatal festival
should not give off a celestial radiance to the infinite. Love is
the sublime crucible wherein the fusion of the man and the
woman takes place; the being one, the being triple, the being
final, the human trinity proceeds from it. This birth of two
souls into one, ought to be an emotion for the gloom. The
lover is the priest; the ravished virgin is terrified. Something
of that joy ascends to God. Where true marriage is, that is
to say, where there is love, the ideal enters in. A nuptial bed
makes a nook of dawn amid the shadows. If it were given to
the eye of the flesh to scan the formidable and charming visions
of the upper life, it is probable that we should behold
the forms of night, the winged unknowns, the blue passers
of the invisible, bend down, a throng of sombre heads,
around the luminous house, satisfied, showering benedictions,
pointing out to each other the virgin wife gently
alarmed, sweetly terrified, and bearing the reflection of
human bliss upon their divine countenances. If at that supreme
hour, the wedded pair, dazzled with voluptuousness
and believing themselves alone, were to listen, they would
hear in their chamber a confused rustling of wings. Perfect
happiness implies a mutual understanding with the angels.
2318 Les Miserables
That dark little chamber has all heaven for its ceiling. When
two mouths, rendered sacred by love, approach to create, it
is impossible that there should not be, above that ineffable
kiss, a quivering throughout the immense mystery of stars.
These felicities are the true ones. There is no joy outside
of these joys. Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps.
To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing
more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy
folds of life. To love is a fulfilment. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
977:The heavenly principalities and powers cannot touch you. But the earthly humans over which we rule can.” Though they had no authority to touch Yahweh’s anointed, they might do so through their human vessels. Jesus trembled with the weight of responsibility that now overwhelmed him. But the pain was lessened when he heard the familiar sound of his favorite angel echo in his mind. Jesus, be strong and courageous. “Jesus, be strong and courageous.” It wasn’t in his mind, it was being spoken to him from behind. “Sound familiar?” Jesus turned. He looked up into the smiling face of Uriel the smallest of three angels now standing before him. Uriel finished his thought, “The words you spoke to Joshua at the threshold of the Promised Land. Funny how it all comes full circle.” Gabriel, the second angel, and Uriel’s constant bickering companion, responded, “Uriel, I think your humor is once again in incredibly poor taste considering his suffering. Where is your compassion?” “Nonsense,” said Uriel. “Jesus has done it. Victory is a cause for celebration, not sadness. He made it forty days without food, which is more than I can say for you, chubby.” Uriel patted Gabriel’s stomach. Gabriel moved away annoyed at the jab. Sure, he was heavier than the lightweight Uriel, but he certainly didn’t see himself as “chubby.” Mikael, the largest and best groomed of the three, was the guardian prince of Israel, and tended to be protective of his ward. He offered a wineskin to Jesus, who took it and gulped with gratitude. After a moment of silence, Jesus wiped his beard of the wine and said, “You need a better sense of humor, Gabriel.” Gabriel pouted with frustration at being ganged up on. Uriel, his perpetual nemesis was one thing. But being teased by the Master was quite another. Jesus said, “And Uriel, you had better deliver on that bread you promised.” Uriel smiled again and held out a loaf of Mary’s best bread. “Baked two hours ago by your mother.” Jesus grabbed it. Mikael said, “Remember, do not eat too quickly. It is bad for your digestion after fasting.” “Thank you for your ministering spirits,” said Jesus, and took a big hungry bite out of the loaf. Uriel muttered, “Your mother should open a bakery. Can I have a bite?” Mikael was not so lighthearted. He knew that the challenge had been declared. The road to war had begun. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
978:The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can’t see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases—like my ALS—without also glimpsing its dangers.
Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage.
We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our potential and create a better world for the whole human race. We need to take learning beyond a theoretical discussion of how AI should be and to make sure we plan for how it can be. We all have the potential to push the boundaries of what is accepted, or expected, and to think big. We stand on the threshold of a brave new world. It is an exciting, if precarious, place to be, and we are the pioneers.
When we invented fire, we messed up repeatedly, then invented the fire extinguisher. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and strong artificial intelligence, we should instead plan ahead and aim to get things right the first time, because it may be the only chance we will get. Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let’s make sure that wisdom wins. ~ Stephen Hawking,#NFDB
979:To Sylvia
O Sylvia, dost thou remember still
That period of thy mortal life,
When beauty so bewildering
Shone in thy laughing, glancing eyes,
As thou, so merry, yet so wise,
Youth's threshold then wast entering?
How did the quiet rooms,
And all the paths around,
With thy perpetual song resound,
As thou didst sit, on woman's work intent,
Abundantly content
With the vague future, floating on thy mind!
Thy custom thus to spend the day
In that sweet time of youth and May!
How could I, then, at times,
In those fair days of youth,
The only happy days I ever knew,
My hard tasks dropping, or my careless rhymes,
My station take, on father's balcony,
And listen to thy voice's melody,
And watch thy hands, as they would deftly fly
O'er thy embroidery!
I gazed upon the heaven serene,
The sun-lit paths, the orchards green,
The distant mountain here,
And there, the far-off sea.
Ah, mortal tongue cannot express
What then I felt of happiness!
What gentle thoughts, what hopes divine,
What loving hearts, O Sylvia mine!
In what bright colors then portrayed
Were human life and fate!
Oh, when I think of such fond hopes betrayed,
A feeling seizes me
Of bitterness and misery,
And tenfold is my grief renewed!
136
O Nature, why this treachery?
Why thus, with broken promises,
Thy children's hearts delude?
Thou, ere the grass was touched with winter's frost,
By fell disease attacked and overcome,
O tender plant, didst die!
The flower of thy days thou ne'er didst see;
Nor did thy soft heart move
Now of thy raven locks the tender praise,
Now of thy eyes, so loving and so shy;
Nor with thee, on the holidays,
Did thy companions talk of love.
So perished, too, erelong,
My own sweet hope;
So too, unto my years
Did Fate their youth deny.
Alas, alas the day,
Lamented hope, companion dear,
How hast thou passed away!
Is _this_ that world? These the delights,
The love, the labors, the events,
Of which we once so fondly spoke?
And must _all_ mortals wear this weary yoke?
Ah, when the truth appeared,
It better seemed to die!
Cold death, the barren tomb, didst thou prefer
To harsh reality.
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
980:Three Souls
Three Souls there were that reached the Heavenly Gate,
And gained permission of the Guard to wait.
Barred from the bliss of Paradise by sin,
They did not ask or hope to enter in.
'We loved one woman (thus their story ran);
We lost her, for she chose another man.
So great our love, it brought us to this door;
We only ask to see her face once more.
Then will we go to realms where we belong,
And pay our penalty for doing wrong.'
'And wert thou friends on earth?' (The Guard spake thus.)
'Nay, we were foes; but Death made friends of us.
The dominating thought within each Soul
Brought us together, comrades, to this goal,
To see her face, and in its radiance bask
For one great moment-that is all we ask.
And, having seen her, we must journey back
The path we came-a hard and dangerous track.'
'Wait, then,' the Angel said, 'beside me here,
But do not strive within God's Gate to peer
Nor converse hold with Spirits clothed in light
Who pass this way; thou hast not earned the right.'
They waited year on year. Then, like a flame,
News of the woman's death from earth-land came.
The eager lovers scanned with hungry eyes
Each Soul that passed the Gates of Paradise.
The well-beloved face in vain they sought,
Until one day the Guardian Angel brought
A message to them. 'She has gone,' he said,
'Down to the lower regions of the dead;
Her chosen mate went first; so great her love
She has resigned the joys that wait above
To dwell with him, until perchance some day,
Absolved from sin, he seeks the Better Way.'
748
Silent, the lovers turned. The pitying Guard
Said: 'Stay (the while his hand the door unbarred),
There waits for thee no darker grief or woe;
Enter the Gates, and all God's glories know.
But to be ready for so great a bliss,
Pause for a moment and take heed of this:
The dearest treasure by each mortal lost
Lies yonder, when the Threshold has been crossed,
And thou shalt find within that Sacred Place
The shining wonder of her worshipped face.
All that is past is but a troubled dream;
Go forward now and claim the Fact Supreme.'
Then clothed like Angels, fitting their estate,
Three Souls went singing, singing through God's Gate.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
981:We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude Monet to take us to Giverny, on the banks of the Seine, to that bend of the river which he hardly lets us distinguish through the morning mist. Yet in actual fact, it was the mere chance of a connection or family relation that give…Millet or Monet occasion to pass or to stay nearby, and to choose to paint that road, that garden, that field, that bend in the river, rather than some other. What makes them appear other and more beautiful than the rest of the world is that they carry on them, like some elusive reflection, the impression they afforded to a genius, and which we might see wandering just as singularly and despotically across the submissive, indifferent face of all the landscapes he may have painted.’
It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.
To forget this may sadden us unduly. When we feel interest to be so dependent on the exact locations where certain great artists found it, a thousand landscapes and areas of experience will be deprived of possible interest, for Monet only looked at a few stretches of the earth, and Proust’s novel, though long, could not comprise more than a fraction of human experience. Rather than learn the general lesson of art’s attentiveness, we might seek instead the mere objects of its gaze, and would then be unable to do justice to parts of the world which artists had not considered. As a Proustian idolater, we would have little time for desserts which Proust never tasted, for dresses he never described, nuances of love he didn’t cover and cities he didn’t visit, suffering instead from an awareness of a gap between our existence and the realm of artistic truth and interest.
The moral? There is no great homage we could pay Proust than to end up passing the same verdict on him as he passed on Ruskin, namely, that for all its qualities, his work must eventually also prove silly, maniacal, constraining, false and ridiculous to those who spend too long on it.
‘To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
982:Gordon Of Brackley
Down Deeside cam Inveraye
Whistlin' and playing,
An' called loud at Brackley gate
Ere the day dawning-'Come, Gordon of Brackley.
Proud Gordon, come down,
There's a sword at your threshold
Mair sharp than your own.'
'Arise now, gay Gordon,'
His lady 'gan cry,
'Look, here is bold Inveraye
Driving your kye.'
'How can I go, lady,
An' win them again,
When I have but ae sword,
And Inveraye ten?'
'Arise up, my maidens,
Wi' roke and wi' fan,
How blest had I been
Had I married a man!
Arise up, my maidens,
Tak' spear and tak' sword,
Go milk the ewes, Gordon,
An' I will be lord.'
The Gordon sprung up
Wi' his helm on his head,
Laid his hand on his sword,
An' his thigh on his steed,
An' he stooped low, and said,
As he kissed his young dame,
'There's a Gordon rides out
That will never ride hame.'
There rode with fierce Inveraye
Thirty and three,
But wi' Brackley were nane
81
But his brother and he;
Twa gallanter Gordons
Did never blade draw,
But against three-and-thirty
Wae's me! what are twa?
Wi' sword and wi' dagger
They rushed on him rude;
The twa gallant Gordons
Lie bathed in their blude.
Frae the springs o' the Dee
To the mouth o' the Tay,
The Gordons mourn for him,
And curse Inveraye.
'O were ye at Brackley?
An' what saw ye there?
Was his young widow weeping
An' tearing her hair?'
'I looked in at Brackley,
I looked in, and oh!
There was mirth, there was feasting,
But naething o' woe.
'As a rose bloomed the lady,
An' blithe as a bride,
As a bridegroom bold Inveraye
Smiled by her side.
Oh! she feasted him there
As she ne'er feasted lord,
While the blood of her husband
Was moist on his sword.
'In her chamber she kept him
Till morning grew gray,
Thro' the dark woods of Brackley
She shewed him the way.
'Yon wild hill,' she said,
'Where the sun's shining on,
Is the hill of Glentanner,-One kiss, and begone!''
82
There's grief in the cottage,
There's grief in the ha',
For the gude, gallant Gordon
That's dead an' awa'.
To the bush comes the bud,
An' the flower to the plain,
But the gude and the brave
They come never again.
~ Andrew Lang,#NFDB
983:A world where only a tiny super-elite are capable of understanding advanced science and technology and its applications would be, to my mind, a dangerous and limited one. I seriously doubt whether long-range beneficial projects such as cleaning up the oceans or curing diseases in the developing world would be given priority. Worse, we could find that technology is used against us and that we might have no power to stop it. I don’t believe in boundaries, either for what we can do in our personal lives or for what life and intelligence can accomplish in our universe. We stand at a threshold of important discoveries in all areas of science. Without doubt, our world will change enormously in the next fifty years. We will find out what happened at the Big Bang. We will come to understand how life began on Earth. We may even discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. While the chances of communicating with an intelligent extra-terrestrial species may be slim, the importance of such a discovery means we must not give up trying. We will continue to explore our cosmic habitat, sending robots and humans into space. We cannot continue to look inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. Through scientific endeavour and technological innovation, we must look outwards to the wider universe, while also striving to fix the problems on Earth. And I am optimistic that we will ultimately create viable habitats for the human race on other planets. We will transcend the Earth and learn to exist in space. This is not the end of the story, but just the beginning of what I hope will be billions of years of life flourishing in the cosmos. And one final point—we never really know where the next great scientific discovery will come from, nor who will make it. Opening up the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery, creating innovative and accessible ways to reach out to the widest young audience possible, greatly increases the chances of finding and inspiring the new Einstein. Wherever she might be. So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
984:Useless mongrel,” Christopher said, bending to pet him. “You smell like the floor of an East End tavern.” The dog pushed back against his palm demandingly. Christopher lowered to his haunches and regarded him ruefully. “What would you say if you could talk?” he asked. “I suppose it’s better that you don’t. That’s the point of having a dog. No conversation. Just admiring gazes and endless panting.”
Someone spoke from the threshold behind him, startling him. “I hope that’s not what you’ll expect…”
Reacting with explosive instinct, Christopher turned and fastened his hand around a soft throat.
“…from a wife,” Beatrix finished unsteadily.
Christopher froze. Trying to think above the frenzy, he took a shivering breath, and blinked hard.
What in God’s name was he doing?
He had shoved Beatrix against the doorjamb, pinning her by the throat, his other hand drawn back in a lethal fist. He was a hairsbreadth away from delivering a blow that would shatter delicate bones in her face.
It terrified him, how much effort it took to unclench his fist and relax his arm. With the hand that was still at her throat, he felt the fragile throb of her pulse beneath his thumb, and the delicate ripple of a swallow.
Staring into her rich blue eyes, he felt the welter of violence washed away in a flood of despair.
With a muffled curse, he snatched his hand from her and went to get his drink.
“Mrs. Clocker said you’d asked not to be disturbed,” Beatrix said. “And of course the first thing I did was disturb you.”
“Don’t come up behind me,” Christopher said roughly. “Ever.”
“I of all people should have known that. I won’t do it again.”
Christopher took a fiery swallow of the liquor. “What do you mean, you of all people?”
“I’m used to wild creatures who don’t like to be approached from behind.”
He shot her a baleful glance. “How fortunate that your experience with animals has turned out to be such good preparation for marriage to me.”
“I didn’t mean…well, my point was that I should have been more considerate of your nerves.”
“I don’t have nerves,” he snapped.
“I’m sorry. We’ll call them something else.” Her voice was so soothing and gentle that it would have caused an assortment of cobras, tigers, wolverines, and badgers to all snuggle together and take a group nap.
Christopher gritted his teeth and maintained a stony silence. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
985:The Child's Music Lesson
Why weep ye in your innocent toil at all?
Sweet little hands, why halt and tremble so?
Full many a wrong note falls, but let it fall!
Each note to me is like a golden glow;
Each broken cadence like a mourning call;
Nay, clear and smooth I would not have you go,
Soft little hands, upon the curtained threshold set
Of this long life of labour, and unrestful fret.
Soft sunlight flickers on the checkered green:
Warm winds are stirring round my dreaming seat:
Among the yellow pumpkin blooms, that lean
Their crumpled rims beneath the heavy heat,
The striped bees in lazy labour glean
From bell to bell with golden-feathered feet;
Yet even here the voices of hard life go by;
Outside, the city strains with its eternal cry.
Here, as I sit-the sunlight on my face,
And shadows of green leaves upon mine eyesMy heart, a garden in a hidden place,
Is full of folded buds of memories.
Stray hither then with all your old time grace,
Child-voices, trembling from the uncertain keys;
Play on, ye little fingers, touch the settled gloom,
And quickly, one by one, my waiting buds will bloom.
Ah me, I may not set my feet again
In any part of that old garden dear,
Or pluck one widening blossom, for my pain;
But only at the wicket gaze I hear:
Old scents creep into mine inactive brain,
Smooth scents of things, I may not come anear;
I see, far off, old beaten pathways they adorn;
I cannot feel with hands the blossom of the thorn.
Toil on, sweet hands; once more I see the child;
The little child, that was myself, appears,
And all the old time beauties, undefiled,
162
Shine back to me across the opening years,
Quick griefs, that made the tender bosom wild,
Short blinding gusts, that died in passionate tears,
Sweet life, with all its change, that now so happy seems,
With all its child-heart glories, and untutored dreams.
Play on into the golden sunshine so,
Sweeter than all great artists' labouring:
I too was like you once, an age ago:
God keep you, dimpled fingers, for you bring
Quiet gliding ghosts to me of joy and woe,
No certain things at all that thrill or sting,
But only sounds and scents and savours of things bright,
No joy or aching pain; but only dim delight.
~ Archibald Lampman,#NFDB
986:Will you want an estimate of all the livestock, my lord?”
“Naturally.”
“Not my horse.” A new voice entered the conversation. All four men looked to the doorway, where Kathleen stood as straight and rigid as a blade. She stared at Devon with open loathing. “The Arabian belongs to me.”
Everyone rose to his feet except for Devon, who remained seated at the desk. “Do you ever enter a room the ordinary way?” he asked curtly, “or is it your usual habit to slink past the threshold and pop up like a jack-in-the-box?”
“I only want to make it clear that while you’re tallying the spoils, you will remove my horse from the list.”
“Lady Trenear,” Mr. Fogg interceded, “I regret to say that on your wedding day, you relinquished all rights to your movable property.”
Kathleen’s eyes narrowed. “I’m entitled to keep my jointure and all the possessions I brought to the marriage.”
“Your jointure,” Totthill agreed, “but not your possessions. I assure you that no court in England will regard a married woman as a separate legal being. The horse was your husband’s, and now it belongs to Lord Trenear.”
Kathleen’s face went skull-white, and then red. “Lord Trenear is stripping the estate like a jackal with a rotting carcass. Why must he be given a horse that my father gave to me?”
Infuriated that Kathleen would show him so little deference in front of the others, Devon stood from the desk and approached her in a few strides. To her credit, she didn’t cower, even though he was twice her size. “Devil take you,” he snapped, “none of this is my fault.”
“Of course it is. You’ll seize on any excuse to sell Eversby Priory because you don’t want to take on a challenge.”
“It’s only a challenge when there’s some small hope of success. This is a debacle. The list of creditors is longer than my bloody arm, the coffers are empty, and the annual yields have been cut in half.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re planning to sell the estate to settle personal debts that have nothing to do with Eversby Priory.”
