#God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done and suffers its bad-

[ace-no-isha]

i use the word god very often for someone who doesn’t believe in a merciful god lmao

[islamicquotesandreminders]

Narrated Abū Masʿūd al-al-Anṣārī: The Prophet ﷺ said,

"If one recites the last two verses of Sūrah al-Baqarah at night, it is sufficient for him (for that night)."

[Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5040]

ءَامَنَ ٱلرَّسُولُ بِمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْهِ مِن رَّبِّهِۦ وَٱلْمُؤْمِنُونَ ۚ كُلٌّ ءَامَنَ بِٱللَّهِ وَمَلَـٰٓئِكَتِهِۦ وَكُتُبِهِۦ وَرُسُلِهِۦ لَا نُفَرِّقُ بَيْنَ أَحَدٍ مِّن رُّسُلِهِۦ ۚ وَقَالُوا۟ سَمِعْنَا وَأَطَعْنَا ۖ غُفْرَانَكَ رَبَّنَا وَإِلَيْكَ ٱلْمَصِيرُ

[Āmana rasūlu bimā unzila ilayhi min rabbihi wal-mu’minūn Kullun āmana bil-lahi wamalāikatihi wakutubihi warusulihi lā nufarriqu bayna aḥadin-min rusulihi Waqālū samiʿ'nā wa-aṭaʿnā ghuf'rānaka rabbanā wa-ilayka l-maṣīr]

The Messenger believes in what has been sent down to him from his Lord, as do the faithful. They all believe in God, His angels, His scriptures, and His messengers. ‘We make no distinction between any of His messengers,’ they say, ‘We hear and obey. Grant us Your forgiveness, our Lord. To You we all return!’

لَا يُكَلِّفُ ٱللَّهُ نَفْسًا إِلَّا وُسْعَهَا ۚ لَهَا مَا كَسَبَتْ وَعَلَيْهَا مَا ٱكْتَسَبَتْ ۗ رَبَّنَا لَا تُؤَاخِذْنَآ إِن نَّسِينَآ أَوْ أَخْطَأْنَا ۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تَحْمِلْ عَلَيْنَآ إِصْرًا كَمَا حَمَلْتَهُۥ عَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِنَا ۚ رَبَّنَا وَلَا تُحَمِّلْنَا مَا لَا طَاقَةَ لَنَا بِهِۦ ۖ وَٱعْفُ عَنَّا وَٱغْفِرْ لَنَا وَٱرْحَمْنَآ ۚ أَنتَ مَوْلَىٰنَا فَٱنصُرْنَا عَلَى ٱلْقَوْمِ ٱلْكَـٰفِرِينَ

[Lā yukalliful-lahu nafsan illā wusʿahā Lahā mā kasabat waʿalayhā mā ik'tasabat Rabbanā lā tuākhiḏhnā in-nasīnā aw akhṭanā Rabbanā walā taḥmil ʿalaynā iṣran kamā ḥamaltahu ʿalā-allaḏhīna min qablinā Rabbanā walā tuḥammilnā mā lā ṭāqata lanā bih wa-uʿfu ʿannā wa-gh'fir lanā wa-rḥamnā Anta mawlānā fa-unṣurnā ʿalā l-qawmi l-kāfirīn]

God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done, and suffers its bad- ‘Lord, do not take us to task if we forget or make mistakes. Lord, do not burden us as You burdened those before us. Lord, do not burden us with more than we have strength to bear. Pardon us, forgive us, and have mercy on us. You are our Protector, so help us against the disbelievers.’

[astermacguffin]

What if the Mark of Cain manifests differently when it's imprisoning God and not the Darkness? If the Darkness makes the Mark bearer go insane with unbridled want for destruction, then what does sealing God make you do?

An obsessive desire for creation? Creation to the point of corruption? (Think of the Shimmer from the film Annihilation. Continuous reproduction to the point of begetting alien, cancer-like entities. A refracted, distorted notion of creation.)

Okay, so canon divergence from The Trap. They successfully seal away Chuck, then Castiel bears the Mark. (Jack won't be back until later episodes, so he's not here yet.)

