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S Quotes

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“Shrinking forests, melting ice, plowed grasslands, raging fires, drying rivers, and dying corals — diminished of all the major habitats, proxy for all who live therein, means that the numbers of free-living animals are the lowest ever, and mostly falling, across the board. It means something acutely awful, I think: that the human species has made itself incompatible with the rest of Life on Earth.”

“Shrinking from men, being on guard, avoiding drawing attention to oneself: this is the daily life of women in Africa and the Middle East. As girls growing up in Mogadishu and Nairobi, my sister and I covered ourselves with hijabs to conceal ourselves from public view. Today, women in Europe must consider what manner of dress will best deflect the attention of the increasing numbers of men on the prowl.”

“Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not just leave his corpse in Iraq but was isolated and repudiated even by the minority Sunnis on whose presumed behalf he spilled so much blood and wrought such hectic destruction. It is even more gratifying that bin Laden himself was exposed as an excrescence on the putrid body of a bankrupt and brutish state machine, and that he found himself quite unable to make any coherent comment on the tide—one hopes that it is a tide, rather than a mere wave—of demand for an accountable and secular form of civil society. There could not have been a finer affirmation of the force of life, so warmly and authentically counterposed to the hysterical celebration of death, and of that death-in-life that is experienced in the stultifications of theocracy, where womanhood and music and literature are stifled and young men mutated into robotic slaughterers.”

“Shuddering Tanis stepped back. Raistlin gave the drawstring on the top of the bag a quick jerk, snapping it shut. Then, glancing at them distrustfully, he slipped the bag within his robes, secreting it in one of his numerous hidden pockets, and begun to turn away. But Tanis stopped him. "Things can never again be the same between us, can they?" the half-elf asked quietly. Raistlin looked at him for a moment, and Tanis saw a brief flicker of regret in the young mage's eyes, a longing for trust and friendship and return to the days of youth. "No," Raistilin whispered. "But such was the price I paid.”

“Shukhov gazed at the ceiling in silence. Now he didn't know whether he wanted freedom or not. At first he'd longed for it. Every night he'd counted the days of his stretch—how many had passed, how many were coming. And then he'd grown bored with counting. And then it became clear that men like him wouldn't ever be allowed to return home, that they'd be exiled.”

“Shukhov had been told that this old man'd been in camps and prisons more years than you could count and had never come under any amnesty. When one ten-year stretch was over they slapped on another. Shukhov took a good look at him close up. In the camp you could pick him out among all the men with their bent backs because he was straight as a ramrod. When he sat at the table it looked like he was sitting on something to raise himself up higher. There hadn't been anything to shave off his head for a long time-he'd lost all his hair because of the good life. His eyes didn't shift around the mess hall all the time to see what was going on, and he was staring over Shukhov's head and looking at something nobody else could see. He ate his thin gruel with a worn old wooden spoon, and he took his time. He didn't bend down low over the bowl like all the others did, but brought the spoon up to his mouth. He didn't have a single tooth either top or bottom-he chewed the bread with his hard gums like they were teeth. His face was all worn-out but not like a goner's-it was dark and looked like it had been hewed out of stone. And you could tell from his big rough hands with the dirt worked in them he hadn't spent many of his long years doing any of the soft jobs. You could see his mind was set on one thing-never to give in. He didn't put his eight ounces of bread in all the filth on the table like everybody else but laid it on a clean little piece of rag that'd been washed over and over again.”

“Shukhov started to pick out the cabbage in his bowl. There was only one piece of potato and that turned up in the bowl he got from Caesar. It wasn't much of a potato. It was frostbitten of course, a little hard and on the sweet side. And there was hardly any fish, just a piece of bone here and there without any flesh on it. But every little fishbone and every piece of fin had to be sucked to get all the juice out of it-it was good for you. All this took time but Shukhov was in no hurry now. He'd had a real good day-he'd managed to get an extra helping at noon and for supper too. So he could skip everything else he wanted to do that evening. Nothing else mat-tered now.”

“Shukladhyan (internal state that renders the constant awareness of ‘I am pure Soul’) is the direct cause for moksha (liberation). Dharmadhyan (absence of adverse internal state of being that hurts the self and others) is the indirect cause for moksha. Artadhyan (adverse internal state that results in hurting the self) is a cause for a birth in animal life form (non-human). Raudradhyan (Adverse internal state of being that hurts others) is a cause for a life in hell.”

“Shukladhyan (pure contemplation of the Self, the Soul) is the direct cause for moksha (liberation). Dharmadhyan (auspicious contemplation; to hurt no one, give happiness to others) is the indirect cause for moksh (liberation). Artadhyan (inner mournful contemplation that hurts the self) is a cause for a birth in animal life form (non-human). Raudradhyan (wrathful contemplation that hurts the self and others) is a cause for a life in hell.”

“Shun darkness and evil vices for they that embrace them wear off with time!”

“Shun la stava ascoltando, però oltre la finestra, sul marciapiede, c’era un uomo che passeggiava. Lo guardò meglio e vide che aveva qualcosa al guinzaglio. Guardò ancora meglio e capì che si trattava di una pannocchia. La trascinava lasciandosi dietro un solco misto a impronte nella neve. «Lo vedi anche tu?» chiese. «Che cosa?» «Il tizio con la pannocchia.» Miyamura-san guardò. «Non reggono tutti l’alcol come noi.» Shun non riuscì a distogliere lo sguardo. «Lo so che hai ragione», disse infine, «è solo che… beh, è questo il massimo in cui posso sperare?» Stava guardando anche lei fuori, ma ora accigliata, sinceramente confusa. «Perché, Shun, in che cosa speravi?»”