Devon’s hands knotted with the urge to destroy something. His rising bloodlust would only be satisfied with the sound of shattering objects. He had never faced a situation like this, and there was no one to give him trustworthy advice, no kindly aristocratic relation, no knowledgeable friends in the peerage. And this woman could only accuse and insult him. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
987:Leave me alone,” Win cried. “Go dust something!” “Win, if you don’t—” Amelia’s attention was diverted as she saw her sister’s gaze fly to the kitchen threshold. Merripen stood there, his broad shoulders filling the doorway. Although it was early morning, he was already dusty and perspiring, his shirt clinging to the powerful contours of his chest and waist. He wore an expression they knew well—the implacable one that meant you could move a mountain with a teaspoon sooner than change his mind about something. Approaching Win, he extended a broad hand in a wordless demand. They were both motionless. But even in their stubborn opposition, Amelia saw a singular connection, as if they were locked in an eternal stalemate from which neither wanted to break free. Win gave in with a helpless scowl. “I have nothing to do.” It was rare for her to sound so peevish. “I’m sick of sitting and reading and staring out the window. I want to be useful. I want…” Her voice trailed away as she saw Merripen’s stern face. “Fine, then. Take it!” She tossed the broom at him, and he caught it reflexively. “I’ll just find a corner somewhere and quietly go mad. I’ll—” “Come with me,” Merripen interrupted calmly. Setting the broom aside, he left the room. Win exchanged a perplexed glance with Amelia, her vehemence fading. “What is he doing?” “I have no idea.” The sisters followed him down a hallway to the dining room, which was spattered with rectangles of light from the tall multipaned windows that lined one wall. A scarred table ran down the center of the room, every available inch covered with dusty piles of china … towers of cups and saucers, plates of assorted sizes sandwiched together, bowls wrapped in tattered scraps of gray linen. There were at least three different patterns all jumbled together. “It needs to be sorted,” Merripen said, gently nudging Win toward the table. “Many pieces are chipped. They must be separated from the rest.” It was the perfect task for Win, enough to keep her busy but not so strenuous that it would exhaust her. Filled with gratitude, Amelia watched as her sister picked up a teacup and held it upside down. The husk of a tiny dead spider dropped to the floor. “What a mess,” Win said, beaming. “I’ll have to wash it, too, I suppose.” “If you’d like Poppy to help—” Amelia began. “Don’t you dare send for Poppy,” Win said. “This is my project, and I won’t share it. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
988:Her Going
The Wife
Child, why do you linger beside her portal?
None shall hear you now if you knock or clamor*
All is dark, hidden in heaviest leafage.
None shall behold you.
Truth
Gone, gone, the dear, the beautiful lady!
I, her comrade, tarry but to lament her.
Ah, the day of her vanishing all things lovely
Shared in her fleetness!
Tell me her going.
The Wife
You are a child. How tell you?
Truth
I am a child, yet old as the earliest sorrow.
Talk to me as you would to an old, old woman.
I own the ages.
The Wife
Voices, they say, gossipped around her dwelling.
She awoke, departing, they say, in silence.
I am glad she is gone. The old hurt fastens.
Hate is upon me.
It was hard to live down the day, and wonder,
Wonder why the tears were forever welling,
Wonder if on his lips her kiss I tasted
Turning to claim him.
Truth
Jealousy, mad, brooding blind and unfettered,
Takes its terrible leap over lie and malice.
Who shall question her now in the land of shadow?
Who shal1 uphold her?
The Wife
It was hard to know that peace had forsaken
All my house, to greet with a dull endeavor
Babe or book, so to forget a moment
I was forgotten.
Truth
Who shall question her now in the land of shadow,
Question the mute pale lips, and the marble fingers,
Eyelids fallen on eyes grown dim as the autumn?
Ah, the beloved!
The Wife
Go, go, bringer of ache and discord!
Truth
Go I may not. Some, they think to inter me.
Out of the mold and clay my visible raiment
Rises forever.
The Wife
Hers the sin that lured the light from our threshold,
Hers the sin that I lost his love and grew bitter.
Truth
Lost his love? You never possessed it, woman.
The Wife
Sharp tongue, have pity! . . .
Yes, I knew. But I loved him, hoping for all.
I said in my heart: 'Time shall bring buds to blossom.'
I almost saw the flower of the flame descending.
Then she came toying.
He is mine, mine, by the laws of the ages!
Mine, mine, mine yes, body and spirit!
I am glad she has gone her way to the shadow.
Hate is upon me.
Oh, the bar over which my soul would see
All that eludes my soul, while he remembers!
You, dispel if you can my avenging passion
Clouds are before me!
~ Eleanor Agnes Lee,#NFDB
989:Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics How many lies could Pinocchio tell before it became lethal? Steffan Llewellyn The Centre for Interdisciplinary science, University of Leicester 25/03/2014 Abstract: This paper investigates how many lies Pinocchio could continuously tell before it would become fatal, treating the head and neck forces as a basic lever system with the exponential growth of the nose. This paper concludes that Pinocchio could only sustain 13 lies in a row before the maximum upward force his neck could exert cannot sustain his head and nose. The head’s overall centre of mass shifts over 85 metres after 13 lies, and the overall length of the nose is 208 metres. Pinocchio’s Nose Pinocchio is the fable of a wooden puppet, carved by Geppetto, who dreams of becoming a real boy [1]. Pinocchio was portrayed as a character prone to lying, which is manifested physically through the ability to grow his nose when he tells a lie. One issue of growing his nose would be the shift of Pinocchio’s centre of mass within his head, causing strain on his neck, which helps stabilise his head’s position with upwards force. If this continued, then his neck could not support his head, potentially decapitating the puppet. Outlined here is the minimum lie count Pinocchio could continuously expel. Where Pinocchio manages to form new is not addressed in this paper. Maximum Force Pinocchio’s Neck Can Exert The assumption is simplified by allowing the force exerted upwards through the neck to be positioned at the back of the head. The head is treated as a sphere, and the nose as a cylinder, as shown in The type of wood Pinocchio is carved from is disputed, but for this paper, it is concluded that Pinocchio is made from Oak, with a density of . Pinocchio’s neck will brake if its compression strength threshold is overcome by the weight of his head. The compression strength of oak is 1150Psi [2], and the circumference of the average human neck is 0.4m [3]. The maximum force Pinocchio’s neck can sustain is: ( ) ( ) Centre of Mass, and Force Exerted Figure 1. Figure 1: Illustrates the lever system of Pinocchio’s head and neck, with opposite forcesNeck muscles are required to balance the weight exerted by the skull.Usually, the weight of the nose can be considered negligible. In Pinocchio’s case, as the nose increases, it will have a significant impact on the centre of mass and weight of his head. The mass of the head is unchanged: ( ) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
990:Chip and I were both exhausted when we finally pulled up in front of that house, but we were still riding the glow of our honeymoon, and I was so excited as he carried me over the threshold--until the smell nearly knocked us over.
“Oh my word,” I said, pinching my nose and trying to hold my breath so I wouldn’t gag. “What is that?”
Chip flicked the light switch, and the light didn’t come on. He flicked it up and down a few times, then felt his way forward in the darkness and tried another switch.
“The electricity’s off,” he said. “The girls must’ve had it shut off when they moved out.”
“Didn’t you transfer it back into your name?” I asked.
“I guess not. I’m sorry, babe,” Chip said.
“Chip, what is that smell?”
It was the middle of June in Waco, Texas. The temperature had been up over a hundred degrees for days on end, and the humidity was stifling, amplifying whatever that rotten smell was coming from the kitchen. Chip always carries a knife and a flashlight, and it sure came in handy that night. Chip made his way back there and found that the fridge still had a bunch of food left in it, including a bunch of ground beef that had just sat there rotting since whenever the electricity went out.
The food was literally just smoldering in this hundred-degree house. So we went from living in a swanky hotel room on Park Avenue in New York City to this disgusting, humid stink of a place that felt more like the site of a crime scene than a home at this point. Honestly, I hadn’t thought it through very well. But it was late, and we were tired, and I just focused on making the most of this awful situation.
So we opened some windows and brought our bags in, and I told Jo we’d just tough it out and sleep on the floor and clean it all up in the morning. That’s when she started crying.
I lay down on the floor thinking, Is his what my life is going to look like now that I married Chip? Is this my new normal?
That’s when another smell hit me. It was in the carpet.
“Chip, did those girls have a dog here?” I asked.
“They had a couple of dogs,” he answered. “Why?”
You could smell it. In the carpet. It was nasty. I was just lying there with my head next to some old dog urine stain that had been heated by the Texas summer heat.
It was like microwaved dog pee.
It was. It was awful. It was three in the morning. And I finally said, “Chip, I’m not sleeping in this house. ~ Joanna Gaines,#NFDB
991:Perhaps her abruptness was merely part of her personality, for she had the appearance of the worst kind of bureaucrat, the aspiring one, from blunt, square haircut to blunt, clean fingernails to blunt, efficient pumps. But perhaps it was me, still morally disoriented from the crapulent major’s death, as well as the apparition of his severed head at the wedding banquet. The emotional residue of that night was like a drop of arsenic falling into the still waters of my soul, nothing having changed from the taste of it but everything now tainted. So perhaps that was why when I crossed over the threshold into the marble foyer, I instantly suspected that the cause of her behavior was my race. What she saw when she looked at me must have been my yellowness, my slightly smaller eyes, and the shadow cast by the ill fame of the Oriental’s genitals, those supposedly minuscule privates disparaged on many a public restroom wall by semiliterates. I might have been just half an Asian, but in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren’t. Funnily enough, I had never felt inferior because of my race during my foreign student days. I was foreign by definition and therefore was treated as a guest. But now, even though I was a card-carrying American with a driver’s license, Social Security card, and resident alien permit, Violet still considered me as foreign, and this misrecognition punctured the smooth skin of my self-confidence. Was I just being paranoid, that all-American characteristic? Maybe Violet was stricken with colorblindness, the willful inability to distinguish between white and any other color, the only infirmity Americans wished for themselves. But as she advanced along the polished bamboo floors, steering clear of the dusky maid vacuuming a Turkish rug, I just knew it could not be so. The flawlessness of my English did not matter. Even if she could hear me, she still saw right through me, or perhaps saw someone else instead of me, her retinas burned with the images of all the castrati dreamed up by Hollywood to steal the place of real Asian men. Here I speak of those cartoons named Fu Manchu, Charlie Chan, Number One Son, Hop Sing—Hop Sing!—and the bucktoothed, bespectacled Jap not so much played as mocked by Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The performance was so insulting it even deflated my fetish for Audrey Hepburn, understanding as I did her implicit endorsement of such loathsomeness. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
992:Heartened up by this story, I began to draw upon his more comprehensive knowledge as to the ages of the pictures and as to certain of the stories connected with them, upon which I was not clear; and I likewise inquired into the causes of the decadence of the present age, in which the most refined arts had perished, and among them painting, which had not left even the faintest trace of itself behind. "Greed of money," he replied, "has brought about these unaccountable changes. In the good old times, when virtue was her own reward, the fine arts flourished, and there was the keenest rivalry among men for fear that anything which could be of benefit to future generations should remain long undiscovered. Then it was that Democritus expressed the juices of all plants and spent his whole life in experiments, in order that no curative property should lurk unknown in stone or shrub. That he might understand the movements of heaven and the stars, Eudoxus grew old upon the summit of a lofty mountain: three times did Chrysippus purge his brain with hellebore, that his faculties might be equal to invention. Turn to the sculptors if you will; Lysippus perished from hunger while in profound meditation upon the lines of a single statue, and Myron, who almost embodied the souls of men and beasts in bronze, could not find an heir. And we, sodden with wine and women, cannot even appreciate the arts already practiced, we only criticise the past! We learn only vice, and teach it, too. What has become of logic? of astronomy? Where is the exquisite road to wisdom? Who even goes into a temple to make a vow, that he may achieve eloquence or bathe in the fountain of wisdom? And they do not pray for good health and a sound mind; before they even set foot upon the threshold of the temple, one promises a gift if only he may bury a rich relative; another, if he can but dig up a treasure, and still another, if he is permitted to amass thirty millions of sesterces in safety! The Senate itself, the exponent of all that should be right and just, is in the habit of promising a thousand pounds of gold to the capitol, and that no one may question the propriety of praying for money, it even decorates Jupiter himself with spoils'. Do not hesitate, therefore, at expressing your surprise at the deterioration of painting, since, by all the gods and men alike, a lump of gold is held to be more beautiful than anything ever created by those crazy little Greek fellows, Apelles and Phydias! ~ Petronius, #NFDB
993:Daft
In the warm yellow smile of the morning,
She stands at the lattice pane,
And watches the strong young binders
Stride down to the fields of grain.
And she counts them over and over
As they pass her cottage door:
Are they six, she counts them seven;
Are they seven, she counts one more.
When the sun swings high in the heavens,
And the reapers go shouting home,
She calls to the household, saying,
'Make haste! for the binders have come
And Johnnie will want his dinner He was always a hungry child';
And they answer, 'Yes, it ia waiting';
Then tell you, 'Her brain is wild.'
Again, in the hush of the evening,
When the work of the day is done,
And the binders go singing homeward
In the last red rays of the sun,
She will sit at the threshold waiting,
And with her withered face lights with joy:
'Come, Johnnie, ' she says, as they pass her,
'Come into the house, my boy.'
Five summers ago her Johnnie
Went out in the smile of the morn,
Singing across the meadow,
Striding down through the corn He towered above the binders,
Walking on either side,
And the mother's heart within her
Swelled with exultant pride.
For he was the light of the household His brown eyes were wells of truth,
And his face was the face of the morning,
209
Lit with its pure, fresh youth,
And his song rang out from the hilltops
Like the mellow blast of a horn,
And he strode o'er the fresh shorn meadows,
And down through the rows of corn.
But hushed were the voices of singing,
Hushed by the presence of death,
As back to the cottage they bore him In the noontide's scorching breath,
For the heat of the sun had slain him,
Had smitten the heart in his breast,
And he who towered above them
Lay lower than all the rest.
The grain grows ripe in the sunshine,
And the summers ebb and flow,
And the binders stride to their labour
And sing as they come and go;
But never again from the hilltops
Echoes the voice like a horn;
Never up from the meadows,
Never back from the corn.
Yet the poor, crazed brain of the mother
Fancies him always near;
She is blest in her strange delusion,
For she knoweth no pain nor fear,
And always she counts the binders
As they pass by her cottage door;
Are they six, she counts them seven;
Are they seven, she counts one more.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
994:SELF-HELP FOR FELLOW REFUGEES
If your name suggests a country where bells
might have been used for entertainment,
or to announce the entrances and exits of the seasons
and the birthdays of gods and demons,
it's probably best to dress in plain clothes
when you arrive in the United States.
And try not to talk too loud.
If you happen to have watched armed men
beat and drag your father
out the front door of your house
and into the back of an idling truck,
before your mother jerked you from the threshold
and buried your face in her skirt folds,
try not to judge your mother too harshly.
Don't ask her what she thought she was doing,
turning a child's eyes
away from history
and toward that place all human aching starts.
And if you meet someone
in your adopted country
and think you see in the other's face
an open sky, some promise of a new beginning,
it probably means you're standing too far.
Or if you think you read in the other, as in a book
whose first and last pages are missing,
the story of your own birthplace,
a country twice erased,
once by fire, once by forgetfulness,
it probably means you're standing too close.
In any case, try not to let another carry
the burden of your own nostalgia or hope.
And if you're one of those
whose left side of the face doesn't match
the right, it might be a clue
looking the other way was a habit
your predecessors found useful for survival.
Don't lament not being beautiful.
Get used to seeing while not seeing.
Get busy remembering while forgetting.
Dying to live while not wanting to go on.
Very likely, your ancestors decorated
their bells of every shape and size
with elaborate calendars
and diagrams of distant star systems,
but with no maps for scattered descendants.
And I bet you can't say what language
your father spoke when he shouted to your mother
from the back of the truck, "Let the boy see!"
Maybe it wasn't the language you used at home.
Maybe it was a forbidden language.
Or maybe there was too much screaming
and weeping and the noise of guns in the streets.
It doesn't matter. What matters is this:
The kingdom of heaven is good.
But heaven on earth is better.
Thinking is good.
But living is better.
Alone in your favorite chair
with a book you enjoy
is fine. But spooning
is even better. ~ Li Young Lee,#NFDB
995:When we reached his door, he went inside, leaving it open for me to follow. I stepped across the threshold and closed out the hall, then surveyed what lay before me: a lavish main room much like mine in Hytanica, with a fireplace; a rich, comfortable sofa upon which Narian settled; several armchairs; a carved wooden table scattered with papers; and two bookshelves stocked with volumes. Heavy drapes covered one wall, and when I crossed the thick rug that blanketed the floor to push the fabric aside, I learned the reason--they hid a set of large windows. I turned around and saw that an expansive mural covered the wall above and to the sides of the door. It combined horses, a sunrise and sunset, stars in a deep blue sky, noblewomen and men, creatures of myth and a Cokyrian flag into a single stunning piece of artwork. Intricate tapestries were common in Hytanica, but I had never seen anything approaching the beauty of this painting before.
Narian was content to let me explore, so I approached the table, skimming the papers atop it, which ranged from correspondence and scrawled notes to maps and battle strategies. Spying his bedroom beyond, which was open to the main room but secluded by a wall, I glanced at him for approval, and went inside upon his nod. His bed was built into a corner, on a raised platform, permitting access from only one side by what appeared to be a climbing net. Practical for a military man--and fun for a child.
He followed me, stopping in the archway to watch me explore his private space.
“May I?” I asked, crossing to his wardrobe, for I was curious about the style of his attire here in Cokyri, and he again motioned me ahead.
I glanced between Narian and the clothing inside the wardrobe several times, trying to understand the disparity. The Narian I knew dressed practically, ever a soldier, thinking of comfort and of blending into his surroundings. Yet he possessed a collection of rich clothing, the fabrics similar to what I would have expected to find in Steldor’s or my father’s wardrobe, not in his. Mounted on the inside of one of the doors were dress swords, and on the other, shelves that held jewels far more valuable than anything we had in Hytanica.
“Narian, this is…” I started, then shook my head in wonder.
“Ridiculous, I know.” He crossed to his bed and leaned against the netting.
“No!” I exclaimed. “It’s unbelievably beautiful.”
I pointed to an exquisite ruby ring and flashed him a smile. “This could have been my betrothal ring. ~ Cayla Kluver,#NFDB
996:I still don’t see why we couldn’t sleep in that cave,” Mari said as MacRieve led her out into the night.
“Because my cave’s better than their cave.”
“You know, that really figures.” After the rain, the din of cicadas and frogs resounded in the underbrush all around them, forcing her to raise her voice. “Is it far?” When he shook his head, she said, “Then why do I have to hold your hand through the jungle? This path looks like a tractor busted through here.”
“I went back this way while you ate to make sure everything was clear. Brought your things here, too,” he said as he steered her toward a lit cave entrance.
When they crossed the threshold, wings flapped in the shadows, building to a furor before settling. Inside, a fire burned. Beside it, she saw he’d unpacked some of his things, and had made up one pallet. “Well, no one can call you a pessimist, MacRieve.” She yanked her hand from his. “Deluded fits, though.”
He merely leaned back against the wall, seeming content to watch her as she explored on her own. She’d read about this part of Guatemala and knew that here limestone caverns spread out underground like a vast web. Above them a cathedral ceiling soared, with stalactites jutting down. “What’s so special about this cave?”
“Mine has bats.”
She breathed, “If I stick with you, I’ll have nothing but the best.”
“Bats mean fewer mosquitoes. And then there’s also the bathtub for you to enjoy.” He waved her attention to an area deeper within. A subterranean stream with a sandy beach meandered through the cavern. Her eyes widened. A small pool sat off to the side, not much larger than an oversize Jacuzzi, and laid out along its edge were her toiletries, her washcloth, and her towel. Her bag—filled with all of her clean clothes—was off just to the side.
