Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we comp...
When we saw a destitute-looking man trying to sell worn flip-flops, I vowed never to complain about a job again. When I considered the steady paycheck and quality of life it provided, my past gripes - primarily boring meetings, back-biting office pol...
Most people aren’t happy. They sing songs like they are. Make up cute little stories. Post pics of the rare times when life wasn’t dreadful. Most people are stomaching this whole affair called life. Are these people complainers? Probably. Most ar...
A sick person is Allah’s guest for as long as he is ill. Every day he is sick, God gives him countless rewards, as long as he says ‘ al hamdulillah’, praise be to God, and does not fight it and complain. When God returns to him his health, he e...
Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a re...
The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his . He will claim that the state is obligated to protected and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus a...
There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attra...
Someone once asked me why people sing. I answered that they sing for many of the same reasons the birds sing. They sing for a mate, to claim their territory, or simply to give voice to the delight of being alive in the midst of a beautiful day. Perha...
I can't tell you how sorry I am. About everything. About your poor cat, about that horrendous funeral my dad concocted, and really about my lunatic father in general. I'm sorry you had to move in next to a family of complete weirdos. I don't know how...
The object, the woman, goes out into the world formed as men have formed her to be used as men wish to use her. She is then a provocation. The object provokes its use. It provokes its use because of its form, determined by the one who is provoked. Th...
The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it into the fire. Even the minor literary reviews, the...
Understatement has become part of the tradition. A proposal to build a history room to house the football team's memorabilia was immediately shelved when many former players complained. What makes this program so special is what you carry in your hea...
I have indeed lived and worked to my taste either in art or science. What more could a man desire? Knowledge has always been my goal. There is much that I shall leave behind undone…but something at least I was privileged to leave for the world to u...
Growing up, my parents managed to show me the importance of reading without cramming it down my throat. A difficult task, I'm sure. It breaks my heart to think that there are kids out there, ready to have their imaginations lit on fire, excited and w...
I am so sorry to hear of 's passing. I will miss his scientific insight and advice, but even more his humor and stubborn integrity. I remember when one of his colleagues complained about 's always rejecting his manuscript when they were sent to him t...
[Discussing a new prisoner who has to spend the night in the box] Dragline: He ain't in the box because of the joke played on him. He back-sassed a free man. They got their rules. We ain't got nothin' to do with that. Would probably have happened to ...
Thomas Wollaston, in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, complained that Darwin did no seem to know what a species actually was. The British Quarterly, deliberately sitting up trouble, speculated that a time might come when a monkey could pro...
It's all messed up," she said. "What is?" he asked quietly from behind her. "Us." "We're doing okay." "I didn't set out to trap you or anything." Keith had accused her of that a hundred times. "I don't feel trapped." "Why?" "I'm a simple guy. I have ...
There's a lot you can do with a name like Amelia. You can play with it, sure, is what you think I'm going to say. Make it cute (Amy), or cuter (Millie), complaining (Meelie), or French, I guess, like the movie (Amélie). You can step right into that ...
..luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose, the reason why luxury cruises and gre...
No matter, they weren’t going anywhere. Never again. Two skeletons buried beneath a dead city. No more fitting a barrow for a warrior of the Apocalypse and a Malazan soldier. That seemed just, poetic even. He would not complain, and when he stood a...