At first, they think he's fine. Cas says he's not feeling any bloodlust just yet. (He does feel a certain itch under his skin. Not a desire to murder, but a desire to do...something. He doesn't tell this to anyone.)

His grace is getting stronger, almost archangel-like (if not more). It's incredibly helpful for hunts, and Cas is happy to feel his wings healthy again after a long time. Sam is happy for him, but Dean is suspicious of things (especially since he's a previous Mark bearer).

After a while, Cas starts feeling...burdened, almost bloated by grace. (After all, he does have access to an infinite supply of it.) He needs to have an outlet for it.

Cas tells them so and Sam suggests healing people. Dean gives the green light on the condition that he remains invisible and he doesn't go Godstiel on them again.

It's a great outlet, and for the first few weeks they start feeling normal again. But unfortunately, healing stops being enough to relieve Cas of his excess grace anymore. The mass healings start to pile up all across the globe and it catches everyone's attention. Some think it's a blessed miracle, some think it's a sign of the end times. They make him slow down on the healings after that.

Without an outlet, however, Cas starts feeling antsy and pained. They brainstorm on possible alternatives. Cas suggests going to Heaven and saving it from collapse by healing his brethren's wings and creating more angels out of consenting souls in Heaven.

He explains Heaven's endangered and dwindling numbers. Sam agrees that it would hit two birds in one stone: relieve Cas from excess grace and prevent the extinction of angels. Dean doesn't like the idea of more winged dicks so he shoots down the idea. Eileen says that since Cas is the one in pain, he should be the one to decide.

Ultimately, Cas defers to Dean's judgment (as always). Sam protests, arguing that he can't just shoulder that pain. Cas replies: "I've suffered worse, Sam."

Cas doesn't complain about the pain for about a week, so for a while, everyone believes him when he said he can shoulder the pain. One day, Dean finds him outside the bunker, groaning in pain as he bleeds himself out, his grace pouring into the ground and sprouting plants. Dean sees this and is finally convinced to allow Cas to make more angels.

What follows then is a series of escalating events:

While Sam and Eileen are practicing their witchcraft for spell they need in a hunt, Cas suggests to enhance Sam's physical and magical abilities using his grace. "It will make the process faster and safer," he reasons. He agrees, but Dean eyes this suspiciously.

During one of their hunts, they encounter a young and freshly-turned vampire. The boy begs them not to kill him, and Cas gives him a proposal. "Promise not to feed on humans ever again and I shall cure you of your hungers and your pains. Pledge your allegiance to me and you shall never be afraid of yourself ever again." The boy agrees, and before Dean could even protest, Cas slices his palm and feeds the vampire his grace.

They argue about the grace-feeding in the Impala. Dean notices Sam's pointed lack of complaints and figures it out. "You're in on this, aren't you? How long has Cas been doing this? He's going Michael behind our backs and you're letting him?"

Sam argues that it's different because Cas isn't making super monsters; he's making them less "monstrous" (whatever that means). Sam's obsession with his own "purity" is key to understanding him here.

One time, Dean catches Cas in his "garden" ("forest" seems more apt with how lush the greens already are) creating butterflies and bees out of thin air using his grace alone.

Reports of the miraculously healed people suddenly gaining new abilities like increased strength, heightened senses, and prophecy start popping up. Some are experiencing phantom limbs, talking about their sprouting "wings."

Sam is becoming addicted to Cas' grace to the point that he willingly lets himself be hurt in hunts just so Cas can cure him. Dean confronts him about this, but Sam just argues that he's "never felt this pure before." Eileenn shares the same concern as Dean.

Hunts are becoming less frequent the more monsters are being "cleansed" by Cas. The world is becoming disconcertingly quiet.

Cas' "garden" is starting to emit this strange aura. The plants and creatures growing inside it are starting to look more...alien.