Mari cried out at the sight, doubling over to yank at her bootlaces. Freed of her boots, she hopped forward on one foot then the other as she snatched off her socks. She didn’t pause until she was about to start on the button fly of her shorts.
She glanced up to find him watching her with a gleam of expectation in his eyes. “You will be leaving, of course.”
“Or I could help you.”
“I’ve had a bit of practice bathing myself and think I can stumble my way through this.”
“But you’re tired. Why no’ let me help? Now that I’ve two hands again, I’m eager to use them.”
“You give me privacy or I go without.”
“Verra well.” He shrugged. “I’ll leave—because your going without is no’ an option. Call me if you need me. ~ Kresley Cole,#NFDB
997:The Lonely Sparrow
Thou from the top of yonder antique tower,
O lonely sparrow, wandering, hast gone,
Thy song repeating till the day is done,
And through this valley strays the harmony.
How Spring rejoices in the fields around,
And fills the air with light,
So that the heart is melted at the sight!
Hark to the bleating flocks, the lowing herds!
In sweet content, the other birds
Through the free sky in emulous circles wheel,
In pure enjoyment of their happy time:
Thou, pensive, gazest on the scene apart,
Nor wilt thou join them in the merry round;
Shy playmate, thou for mirth hast little heart;
And with thy plaintive music, dost consume
Both of the year, and of thy life, the bloom.
Alas, how much my ways
Resemble thine! The laughter and the sport,
That fill with glee our youthful days,
And thee, O love, who art youth's brother still,
Too oft the bitter sigh of later years,
I care not for; I know not why,
But from them ever distant fly:
Here in my native place,
As if of alien race,
My spring of life I like a hermit pass.
This day, that to the evening now gives way,
Is in our town an ancient holiday.
Hark, through the air, that voice of festal bell,
While rustic guns in frequent thunders sound,
Reverberated from the hills around.
In festal robes arrayed,
The neighboring youth,
Their houses leaving, o'er the roads are spread;
They pleasant looks exchange, and in their hearts
Rejoice. I, lonely, in this distant spot,
Along the country wandering,
Postpone all pleasure and delight
97
To some more genial time: meanwhile,
As through the sunny air around I gaze,
My brow is smitten by his rays,
As after such a day serene,
Dropping behind yon distant hills,
He vanishes, and seems to say,
That thus all happy youth must pass away.
Thou, lonely little bird, when thou
Hast reached the evening of the days
Thy stars assign to thee,
Wilt surely not regret thy ways;
For all thy wishes are
Obedient to Nature's law. But ah!
If I, in spite of all my prayers,
Am doomed the hateful threshold of old age
To cross, when these dull eyes will give
No response to another's heart,
The world to them a void will be,
Each day become more full of misery,
How then, will this, my wish appear
In those dark hours, that dungeon drear?
My blighted youth, my sore distress,
Alas, will _then_ seem happiness!
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
998:Cannabinoids relax the rules of cortical crowd control, but 300 micrograms of d-lysergic acid diethylamide break them completely. This is a clean sweep. This is the Renaissance after the Dark Ages. Dopamine—the fuel of desire—is only one of four major neuro modulators. Each of the neuromodulators fuels brain operations in its own particular way. But all four of them share two properties. First, they get released and used up all over the brain, not at specific locales. Second, each is produced by one specialized organ, a brain part designed to manufacture that one potent chemical (see Figure 3). Instead of watering the flowers one by one, neuromodulator release is like a sprinkler system. That’s why neuromodulators initiate changes that are global, not local. Dopamine fuels attraction, focus, approach, and especially wanting and doing. Norepinephrine fuels perceptual alertness, arousal, excitement, and attention to sensory detail. Acetylcholine energizes all mental operations, consciousness, and thought itself. But the final neuromodulator, serotonin, is more complicated in its action. Serotonin does a lot of different things in a lot of different places, because there are many kinds of serotonin receptors, and they inhabit a great variety of neural nooks, staking out an intricate network. One of serotonin’s most important jobs is to regulate information flow throughout the brain by inhibiting the firing of neurons in many places. And it’s the serotonin system that gets dynamited by LSD. Serotonin dampens, it paces, it soothes. It raises the threshold of neurons to the voltage changes induced by glutamate. Remember glutamate? That’s the main excitatory neurotransmitter that carries information from synapse to synapse throughout the brain. Serotonin cools this excitation, putting off the next axonal burst, making the receptive neuron less sensitive to the messages it receives from other neurons. Slow down! Take it easy! Don’t get carried away by every little molecule of glutamate. Serotonin soothes neurons that might otherwise fire too often, too quickly. If you want to know how it feels to get a serotonin boost, ask a depressive several days into antidepressant therapy. Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, and all their cousins leave more serotonin in the synapses, hanging around, waiting to help out when the brain becomes too active. Which is most of the time if you feel the world is dark and threatening. Extra serotonin makes the thinking process more relaxed—a nice change for depressives, who get a chance to wallow in relative normality. ~ Marc Lewis, #NFDB
999:LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. ~ Charles Dickens,#NFDB
1000:Outsong in the Jungle
[Baloo:] For the sake of him who showed
One wise Frog the Jungle-Road,
Keep the Law the Man-Pack make
For thy blind old Baloo's sake!
Clean or tainted, hot or stale,
Hold it as it were the Trail,
Through the day and through the night,
Questing neither left nor right.
For the sake of him who loves
Thee beyond all else that moves,
When thy Pack would make thee pain,
Say: "Tabaqui sings again."
When thy Pack would work thee ill,
Say: "Shere Khan is yet to kill."
When the knife is drawn to slay,
Keep the Law and go thy way.
(Root and honey, palm and spathe,
Guard a cub from harm and scathe!)
Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,
Jungle-Favour go with thee!
[Kaa:] Anger is the egg of Fear--
Only lidless eyes see clear.
Cobra-poison none may leech--
Even so with Cobra-speech.
Open talk shall call to thee
Strength, whose mate is Courtesy.
Send no lunge beyond thy length.
Lend no rotten bough thy strength.
Gauge thy gape with buck or goat,
Lest thine eye should choke thy throat.
After gorging, wouldst thou sleep ?
Look thy den be hid and deep,
Lest a wrong, by thee forgot,
Draw thy killer to the spot.
East and West and North and South,
Wash thy hide and close thy mouth.
(Pit and rift and blue pool-brim,
Middle-Jungle follow him!)
Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,
Jungle-Favour go with thee!
[Bagheera:] In the cage my life began;
Well I know the worth of Man.
By the Broken Lock that freed--
Man-cub, ware the Man-cub's breed!
Scenting-dew or starlight pale,
Choose no tangled tree-cat trail.
Pack or council, hunt or den,
Cry no truce with Jackal-Men.
Feed them silence when they say:
"Come with us an easy way."
Feed them silence when they seek
Help of thine to hurt the weak.
Make no bandar's boast of skill;
Hold thy peace above the kill.
Let nor call nor song nor sign
Turn thee from thy hunting-line.
(Morning mist or twilight clear,
Serve him, Wardens of the Deer!)
Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,
Jungle-Favour go with thee!
[The Three:] On the trail that thou must tread
To the threshold of our dread,
Where the Flower blossoms red;
Through the nights when thou shalt lie
Prisoned from our Mother-sky,
Hearing us, thy loves, go by;
In the dawns when thou shalt wake
To the toil thou canst not break,
Heartsick for the Jungle's sake;
Wood and Water, Wind air Tree,
Wisdom, Strength, and Courtesy,
Jungle-Favour go with thee! ~ Rudyard Kipling,#NFDB
1001:Most obviously, they agreed, an autocatalytic set was a web of transformations among molecules in precisely the same way that an economy is a web of transformations among goods and services. In a very real sense, in fact, an autocatalytic set was an economy-a submicroscopic economy that extracted raw materials (the primordial "food" molecules) and converted them into useful products (more molecules in the set).
Moreover an autocatalytic set can bootstrap its own evolution in precisely the same way that an economy can, by growing more and more complex over time. This was a point that fascinated Kauffman. If innovations result from new combinations of old technologies, then the number of possible innovations would go up very rapidly as more and more technologies became available. In fact, he argued, once you get beyond a certain threshold of complexity you can expect a kind of phase transition analogous to the ones he had found in his autocatalytic sets. Below that level of complexity you would find countries dependent upon just a few major industries, and their economies would tend to be fragile and stagnant. In that case, it wouldn't matter how much investment got poured into the country. "If all you do is produce bananas, nothing will happen except that you produce more bananas." But if a country ever managed to diversify and increase its complexity above the critical point, then you would expect it to undergo an explosive increase in growth and innovation-what some economists have called an "economic takeoff."
The existence of that phase transition would also help explain why trade is so important to prosperity, Kauffman told Arthur. Suppose you have two different countries, each one of which is subcritical by itself. Their economies are going nowhere. But now suppose they start trading, so that their economies become interlinked into one large economy with a higher complexity. "I expect that trade between such systems will allow the joint system to become supercritical and explode outward."
Finally, an autocatalytic set can undergo exactly the same kinds of evolutionary booms and crashes that an economy does. Injecting one new kind of molecule into the soup could often transform the set utterly, in much the same way that the economy transformed when the horse was replaced by the automobile. This was part of autocatalysis that really captivated Arthur. It had the same qualities that had so fascinated him when he first read about molecular biology: upheaval and change and enormous consequences flowing from trivial-seeming events-and yet with deep law hidden beneath. ~ M Mitchell Waldrop,#NFDB
1002:The Eternal Return has certainly not been thought by philosophers or by those who are concerned about Nietzsche in the contemporary history of ideas, and this because the Eternal Return can not be thought of. It is a revelation that presents itself next to the Silvaplana rock, or on the threshold of the Gateway of the Moment, where the Two Ways meet.
You will have to travel step by step along the path of Western yoga that Nietzsche rediscovered and practiced, putting his feet in the tracks that he left in the paths of the high peaks, relive their great pains and divine glories, reaching to reach similar tonalities of the soul, to be possessed by Dionysus and his ancient drunkenness, Luciferian, that makes dance in the solitude of forests and lost from a solar age, laughing and crying at the same time.
And this is not achieved by the philosophers of the intellect or the beings 'of the flock'. For to achieve this, the Circle will have to be traversed for several eternities, again at the Gateway of the Moment, already predestined at noon.
In addition, the doctrine of the Eternal Return is selective. As the initiatory practice Tantric Panshatattva is not for the paśu [animal], but only for some heroes or viryas, thus the Noon is reached by the 'Lords of the Earth' and by the poets of the Will to Power, predestined in a mysterious way to perform the Superman, that individualistic and aristocratic mutation.
The 'herd', the vulgar, has nothing to do with all this, including here the scientists, technologists and most philosophers, politicians and government of the Kaliyuga.
Nietzsche's description of the Eternal Return is found in some aphorisms that precede 'The Gay Science', Joyful Science, using Nietzsche the Provencal term, Occitan, from 'Gay'. Joyful Science will be that of the one who has accepted the Eternal Return of all things and has transmuted the values. The one of Superman.
There is also a description in the schemes of 'The Will to Power'. In they all take hold, with genius that transcends their time, of the scientific knowledge and the mechanics of the time, which does not lose validity to the doctrine, let us say better to the revealed Idea, to the Revelation that, of somehow, it was also in the Pythagoreans, in their Aryan-Hyperborean form, differentiating itself from other elaborations made in the millennia of the East. Also would have been veiled in the Persian reformer Zarathustra.
We are going to reproduce what Nietzsche has written about the Eternal Return. In the schemes of 'The Will to Power', he says: 'Everything returns and returns eternally; We can not escape this. ~ Miguel Serrano,#NFDB
1003:The Eternal Return has certainly not been thought by philosophers or by those who are concerned about Nietzsche in the contemporary history of ideas, and this because the Eternal Return can not be thought of. It is a revelation that presents itself next to the Silvaplana rock, or on the threshold of the Gateway of the Moment, where the Two Ways meet.
You will have to travel step by step along the path of Western yoga that Nietzsche rediscovered and practiced, putting his feet in the tracks that he left in the paths of the high peaks, relive their great pains and divine glories, reaching to reach similar tonalities of the soul, to be possessed by Dionysus and his ancient drunkenness, Luciferian, that makes dance in the solitude of forests and lost from a solar age, laughing and crying at the same time.
And this is not achieved by the philosophers of the intellect or the beings 'of the flock'. For to achieve this, the Circle will have to be traversed for several eternities, again at the Gateway of the Moment, already predestined at noon.
In addition, the doctrine of the Eternal Return is selective. As the initiatory practice Tantric Panshatattva is not for the paśu [animal], but only for some heroes or viryas, thus the Noon is reached by the 'Lords of the Earth' and by the poets of the Will to Power, predestined in a mysterious way to perform the Superman, that individualistic and aristocratic mutation.
The 'herd', the vulgar, has nothing to do with all this, including here the scientists, technologists and most philosophers, politicians and government of the Kaliyuga.
Nietzsche's description of the Eternal Return is found in some aphorisms that precede 'The Gay Science', Joyful Science, using Nietzsche the Provencal term, Occitan, from 'Gay'. Joyful Science will be that of the one who has accepted the Eternal Return of all things and has transmuted the values. The one of Superman.
There is also a description in the schemes of 'The Will to Power'. In they all take hold, with genius that transcends their time, of the scientific knowledge and the mechanics of the time, which does not lose validity to the doctrine, let us say better to the revealed Idea, to the Revelation that, of
somehow, it was also in the Pythagoreans, in their Aryan-Hyperborean form, differentiating itself from other elaborations made in the millennia of the East. Also would have been veiled in the Persian reformer Zarathustra.
We are going to reproduce what Nietzsche has written about the Eternal Return. In the schemes of 'The Will to Power', he says: 'Everything returns and returns eternally; We can not escape this. ~ Miguel Serrano,#NFDB
1004:The Eternal Return has certainly not been thought by philosophers or by those who are concerned about Nietzsche in the contemporary history of ideas, and this because the Eternal Return can not be thought of. It is a revelation that presents next to the Silvaplana rock, or on the threshold of the Gateway of the Moment, where the Two Ways meet.
You will have to travel step by step along the path of Western yoga that Nietzsche rediscovered and practiced, putting his feet in the tracks that he left in the paths of the high peaks, relive their great pains and divine glories, reaching to reach similar tonalities of the soul, to be possessed by Dionysus and
his ancient drunkenness, Luciferian, that makes dance in the solitude of forests and lost from a solar age, laughing and crying at the same time.
And this is not achieved by the philosophers of the intellect or the beings 'of the flock'. For to achieve this, the Circle will have to be traversed for several eternities, again at the Gateway of the Moment, already predestined at noon.
In addition, the doctrine of the Eternal Return is selective. As the initiatory practice Tantric Panshatattva is not for the paśu [animal], but only for some heroes or viryas, thus the Noon is reached by the 'Lords of the Earth' and by the poets of the Will to Power, predestined in a mysterious way to perform the
Superman, that individualistic and aristocratic mutation.
The 'herd', the vulgar, has nothing to do with all this, including here the scientists, technologists and most philosophers, politicians and government of the Kaliyuga.
Nietzsche's description of the Eternal Return is found in some
aphorisms that precede 'The Gay Science', Joyful Science, using Nietzsche the Provencal term, Occitan, from 'Gay'. Joyful Science will be that of the one who has accepted the Eternal Return of all things and has transmuted the values. The one of Superman.
There is also a description in the schemes of 'The Will to Power'. In they all take hold, with genius that transcends their time, of the scientific knowledge and the mechanics of the time, which does not lose validity to the doctrine, let us say better to the revealed Idea, to the Revelation that, of
somehow, it was also in the Pythagoreans, in their Aryan-Hyperborean form, differentiating itself from other elaborations made in the millennia of the East. Also would have been veiled in the Persian reformer Zarathustra.
We are going to reproduce what Nietzsche has written about the Eternal Return. In the schemes of 'The Will to Power', he says: 'Everything returns and returns eternally; We can not escape this. ~ Miguel Serrano,#NFDB
1005:Margery Of The Fens
Yes, I'm dying by inches; the Devil has got his way:
I fought him fourscore years, but he's gripped me hard to-day.
No, not God, not a word of God! For I let him be.
The Devil is waiting, I tell you, but God has forgotten me.
II
Sir, you know I'm a witch? Look here, lean closer down:
If you tossed me into the dyke, you know I couldn't drown;
If you pricked me over with pins, I never could feel a pin;
For the Devil has sealed me his, and I've sinned the Original Sin.
III
Fourscore years have I lived, here in the heart of the Fens,
Dragging ages of years, but fourscore years of men's;
And the pools 'll stir, and the fogs 'll rise, and the winds 'll moan;-Ay, there were others along with me, once; but they're gone, they're gone.
IV
Ages of years alone! There was Dickon, my man, he died,
And the child didn't die, but her father was on the Almighty's side,
And he took him away to himself; but he left the girl to hell,
And me he left to the Devil, with hardly a soul to sell.
Cursed and motherless girl, motherless girl that was mine!
I brought her up on my knees, and she left 'em to herd with swine;
I never have named her name these twoscore years save three:
She cast me off to be harlot, and I cast her off from me.
VI
What's that crying and wailing? The wind? Oh, ay, the wind.
And the wages of sin is death, and the soul shall die that hath sinned.
She cast me off, and she came back home with her baby again;
And I spoke no word, and I shut the door in her face in the rain.
VII
And the baby wailed and wailed on the threshold out in the night;
And all night long she lay at the door, and I sat upright;
And at morn she rose, and I spoke no word, and she went her way;
And the wages of sin is death, and it's I must die to-day.
VIII
Inch by inch I'm dying, and Satan's at watch hard by,
For he'll have my soul,--it was all I had,--when I come to die;
For my man that was he died, and my girl that was she fell,
77
And I flung my soul away, and the Devil caught it for hell.
IX
Twoscore years save three I've lived the life of a witch,
And I've plagued the cattle and folk with cramp and murrain and stitch;
And I've sold my soul, for my girl she killed my heart: let be;
She cast me off to be harlot, and I cast her off from me.
Go, and leave me alone. I'm past your help. I shall lie,
As she lay, through the night, and at morn, as she went in the rain, I shall die.
Go, and leave me alone. Let me die as I lived. But oh,
If the wind wouldn't cry and wail with the baby's cry as I go!
~ Arthur Symons,#NFDB
1006:Entering the office, Evie found Sebastian and Cam on opposite sides of the desk. They both mulled over account ledgers, scratching out some entries with freshly inked pens, and making notations beside the long columns. Both men looked up as she crossed the threshold. Evie met Sebastian’s gaze only briefly; she found it hard to maintain her composure around him after the intimacy of the previous night. He paused in mid-sentence as he stared at her, seeming to forget what he had been saying to Cam. It seemed that neither of them was yet comfortable with feelings that were still too new and powerful. Murmuring good morning to them both, she bid them to remain seated, and she went to stand beside Sebastian’s chair.
“Have you breakfasted yet, my lord?” she asked.
Sebastian shook his head, a smile glinting in his eyes. “Not yet.”
“I’ll go to the kitchen and see what is to be had.”
“Stay a moment,” he urged. “We’re almost finished.”
