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D Quotes

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All D Quotes

“Despite the chaos that was tearing her head apart, Tevi understood what scene Yenneg was attempting to play out, with herself as a conscripted actor. She needed to force out an explanation or denial, but no words could get past her lips. Jemeryl's presence was paralysing her, an effect far more irresistible than anything Yenneg had achieved. Tevi watched Jemeryl take another few steps forwards and then crouch down so that their eyes were no more than a foot apart. Tevi thought she would die from the shock. Yet somehow, she forced her mouth to shape the words, "Wine. Love potion." Her voice was not loud enough even to count as a whisper. Certainly nobody else in the room would have heard, yet Tevi could not control her breathing to manage anything else. At first Jemeryl showed no sign of comprehension, but then suddenly, the bewilderment on her face transformed into fury. She leapt up, her arms moving in a blurred aggressive swirl. The gesture ended with an action like hurling a ball. Blue fire erupted from Jemeryl's hands and shot towards Yenneg. The other sorcerer had obviously recognised the gesture and made an effort to protect himself. A shimmering shield sprung up before Yenneg, but it was not strong enough, and the shockwave knocked him off his feet. His shoulders slammed into the wall behind him and he crumpled to the floor. Jemeryl had been telling the truth when she claimed to vastly excel the acolytes in magical ability, not that Tevi had ever entertained doubts. Jemeryl's hands moved again, and this time Yenneg was sprawled on the floor and in no state to mount a defence. A second bolt of blue fire burst in his direction. Lightning in the form of a whip snapped across the room, intercepting Jemeryl's attack before it struck. The diverted fireball hit the wall of the summerhouse two feet from Yenneg's head and smashed through it, as if it were a stone going through wet paper.”

“Despite the clear scientific consensus, a veritable brigade of self-proclaimed, underinformed armchair experts lurk on comment threads the world over, eager to pour scorn on climate science. Barrages of ad hominem attacks all too often await both the scientists working in climate research and journalists who communicate the research findings.”

“Despite the complexity and variety of the universe, it turns out that to make one you need just three ingredients. Let’s imagine that we could list them in some kind of cosmic cookbook. So what are the three ingredients we need to cook up a universe? The first is matter—stuff that has mass. Matter is all around us, in the ground beneath our feet and out in space. Dust, rock, ice, liquids. Vast clouds of gas, massive spirals of stars, each containing billions of suns, stretching away for incredible distances. The second thing you need is energy. Even if you’ve never thought about it, we all know what energy is. Something we encounter every day. Look up at the Sun and you can feel it on your face: energy produced by a star ninety-three million miles away. Energy permeates the universe, driving the processes that keep it a dynamic, endlessly changing place. So we have matter and we have energy. The third thing we need to build a universe is space. Lots of space. You can call the universe many things—awesome, beautiful, violent—but one thing you can’t call it is cramped. Wherever we look we see space, more space and even more space. Stretching in all directions. It’s enough to make your head spin. So where could all this matter, energy and space come from? We had no idea until the twentieth century. The answer came from the insights of one man, probably the most remarkable scientist who has ever lived. His name was Albert Einstein. Sadly I never got to meet him, since I was only thirteen when he died. Einstein realised something quite extraordinary: that two of the main ingredients needed to make a universe—mass and energy—are basically the same thing, two sides of the same coin if you like. His famous equation E = mc2 simply means that mass can be thought of as a kind of energy, and vice versa. So instead of three ingredients, we can now say that the universe has just two: energy and space. So where did all this energy and space come from? The answer was found after decades of work by scientists: space and energy were spontaneously invented in an event we now call the Big Bang.”

“Despite the damaging effects of mounting criticism, we saw some lovely examples of the triumph of the human spirit. Al’s greatest trouble was accustoming his people to the concept that each had been given at least one gift of the Holy Spirit to be used for ministry in the community. It seemed to be foreign to them. For those who actually experimented with expressing what was locked inside there was delight and fulfillment.”

“Despite the dazzling successes of modern technology and the unprecedented power of modern military systems, they suffer from a common and catastrophic fault. While providing us with a bountiful supply of food, with great industrial plants, with high-speed transportation, and with military weapons of unprecedented power, they threaten our very survival.”

“Despite the despair and sadness, one must go out there and have a love affair with life. To the playful mind, every moment is a moment of festival, a journey to taste the fruit of life. Were it otherwise, the dew of heaven would never make us fresh, the sun would never burst to fill us with light, dusk would never paint the sky to awaken the lover in us, and the moon would never blush at night to call the poet in us.”

“Despite the differences in detail and in emphasis in Wesley's exposition of the two sacraments, there is an underlying unity in his sacramental theology. He regarded both sacraments as means whereby God could confer grace according to His promise, but yet insisted, that in order to prevent the means from being mistaken as ends, it was necessary for there to be an appropriation of the grace held out by the faith of the believer. Grace was not conferred IN SPITE OF MAN, but only with his co-operation. So human response was necessary for the efficacy of the sacraments, although man's actions were never thought of as meritorious works.”

“Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn’t a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that “God does not play dice with the universe.” He was wrong, and it’s too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: “Einstein! Stop telling God what to do.”

“Despite the ebb and flow of our feelings, we can control the way we act. Patience, for instance, is not a feeling. Patience is the description of a behavior. One can choose to act patiently even while the feeling of frustration tempts him to choose inappropriate behavior. It is impossible to feel frustrated and feel patient at the same time, but one can be inundated with feelings of frustration and still display patience. Patience is a discipline. It is an action. Patience is a chosen response.”

“Despite the extraordinary efforts taken to bring the killer to justice, one of my great disappointments with the case was that we lacked the good fortune to give the people an ending, less so the sort it deserved. In turn, those vast and interconnected stories, provided and investigated, go without an ending to this day." ~ Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline, the Ripper Lives: To Catch a Killer (1/10)”

“Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn't think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they've been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you've been introduced to socially.”

“Despite the fact that Christianity initially was a non-violent radical movement of God's people, many today who claim to be of Christ seem to see war as needed and even God ordained. Such blasphemy is hardly new. Since the days of Constantine (I) when the State and the Church made an unholy alliance, the deception of redemptive warfare has been clung to as if it were a life belt. Yet, ever since the time of Jesus the Messiah and prophets before Him many radicals (often persecuted and outcast) have questioned the morality of war. Now in the 21st Century generations are also rising up against the war machine among both the secular and spiritual sector of society. They recognise that war is for power, economy and pride, not justice or peace. Long may the voices in the wilderness be heard, as they prepare the way for the Lord, who when he comes again will be the undoing of evil and the establisher of a kingdom not of this world that will live in peace forever!!!”

“Despite the fact that “False Memory Syndrome” remained undefined and had never been the subject of any research, the FMSF focused its early activities on influencing the media and legal system…The definition of “False Memory Syndrome” did not evolve from clinical studies; rather the purported syndrome’s description is based on the accounts of parents claiming to be falsely accused of child sexual abuse, usually by their adult daughters." p13 Dallam, S. J. (2002). Crisis or Creation: A systematic examination of false memory claims. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 9 (3/4), 9-36”

“Despite the fact that he no longer dressed like the big dork he did then, despite the fact that he’d swapped the nerd wear for some much cooler clothes, despite the fact that he’d let his hair go all shaggy and loose to the point where it curved down into his face in that cool guy, slightly windswept, effortless way, despite the fact that every time I looked into his brilliant blue eyes I was totally reminded of the Zac Efron poster that used to hang on my old bedroom wall, it still didn’t make it okay for him to laugh at me the way he did.”