One of the original angels goes to Dean and tells him of Heaven's affairs. The Host is stable again, but the angels he created are...not exactly angels. They're graced up and they sustain Heaven, but their true forms are "horrifying and incomprehensible, even to an angel." The angel adds that more than 60% of Earth's creatures have already been touched by Cas' grace.

The final nail in the coffin is when Dean catches Cas in the garden fiddling with his angel blade. It's emitting a strange glow, vibrating a subtle hum and looking as if it's liquid, flowing and distorting here and there.

Dean asks him what he's holding. "Oh, this?" Cas responds. "This is the Last Blade. Last, not in terms of time but in concept, for no other blade shall ever compare to it. The spark of creation. Fiat lux."

Dean's heart sinks. Of course. The First and the Last, Alpha and Omega. "Cas...the Mark, I think i-it's scrambling your brain, man."

"I know," he replies, eyes wet and apologetic. It's a small moment of lucidity amidst weeks and months of...whatever that was.

"Okay, okay, so you're still you, that's... that's good. Okay." Dean doesn't know how to approach this. Give him a fight and he'll know what to do, but this? Watching his best friend, the love of his life, be distorted into something incomprehensible? Yeah, this is totally beyond him.

"You know, I used to hate Chuck," Cas says. "How could the Father of All Creation be this angry, petulant child? But," he continues, "knowing what I know now, it's either regressing into a petty child or being reduced to insanity."

"Cas...what are you talking about, man?"

"No mind should bear this burden, Dean. No matter how infinite they are," he says, voice trembling in exhaustion.

(more below the cut)

He continues. "The awareness of everything is the awareness of nothing at all. Imagine perceiving every possible piece of information about the world all at once. Seeing light in all its forms all at once: ultraviolet, infrared, etc. Sensing all the neutrinos zip by, sensing gravitational waves, sensing the slighest bit of seismic activity."

Dean doesn't know how to respond, so he lets him go on.

"Knowledge can only ever be a slice of the Totality of Truth. Truth is absolute chaos, and Knowledge is the partial ordering of this chaos. One can sanely approach Truth only through organized paritions of Totality. Why do you think Chuck is so obsessed with stories? Stories are linear and finite; they're sensible snippets of the endless sea of possible worlds."

"So, what? Are you trying to—"

"I'm not trying to justify Chuck's actions, Dean," he interrupts. "I just want to contextualize them. Chuck's simplistic and repetitive narratives are what they are: manifestations of a chaotic Totality, gone insane trying to understand itself. Looking for simple things to hold on to."

Cas takes a deep breath. He speaks with a shaky voice. "I'm barely holding myself together, Dean. I can feel the universe beneath my skin."

He doesn't know what possesses him to ask, but he does it anyway. "What are you holding on to?"

Cas smiles at that. "You."

They stare at each other for a while, frozen where they stand. Cas, with unrestrained affection in his face. Dean, struck by shock and indecision. It's Cas who first breaks the silence.

"I think we both know what needs to be done, while I'm still lucid enough." Cas slices his palm and lets his blood drip down the soil. He then thrusts the Last Blade into the ground, lifting it when the soil glows.

Dean stared in awe as the ground erupts and a familiar shape rises from the hollow. "Is that.."

"The Ma'Lak box, yes. I also enhanced it with the Blade to be able to house things as powerful as me."

"Cas, wait, maybe we can think of another way to—"

"Dean," he says, calmly. "You know there's no other way. I wouldn't ask this of you if there was."

In any other scenario, Dean would've kept arguing, but even he knows that they're running out of time. Sam's grace addiction is getting worse and all the creatures touched by Cas' grace are slowly mutating into eldritch horrors. Dean offers a shaky nod. "Okay."

Tension visibly releases from Cas' body. "Thank you, Dean." He opens the box and enters it with ease. "When you lock this, bury me with the garden's graced soil. Once I'm under, my influence over the world should dampen."

Dean gives a wordless nod. For a while, they just stared at each other, Cas lying down and Dean trying to memorize every inch of his face while he can.

Cas presses his hand into Dean's left shoulder where his mark used to dwell. "My untainted grace," he whisper gently. "Some of it is still inside you. That's probably why you're not as affected by me."