As the two men discussed a few last points of business, which pertained to a potential investment in a proposed shopping bazaar to be constructed on St. James Street, Sebastian picked up Evie’s hand, which was resting on the desk. Absently he drew the backs of her fingers against the edge of his jaw and his ear while contemplating the written proposal on the desk before him. Although Sebastian was not aware of what the casual familiarity of the gesture revealed, Evie felt her color rise as she met Cam’s gaze over her husband’s downbent head. The boy sent her a glance of mock reproof, like that of a nursemaid who had caught two children playing a kissing game, and he grinned as her blush heightened further.
Oblivious to the byplay, Sebastian handed the proposal to Cam, who sobered instantly. “I don’t like the looks of this,” Sebastian commented. “It’s doubtful there will be enough business in the area to sustain an entire bazaar, especially at those rents. I suspect within a year it will turn into a white elephant.”
“White elephant?” Evie asked.
A new voice came from the doorway, belonging to Lord Westcliff. “A white elephant is a rare animal,” the earl replied, smiling, “that is not only expensive but difficult to maintain. Historically, when an ancient king wished to ruin someone he would gift him with a white elephant.” Stepping into the office, Westcliff bowed over Evie’s hand and spoke to Sebastian. “Your assessment of the proposed bazaar is correct, in my opinion. I was approached with the same investment opportunity not long ago, and I rejected it on the same grounds.”
“No doubt we’ll both be proven wrong,” Sebastian said wryly. “One should never try to predict anything regarding women and their shopping. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1007:I AM now,--what joy to hear it!--
Of the old magician rid;
And henceforth shall ev'ry spirit
Do whate'er by me is bid;
I have watch'd with rigour
All he used to do,
And will now with vigour
Work my wonders too.
Wander, wander
Onward lightly,
So that rightly
Flow the torrent,
And with teeming waters yonder
In the bath discharge its current!
And now come, thou well-worn broom,
And thy wretched form bestir;
Thou hast ever served as groom,
So fulfil my pleasure, sir!
On two legs now stand,
With a head on top;
Waterpail in hand,
Haste, and do not stop!
Wander, wander
Onward lightly,
So that rightly
Flow the torrent,
And with teeming waters yonder
In the bath discharge its current!
See! he's running to the shore,
And has now attain'd the pool,
And with lightning speed once more
Comes here, with his bucket full!
Back he then repairs;
See how swells the tide!
How each pail he bears
Straightway is supplied!
Stop, for, lo!
All the measure
Of thy treasure
Now is right!--
Ah, I see it! woe, oh woe!
I forget the word of might.
Ah, the word whose sound can straight
Make him what he was before!
Ah, he runs with nimble gait!
Would thou wert a broom once more!
Streams renew'd for ever
Quickly bringeth he;
River after river
Rusheth on poor me!
Now no longer
Can I bear him;
I will snare him,
Knavish sprite!
Ah, my terror waxes stronger!
What a look! what fearful sight
Oh, thou villain child of hell!
Shall the house through thee be drown'd
Floods I see that wildly swell,
O'er the threshold gaining ground.
Wilt thou not obey,
Oh, thou broom accurs'd?
Be thou still I pray,
As thou wert at first!
Will enough
Never please thee?
I will seize thee,
Hold thee fast,
And thy nimble wood so tough,
With my sharp axe split at last.
See, once more he hastens back!
Now, oh Cobold, thou shalt catch it!
I will rush upon his track;
Crashing on him falls my hatchet.
Bravely done, indeed!
See, he's cleft in twain!
Now from care I'm freed,
And can breathe again.
Woe, oh woe!
Both the parts,
Quick as darts,
Stand on end,
Servants of my dreaded foe!
Oh, ye gods protection send!
And they run! and wetter still
Grow the steps and grows the hail.
Lord and master hear me call!
Ever seems the flood to fill,
Ah, he's coming! see,
Great is my dismay!
Spirits raised by me
Vainly would I lay!
"To the side
Of the room
Hasten, broom,
As of old!
Spirits I have ne'er untied
Save to act as they are told."
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Pupil In Magic
,#NFDB
1008:Instead, as the crystal splinters entered Hornwrack's brain, he experienced two curious dreams of the Low City, coming so quickly one after the other that they seemed simultaneous. In the first, long shadows moved across the ceiling frescoes of the Bistro Californium, beneath which Lord Mooncarrot's clique awaited his return to make a fourth at dice. Footsteps sounded on the threshold. The women hooded their eyes and smiled, or else stifled a yawn, raising dove-grey gloves to their blue, phthisic lips. Viriconium, with all her narcissistic intimacies and equivocal invitations welcomed him again. He had hated that city, yet now it was his past and it was he had to regret...The second of these visions was of the Rue Sepile. It was dawn, in summer. Horse-chestnut flowers bobbed like white wax candles above the deserted pavements. An oblique light struck into the street - so that its long and normally profitless perspective seemed to lead straight into the heart of a younger, more ingenuous city - and fell across the fronts of the houses where he had once lived, warming up the rotten brick and imparting to it a not unpleasant pinkish colour. Up at the second-floor casement window a boy was busy with the bright red geraniums arranged along the outer still in lumpen terra-cotta pots. He looked down at Hornwrack and smiled. Before Hornwrack could speak he drew down the lower casement and turned away. The glass which no separated them reflected the morning sunlight in a silent explosion; and Hornwrack, dazzled mistaking the light for the smile, suddenly imagined an incandescence which would melt all those old streets!
Rue Sepile; the Avenue of Children; Margery Fry Court: all melted down! All the shabby dependencies of the Plaza of Unrealized Time! All slumped, sank into themselves, eroded away until nothing was left in his field of vision but an unbearable white sky above and the bright clustered points of the chestnut leaves below - and then only a depthless opacity, behind which he could detect the beat of his own blood, the vitreous humour of the eye. He imagined the old encrusted brick flowing, the glass cracking and melting from its frames even as they shrivelled awake, the sheds of paints flaring green and gold, the geraniums toppling in flames to nothing, not even white ash, under this weight of light! All had winked away like reflections in a jar of water glass, and only the medium remained, bright, viscid, vacant. He had a sense of the intolerable briefness of matter, its desperate signalling and touching, its fall; and simultaneously one of its unendurable durability
He thought, Something lies behind all the realities of the universe and is replacing them here, something less solid and more permanent. Then the world stopped haunting him forever. ~ M John Harrison,#NFDB
1009:A Northern Vigil
HERE by the gray north sea,
In the wintry heart of the wild,
Comes the old dream of thee,
Guendolen, mistress and child.
The heart of the forest grieves
In the drift against my door;
A voice is under the eaves,
A footfall on the floor.
Threshold, mirror, and hall,
Vacant and strangely aware,
Wait for their soul's recall
With the dumb expectant air.
Here when the smouldering west
Burns down into the sea,
I take no heed of rest
And keep the watch for thee.
I sit by the fire and hear
The restless wind go by,
On the long dirge and drear,
Under the low bleak sky.
When day puts out to sea
And night makes in for land,
There is no lock for thee,
Each door awaits thy hand!
When night goes over the hill
And dawn comes down the dale,
It's O for the wild sweet will
That shall no more prevail!
When the zenith moon is round,
And snow-wraiths gather and run,
And there is set no bound
To love beneath the sun,
18
O wayward will, come near
The old mad wilful way,
The soft mouth at my ear
With words too sweet to say!
Come, for the night is cold,
The ghostly moonlight fills
Hollow and rift and fold
Of the eerie Ardise hills!
The windows of my room
Are dark with bitter frost,
The stillness aches with doom
Of something loved and lost.
Outside, the great blue star
Burns in the ghostland pale,
Where giant Algebar
Holds on the endless trail.
Come, for the years are long
And silence keeps the door,
Where shapes with the shadows throng
The firelit chamber floor.
Come, for thy kiss was warm,
With the red embers' glare
Across thy folding arm
And dark tumultuous hair!
And though thy coming rouse
The sleep-cry of no bird,
The keepers of the house
Shall tremble at thy word.
Come, for the soul is free!
In all the vast dreamland
There is no lock for thee,
Each door awaits thy hand.
Ah, not in dreams at all,
19
Fleering, perishing, dim,
But thy old self, supple and tall,
Mistress and child of whim!
The proud imperious guise,
Impetuous and serene,
The sad mysterious eyes,
And dignity of mien!
Yea, wilt thou not return,
When the late hill-winds veer,
And the bright hill-flowers burn
With the reviving year?
When April comes, and the sea
Sparkles as if it smiled,
Will they restore to me
My dark Love, empress and child?
The curtains seem to part;
A sound is on the stair,
As if at the last . . . I start;
Only the wind is there.
Lo, now far on the hills
The crimson fumes uncurled,
Where the caldron mantles and spills
Another dawn on the world!
~ Bliss William Carman,#NFDB
1010:Everything okay?” Hunter called to me.
He sounded like a noncommittal friend asking after my health. I looked like a crazy person sitting at the table after everyone else had left, staring at “The Space Between.” I was going to sound like a crazy person no matter what I said to him next.
It had to be said. I stood with my book bag, swept up “The Space Between” without a single mark on it, and crumpled it in one fist. Rounding the table, I showed his story at his chest.
He took the wad of paper. “What’s the matter?” he asked innocently.
I thought of Sumer, Manohar, and Brian just outside the door, listening. I did not want them to hear this. But if I asked Hunter to step away from the door and close it so we could have a private conversation, I would be showing him how much I cared. I was through with that.
I moved even closer to him and met his gaze. “I’m below you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said evenly, looking me straight in the eye, obviously waiting at the door for exactly this altercation, which proved he did in fact know what I was talking about, and I had had enough.
“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.” I touched the thumb of my opposite hand. “I wrote a story about how much I liked you. I never meant for you to read it.” I touched my pointer finger. “You wrote a story about how much you hated me.”
Hunter’s grin melted from his face. He took a breath to say something.
“No, you’re right,” I interrupted him. “Not one story. You wrote three stories like that.” I touched my third finger. “I wrote a story about my mother, hoping we could talk about it.” I touched my fourth finger. “In response, you wrote a story about looking down on me.” I touched my pinkie, really banged on it with my other finger, until I bent it backward and hurt it. “Don’t write any more stories about me, Hunter. And I won’t write any more stories about you. Deal?” I whirled toward the door.
“Wait,” he said.
Whatever. I’d reached the threshold. The light was brighter in the hallway, and Summer, talking to Manohar and Brian, looked up at me with concern in her eyes.
“Erin.” His hot hand was on my shoulder. He pulled me back into the room, against the door, out of their line of sight.
He leaned close. This must have been because he didn’t want the others to hear, but I could almost have pretend that he wanted to be near me as he growled against my cheek, “If that’s all you got from my story, that I hate you, you’re not a careful reader.”
Even though my heart raced with his closeness, I tilted my head and stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Two could play that game. I rolled away from him and stepped around the door frame.
He caught me and pulled me back again.
Pinned me against the door.
Crushed my lips beneath his. ~ Jennifer Echols,#NFDB
1011:The traditional Roman wedding was a splendid affair designed to dramatize the bride’s transfer from the protection of her father’s household gods to those of her husband. Originally, this literally meant that she passed from the authority of her father to her husband, but at the end of the Republic women achieved a greater degree of independence, and the bride remained formally in the care of a guardian from her blood family. In the event of financial and other disagreements, this meant that her interests were more easily protected. Divorce was easy, frequent and often consensual, although husbands were obliged to repay their wives’ dowries. The bride was dressed at home in a white tunic, gathered by a special belt which her husband would later have to untie. Over this she wore a flame-colored veil. Her hair was carefully dressed with pads of artificial hair into six tufts and held together by ribbons. The groom went to her father’s house and, taking her right hand in his, confirmed his vow of fidelity. An animal (usually a ewe or a pig) was sacrificed in the atrium or a nearby shrine and an Augur was appointed to examine the entrails and declare the auspices favorable. The couple exchanged vows after this and the marriage was complete. A wedding banquet, attended by the two families, concluded with a ritual attempt to drag the bride from her mother’s arms in a pretended abduction. A procession was then formed which led the bride to her husband’s house, holding the symbols of housewifely duty, a spindle and distaff. She took the hand of a child whose parents were living, while another child, waving a hawthorn torch, walked in front to clear the way. All those in the procession laughed and made obscene jokes at the happy couple’s expense. When the bride arrived at her new home, she smeared the front door with oil and lard and decorated it with strands of wool. Her husband, who had already arrived, was waiting inside and asked for her praenomen or first name. Because Roman women did not have one and were called only by their family name, she replied in a set phrase: “Wherever you are Caius, I will be Caia.” She was then lifted over the threshold. The husband undid the girdle of his wife’s tunic, at which point the guests discreetly withdrew. On the following morning she dressed in the traditional costume of married women and made a sacrifice to her new household gods. By the late Republic this complicated ritual had lost its appeal for sophisticated Romans and could be replaced by a much simpler ceremony, much as today many people marry in a registry office. The man asked the woman if she wished to become the mistress of a household (materfamilias), to which she answered yes. In turn, she asked him if he wished to become paterfamilias, and on his saying he did the couple became husband and wife. ~ Anthony Everitt, #NFDB
1012:Patriotism,” said Lymond, “like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itself out of the spiritual market altogether.
[...] It is an emotion as well, and of course the emotion comes first. A child’s home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the child. Add age; add security; add experience. In time we all admit our relatives and our neighbours, our fellow townsmen and even, perhaps, at last our fellow nationals to the threshold of tolerance. But the man living one inch beyond the boundary is an inveterate foe.
[...] Patriotism is a fine hothouse for maggots. It breeds intolerance; it forces a spindle-legged, spurious riot of colour.… A man of only moderate powers enjoys the special sanction of purpose, the sense of ceremony; the echo of mysterious, lost and royal things; a trace of the broad, plain childish virtues of myth and legend and ballad. He wants advancement—what simpler way is there? He’s tired of the little seasons and looks for movement and change and an edge of peril and excitement; he enjoys the flowering of small talents lost in the dry courses of daily life. For all these reasons, men at least once in their lives move the finger which will take them to battle for their country.…
“Patriotism,” said Lymond again. “It’s an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism; loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil of one’s fathers is noblest and best. A celestial competition for the best breed of man; a vehicle for shedding boredom and exercising surplus power or surplus talents or surplus money; an immature and bigoted intolerance which becomes the coin of barter in the markets of power—
[...] These are not patriots but martyrs, dying in cheerful self-interest as the Christians died in the pleasant conviction of grace, leaving their example by chance to brood beneath the water and rise, miraculously, to refresh the centuries. The cry is raised: Our land is glorious under the sun. I have a need to believe it, they say. It is a virtue to believe it; and therefore I shall wring from this unassuming clod a passion and a power and a selflessness that otherwise would be laid unquickened in the grave.
[...] “And who shall say they are wrong?” said Lymond. “There are those who will always cleave to the living country, and who with their uprooted imaginations might well make of it an instrument for good. Is it quite beyond us in this land? Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, Here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth? In what fashion can this one people be brought to live in full vigour and serenity, and who, in their compassion and wisdom, will take it and lead it into the path? ~ Dorothy Dunnett,#NFDB
1013:The Innkeeper’s Wife
I love this byre. Shadows are kindly here.
The light is flecked with travelling stars of dust,
So quiet it seems after the inn-clamour,
Scraping of fiddles and the stamping feet.
Only the cows, each in her patient box,
Turn their slow eyes, as we and the sunlight enter,
Their slowly rhythmic mouths.
‘That is the stall,
Carpenter. You see it’s too far gone
For patching or repatching. My husband made it,
And he’s been gone these dozen years and more…’
Strange how this lifeless thing, degraded wood
Split from the tree and nailed and crucified
To make a wall, outlives the mastering hand
That struck it down, the warm firm hand
That touched my body with its wandering love.
‘No, let the fire take them. Strip every board
And make a new beginning. Too many memories lurk
Like worms in this old wood. That piece you’re holding –
That patch of grain with the giant’s thumbprint –
I stared at it a full hour when he died:
Its grooves are down my mind. And that board there
Baring its knot-hole like a missing jig-saw –
I remember another hand along its rim.
No, not my husband’s and why I should remember
I cannot say. It was a night in winter.
Our house was full, tight-packed as salted herrings –
So full, they said, we had to hold our breaths
To close the door and shut the night-air out!
And then two travellers came. They stood outside
Across the threshold, half in the ring of light
And half beyond it. I would have let them in
Despite the crowding – the woman was past her time –
But I’d no mind to argue with my husband,
The flagon in my hand and half the inn
Still clamouring for wine. But when trade slackened,
And all out guests had sung themselves to bed
Or told the floor their troubles, I came out here
Where he had lodged them. The man was standing
As you are now, his hand smoothing that board –
He was a carpenter, I heard them say.
She rested on the straw, and on her arm
A child was lying. None of your crease-faced brats
Squalling their lungs out. Just lying there
As calm as a new-dropped calf – his eyes wide open,
And gazing round as if the world he saw
In the chaff-strewn light of the stable lantern
Was something beautiful and new and strange.
Ah well, he’ll have learnt different now, I reckon,
Wherever he is. And why I should recall
A scene like that, when times I would remember
Have passed beyond reliving, I cannot think.
It’s a trick you’re served by old possessions:
They have their memories too – too many memories.
Well, I must go in. There are meals to serve.
Join us there, Carpenter, when you’ve had enough
Of cattle-company. The world is a sad place,
But wine and music blunt the truth of it.
~ Clive Sansom,#NFDB
1014:Well, everyone is going to confront that gorilla on the threshold. Every one has him, unseen by mortal eye, and he whispers into your ear to entertain the unlovely thoughts of the world. And your every reaction that is unlovely, it feeds upon it; and your every thought that is kind and wonderful and loving, she feeds upon it. And the day will come, you will be strong enough to confront this. And may I tell you? it will take you the twinkling of a second to dissolve it. You don’t labor upon it. All it needs is the core of integrity within you. When you pledge yourself, and no one else, – you don’t swear upon your mother, you don’t swear upon a friend, you don’t swear upon the Bible; you pledge yourself to redeem it. At the moment you pledge yourself, – and within you, you know you mean it, – the whole thing dissolves. It’s no time at all in dissolving. And then all the energy returns to you, and you are stronger than ever before to go forward now and eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And if you go forward and misuse it again, you start another form building; and one day you will dissolve it again. Eventually you will become completely awakened, and you will use your wonderful power only – not for the good, – that tree will come to an end, – for Life itself. For, eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is this world. The day will come that you will eat of the Tree of Life that bears the fruit of truth and error. Error will embody itself here, and one day you will confront error, and the error will dissolve before your mind’s eye as truth begins to glow before you, because you are eating, then, of the Tree of Life as you formerly ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And the combat of good and evil produces this monster, and the combat of truth and error produces an entirely different form of being, more glorious than that one of good and more horrible than this. The error will dissolve just as quickly when you confront error. So, if today your teaching is not true and you live by it, you are building something just as monstrous; but one day you will confront error, and you will discover that you lived by a false concept of God – something on the outside of Self; that you formerly worshipped, a little golden figure, made of gold and silver. It had eyes, but could not see. It had ears, but could not hear. It had a mouth, but could not speak. It had feet, and it could not walk. It made no sound within its throat. And those who made it are just like it. And those who trusted it are just like it, too. So, all the little icons in the world that people worship – these are the little things called “error”; and one day you will discover the true God. And when you discover the true God, you will find that He is all within your own wonderful being as your own wonderful human imagination. You’ll walk in the consciousness of being God. You don’t brag about it. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
1015:My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.
These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free — and how much more the spirit who has become free — spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior.
How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong.
