“What is deemed as “his-story” is often determined by those who survived to write it. In other words, history is written by the victors...Now, with the help of the Roman historian Tacitus, I shall tell you Queen Boudicca’s story, her-story……””
“One might go to the bakery, perhaps," he said. "But did you know the baker has tuberculosis? All the people here run around in a highly infectious state. The baker's daughter has tuberculosis too, it seems to have something to do with the runoff from the cellulose factory, with the steam that the locomotives have spewed out for decades, with the bad diet that people eat. Almost all of them have cankered lung lobes, pneumothorax and pneumoperitoneum are endemic. They have tuberculosis of the lungs, the head, the arms and legs. All of them have tubercular abscesses somewhere on their bodies. The valley is notorious for tuberculosis. You will find every form of it here: skin tuberculosis, brain tuberculosis, intestinal tuberculosis. Many cases of meningitis, which is deadly within hours. The workmen have tuberculosis from the dirt they dig around in, the farmers have it from their dogs and the infected milk. The majority of the people have galloping consumption. Moreover," he said, "the effect of the new drugs, of streptomycin for example, is nil. Did you know the knacker has tuberculosis? That the landlady has tuberculosis? That the landlady has tuberculosis? That her daughters have been to sanatoria on three occasions? Tuberculosis is by no means on the way out. People claim it is curable. but that's what the pharmaceutical industry says. In fact, tuberculosis is as incurable as it always was. Even people who have been inoculated against it come down with it. Often those who have it the worst are the ones who look so healthy that you wouldn't suspect they were ill at all. Their rosy faces are utterly at variance with their ravaged lungs. You keep running into people who've had to endure a cautery or, at the very least, a transverse lesion. Most of them have had their lives ruined by failed reconstructive surgery." We didn't go to the bakery. Straight home instead.””
“The seventeenth-century Benedictine mystic, Dom Augustine Baker, who fought a determined battle for the interior liberty of contemplative souls in an age ridden by autocratic directors, has the following to say on the subject: “The director is not to teach his own way, nor indeed any determinate way of prayer, but to instruct his disciples how they may themselves find out the way proper for them. . . . In a word, he is only God’s usher, and must lead souls in God’s way, and not his own.””
“I sometimes wonder if I’m built from old videotape. I feel archaic, worn from overuse and increasingly obscure. One day I’ll get caught up in the grinding wheels of my own life and unravel.””
“pursy, unwieldy, half cataleptic baker of Mannheim had absolutely fought six-and-twenty rounds with an accomplished English boxer merely upon this inspiration; so greatly was natural genius exalted and sublimed by the genial presence of his murderer.””
“The other major oil industry suppliers were similarly weary, trying to shore up earnings by slashing jobs, trimming project costs, and squeezing their own customers and suppliers wherever they could. (The wildcatters had it worse: many of the mom-and-pop operators of the American oil patch started to file for bankruptcy.) One year later, GE would merge its oil and gas unit into the oil-field giant Baker Hughes, keeping for itself a more than 50 percent stake in the company and spinning out a new public company to be run by Simonelli, under GE’s control. The transaction eased GE’s exposure to the ongoing oil rout and gave the new company, dubbed “Baker Hughes, a GE company,” vast new areas of redundant employees and operations to eliminate. With Baker Hughes, GE changed its tone a bit. The deal was transformational, but in which intended direction wasn’t made clear. GE execs like Bornstein would proclaim that the deal gave them “optionality,” but the reality was that investors were left in the dark on the strategy: Was GE doubling down on oil? Or was it preparing to exit the industry? The idea of holding such a long-term option was nice, but the game pieces in the positioning were people, and those who didn’t leave their job had no idea where the future of the company might be. The new arrangement didn’t spare Lufkin. The historic foundry was closed. The city’s annual financial report now just shows a blank line when listing the company’s employment tally, evidence of the more than four thousand jobs that evaporated after GE came to town. Between two Mondays”
“Mason, hands in the dough, watch'd his father openly, feeling the pain in his arms, the pale mass seething with live resistance,”
“The London criminal is a practical fellow,’ said Holmes. ‘It makes no sense to steal from the poor.””
“have long held that the meanest rookeries in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the glorious countryside.””
“It was one of the reasons he fell in love with her shortly afterward and why they’d stayed in love for nearly seven years of monogamy. Nita, Nita . . . The mind’s picture was always of her seated behind their house at dusk, where the cries of children were drowned in the whistle of a night train for Suez; where cinders came to lodge in pores beginning to widen under the stresses of some heart’s geology (“Your complexion is going from bad to worse,” he’d say: “I’ll have to start paying more attention to the lovely young French girls who are always making eyes at me.” “Fine,” she’d retort, “I’ll tell that to the baker when he comes to sleep with me tomorrow, it’ll make him feel better”);””
“My methods and my intellect, coupled with your inimitable character and daring-do, can bring justice to rich and poor alike.””
“the memory of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created the best and wisest man we ever knew.””
“When the vessels of mercy perceive the fearsome wrath of God on the disobedient and reflect on the fact that they deserve the same, then in a deeper way they appreciate the riches of God’s glory (τὸν πλοῦτον τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ) and the grace lavished on them. The riches of glory may be defined as “his character, his essence, his divine life and limitless supply of kindness and mercy and wisdom and power and provision” (Berry 2016: 170).””
“Lestrade shrieked again and ran at the door, but only succeeded in knocking himself unconscious.””
“Why this book? In today’s globalized world, it seems we forget things that happened only a decade ago. Thus, we repeat the mistakes of the past, unnecessarily.””