Dean wants to say, I'll always be affected by you, but he holds himself back.

He takes his hand back, a bloody handprint now on Dean's jacket. "I love you, Dean," he says, breathless.

"Cas..."

"I probably would've built up to that if we had more time but," he makes a surprised laugh, "I am, as you would say, already 'losing my marbles', so."

The air quotes would've been funny and endearing in any other scenario, but it just makes Dean's vision blur up with tears.

"Thank you for everything, Dean. I know we've done nothing but repeatedly hurt each other these past few years, but I don't want to spend a deathless eternity with that as my memory of you. I forgive you, even for the things you haven't forgiven yourself for yet. And I'm sorry for everything, especially for ending things like this."

He should probably wipe away his tears to clear his vision, but Dean can do nothing but stare at Cas in awe, in fear, in grief, in reverence. They're both fully crying now.

"Goodbye, Dean."

"Wait, Cas."

Cas looks at him, waiting.

"Can you...can you say it again?"

He doesn't need to clarify what 'it' means. They both know.

With one last mournful smile, Cas says: "I love you, Dean."

And with that, Dean finally gathers all the strength he needs to shut the lid and lock the box. He stares at it for a while, unblinking. He forgot to ask, Can you hear my prayers down there? But it's too late now to ask.

The box automatically lowers itself into the hole it arose from. Now all that's left to do is to cover it again with soil.

Dean doesn't bother with a shovel. He gently buries the box with his hands deep in the soil, some of it getting trapped under his nails. He continues the mindless task, whispering a tireless series of I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I hope you're okay I'm sorry, over and over between his quiet sobs. Cas is quiet inside the box. No screaming or crying. Dean doesn't know if that's better or worse.

When the final clump of soil is pressed into the mound, he suddenly feels it: a visceral shift that echoes throughout the world. The alien glimmer of the garden dims, and the world corrects its axis. Dean screams his agony into the air.

That's how Sam finds him: sprawled over a mound of soil, crying his heart out. Dean doesn't need to say anything: he knows what happened. He pulls his brother off the ground and brings him inside the bunker.

For the first two weeks, Dean cycles through drinking and passing out in various places in the bunker. If he's not wearing the jacket, he's holding it with close to him. Sam gives him a considerable space to grieve while he monitors the world grace problem with Eileen. The grace mutations have significantly dropped since then and everyone's going back to normal.

Unfortunately, that means monsters are getting hungry again. Sam doesn't want to leave his brother alone after going nonverbal with grief and dysfunctional due to alcohol. Eileen assures him that she can handle hunts on their own and that the hunter network that they're building will lessen the workload.

Sam's attempts to sober Dean up finally work, mostly due to the latter having very little strength to protest. Dean remains sober an entire day for the first time in weeks, and all he can think about is: I haven't prayed to Cas in a while. The longing might have reached him, but never a coherent prayer.

The first time he goes out of the bunker in a while, he heads straight to Cas' garden. Sam's glad that he's finally going out because "the sun is good for you" or something, but he's really only here for Cas. He kneels in front of the burial mound (where a patch of an unknown species of flowers is already growing).

The first prayer he says to him in a while is: I love you, Cas. I should've said it while you were still here. Not saying it out loud and just strongly thinking about the words somehow bolsters him to get the words through.

He's crying again, and he knows he's losing coherency. In his mind, he's explaining about his hangups and his regrets and his continuous denial of his own joy, but one constant remains: he's beaming all his love and affection into this prayer.

He's halfway through explaining all the traits that he finds endearing in Cas when suddenly, he feels it like a snap. If the glimmer dimmed when he buried Cas, now it's as if it was never there in the first place. With an unsettling amount of certainty, Dean just knows that Cas is gone. For real, this time.

"C-cas...?" It's the first thing he's said in a while and it sounds rough in his long unused voice.

"CAS! CAS!!! " He's now screaming, ripping away the flowerbed with his bare hands and scratching the soil away. Tears are obstructing his vision, but he has no time to wipe them away. He needs to make sure that is really gone. His hands are bleeding and he doesn't give a damn.