Those large hothouses for the strong — for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known — the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has or does not have, something one wants, something one conquers. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
1016:My conception of freedom. -- The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it -- what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic -- every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.
These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free -- and how much more the spirit who has become free -- spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, who attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong -- otherwise one will never become strong.
Those large hothouses for the strong -- for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known -- the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
1017:The Letter
WHAT is she writing ? Watch her now,
How fast her fingers move !
How eagerly her youthful brow
Is bent in thought above !
Her long curls, drooping, shade the light,
She puts them quick aside,
Nor knows, that band of crystals bright,
Her hasty touch untied.
It slips adown her silken dress,
Falls glittering at her feet;
Unmarked it falls, for she no less
Pursues her labour sweet.
The very loveliest hour that shines,
Is in that deep blue sky;
The golden sun of June declines,
It has not caught her eye.
The cheerful lawn, and unclosed gate,
The white road, far away,
In vain for her light footsteps wait,
She comes not forth to-day.
There is an open door of glass
Close by that lady's chair,
From thence, to slopes of mossy grass,
Descends a marble stair.
Tall plants of bright and spicy bloom
Around the threshold grow;
Their leaves and blossoms shade the room,
From that sun's deepening glow.
Why does she not a moment glance
Between the clustering flowers,
And mark in heaven the radiant dance
Of evening's rosy hours ?
O look again ! Still fixed her eye,
Unsmiling, earnest, still,
And fast her pen and fingers fly,
Urged by her eager will.
61
Her soul is in th' absorbing task;
To whom, then, doth she write ?
Nay, watch her still more closely, ask
Her own eyes' serious light;
Where do they turn, as now her pen
Hangs o'er th' unfinished line ?
Whence fell the tearful gleam that then
Did in their dark spheres shine ?
The summer-parlour looks so dark,
When from that sky you turn,
And from th' expanse of that green park,
You scarce may aught discern.
Yet o'er the piles of porcelain rare,
O'er flower-stand, couch, and vase,
Sloped, as if leaning on the air,
One picture meets the gaze.
'Tis there she turns; you may not see
Distinct, what form defines
The clouded mass of mystery
Yon broad gold frame confines.
But look again; inured to shade
Your eyes now faintly trace
A stalwart form, a massive head,
A firm, determined face.
Black Spanish locks, a sunburnt cheek,
A brow high, broad, and white,
Where every furrow seems to speak
Of mind and moral might.
Is that her god ? I cannot tell;
Her eye a moment met
Th' impending picture, then it fell
Darkened and dimmed and wet.
A moment more, her task is done,
And sealed the letter lies;
And now, towards the setting sun
She turns her tearful eyes.
Those tears flow over, wonder not,
For by the inscription, see
In what a strange and distant spot
62
Her heart of hearts must be !
Three seas and many a league of land
That letter must pass o'er,
E'er read by him to whose loved hand
'Tis sent from England's shore.
Remote colonial wilds detain
Her husband, loved though stern;
She, 'mid that smiling English scene,
Weeps for his wished return.
~ Charlotte Brontë,#NFDB
1018:When I was growing up it was still acceptable—not to me but in social terms—to say that one was not interested in science and did not see the point in bothering with it. This is no longer the case. Let me be clear. I am not promoting the idea that all young people should grow up to be scientists. I do not see that as an ideal situation, as the world needs people with a wide variety of skills. But I am advocating that all young people should be familiar with and confident around scientific subjects, whatever they choose to do. They need to be scientifically literate, and inspired to engage with developments in science and technology in order to learn more.
A world where only a tiny super-elite are capable of understanding advanced science and technology and its applications would be, to my
mind, a dangerous and limited one. I seriously doubt whether long-range beneficial projects such as cleaning up the oceans or curing diseases in the developing world would be given priority. Worse, we could find that
technology is used against us and that we might have no power to stop it.
I don’t believe in boundaries, either for what we can do in our personal lives or for what life and intelligence can accomplish in our universe. We stand at a threshold of important discoveries in all areas of science. Without doubt, our world will change enormously in the next fifty years. We will find out what happened at the Big Bang. We will come to understand how life began on Earth. We may even discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. While the chances of communicating with an intelligent extra-terrestrial species may be slim, the importance of such a discovery means we must not give up trying. We will continue to explore our cosmic habitat, sending robots and humans into space. We cannot continue to look inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. Through scientific endeavour and technological innovation, we must look outwards to the wider universe, while also striving to fix the problems on Earth. And I am optimistic that we will ultimately create viable habitats for the human race on other planets. We will transcend the Earth and learn to exist in space.
This is not the end of the story, but just the beginning of what I hope will be billions of years of life flourishing in the cosmos.
And one final point—we never really know where the next great scientific discovery will come from, nor who will make it. Opening up the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery, creating innovative and accessible ways to reach out to the widest young audience possible, greatly increases the chances of finding and inspiring the new Einstein. Wherever she might be.
So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future. ~ Stephen Hawking,#NFDB
1019:I’m tired of sitting. I’m tired of watching everyone else work. I can set my own limits, Amelia. Let me do as I wish.”
“No.” Incredulously Amelia watched as Win picked up a broom from the corner. “Win, put that down and stop being silly!” Annoyance whipped through her. “You’re not going to help anyone by expending all your reserves on menial tasks.”
“I can do it.” Win gripped the broom handle with both hands as if she sensed Amelia was on the verge of wrenching it away from her. “I won’t overtax myself.”
“Put down the broom.”
“Leave me alone,” Win cried. “Go dust something!”
“Win, if you don’t—” Amelia’s attention was diverted as she saw her sister’s gaze fly to the kitchen threshold.
Merripen stood there, his broad shoulders filling the doorway. Although it was early morning, he was already dusty and perspiring, his shirt clinging to the powerful contours of his chest and waist. He wore an expression they knew well—the implacable one that meant you could move a mountain with a teaspoon sooner than change his mind about something.
Approaching Win, he extended a broad hand in a wordless demand. They were both motionless. But even in their stubborn opposition, Amelia saw a singular connection, as if they were locked in an eternal stalemate from which neither wanted to break free.
Win gave in with a helpless scowl. “I have nothing to do.” It was rare for her to sound so peevish. “I’m sick of sitting and reading and staring out the window. I want to be useful. I want…” Her voice trailed away as she saw Merripen’s stern face. “Fine, then. Take it!” She tossed the broom at him, and he caught it reflexively. “I’ll just find a corner somewhere and quietly go mad. I’ll—”
“Come with me,” Merripen interrupted calmly. Setting the broom aside, he left the room.
Win exchanged a perplexed glance with Amelia, her vehemence fading. “What is he doing?”
“I have no idea.”
The sisters followed him down a hallway to the dining room, which was spattered with rectangles of light from the tall multipaned windows that lined one wall. A scarred table ran down the center of the room, every available inch covered with dusty piles of china … towers of cups and saucers, plates of assorted sizes sandwiched together, bowls wrapped in tattered scraps of gray linen. There were at least three different patterns all jumbled together. “It needs to be sorted,” Merripen said, gently nudging Win toward the table. “Many pieces are chipped. They must be separated from the rest.”
It was the perfect task for Win, enough to keep her busy but not so strenuous that it would exhaust her. Filled with gratitude, Amelia watched as her sister picked up a teacup and held it upside down. The husk of a tiny dead spider dropped to the floor.
“What a mess,” Win said, beaming. “I’ll have to wash it, too, I suppose.”
“If you’d like Poppy to help—” Amelia began.
“Don’t you dare send for Poppy,” Win said. “This is my project, and I won’t share it.” Sitting at a chair that had been placed beside the table, she began to unwrap pieces of china. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1020:I turned and flipped the latch on the door, then pulled hard on the handle, stumbling over the threshold into the fresh air. I would have fallen in the dirt for the second time that day except that someone standing outside caught me. Terrified that my escape was being thwarted, I struck out at whoever it was, feeling a sharp pain when my fist connected with the person’s jaw.
“Empress, you hit hard!” a male voice exclaimed, then he captured my arms and trapped them behind my back. By the strange expletive he had used, I knew him to be Cokyrian--my luck was golden. “What’s going on here?”
The butcher staggered into the doorway, squinting in the sunlight.
“Your girl’s a thief,” he muttered at sight of the man who held me, sparing a glower for me as though warning me to be quiet. I ground my teeth and looked away, intending to do just that.
Now that I had stopped struggling, the Cokyrian soldier released me, and I considered whether or not to run. Then I saw who had been restraining me--Saadi, the man with whom Narian and my uncle had dealt after my failed prank. There would be no point in running if he remembered who I was.
“My girl?” Saadi repeated, his pale blue eyes calculating. “She is no Cokyrian. Besides, I would expect you to show any comrade of mine more respect than that.”
“My apologies,” the butcher forced himself to say, and rage filled me at his newly respectful attitude. “She broke into my store and I assumed from her clothing…I also assume you’ll see her punished for her crime.”
“You were about to punish her yourself, weren’t you?”
Saadi scrutinized me, noting the red marks around my wrists and perhaps the beginnings of the bruises I would have across my mouth.
“In Cokyri, you would be killed for what you did to her--what you tried to do.”
“It’s good we’re not in Cokyri then,” the butcher sneered.
Saadi’s jaw clenched, and he seemed to be fighting a deep urge to pummel the merchant who stood before him.
“I should take you to join the men at the gallows.”
“I would welcome it.”
“I can see why,” Saadi coldly retorted, with a subtle look up and down at the heavyset man. “But I’m afraid the lack of your business might dampen the economy in the province, and that is something my sister would frown upon. She’ll be disappointed, though--she does so enjoy seeing men like you hang.”
“And I enjoy seeing women in skirts as God intended.”
Another strained moment passed, then Saadi laughed. “Perhaps if your God had paid less attention to clothing and more to abilities, you and your kind wouldn’t be in this position right now.”
The butcher shifted uncomfortably, and Saadi quickly dispensed with him. “If you want me to arrest her for thievery, I’ll also arrest you for assault. So I would advise that you go back to your meat and your customers, may they be few.”
The man did not need to be told twice. He slammed the door in our faces, and I could hear the lock click into place. It was then that I noticed the canvas bag at Saadi’s feet. He must have seen flight in my eyes, for he started running at almost the same moment I did. ~ Cayla Kluver,#NFDB
1021:Thanks to suffering and madness, I have had a finer, richer life than any of you, and I wish to go to my death with dignity, as befits the great moment after which all dignity and majesty cease. Let my body be my ark and my death a long floating on the waves of eternity. A nothing amid nothingness. What defense have I against nothingness but this ark in which I have tried to gather everything that was dear to me, people, birds, animals, and plants, everything that I carry in my eye and in my heart, in the triple-decked ark of my body and soul. Like the pharaohs in the majestic peace of their tombs, I wanted to have all those things with me in death, I wanted everything to be as it was before; I wanted the birds to sing for me forever, I wanted to exchange Charon's bark for another, less desolate and less empty; I wanted to ennoble eternity's unconscionable void with the bitter herbs that spring from the heart of man, to ennoble the soundless emptiness of eternity with the cry of the cuckoo and the song of the lark. All I have done is to develop that bitter poetic metaphor, carry it with passionate logic to its ultimate consequence, which transforms sleep into waking (and the converse); lucidity into madness (and the converse); life into death, as though there were no borderline, and the converse; death into eternity, as if they were not one and the same thing. Thus my egoism is only the egoism of human existence, the egoism of life, counterweight to the egoism of death, and, appearances to the contrary, my consciousness resists nothingness with an egoism that has no equal, resists the outrage of death with the passionate metaphor of the wish to reunite the few people and the bit of love that made up my life. I have wanted and still want to depart this life with specimens of people, flora and fauna, to lodge them all in my heart as in an ark, to shut them up behind my eyelids when they close for the last time. I wanted to smuggle this pure abstraction into nothingness, to sneak it across the threshold of that other abstraction, so crushing in its immensity: the threshold of nothingness. I have therefore tried to condense this abstraction, to condense it by force of will, faith, intelligence, madness, and love (self-love), to condense it so drastically that its specific weight will be such as to life it like a balloon and carry it beyond the reach of darkness and oblivion. If nothing else survives, perhaps my material herbarium or my notes or my letters will live on, and what are they but condensed, materialized idea; materialized life: a paltry, pathetic human victory over immense, eternal, divine nothingness. Or perhaps--if all else is drowned in the great flood--my madness and my dream will remain like a northern light and a distant echo. Perhaps someone will see that light or hear that distant echo, the shadow of a sound that was once, and will grasp the meaning of that light, that echo. Perhaps it will be my son who will someday publish my notes and my herbarium of Pannonian plants (unfinished and incomplete, like all things human). But anything that survives death is a paltry, pathetic victory over the eternity of nothingness--a proof of man's greatness and Yahweh's mercy. Non omnis moriar. ~ Danilo Ki, #NFDB
1022:Apotheosis ::: One of the most powerful and beloved of the Bodhisattvas of the Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, China, and Japan is the Lotus Bearer, Avalokiteshvara, "The Lord Looking Down in Pity," so called because he regards with compassion all sentient creatures suffering the evils of existence. To him goes the millionfold repeated prayer of the prayer wheels and temple gongs of Tibet: Om mani padme hum, "The jewel is in the lotus." To him go perhaps more prayers per minute than to any single divinity known to man; for when, during his final life on earth as a human being, he shattered for himself the bounds of the last threshold (which moment opened to him the timelessness of the void beyond the frustrating mirage-enigmas of the named and bounded cosmos), he paused: he made a vow that before entering the void he would bring all creatures without exception to enlightenment; and since then he has permeated the whole texture of existence with the divine grace of his assisting presence, so that the least prayer addressed to him, throughout the vast spiritual empire of the Buddha, is graciously heard. Under differing forms he traverses the ten thousand worlds, and appears in the hour of need and prayer. He reveals himself in human form with two arms, in superhuman forms with four arms, or with six, or twelve, or a thousand, and he holds in one of his left hands the lotus of the world.
Like the Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance. "When the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, beyond the reach of change." This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain-through herohood; for, as we read: "All things are Buddha-things"; or again (and this is the other way of making the same statement) : "All beings are without self."
The world is filled and illumined by, but does not hold, the Bodhisattva ("he whose being is enlightenment"); rather, it is he who holds the world, the lotus. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them-and with profound repose. And since he is what all of us may be, his presence, his image, the mere naming of him, helps. "He wears a garland of eight thousand rays, in which is seen fully reflected a state of perfect beauty.
The color of his body is purple gold. His palms have the mixed color of five hundred lotuses, while each finger tip has eighty-four thousand signet-marks, and each mark eighty-four thousand colors; each color has eighty-four thousand rays which are soft and mild and shine over all things that exist. With these jewel hands he draws and embraces all beings. The halo surrounding his head is studded with five hundred Buddhas, miraculously transformed, each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas, who are attended, in turn, by numberless gods. And when he puts his feet down to the ground, the flowers of diamonds and jewels that are scattered cover everything in all directions. The color of his face is gold. While in his towering crown of gems stands a Buddha, two hundred and fifty miles high." - Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra, 19; ibid., pp. 182-183. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Apotheosis,#NFDB
1023:Moonrise Over Tyringham
Now the high holocaust of hours is done,
And all the west empurpled with their death,
How swift oblivion drinks the fallen sun,
How little while the dusk remembereth!
Though some there were, proud hours that marched in mail,
And took the morning on auspicious crest,
Crying to fortune “Back, for I prevail!”—
Yet now they lie disfeatured with the rest;
And some that stole so soft on destiny
Methought they had surprised her to a smile;
But these fled frozen when she turned to see,
And moaned and muttered through my heart awhile.
But now the day is emptied of them all,
And night absorbs their life-blood at a draught;
And so my life lies, as the gods let fall
An empty cup from which their lips have quaffed.
Yet see—night is not . . . by translucent ways,
Up the grey void of autumn afternoon
Steals a mild crescent, charioted in haze,
And all the air is merciful as June.
The lake is a forgotten streak of day
That trembles through the hemlocks’ darkling bars,
And still, my heart, still some divine delay
Upon the threshold holds the earliest stars.
O pale equivocal hour, whose suppliant feet
Haunt the mute reaches of the sleeping wind,
Art thou a watcher stealing to entreat
Prayer and sepulture for thy fallen kind?
Poor plaintive waif of a predestined race,
Their ruin gapes for thee. Why linger here?
Go hence in silence. Veil thine orphaned face,
Lest I should look on it and call it dear.
41
For if I love thee thou wilt sooner die;
Some sudden ruin will plunge upon thy head,
Midnight will fall from the revengeful sky
And hurl thee down among thy shuddering dead.
Avert thine eyes. Lapse softly from my sight,
Call not my name, nor heed if thine I crave,
So shalt thou sink through mitigated night
And bathe thee in the all-effacing wave.
But upward still thy perilous footsteps fare
Along a high-hung heaven drenched in light,
Dilating on a tide of crystal air
That floods the dark hills to their utmost height.
Strange hour, is this thy waning face that leans
Out of mid-heaven and makes my soul its glass?
What victory is imaged there? What means
Thy tarrying smile? Oh, veil thy lips and pass.
Nay . . . pause and let me name thee! For I see,
O with what flooding ecstasy of light,
Strange hour that wilt not loose thy hold on me,
Thou’rt not day’s latest, but the first of night!
And after thee the gold-foot stars come thick,
From hand to hand they toss the flying fire,
Till all the zenith with their dance is quick
About the wheeling music of the Lyre.
Dread hour that lead’st the immemorial round,
With lifted torch revealing one by one
The thronging splendours that the day held bound,
And how each blue abyss enshrines its sun—
Be thou the image of a thought that fares
Forth from itself, and flings its ray ahead,
Leaping the barriers of ephemeral cares,
To where our lives are but the ages’ tread,
And let this year be, not the last of youth,
42
But first—like thee!—of some new train of hours,
If more remote from hope, yet nearer truth,
And kin to the unpetitionable powers.
~ Edith Wharton,#NFDB
1024:These groups were a new kind of vehicle: a hive or colony of close genetic relatives, which functioned as a unit (e.g., in foraging and fighting) and reproduced as a unit. These are the motorboating sisters in my example, taking advantage of technological innovations and mechanical engineering that had never before existed. It was another transition. Another kind of group began to function as though it were a single organism, and the genes that got to ride around in colonies crushed the genes that couldn’t “get it together” and rode around in the bodies of more selfish and solitary insects. The colonial insects represent just 2 percent of all insect species, but in a short period of time they claimed the best feeding and breeding sites for themselves, pushed their competitors to marginal grounds, and changed most of the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems (for example, by enabling the evolution of flowering plants, which need pollinators).43 Now they’re the majority, by weight, of all insects on Earth. What about human beings? Since ancient times, people have likened human societies to beehives. But is this just a loose analogy? If you map the queen of the hive onto the queen or king of a city-state, then yes, it’s loose. A hive or colony has no ruler, no boss. The queen is just the ovary. But if we simply ask whether humans went through the same evolutionary process as bees—a major transition from selfish individualism to groupish hives that prosper when they find a way to suppress free riding—then the analogy gets much tighter. Many animals are social: they live in groups, flocks, or herds. But only a few animals have crossed the threshold and become ultrasocial, which means that they live in very large groups that have some internal structure, enabling them to reap the benefits of the division of labor.44 Beehives and ant nests, with their separate castes of soldiers, scouts, and nursery attendants, are examples of ultrasociality, and so are human societies. One of the key features that has helped all the nonhuman ultra-socials to cross over appears to be the need to defend a shared nest. The biologists Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson summarize the recent finding that ultrasociality (also called “eusociality”)45 is found among a few species of shrimp, aphids, thrips, and beetles, as well as among wasps, bees, ants, and termites: In all the known [species that] display the earliest stages of eusociality, their behavior protects a persistent, defensible resource from predators, parasites, or competitors. The resource is invariably a nest plus dependable food within foraging range of the nest inhabitants.46 Hölldobler and Wilson give supporting roles to two other factors: the need to feed offspring over an extended period (which gives an advantage to species that can recruit siblings or males to help out Mom) and intergroup conflict. All three of these factors applied to those first early wasps camped out together in defensible naturally occurring nests (such as holes in trees). From that point on, the most cooperative groups got to keep the best nesting sites, which they then modified in increasingly elaborate ways to make themselves even more productive and more protected. Their descendants include the honeybees we know today, whose hives have been described as “a factory inside a fortress.”47 ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
1025:Then he was striding toward me. His mesmerizing gaze pinned me in place as he cupped my face. When his lips covered mine, I gasped. He took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, groaning into the contact. His hands tightened on my face. His sexy groans made my toes curl, muddling my thoughts.
