Jim > Recent Status Updates

The body of a soldier who had been shot came floating along, on his back, swollen, the legs bent at the knees aqnd the arms bent likewise, he looked as if he were raising his hands.... The commandante here advised letting him float by—so as to avoid any trouble.

The Afghans were always a secretive race, and vastly preferred doing something wicked to saying anything at all. They would be quiet and well-behaved for months, till one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut the throats of a constable or two, dash through a village, carry away three or four women, and withdraw....

My doctor tells me that I need rest and change of air. It is not improbable that I shall get both ere long -- rest that neither the red-coated messenger nor the mid-day gun can break, and change of air far beyond that which any home-bound steamer can give me.

A salient characteristic of humankind is our quest for truth. When we are free from necessary care and labour, we long to see, hear, and learn, and we regard knowledge of hidden and marvellous matters as essential to a happy life.

Like the German philosopher, I believed that the outside world was a personal creation of mine, and that, by an effort of the will, I was able to wipe out unpleasant events, as if with an india rubber.

[Gonzalo] Pizarro could not discern, that under this modest exterior lay a moral power, stronger than his own steel-clad battalions, which, operating silently on public opinion ... was even now undermining his strength, like a subterraneous channel eating away the foundations of some stately edifice, that stands secure in its pride of place!

There is something in the possession of superior strength most dangerous, in a moral view, to its possessor. Brought in contact with semi-civilized man, the European, with his endowments and effective force so immeasurably superior, holds him as little higher than the brute, and as born equally for his service.

It was the tale often repeated in the history of Spanish enterprise. A few, more lucky than the rest, stumble on some unexpected prize, and hundreds, attracted by their success, press forward in the same path. But the rich spoil which lay on the surface has been already swept away by the first comers, and those who follow are to win treasure by long-protracted and painful exertion.

Atahuallpa was not one of those to whom, in the language of the Grecian bard, "the Gods are willing to reveal themselves." He had not read the handwriting on the heavens. The small speck, which the clear-sighted eye of his father has discerned on the distant verge of the horizon, though little noticed by Atahuallpa ... had now risen high towards the zenith.

It might have gone hard with the Spaniards, hotly pressed by their resolute enemy so superior in numbers, but for a ludicrous accident reported as happening to one of the cavaliers. This was a fall from his horse, which so astonished the barbarians, who were not prepared for this division of what seemed one and the same being into two that they fell back.

This is all I have to say on the topic of friendship. As for you, I urge you to strive for virtue, without which friendship is impossible, and to recognize that other than virtue, nothing is preferable to friendship.

Many of these beneficent works of the Incas were suffered to go to decay by their Spanish conquerors. In some spots, the waters are still left to flow in their dark, subterraneous channels, whose windings and whose sources have been alike unexplored.

We see that sensation and reason are present in parts of the universe -- for nothing exists that isn't part of the universe. They must exist -- and in a very keen and intense state -- in the same place where the ruling faculty of the universe is found. It follows of necessity that the universe is wise....

One runs like a mouse up the old, slow pendulum of the big clock, time, scurries around and across its huge hands, strays inside through the intricate wheels and balances and springs of the inner mechanism, searching for the cobwebbed mazes of this machine with all its false exits and dangerous blind alleys and steep runways, natural traps and artificial baits, hunting for the true opening and the real prize.

Let us suppose instead that a port or refuge has been prepared for us. If only we could approach it with sails unfurled! But if we are tossed by contrary winds, still it means we're delayed a little. Can something that everyone must undergo [i.e., death] be a cause of misery to one?

You know who the muki is, don't you? The devil of the mines, he takes revenge for the hills that are misused by human greed. He only kills miners.

Mr. Reeder was something over fifty, a long-faced gentleman with sandy-grey hair and a slither of side whiskers that mercifully distracted attention from his large outstanding ears.

The earth! Man's task is to fill this great temple deserted by the gods with idols made in his own image, indescribable, with faces of love and feet of clay.

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts." I prefer to keep my eyes open.

I came out of the war pretty well wrecked. I was in the army four years; was on the front all the time, and I was in the saddle more than half my time; and when I came out of the army I was completely used up—shot all to pieces, crippled up, and found myself and my family entirely dependent. I went into the army worth a million and a half dollars, and came out a beggar.

[Harry St. John Dixon] expressed his "distaste [at] being commanded by a man having no pretensions to gentility -- a negro trader, gambler, -- an ambitious man, careless of the lives of his men so long as preferment be en prospectu. Forrest may be & no doubt is, the best Cav[alry] officer in the West, but I object to a tyrannical, hotheaded vulgarian's commanding me."

Chalmers recalled that Forrest jumped down off his horse, grabbed the frightened [retreating] trooper, threw him to the ground, and then dragged him to the side of the road, where he began whipping him with a piece of brush. Then, turning him toward the gunfire, he said: 'Now, God damn you, you go back there and fight. You might as well get killed there as here, fr if you run away again you'll never get off so easy.'

Pierre paused for a moment on the deserted footpath. He heaved a deep sigh of relief and triumph. So those dastardly republicans had really abandoned Plassans to him. The town belonged to him now; it slept like the stupid thing it was. There it lay, silent and serene, calm and confident; he had only to stretch out his hand to take possession of it.

The Andean peoples, in particular, tend to have a more fatalistic approach to life, a legacy of the servitude, disease, and wars that killed many thousands in the past. These may no longer be a threat today but many still struggle to survive and live a "normal" life.

Several times Silvere had picked up fragments of bone and pieces of skull, they liked to talk about the old cemetery. With their lively imaginations, they would tell each other that their love had shot up like some luxuriant plant in the in the special soil fertilized by dead men's bones.

We haven't lost our way yet. Our determination must have kept us pure. The sun hasn't fallen once and for all; it hasn't stopped falling yet. It goes and comes back.... It heats the world. The people of the earth haven't fallen, either. Here we are. I in the middle, you all around me. I talking, you listening. That is happiness, it seems.

We haven't lost our way yet. Our determination must have kept us pure. The sun hasn't fallen once and for all; it hasn't stopped falling yet. It goes and comes back.... It heats the world. The people of the earth haven't fallen, either. Here we are. I in the middle, you all around me. I talking, you listening. That is happiness, it seems.

Unlike the eastern theater, which until 1864 would be characterized by pretensions at chivalry, the war in the West from its onset was a mean-spirited death duel which, in the upper South, was multiplied in ferocity by its frequent division of brothers, relatives, and neighbors.

[Forrest] was riding from Hernando to Holly Springs with a Hernando attorney named James K Morse when Morse was waylaid, shot, and killed by a planter named Dyson.... When Dyson turned his double-barreled weapon toward [Forrest], bhe looked down the barrel of a pistol already drawn and cocked. The man behind it coolly informed the killer he had best shoot straight, that his was "now a game at which two could play."