Eventually, Sam comes running towards him. "Dean! Dean, stop!"

He tries to hold his brother back, but Dean just keeps on clawing away soil. "Sammy, Sammy he's gone, he's not there anymore, Sammy I have to see, please, let me see Cas again, I need—" he breaks into sobs again, and like a puppet with its strings cut off, he slumps into Sam.

"Dean, it's okay, it's okay..." he says softly to his shaking brother.

Eventually, when Dean calms down, he looks at the carnage he's done and starts sobbing again. The flowers, his last evidence of Cas being here, are all destroyed. Now Cas truly is gone.

. . .

When Cas first heard Dean's confession prayer, he was overcome with joy. When he realized what that means, however, his stomach suddenly sinks.

He hears before he sees the Empty arrive, slithering like black goo.

"Wow, were you excited enough for eternal slumber that you wanted a preview?" The Shadow teases in Meg's voice.

At first, he was dreading the Empty, but now that he thinks of it, it's actually the perfect prison for him: a vast, endless nothingness for him to fill with his creations.

And if Jack wasn't in Heaven, that only means that he's in the Empty, and he can't wait to see his son again. Even when blinded by the madness of the universe, he can never forget the joy of being a father.

"Yes," he replies, "I'm actually glad you're here now."

. . .

Somewhere around the globe, Billie drops Jack back.

"Don't worry, kid. You'l reunite with your father very soon."

(to be continued)

[nikkywrites]

Fool, King of Sea (Ocean's Heart Side Story)

Summary: Amphitrite has never seen a divine fool enough face constant rejection for a domain they do not seem to like. Poseidon is, though, the greatest fool she's ever met. And Calypso is a great friend, when she's not being irritating.

*****

One thing that is of short supply in the ocean is good fun.

It can be made, of course, games built around redirecting ships to wrong ports, seeing who can sneak unaided by divinity into captain's quarters, who can race from Crete to Corinth the quickest. Games that are not made for one.

Calypso is good fun when she wants to play, is a challenge Amphitrite loves to play with. They toss their wins back and forth, banter in barbs they only laugh at. Calypso is a great companion, when she is around.

But there are times when she is not.

Alone, Amphitrite gets bored all too quickly, aimlessly searching through the water. She'll rest with her creatures some days, care for them like the pets they all are, but some days she wants excitement and no one is around to deliver.

Then comes something rarer than excitement -- a divine looking to be king.

It is obvious at a glance that this man does not belong. He is tall with thin hips and too much rage boiling in his bones. He must be some sort of new, thinking he can demand ocean to let him rule. It chooses who it will.

Watching this godling try to force himself upon her home is amusing. It remains cold, rejecting and rejecting him. What a fool, to keep trying.

He slinks away eventually, face pinched and muscles coiled tight. There's a rage boiling in his blood, rage the water rejected without hesitation. Amphitrite laughs at his retreat. It is little wonder her domain does not want him. He is entirely too hot for the cold waters. He will boil her home to steam or it will shatter him.

Ah. Well, it was nice while it lasted. Divines did not handle rejection. He would not face the humiliation again, however amusing it would have been to watch. She feels Calypso's call below, from the deep that is more home to her than Amphitrite, the deep that even she finds too chilling. She watches the point of shore the young god had been standing on and turns to go find Calypso. The call is purposefully untraced and it is a call to find her before she rises to air.

The young god's defilement of her home slips from her mind.

-----

Calypso can look awfully disappointed when she wishes to, can arrange her features in a way that niggles even at her. There is something about the arch of her brow and the curve of her frown and the angle of her eyes that stabs at Amphitrite in a way it shouldn't. It is a look of too much divinity towards something that cannot bear it, but Amphitrite can bear Calypso's divinity just fine. It is a trick.

"What?" she asks eventually, a bite to her words that would make a mortal faint.

Calypso turns her gaze elsewhere, to the seaweed curled up beside them, curled above in a little bubble as the water outside churns them away somewhere else. She stares at the weaving. "Nothing," she says in a too-friendly, too-simple tone.