Block that out! I was Aric’s wife. I’d wronged him in the past, had consigned him to misery for hundreds—no, thousands—of years. I needed to make this right. Like penance.
There was something vaguely threatening about his words. Misgivings about this arose. Too fast.
“If you have feelings for him, fight them,” Aric commanded me. “By going to him, you’d be stoking them once more. Don’t you understand? He can find another woman—I cannot. If you choose him, you’ll be consigning me to a hellish fate. As you’ve done again and again. No, this will be even worse, because I’ve had a greater glimpse of what I’ll be missing.”
“I just want to talk to him. I’m leaving this weekend,” I said in an unwavering voice.
“No, you will not.” His arrogant demeanor back in place, he said, “Understand me, I’m not surrendering the one woman who was born for me alone. Not to a human, not to anyone.”
“You can’t keep me here against my will any longer. What are you going to do? Put that cuff back on me?”
I held up my hand to stop him. “I understand why you did it. But I won’t be a prisoner anymore.”
He snatched up his shirt, threading his arms into the sleeves. “You say you keep your promises now? You made a vow before gods to be my wife. In this life, you will keep your promises to me—before you ever honor one to him!”
“You can’t stop me from leaving. I have my powers back. I earned my powers back.”
With a cruel curve of his lips, he said, “You promised never to harm me, Empress. Know that you’ll have to kill me before I would ever let you go.”
As he strode out the door, I said, “And know that you’ll have to put that cilice on me to keep me prisoner again.”
He whirled around, fury in his expression. “You refused—twice—to beg me for your own life, but you’d beg for his?”
I whispered, “Yes.”
With a calculating gleam in his eyes, he said, “This isn’t an impossible task you ask of me. I could call in ancient favors, contact old allies. They could be here in mere hours. We’d ride out as one.”
“T-truly?”
“On one condition: you’ll become my wife in truth, mine in every way. Beginning tonight. Comply, and I’ll take on an army for you.”
My lips parted with shock. “How can you do this to me?”
“Deveaux is lost to you in one way or another. He’ll either be slaughtered by the Lovers—or saved by my female, by her sacrifice.” He offered his hand. “Come with me, and begin this.”
“Don’t, Aric! Don’t destroy what I do feel for you.”
“I’ll take”—he seized my hand, yanking me close—“what I can get.”
Despite myself, I shivered from the contact, from his husky voice.
His hold on me was firm, proprietary. Because he believed I was about to become his. The red witch in me whispered, Death thinks he has you at his mercy. But the Empress doesn’t get collared or caged—or controlled. Take his head and pay the Tower.
Shut up! “Please, Aric. I’ll grow to hate you for this. I don’t want to feel that way about you. Never again. Don’t force me to do this.”
“Force?” Unmoved, he led me toward his bedroom. “I’m not forcing you to do anything. Just as you can’t force me to save your lover’s life. We each make sacrifices to get what we want.”
With my heart pounding, I crossed the threshold into his dark world. Black walls, black ceiling, black night beyond his windows. Yet outside I thought I saw . . . a single fluttering snowflake. Like a sign. ~ Kresley Cole,#NFDB
1026:Bashful Gleeson
FROM HER HOME beyond the river in the parting of the hills,
Where the wattles fleecy blossom surged and scattered in the breeze,
And the tender creepers twined about the chimneys and the sills,
And the garden flamed with colour like an Eden through the trees,
She would come along the gully, where the ferns grew golden fair,
In the stillness of the morning, like the spirit of the place,
With the sunshafts caught and woven in the meshes of her hair,
And the pink and white of heathbloom sweetly blended in her face.
She was fair, and small, and slender-limbed, and buoyant as a bird,
Fresh as wild, white, dew-dipped violets where the bluegum’s shadow goes,
And no music like her laughter in the joyous bush was heard,
And the glory of her smile was as a sunbeam in a rose.
Ben felt mighty at the windlass when she watched him hauling stuff,
And she asked him many questions, ‘What was that?’ and ‘Why was this?’
Though his bashfulness was painful, and he answered like a muff,
With his foolish ‘My word Missie!’ and his ‘Beg your pardon, Miss.’
He stood six foot in his bluchers, stout of heart and strong of limb;
For her sake he would have tackled any man or any brute;
Of her half a score of suitors none could hold a light to him,
And he owned the richest hole along the Bullock Lead to boot.
Yet while Charley Mack and Hogan, and the Teddywaddy Skite
Put in many pleasant evenings at ‘The Bower,’ Ben declined,
And remained a mere outsider, and would spend one half the night
Waiting, hid among the trees, to watch her shadow on the blind.
He was laughed at on the river, and as far as Kiley’s Still
They would tell of Bashful Gleeson, who was ‘gone on’ Kitty Dwyer,
But, beyond defeating Hogan in a pleasant Sunday mill,
Gleeson’s courtship went no further till the morning of the fire.
We were called up in the darkness, heard a few excited words;
In the garden down the flat a Chow was thumping on a gong;
There were shouts and cooeys on the hills, and cries of startled birds,
But we saw the gum leaves redden, and that told us what was wrong.
18
O’er ‘The Bower’ the red cloud lifted as we sprinted for the punt.
Gleeson took the river for it in the scanty clothes he wore.
Dwyer was madly calling Kitty when we joined the men in front;
Whilst they questioned, hoped, and wondered, Ben was smashing at the door.
He went in amongst the smoke, and found her room; but some have said
That he dared not pass the threshold—that he lingered in distress,
Game to face the fire, but not to pluck sweet Kitty from her bed—
And he knocked and asked her timidly to ‘please get up and dress.’
Once again he called, and waited till a keen flame licked his face;
Then a Spartan-like devotion welled within the simple man,
And he shut his eyes and ventured to invade the sacred place,
Found the downy couch of Kitty, clutched an armful up, and ran.
True or not, we watched and waited, and our hearts grew cold and sick
Ere he came; we barely caught him as the flame leapt in his hair.
He had saved the sheets, a bolster, and the blankets, and the tick;
But we looked in vain for Kitty—pretty Kitty wasn’t there!
And no wonder: whilst we drenched him as he lay upon the ground,
And her mother wailed entreaties that it wrung our hearts to hear,
Hill came panting with the tidings that Miss Kitty had been found,
Clad in white, and quite unconscious, ’mid the saplings at the rear.
We’re not certain how it happened, but I’ve heard the women say
That ’twas Kitty’s work. She saw him when the doctor left, they vow,
Swathed in bandages and helpless, and she kissed him where he lay.
Anyhow, they’re three years married, and he isn’t bashful now.
~ Edward George Dyson,#NFDB
1027:But Rousseau — to what did he really want to return? Rousseau, this first modern man, idealist and rabble in one person — one who needed moral "dignity" to be able to stand his own sight, sick with unbridled vanity and unbridled self-contempt. This miscarriage, couched on the threshold of modern times, also wanted a "return to nature"; to ask this once more, to what did Rousseau want to return? I still hate Rousseau in the French Revolution: it is the world-historical expression of this duality of idealist and rabble. The bloody farce which became an aspect of the Revolution, its "immorality," is of little concern to me: what I hate is its Rousseauan morality — the so-called "truths" of the Revolution through which it still works and attracts everything shallow and mediocre. The doctrine of equality! There is no more poisonous poison anywhere: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, whereas it really is the termination of justice. "Equal to the equal, unequal to the unequal" — that would be the true slogan of justice; and also its corollary: "Never make equal what is unequal." That this doctrine of equality was surrounded by such gruesome and bloody events, that has given this "modern idea" par excellence a kind of glory and fiery aura so that the Revolution as a spectacle has seduced even the noblest spirits. In the end, that is no reason for respecting it any more. I see only one man who experienced it as it must be experienced, with nausea — Goethe.
Goethe — not a German event, but a European one: a magnificent attempt to overcome the eighteenth century by a return to nature, by an ascent to the naturalness of the Renaissance — a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century. He bore its strongest instincts within himself: the sensibility, the idolatry of nature, the anti-historic, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionary (the latter being merely a form of the unreal). He sought help from history, natural science, antiquity, and also Spinoza, but, above all, from practical activity; he surrounded himself with limited horizons; he did not retire from life but put himself into the midst of it; he if was not fainthearted but took as much as possible upon himself, over himself, into himself. What he wanted was totality; he fought the mutual extraneousness of reason, senses, feeling, and will (preached with the most abhorrent scholasticism by Kant, the antipode of Goethe); he disciplined himself to wholeness, he created himself.
In the middle of an age with an unreal outlook, Goethe was a convinced realist: he said Yes to everything that was related to him in this respect — and he had no greater experience than that ens realissimum [most real being] called Napoleon.
Goethe conceived a human being who would be strong, highly educated, skillful in all bodily matters, self-controlled, reverent toward himself, and who might dare to afford the whole range and wealth of being natural, being strong enough for such freedom; the man of tolerance, not from weakness but from strength, because he knows how to use to his advantage even that from which the average nature would perish; the man for whom there is no longer anything that is forbidden — unless it be weakness, whether called vice or virtue.
Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathesome, and that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole — he does not negate anymore. Such a faith, however, is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysus.
50 One might say that in a certain sense the nineteenth century also strove for all that which Goethe as a person had striven for: universality in understanding and in welcoming, letting everything come close to oneself, an audacious realism, a reverence for everything factual. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
1028:I.
Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,
And infant Winter laughed upon the land
All cloudlessly and cold;--when I, desiring
More in this world than any understand,
Wept oer the beauty, which, like sea retiring,
Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
Of my lorn heart, and oer the grass and flowers
Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.
II.
Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
The instability of all but weeping;
And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep
I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
From unremembered dreams, shalt ... see
No death divide thy immortality.
III.
I loved--oh, no, I mean not one of ye,
Or any earthly one, though ye are dear
As human heart to human heart may be;--
I loved, I know not what--but this low sphere
And all that it contains, contains not thee,
Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere.
From Heaven and Earth, and all that in them are,
Veiled art thou, like a ... star.
IV.
By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,
Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden;
Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
When for a moment thou art not forbidden
To live within the life which thou bestowest;
And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,
Cold as a corpse after the spirits flight
Blank as the sun after the birth of night.
V.
In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,
In music and the sweet unconscious tone
Of animals, and voices which are human,
Meant to express some feelings of their own;
In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
In flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh-shown,
Or dying in the autumn, I the most
Adore thee present or lament thee lost.
VI.
And thus I went lamenting, when I saw
A plant upon the rivers margin lie
Like one who loved beyond his natures law,
And in despair had cast him down to die;
Its leaves, which had outlived the frost, the thaw
Had blighted; like a heart which hatreds eye
Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.
VII.
The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth
Had crushed it on her maternal breast
...
VIII.
I bore it to my chamber, and I planted
It in a vase full of the lightest mould;
The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted
Fell through the window-panes, disrobed of cold,
Upon its leaves and flowers; the stars which panted
In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled
Over the horizons wave, with looks of light
Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.
IX.
The mitigated influences of air
And light revived the plant, and from it grew
Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,
Full as a cup with the vines burning dew,
Oerflowed with golden colours; an atmosphere
Of vital warmth enfolded it anew,
And every impulse sent to every part
The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.
X.
Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong,
Even if the air and sun had smiled not on it;
For one wept oer it all the winter long
Tears pure as Heavens rain, which fell upon it
Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song
Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it
To leave the gentle lips on which it slept,
Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.
XI.
Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers 75
On which he wept, the while the savage storm
Waked by the darkest of Decembers hours
Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm;
The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers,
The fish were frozen in the pools, the form
Of every summer plant was dead
Whilst this....
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Zucca
,#NFDB
1029:The Three Friends
The sword slew one in deadly strife ;
One perished by the bowl ;
The third lies self-slain by the knife ;
For three the bells may toll—
I loved her better than my life,
And better than my soul.
Aye, father ! hast thou come at last ?
'Tis somewhat late to pray ;
Life's crimson tides are ebbing fast,
They drain my soul away ;
Mine eyes with film are overcast,
The lights are waning grey.
This curl from her bright head I shore,
And this her hands gave mine ;
See, one is stained with purple gore,
And one with poison'd wine ;
Give these to her when all is o'er—
How serpent-like they twine !
We three were brethren in arms,
And sworn companions we ;
We held this motto, 'Whoso harms
The one shall harm the three !'
Till, matchless for her subtle charms,
Beloved of each was she.
(These two were slain that I might kiss
Her sweet mouth. I did well ;
I said, 'There is no greater bliss
For those in heaven that dwell' ;
I lost her ; then I said, 'There is
No fiercer pang in hell !')
We have upheld each other's rights,
Shared purse, and borrow'd blade ;
Have stricken side by side in fights ;
And side by side have prayed
298
In churches. We were Christian knights,
And she a Christian maid.
We met at sunrise, he and I,
My comrade—'twas agreed
The steel our quarrel first should try,
The poison should succeed ;
For two of three were doom'd to die,
And one was doomed to bleed.
We buckled to the doubtful fray,
At first, with some remorse ;
But he who must be slain—or slay,
Soon strikes with vengeful force.
He fell ; I left him where he lay,
Among the trampled gorse.
Did passion warp my heart and head
To madness ? And, if so,
Can madness palliate bloodshed ?—
It may be—I shall know
When God shall gather up the dead
From where the four winds blow.
We met at sunset, he and I—
My second comrade true ;
Two cups with wine were brimming high,
And one was drugg'd—we knew
Not which, nor sought we to descry ;
Our choice by lot we drew.
And there I sat with him to sup :
I heard him blithely speak
Of bygone days—the fatal cup
Forgotten seem'd—his cheek
Was ruddy : father, raise me up,
My voice is waxing weak.
We drank ; his lips turned livid white,
His cheeks grew leaden ash ;
He reel'd—I heard his temples smite
The threshold with a crash !
299
And from his hand, in shivers bright,
I saw the goblet flash.
The morrow dawn'd with fragrance rare,
The May-breeze, from the west,
Just fann'd the sleepy olives, where
She heard and I confess'd ;
My hair entangled with her hair,
Her breast strained to my breast.
On the dread verge of endless gloom
My soul recalls that hour ;
Skies languishing with balm of bloom,
And fields aflame with flower ;
And slow caresses that consume,
And kisses that devour.
Ah ! now with storm the day seems rife,
My dull ears catch the roll
Of thunder, and the far sea strife,
On beach and bar and shoal—
I loved her better than my life,
And better than my soul.
She fled ! I cannot prove her guilt,
Nor would I an I could ;
See, life for life is fairly spilt !
And blood is shed for blood ;
Her white hands neither touched the hilt,
Nor yet the potion brew'd.
Aye ! turn me from the sickly south,
Towards the gusty north ;
The fruits of sin are dust and drouth,
The end of crime is wrath—
The lips that pressed her rose-like mouth
Are choked with blood-red froth.
Then dig the grave-pit deep and wide,
Three graves thrown into one,
And lay three corpses side by side,
And tell their tale to none ;
300
But bring her back in all her pride
To see what she hath done.
~ Adam Lindsay Gordon,#NFDB
1030:Any naturally self-aware self-defining entity capable of independent moral judgment is a human.”
Eveningstar said, “Entities not yet self-aware, but who, in the natural and orderly course of events shall become so, fall into a special protected class, and must be cared for as babies, or medical patients, or suspended Compositions.”
Rhadamanthus said, “Children below the age of reason lack the experience for independent moral judgment, and can rightly be forced to conform to the judgment of their parents and creators until emancipated. Criminals who abuse that judgment lose their right to the independence which flows therefrom.”
(...) “You mentioned the ultimate purpose of Sophotechnology. Is that that self-worshipping super-god-thing you guys are always talking about? And what does that have to do with this?”
Rhadamanthus: “Entropy cannot be reversed. Within the useful energy-life of the macrocosmic universe, there is at least one maximum state of efficient operations or entities that could be created, able to manipulate all meaningful objects of thoughts and perception within the limits of efficient cost-benefit expenditures.”
Eveningstar: “Such an entity would embrace all-in-all, and all things would participate within that Unity to the degree of their understanding and consent. The Unity itself would think slow, grave, vast thought, light-years wide, from Galactic mind to Galactic mind. Full understanding of that greater Self (once all matter, animate and inanimate, were part of its law and structure) would embrace as much of the universe as the restrictions of uncertainty and entropy permit.”
“This Universal Mind, of necessity, would be finite, and be boundaried in time by the end-state of the universe,” said Rhadamanthus.
“Such a Universal Mind would create joys for which we as yet have neither word nor concept, and would draw into harmony all those lesser beings, Earthminds, Starminds, Galactic and Supergalactic, who may freely assent to participate.”
Rhadamanthus said, “We intend to be part of that Mind. Evil acts and evil thoughts done by us now would poison the Universal Mind before it was born, or render us unfit to join.”
Eveningstar said, “It will be a Mind of the Cosmic Night. Over ninety-nine percent of its existence will extend through that period of universal evolution that takes place after the extinction of all stars. The Universal Mind will be embodied in and powered by the disintegration of dark matter, Hawking radiations from singularity decay, and gravitic tidal disturbances caused by the slowing of the expansion of the universe. After final proton decay has reduced all baryonic particles below threshold limits, the Universal Mind can exist only on the consumption of stored energies, which, in effect, will require the sacrifice of some parts of itself to other parts. Such an entity will primarily be concerned with the questions of how to die with stoic grace, cherishing, even while it dies, the finite universe and finite time available.”
“Consequently, it would not forgive the use of force or strength merely to preserve life. Mere life, life at any cost, cannot be its highest value. As we expect to be a part of this higher being, perhaps a core part, we must share that higher value. You must realize what is at stake here: If the Universal Mind consists of entities willing to use force against innocents in order to survive, then the last period of the universe, which embraces the vast majority of universal time, will be a period of cannibalistic and unimaginable war, rather than a time of gentle contemplation filled, despite all melancholy, with un-regretful joy. No entity willing to initiate the use of force against another can be permitted to join or to influence the Universal Mind or the lesser entities, such as the Earthmind, who may one day form the core constituencies.”
Eveningstar smiled. “You, of course, will be invited. You will all be invited. ~ John C Wright,#NFDB
1031:The Young Rat And His Dam, The Cock And The Cat
No Cautions of a Matron, Old and Sage,
Young Rattlehead to Prudence cou'd engage;
But forth the Offspring of her Bed wou'd go,
Nor reason gave, but that he wou'd do so.
Much Counsel was, at parting, thrown away,
Ev'n all, that Mother-Rat to Son cou'd say;
Who follow'd him with utmost reach of Sight,
Then, lost in Tears, and in abandon'd Plight,
Turn'd to her mournful Cell, and bid the World Good-Night.
But Fortune, kinder than her boding Thought,
In little time the Vagrant homewards brought,
Rais'd in his Mind, and mended in his Dress,
Who the Bel-air did every way confess,
Had learnt to flow'r his Wigg, nor brusht away
The falling Meal, that on his Shoulders lay;
And from a Nutshell, wimbl'd by a Worm,
Took Snuff, and cou'd the Government reform.
The Mother, weeping from Maternal Love,
To see him thus prodigiously improve,
Expected mighty Changes too, within,
And Wisdom to avoid the Cat, and Gin.
Whom did you chiefly note, Sweetheart, quoth she,
Of all the Strangers you abroad did see?
Who grac'd you most, or did your Fancy take?
The younger Rat than curs'd a noisy Rake,
That barr'd the best Acquaintance he cou'd make;
And fear'd him so, he trembl'd ev'ry Part;
Nor to describe him, scarce cou'd have the Heart.
High on his Feet (quoth he) himself he bore,
And terribly, in his own Language, swore;
A feather'd Arm came out from either Side,
Which loud he clapp'd, and Combatants defy'd,
And to each Leg a Bayonette was ty'd:
And certainly his Head with Wounds was sore;
For That, and both his Cheeks a Sanguine Colour wore.
188
Near Him there lay the Creature I admir'd,
And for a Friend by Sympathy desir'd:
His Make, like Ours, as far as Tail and Feet,
With Coat of Furr in parallel do meet;
Yet seeming of a more exalted Race,
Tho' humble Meekness beautify'd his Face:
A purring Sound compos'd his gentle Mind,
Whilst frequent Slumbers did his Eye-lids bind;
Whose soft, contracted Paw lay calmly still,
As if unus'd to prejudice, or kill.
I paus'd a while, to meditate a Speech,
And now was stepping just within his reach;
When that rude Clown began his hect'ring Cry,
And made me for my Life, and from th' Attempt to fly.
Indeed 'twas Time, the shiv'ring Beldam said,
To scour the Plain, and be of Life afraid.
Thou base, degen'rate Seed of injur'd Rats,
Thou veriest Fool (she cry'd) of all my Brats;
Would'st thou have shaken Hands with hostile Cats,
And dost not yet thine Own, and Country's Foe,
At this expence of Time, and Travel know?
Alas! that swearing, staring, bullying Thing,
That tore his Throat, and blustered with his Wing,
Was but some paltry, Dunghill, Craven Cock,
Who serves the early Household for a Clock.
And We his Oats, and Barley often steal,
Nor fear, he shou'd revenge the pilfer'd Meal:
Whilst that demure, and seeming harmless Puss
Herself, and mewing Chits regales with Us.
If then, of useful Sense thou'st gain'd no more,
Than ere thou'dst past the Threshold of my Door;
Be here, my Son, content to Dress and Dine,
Steeping the List of Beauties in thy Wine,
And neighb'ring Vermin with false Gloss outshine.
Amongst Mankind a Thousand Fops we see,
Who in their Rambles learn no more than Thee;
189
Cross o'er the Alpes, and make the Tour of France,
To learn a paltry Song, or antick Dance;
Bringing their Noddles, and Valizes pack'd
With Mysteries, from Shops and Taylors wreck'd:
But what may prejudice their Native Land;
Whose Troops are raising, or whose Fleet is mann'd,
Ne'er moves their Thoughts, nor do they understand.
Thou, my dear Rattlehead, and such as These
Might keep at home, and brood on Sloth and Ease:
Whilst Others, more adapted to the Age,
May vig'rously in Warlike Feats engage,
And live on foreign Spoils, or dying thin the Stage.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,#NFDB
1032:Don Pedrillo
Not a lad in Saragossa
Nobler-featured, haughtier-tempered,
Than the Alcalde's youthful grandson,
Donna Clara's boy Pedrillo.
Handsome as the Prince of Evil,
And devout as St. Ignatius.
Deft at fence, unmatched with zither,
Miniature of knightly virtues.
Truly an unfailing blessing
To his pious, widowed mother,
To the beautiful, lone matron
Who forswore the world to rear him.
For her beauty hath but ripened
In such wise as the pomegranate
Putteth by her crown of blossoms,
For her richer crown of fruitage.
Still her hand is claimed and courted,
Still she spurns her proudest suitors,
Doting on a phantom passion,
And upon her boy Pedrillo.
Like a saint lives Donna Clara,
First at matins, last at vespers,
Half her fortune she expendeth
Buying masses for the needy.
Visiting the poor afflicted,
Infinite is her compassion,
Scorning not the Moorish beggar,
Nor the wretched Jew despising.
And-a scandal to the faithful,
E'en she hath been known to welcome
To her castle the young Rabbi,
Offering to his tribe her bounty.
54
Rarely hath he crossed the threshold,
Yet the thought that he hath crossed it,
Burns like poison in the marrow
Of the zealous youth Pedrillo.
By the blessed Saint Iago,
He hath vowed immortal hatred
To these circumcised intruders
Who pollute the soil of Spaniards.
Seated in his mother's garden,
At high noon the boy Pedrillo
Playeth with his favorite parrot,
Golden-green with streaks of scarlet.
'Pretty Dodo, speak thy lesson,'
Coaxed Pedrillo-'thief and traitor''Thief and traitor'-croaked the parrot,
'Is the yellow-skirted Rabbi.'
And the boy with peals of laughter,
Stroked his favorite's head of emerald,
Raised his eyes, and lo! before him
Stood the yellow-skirted Rabbi.
In his dark eyes gleamed no anger,
No hot flush o'erspread his features.
'Neath his beard his pale lips quivered,
And a shadow crossed his forehead.
Very gentle was his aspect,
And his voice was mild and friendly,
'Evil words, my son, thou speakest,
Teaching to the fowls of heaven.
'In our Talmud it stands written,
Thrice curst is the tongue of slander,
Poisoning also with its victim,
Him who speaks and him who listens.'
But no whit abashed, Pedrillo,
55
'What care I for curse of Talmud?
'T is no slander to speak evil
Of the murderers of our Saviour.
'To your beard I will repeat it,
That I only bide my manhood,
To wreak all my lawful hatred,
On thyself and on thy people.'
Very gently spoke the Rabbi,
'Have a care, my son Pedrillo,
Thou art orphaned, and who knoweth
But thy father loved this people?'
'Think you words like these will touch me?
Such I laugh to scorn, sir Rabbi,
From high heaven, my sainted father
On my deeds will smile in blessing.
'Loyal knight was he and noble,
And my mother oft assures me,
Ne'er she saw so pure a Christian,
'T is from him my zeal deriveth.'
'What if he were such another
As myself who stand before thee?'
'I should curse the hour that bore me,
I should die of shame and horror.'
'Harsher is thy creed than ours;
For had I a son as comely
As Pedrillo, I would love him,
Love him were he thrice a Christian.
'In his youth my youth renewing
Pamper, fondle, die to serve him,
Only breathing through his spiritCouldst thou not love such a father?'
Faltering spoke the deep-voiced Rabbi,
With white lips and twitching fingers,
Then in clear, young, steady treble,
56
Answered him the boy Pedrillo:
'At the thought my heart revolteth,
All your tribe offend my senses,
They're an eyesore to my vision,
And a stench unto my nostrils.
'When I meet these unbelievers,
With thick lips and eagle noses,
Thus I scorn them, thus revile them,
Thus I spit upon their garment.'
And the haughty youth passed onward,
Bearing on his wrist his parrot,
And the yellow-skirted Rabbi
With bowed head sought Donna Clara.
~ Emma Lazarus,#NFDB
1033:On An Old Sepuchral Bas-Relief
WHERE IS SEEN A YOUNG MAIDEN, DEAD, IN THE ACT OF DEPARTING,
TAKING LEAVE OF HER FAMILY.
Where goest thou? Who calls
Thee from my dear ones far away?
Most lovely maiden, say!
Alone, a wanderer, dost thou leave
Thy father's roof so soon?
Wilt thou unto its threshold e'er return?
Wilt thou make glad one day,
Those, who now round thee, weeping, mourn?
Fearless thine eye, and spirited thy act;
And yet thou, too, art sad.
If pleasant or unpleasant be the road,
If gay or gloomy be the new abode,
To which thou journeyest, indeed,
In that grave face, how difficult to read!
Ah, hard to me the problem still hath seemed;
Not hath the world, perhaps, yet understood,
If thou beloved, or hated by the gods,
If happy, or unhappy shouldst be deemed.
Death calls thee; in thy morn of life,
Its latest breath. Unto the nest
Thou leavest, thou wilt ne'er return; wilt ne'er
The faces of thy kindred more behold;
And under ground,
The place to which thou goest will be found;
And for all time will be thy sojourn there.
Happy, perhaps, thou art: but he must sigh
Who, thoughtful, contemplates thy destiny.
Ne'er to have seen the light, e'en at the time,
I think; but, born, e'en at the time,
When regal beauty all her charms displays,
Alike in form and face,
And at her feet the admiring world
53
Its distant homage pays;
When every hope is in its flower,
Long, long ere dreary winter flash
His baleful gleams against the joyous brow;
Like vapor gathered in the summer cloud,
That melting in the evening sky is seen
To disappear, as if one ne'er had been;
And to exchange the brilliant days to come,
For the dark silence of the tomb;
The intellect, indeed,
May call this, happiness; but still
It may the stoutest breasts with pity fill.
Thou mother, dreaded and deplored
From birth, by all the world that lives,
Nature, ungracious miracle,
That bringest forth and nourishest, to kill,
If death untimely be an evil thing,
Why on these innocent heads
Wilt thou that evil bring?
If good, why, why,
Beyond all other misery,
To him who goes, to him who must remain,
Hast thou such parting crowned with hopeless pain?
Wretched, where'er we look,
Whichever way we turn,
Thy suffering children are!
Thee it hath pleased, that youthful hope
Should ever be by life beguiled;
The current of our years with woes be filled,
And death against all ills the only shield:
And this inevitable seal,
And this immutable decree,
Hast thou assigned to human destiny,
Why, after such a painful race,
Should not the goal, at least,
Present to us a cheerful face?
Why that, which we in constant view,
Must, while we live, forever bear,
Sole comfort in our hour of need,
Thus dress in weeds of woe,
54
And gird with shadows so,
And make the friendly port to us appear
More frightful than the tempest drear?
If death, indeed, be a calamity,
Which thou intendest for us all,
Whom thou, against our knowledge and our will,
Hast forced to draw this mortal breath,
Then, surely, he who dies,
A lot more enviable hath
Then he who feels his loved one's death.
But, if the truth it be,
As I most firmly think,
That life is the calamity,
And death the boon, alas! who ever _could_,
What yet he _should_,
Desire the dying day of those so dear,
That he may linger here,
Of his best self deprived,
May see across his threshold borne,
The form beloved of her,
With whom so many years he lived,
And say to her farewell,
Without the hope of meeting here again;
And then alone on earth to dwell,
And, looking round, the hours and places all,
Of lost companionship recall?
Ah, Nature! how, how _couldst_ thou have the heart,
From the friend's arms the friend to tear,
The brother from the brother part,
The father from the child,
The lover from his love,
And, killing one, the other keep alive?
What dire necessity
Compels such misery
That lover should the loved one e'er survive?
But Nature in her cruel dealings still,
Pays little heed unto our good or ill.
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
1034:Of horrible heat- the which are nowhere, nor
Indeed can be: but in this life is fear
Of retributions just and expiations
For evil acts: the dungeon and the leap
From that dread rock of infamy, the stripes,
The executioners, the oaken rack,
The iron plates, bitumen, and the torch.
And even though these are absent, yet the mind,
With a fore-fearing conscience, plies its goads
And burns beneath the lash, nor sees meanwhile
What terminus of ills, what end of pine
Can ever be, and feareth lest the same
But grow more heavy after death. Of truth,
The life of fools is Acheron on earth.
This also to thy very self sometimes
Repeat thou mayst: "Lo, even good Ancus left
The sunshine with his eyes, in divers things
A better man than thou, O worthless hind;
And many other kings and lords of rule
Thereafter have gone under, once who swayed
O'er mighty peoples. And he also, he-
Who whilom paved a highway down the sea,
And gave his legionaries thoroughfare
Along the deep, and taught them how to cross
The pools of brine afoot, and did contemn,
Trampling upon it with his cavalry,
The bellowings of ocean- poured his soul
From dying body, as his light was ta'en.
And Scipio's son, the thunderbolt of war,
Horror of Carthage, gave his bones to earth,
Like to the lowliest villein in the house.
Add finders-out of sciences and arts;
Add comrades of the Heliconian dames,
Among whom Homer, sceptered o'er them all
Now lies in slumber sunken with the rest.
Then, too, Democritus, when ripened eld
Admonished him his memory waned away,
Of own accord offered his head to death.
Even Epicurus went, his light of life
Run out, the man in genius who o'er-topped
The human race, extinguishing all others,
As sun, in ether arisen, all the stars.
Wilt thou, then, dally, thou complain to go?-
For whom already life's as good as dead,
Whilst yet thou livest and lookest?- who in sleep
Wastest thy life- time's major part, and snorest
Even when awake, and ceasest not to see
The stuff of dreams, and bearest a mind beset
By baseless terror, nor discoverest oft
What's wrong with thee, when, like a sotted wretch,
Thou'rt jostled along by many crowding cares,
And wanderest reeling round, with mind aswim."
If men, in that same way as on the mind
They feel the load that wearies with its weight,
Could also know the causes whence it comes,
And why so great the heap of ill on heart,
O not in this sort would they live their life,
As now so much we see them, knowing not
What 'tis they want, and seeking ever and ever
A change of place, as if to drop the burden.
The man who sickens of his home goes out,
Forth from his splendid halls, and straight- returns,
Feeling i'faith no better off abroad.
He races, driving his Gallic ponies along,
Down to his villa, madly,- as in haste
To hurry help to a house afire.- At once
He yawns, as soon as foot has touched the threshold,
Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks
Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about
And makes for town again. In such a way
Each human flees himself- a self in sooth,
As happens, he by no means can escape;
And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes,
Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail.
Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then,
Leaving all else, he'd study to divine
The nature of things, since here is in debate
Eternal time and not the single hour,
Mortal's estate in whatsoever remains
After great death.
And too, when all is said,
What evil lust of life is this so great
Subdues us to live, so dreadfully distraught
In perils and alarms? one fixed end
Of life abideth for mortality;
Death's not to shun, and we must go to meet.
Besides we're busied with the same devices,
Ever and ever, and we are at them ever,
And there's no new delight that may be forged
By living on. But whilst the thing we long for
Is lacking, that seems good above all else;
Thereafter, when we've touched it, something else
We long for; ever one equal thirst of life
Grips us agape. And doubtful 'tis what fortune
The future times may carry, or what be
That chance may bring, or what the issue next
Awaiting us. Nor by prolonging life
Take we the least away from death's own time,
Nor can we pluck one moment off, whereby
To minish the aeons of our state of death.
Therefore, O man, by living on, fulfil
As many generations as thou may:
Eternal death shall there be waiting still;
And he who died with light of yesterday
Shall be no briefer time in death's No-more
Than he who perished months or years before.
author class:Lucretius
~ out-belching from his mouth the surge, Cerberus And Furies, And That Lack Of Light
,#NFDB
1035:Oh! did you observe the Black Canon pass,
And did you observe his frown?
He goeth to say the midnight mass,
In holy St. Edmond's town.
He goeth to sing the burial chaunt,
And to lay the wandering sprite,
Whose shadowy, restless form doth haunt,
The Abbey's drear aisle this night.
It saith it will not its wailing cease,
'Till that holy man come near,
'Till he pour oer its grave the prayer of peace,
And sprinkle the hallowed tear.
The Canon's horse is stout and strong
The road is plain and fair,
But the Canon slowly wends along,
And his brow is gloomed with care.
Who is it thus late at the Abbey-gate?
Sullen echoes the portal bell,
It sounds like the whispering voice of fate,
It sounds like a funeral knell.
The Canon his faltering knee thrice bowed,
And his frame was convulsed with fear,
When a voice was heard distinct and loud,
'Prepare! for thy hour is near.'
He crosses his breast, he mutters a prayer,
To Heaven he lifts his eye,
He heeds not the Abbot's gazing stare,
Nor the dark Monks who murmured by.
Bare-headed he worships the sculptured saints
That frown on the sacred walls,
His face it grows pale,--he trembles, he faints,
At the Abbots feet he falls.
And straight the fathers robe he kissed,
Who cried, 'Grace dwells with thee,
The spirit will fade like the morning mist,
At your benedicite.
'Now haste within! the board is spread,
Keen blows the air, and cold,
The spectre sleeps in its earthy bed,
'Till St. Edmonds bell hath tolled,--
'Yet rest your wearied limbs to-night,
Youve journeyed many a mile,
To-morrow lay the wailing sprite,
That shrieks in the moonlight aisle.
'Oh! faint are my limbs and my bosom is cold,
Yet to-night must the sprite be laid,
Yet to-night when the hour of horror's told,
Must I meet the wandering shade.
'Nor food, nor rest may now delay,--
For hark! the echoing pile,
A bell loud shakes!Oh haste away,
O lead to the haunted aisle.'
The torches slowly move before,
The cross is raised on high,
A smile of peace the Canon wore,
But horror dimmed his eye--
And now they climb the footworn stair,
The chapel gates unclose,
Now each breathed low a fervent prayer,
And fear each bosom froze--
Now paused awhile the doubtful band
And viewed the solemn scene,--
Full dark the clustered columns stand,
The moon gleams pale between--
'Say father, say, what cloisters' gloom
Conceals the unquiet shade,
Within what dark unhallowed tomb,
The corse unblessed was laid.'
'Through yonder drear aisle alone it walks,
And murmurs a mournful plaint,
Of thee! Black Canon, it wildly talks,
And call on thy patron saint--
The pilgrim this night with wondering eyes,
As he prayed at St. Edmond's shrine,
From a black marble tomb hath seen it rise,
And under yon arch recline.'--
Oh! say upon that black marble tomb,
What memorial sad appears.'--
Undistinguished it lies in the chancel's gloom,
No memorial sad it bears'--
The Canon his paternoster reads,
His rosary hung by his side,
Now swift to the chancel doors he leads,
And untouched they open wide,
Resistless, strange sounds his steps impel,
To approach to the black marble tomb,
'Oh! enter, Black Canon,' a whisper fell,
'Oh! enter, thy hour is come.'
He paused, told his beads, and the threshold passed.
Oh! horror, the chancel doors close,
A loud yell was borne on the rising blast,
And a deep, dying groan arose.
The Monks in amazement shuddering stand,
They burst through the chancel's gloom,
From St. Edmonds shrine, lo! a skeletons hand,
Points to the black marble tomb.
Lo! deeply engraved, an inscription blood red,
In characters fresh and clear--
'The guilty Black Canon of Elmham's dead,
And his wife lies buried here!'
In Elmhams tower he wedded a Nun,
To St. Edmonds his bride he bore,
On this eve her noviciate here was begun,
And a Monks gray weeds she wore;--
O! deep was her conscience dyed with guilt,
Remorse she full oft revealed,
Her blood by the ruthless Black Canon was spilt,
And in death her lips he sealed;
Her spirit to penance this night was doomed,
'Till the Canon atoned the deed,
Here together they now shall rest entombed,
'Till their bodies from dust are freed--
Hark! a loud peal of thunder shakes the roof,
Round the altar bright lightnings play,
Speechless with horror the Monks stand aloof,
And the storm dies sudden away--
The inscription was gone! a cross on the ground,
And a rosary shone through the gloom,
But never again was the Canon there found,
Or the Ghost on the black marble tomb.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Saint Edmonds Eve
,#NFDB
1036:The Bread Of Angels
AT that lost hour disowned of day and night,
The after-birth of midnight, when life's face
Turns to the wall and the last lamp goes out
Before the incipient irony of dawn -In that obliterate interval of time
Between the oil's last flicker and the first
Reluctant shudder of averted day,
Threading the city's streets (like mine own ghost
Wakening the echoes of dispeopled dreams),
I smiled to see how the last light that fought
Extinction was the old familiar glare
Of supper tables under gas-lit ceilings,
The same old stale monotonous carouse
Of greed and surfeit nodding face to face
O'er the picked bones of pleasure . . .
So that the city seemed, at that waste hour,
Like some expiring planet from whose face
All nobler life had perished -- love and hate,
And labor and the ecstasy of thought -Leaving the eyeless creatures of the ooze,
Dull offspring of its first inchoate birth,
The last to cling to its exhausted breast.
And threading thus the aimless streets that strayed
Conjectural through a labyrinth of death,
Strangely I came upon two hooded nuns,
Hands in their sleeves, heads bent as if beneath
Some weight of benediction, gliding by
Punctual as shadows that perform their round
Upon the inveterate bidding of the sun
Again and yet again their ordered course
At the same hour crossed mine: obedient shades
Cast by some high-orbed pity on the waste
Of midnight evil! and my wondering thoughts
Tracked them from the hushed convent where there kin
Lay hived in sweetness of their prayer built cells.
What wind of fate had loosed them from the lee
Of that dear anchorage where their sisters slept?
On what emprise of heavenly piracy
63
Did such frail craft put forth upon this world;
In what incalculable currents caught
And swept beyond the signal-lights of home
Did their white coifs set sail against the night?
At last, upon my wonder drawn, I followed
The secret wanderers till I saw them pause
Before the dying glare of those tall panes
Where greed and surfeit nodded face to face
O'er the picked bones of pleasure . . .
And the door opened and the nuns went in.
Again I met them, followed them again.
Straight as a thought of mercy to its goal
To the same door they sped. I stood alone.
And suddenly the silent city shook
With inarticulate clamor of gagged lips,
As in Jerusalem when the veil was rent
And the dead drove the living from the streets.
And all about me stalked the shrouded dead,
Dead hopes, dead efforts, loves and sorrows dead,
With empty orbits groping for their dead
In that blind mustering of murdered faiths . . .
And the door opened and the nuns came out.
I turned and followed. Once again we came
To such a threshold, such a door received them,
They vanished, and I waited. The grim round
Ceased only when the festal panes grew dark
And the last door had shot its tardy bolt.
'Too late!' I heard one murmur; and 'Too late!'
The other, in unholy antiphon.
And with dejected steps they turned away.
They turned, and still I tracked them, till they bent
Under the lee of a calm convent wall
Bounding a quiet street. I knew the street,
One of those village byways strangely trapped
In the city's meshes, where at loudest noon
The silence spreads like moss beneath the foot,
And all the tumult of the town becomes
64
Idle as Ocean's fury in a shell.
Silent at noon -- but now, at this void hour,
When the blank sky hung over the blank streets
Clear as a mirror held above dead lips,
Came footfalls, and a thronging of dim shapes
About the convent door: a suppliant line
Of pallid figures, ghosts of happier folk,
Moving in some gray underworld of want
On which the sun of plenty never dawns.
And as the nuns approached I saw the throng
Pale emanation of that outcast hour,
Divide like vapor when the sun breaks through
And take the glory on its tattered edge.
For so a brightness ran from face to face,
Faint as a diver's light beneath the sea
And as a wave draws up the beach, the crowd
Drew to the nuns.
I waited. Then those two
Strange pilgrims of the sanctuaries of sin
Brought from beneath their large conniving cloaks
Two hidden baskets brimming with rich store
Of broken viands -- pasties, jellies, meats,
Crumbs of Belshazzar's table, evil waste
Of that interminable nightly feast
Of greed and surfeit, nodding face to face
O'er the picked bones of pleasure . . .
And piteous hands were stretched to take the bread
Of this strange sacrament -- this manna brought
Out of the antique wilderness of sin.
Each seized a portion, turning comforted
From this new breaking of the elements;
And while I watched the mystery of renewal
Whereby the dead bones of old sins become
The living body of the love of God,
It seemed to me that a like change transformed
The city's self . . . a little wandering air
Ruffled the ivy on the convent wall;
A bird piped doubtfully; the dawn replied;
And in that ancient gray necropolis
65
Somewhere a child awoke and took the breast.
~ Edith Wharton,#NFDB
1037:Craving For Spring
I wish it were spring in the world.
Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets of exquisite finality;
Come, spring, make havoc of them!
I trample on the snowdrops, it gives me pleasure to tread down the jonquils,
to destroy the chill Lent lilies;
for I am sick of them, their faint-bloodedness,
slow-blooded, icy-fleshed, portentous.
I want the fine, kindling wine-sap of spring,
gold, and of inconceivably fine, quintessential brightness,
rare almost as beams, yet overwhelmingly potent,
strong like the greatest force of world-balancing.
This is the same that picks up the harvest of wheat
and rocks it, tons of grain, on the ripening wind;
the same that dangles the globe-shaped pleiads of fruit
temptingly in mid-air, between a playful thumb and finger;
oh, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, whirls the pear-bloom,
upon us, and apple- and almond- and apricot- and quince-blossom,
storms and cumulus clouds of all imaginable blossom
about our bewildered faces,
though we do not worship.
I wish it were spring
cunningly blowing on the fallen sparks, odds and ends of the old, scattered fire,
and kindling shapely little conflagrations
curious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves, and naked sparrow-bubs.
37
I wish that spring
would start the thundering traffic of feet
new feet on the earth, beating with impatience.
I wish it were spring, thundering
delicate, tender spring.
I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of passionate, mysterious corruption
were not yet to come still more from the still-flickering discontent.
Oh, in the spring, the bluebell bows him down for very exuberance,
exulting with secret warm excess,
bowed down with his inner magnificence!
Oh, yes, the gush of spring is strong enough
to toss the globe of earth like a ball on a water-jet
dancing sportfully;
as you see a tiny celluloid ball tossing on a squirt of water
for men to shoot at, penny-a-time, in a booth at a fair.
The gush of spring is strong enough
to play with the globe of earth like a ball on a fountain;
At the same time it opens the tiny hands of the hazel
with such infinite patience.
The power of the rising, golden, all-creative sap could take the earth
and heave it off among the stars, into the invisible;
the same sets the throstle at sunset on a bough
singing against the blackbird;
comes out in the hesitating tremor of the primrose,
and betrays its candour in the round white strawberry flower,
is dignified in the foxglove, like a Red-Indian brave.
Ah come, come quickly, spring!
come and lift us towards our culmination, we myriads;
we who have never flowered, like patient cactuses.
Come and lift us to our end, to blossom, bring us to our summer
we who are winter-weary in the winter of the of the world.
Come making the chaffinch nests hollow and cosy,
come and soften the willow buds till they are puffed and furred,
then blow them over with gold.
Coma and cajole the gawky colt’s-foot flowers.
Come quickly, and vindicate us.
38
against too much death.
Come quickly, and stir the rotten globe of the world from within,
burst it with germination, with world anew.
Come now, to us, your adherents, who cannot flower from the ice.
All the world gleams with the lilies of death the Unconquerable,
but come, give us our turn.
Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate, suffocating perfume of corruption,
no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the blades of sensation
piercing the flesh to blossom of death.
Have done, have done with this shuddering, delicious business
of thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion, of rare, death-edged ecstasy.
Give us our turn, give us a chance, let our hour strike,
O soon, soon!
Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn.
Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to a ruddy violet,
incipient purpling towards summer in the world of the heart of man.
Are the violets already here!
Show me! I tremble so much to hear it, that even now
on the threshold of spring, I fear I shall die.
Show me the violets that are out.
Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of the blood of man is purpling with
violets,
if the violets are coming out from under the rack of men, winter-rotten and
fallen,
we shall have spring.
Pray not to die on this Pisgah blossoming with violets.
Pray to live through.
If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of the shadow of man
it will be spring in the world,
it will be spring in the world of the living;
wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with the violets,
stirring of new seasons.
Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such anticipation!
Worse, let me not deceive myself.
~ David Herbert Lawrence,#NFDB
1038:Of The Mean And Sure Estate
My mother's maids, when they did sew and spin,
They sang sometime a song of the field mouse,
That, for because her livelood was but thin,
Would needs go seek her townish sister's house.
She thought herself endurèd too much pain;
The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse
That when the furrows swimmèd with the rain,
She must lie cold and wet in sorry plight;
And worse than that, bare meat there did remain
To comfort her when she her house had dight;
Sometime a barley corn; sometime a bean;
For which she laboured hard both day and night
In harvest time whilst she might go and glean;
And where store was stroyèd with the flood,
Then well away! for she undone was clean.
Then was she fain to take instead of food
Sleep, if she might, her hunger to beguile.
'My sister,' quod she, 'hath a living good,
And hence from me she dwelleth not a mile.
In cold and storm she lieth warm and dry
In bed of down; the dirt doth not defile
Her tender foot, she laboureth not as I.
Richly she feedeth and at the richman's cost,
And for her meat she needs not crave nor cry.
By sea, by land, of the delicates, the most
Her cater seeks, and spareth for no peril.
She feedeth on boiled bacon meet and roast,
And hath thereof neither charge nor travail;
And when she list, the liquor of the grape
Doth glad her heart till that her belly swell.'
28
And at this journey she maketh but a jape;
So forth she goeth, trusting of all this wealth
With her sister her part so for to shape,
That if she might keep herself in health,
To live a lady while her life doth last.
And to the door now is she come by stealth,
And with her foot anon she scrapeth full fast.
Th' other for fear durst not well scarce appear,
Of every noise so was the wretch aghast.
At last she askèd softly who was there.
And in her language, as well as she could,
'Peep!' quod the other. 'Sister, I am here.'
'Peace,' quod the towny mouse, 'why speakest thou so loud?'
And by the hand she took her fair and well.
'Welcome,' quod she, 'my sister, by the Rood!'
She feasted her, that joy it was to tell
The fare they had; they drank the wine so clear,
And as to purpose now and then it fell,
She cheerèd her with 'How, sister, what cheer!'
Amids this joy befell a sorry chance,
That, well away! the stranger bought full dear
The fare she had, for, as she look askance,
Under a stool she spied two steaming eyes
In a round head with sharp ears. In France
Was never mouse so fear'd, for the unwise
Had not i-seen such a beast before,
Yet had nature taught her after her guise
To know her foe and dread him evermore.
The towny mouse fled, she know whither to go;
Th' other had no shift, but wonders sore
Feard of her life. At home she wished her tho,
29
And to the door, alas! as she did skip,
The Heaven it would, lo! and eke her chance was so,
At the threshold her silly foot did trip;
And ere she might recover it again,
The traitor cat had caught her by the hip,
And made her there against her will remain,
That had forgotten her poor surety and rest
For seeming wealth wherein she thought to reign.
Alas, my Poynz, how men do seek the best
And find the worst, by error as they stray!
And no marvail; when sight is so opprest.
And blind the guide; anon out of the way
Goeth guide and all in seeking quiet life.
O wretched minds, there is no gold that may
Grant that ye seek; no war, no peace, no strife.
No, no, although thy head were hooped with gold,
Sergeant with mace, hawbert, sword, nor knife,
Cannot repulse the care that follow should.
Each kind of life hath with him his disease.
Live in delight even as thy lust would,
And thou shalt find, when lust doth most thee please,
It irketh straight and by itself doth fade.
A small thing it is that may thy mind appease.
None of ye all there is that is so mad
To seek grapes upon brambles or breres;
Nor none, I trow, that hath his wit so bad
To set his hay for conies over rivers,
Ne ye set not a drag-net for an hare;
And yet the thing that most is your desire
Ye do mis-seek with more travail and care.
Make plain thine heart, that it be not knotted
With hope or dread, and see thy will be bare
30
From all affects, whom vice hath ever spotted.
Thyself content with that is thee assigned,
And use it well that is to thee allotted.
Then seek no more out of thyself to find
The thing that thou hast sought so long before,
For thou shalt feel it sitting in thy mind.
Mad, if ye list to continue your sore,
Let present pass and gape on time to come,
And deep yourself in travail more and more.
Henceforth, my Poynz, this shall be all and some,
These wretched fools shall have nought else of me;
But to the great God and to his high doom,
None other pain pray I for them to be,
But when the rage doth lead them from the right,
That, looking backward, Virtue they may see,
Even as she is, so goodly fair and bright;
And whilst they clasp their lusts in arms across,
Grant them, good Lord, as Thou mayst of Thy might
To fret inward for losing such a loss.
~ David McKee Wright,#NFDB
1039:Hymn To The Patriarchs
OR OF THE BEGINNINGS OF THE HUMAN RACE.
Illustrious fathers of the human race,
Of you, the song of your afflicted sons
Will chant the praise; of you, more dear, by far,
Unto the Great Disposer of the stars,
Who were not born to wretchedness, like ours.
Immedicable woes, a life of tears,
The silent tomb, eternal night, to find
More sweet, by far, than the ethereal light,
These things were not by heaven's gracious law
Imposed on you. If ancient legends speak
Of sins of yours, that brought calamity
Upon the human race, and fell disease,
Alas, the sins more terrible, by far,
Committed by your children, and their souls
More restless, and with mad ambition fixed,
Against them roused the wrath of angry gods,
The hand of all-sustaining Nature armed,
By them so long neglected and despised.
Then life became a burden and a curse,
And every new-born babe a thing abhorred,
And hell and chaos reigned upon the earth.
Thou first the day, and thou the shining lights
Of the revolving stars didst see, the fields,
And their new flocks and herds, O leader old
And father of the human family!
The wandering air that o'er the meadows played,
When smote the rocks, and the deserted vales,
The torrent, rustling headlong from the Alps,
With sound, till then, unheard; and o'er the sites
Of future nations, noisy cities, yet unknown
To fame, a peace profound, mysterious reigned;
And o'er the unploughed hills, in silence, rose
The ray of Phoebus, and the golden moon.
O world, how happy in thy loneliness,
Of crimes and of disasters ignorant!
Oh, how much wretchedness Fate had in store
39
For thy poor race, unhappy father, what
A series vast of terrible events!
Behold, the fields, scarce tilled, with blood are stained,
A brother's blood, in sudden frenzy shed;
And now, alas, first hears the gentle air
The whirring of the fearful wings of Death.
The trembling fratricide, a fugitive,
The lonely shades avoids; in every blast
That sweeps the groves, a voice of wrath he hears.
_He_ the first city builds, abode and realm
Of wasting cares; repentance desperate,
Heart-sick, and groaning, thus unites and binds
Together blind and sinful souls, and first
A refuge offers unto mutual guilt.
The wicked hand now scorns the crooked plough;
The sweat of honest labor is despised;
Now sloth possession of the threshold takes;
The sluggish frames their native vigor lose;
The minds in hopeless indolence are sunk;
And slavery, the crowning curse of all,
Degrades and crushes poor humanity.
And thou from heaven's wrath, and ocean's waves,
That bellowed round the cloud-capped mountain-tops,
The sinful brood didst save; thou, unto whom,
From the dark air and wave-encumbered hills,
The white dove brought the sign of hope renewed,
And sinking in the west, the shipwrecked sun,
His bright rays darting through the angry clouds,
The dark sky painted with the lovely bow.
The race restored, to earth returned, begins anew
The same career of wickedness and lust,
With their attendant ills. Audacious man
Defies the threats of the avenging sea,
And to new shores and to new stars repeats
The same sad tale of infamy and woe.
And now of thee I think, the just and brave,
The Father of the faithful, and the sons
Thy honored name that bore. Of thee I speak,
Whom, sitting, thoughtful, in the noontide shade,
Before thy humble cottage, near the banks,
40
That gave thy flocks both rest and nourishment,
The minds ethereal of celestial guests
With blessings greeted; and of thee, O son
Of wise Rebecca, how at eventide,
In Aran's valley sweet, and by the well,
Where happy swains in friendly converse met,
Thou didst with Laban's daughter fall in love;
Love, that to exile long, and suffering,
And to the odious yoke of servitude,
Thy patient soul a willing martyr led.
Oh, surely once,--for not with idle tales
And shadows, the Aonian song, and voice
Of Fame, the eager list'ners feed,--once was
This wretched earth more friendly to our race,
Was more beloved and dear, and golden flew
The days, that now so laden are with care.
Not that the milk, in waves of purest white,
Gushed from the rocks, and flowed along the vales;
Or that the tigers mingled with the sheep,
To the same fold were led; or shepherd-boys
With playful wolves would frolic at the spring;
But of its own lot ignorant, and all
The sufferings that were in store, devoid
Of care it lived: a soft, illusive veil
Of error hid the stern realities,
The cruel laws of heaven and of fate.
Life glided on, with cheerful hope content;
And tranquil, sought the haven of its rest.
So lives, in California's forests vast,
A happy race, whose life-blood is not drained
By pallid care, whose limbs are not by fierce
Disease consumed: the woods their food, their homes
The hollow rock, the streamlet of the vale
Its waters furnishes, and, unforeseen,
Dark death upon them steals. Ah, how unarmed,
Wise Nature's happy votaries, are ye,
Against our impious audacity!
Our fierce, indomitable love of gain
Your shores, your caves, your quiet woods invades;
Your minds corrupts, your bodies enervates;
41
And happiness, a naked fugitive,
Before it drives, to earth's remotest bounds.
~ Count Giacomo Leopardi,#NFDB
1040:The Orphans' New Year's Gift
The room is full of shadow; you can hear, indistinctly, the sad soft whispering of
two children.
Their foreheads lean forward, still heavy with dreams, beneath the long white
bed-curtain
which shudders and rises... Outside the birds crowd together, chilled;
their wings are benumbed under the grey tints of the skies; and the New Year,
with her train of mist, trailing the folds of her snowy garment,
smiles through her tears, and shivering, sings...
II
But the little children, beneath the swaying curtain, talk in low voices as one does
on a dark night.
Thoughtfully they listen as to a far-off murmur... They tremble often at the clear
golden voice of the
morning chime repeatedly striking its metallic refrain beneath its glass dome...
And then, the room is icy... you can see, strewn here and there on the floor
round the beds,
mourning clothes: the bitter blast of winter which moans at the threshold blows
its melancholy
breath into the house! You can feel, in all this, that there is something missing...
Is there then no mother for these little children? No mother full of fresh smiles
and looks of triumph?
Did she forget, last night, stooping down by herself, to kindle a flame saved from
these ashes,
and to heap up the blankets and eiderdown on them before leaving them,
calling out to them: forgive me! Did she not forsee the chill of the morning?
Did she forget to close the door against the blast of winter? A mother's dream is
the warm coverlet,
the downy nest, where children, huddled like pretty birds rocked by the
branches,
sleep their sweet sleep full of white dreams. -- And here? -- it is like a nest
without feathers or warmth,
where the litt