Amphitrite narrows her eyes. Calypso has her ways of haggling for everything she wishes, from whoever she wishes it from. She recalls the moment she'd learned how Calypso had earned her tentacle-swarmed form. Calypso has never hungered for something she did not get and that nettles at her.

It was not fair.

"Don't play your games with me," Amphitrite warns. "I do not hold patience for them today."

Calypso lifts a cool shoulder. The move is infuriating. "Alright."

The silence burns.

Nothing should be burning under the water, in the deep cold of the sea. There is not allowed any warmth. Certainly not heat.

Amphitrite's glare burns hotter. "You are playing," she says.

Calypso's gaze slides over. Her body language is all relaxation and distance. She is at ease but there is something in her expression, something churning in her mind. "How so?"

That was the question. Then, the answer comes.

"You are trying to nettle me," she says, feeling the answer is right but not knowing why. What reason could there be for Calypso to want her angry?

"Maybe you shouldn't be so easily nettled, then."

Amphitrite's lip curls at the accusation. "What ill is in you today?" she asks. "You're being sour."

Calypso seems to consider the words, rubbing her lips together, She shrugs. "I am not sure." Her eyes flick over nothing. "A passing mood, I think. I want to stir trouble but it's too dreary a day for mortals to be out."

She snorts delicately. "Right. Warning, next time. I warn you."

Calypso's smile looks empty. There is nothing wrong with its shape but it looks false. "Sure. Apologies for wounding your ego."

"As if."

The smile shifts, looks more real, more like a smile that belongs on Calypso's face. "You may barb me back," she says, "if that would ease the sting of your pride."

Remaining bits of Amphitrite's anger fall away. She laughs and Calypso joins in.

"Shall we travel for a mortal?" Amphitrite offers. She is all too aware of these moods of Calypso's, times where she is reaching for something that does not quite exist. She had murmured the word chaos once, describing it.

With all the things she represents, all she is and the price of it -- Amphitrite does not think it worth it. There is an emptiness to Calypso sometimes, like the bottomless abyss that leads to the Underworld, that only knows to soundlessly call. That wrongness. It must be her price, for being the face of too many things.

In her rare moments of softness, Amphitrite worries over how it will cause her trouble one day.

"No, this is fine."

Fine. Because nothing can please her now.

It's her curse. The burden of being all the ocean is.

Amphitrite is grateful that the burden is not hers. The deep is enough for her, the cold and the creatures. She could not imagine more.

The seaweed begins to part. They both gain a sense of being in a different section of ocean, placed anew by a combination of both their powers ordered to drift them away.

Amphitrite looks over at Calypso. Her eyes are terrifying, sometimes. They look as if they can see through all. Laying secrets to the sun.

"You should take a mortal," she suggests. "I know how highly you think of them, but having one is quite fun."

Calypso's eyes churn. She gazes out at the water. "Mortals bear much misfortune by our hands," she says. "I see no reason one needs to bear the misfortune of me."

Amphitrite sighs. "Ready, then?" One day, she would convince Calypso to get a mortal. She didn't understand Calypso's protection over them. She spoke for them when opportunity drifted by, but when she wears her other shape, she swallows them like a fish. No remorse. No guilt. No regret. How can she advocate for them so and have their blood dripping in her soul?

It was not right. Many things weren't with her. It was why she was so fun.

"Am I ever not?"

Amphitrite grins. "Go, then."

They race, power folded under their skin, to find the place they had started at.

-----

The god fool returns.

Amphitrite does not seek his appearance, but the backsplash of his untethered divinity beating against the water reaches her. She comes not from the boredom, this time, but the fun she knows will be there.

The god -- Poseidon, the ocean hisses at her as she travels, one of Cronus' rebelling children -- is just as entertaining as she remembers.

He thrusts his sad excuse of divinity over top the water, steps his foot into the splash of shore, growls his place like it is something he can demand. "I am Poseidon," he says, putting too much force in each syllable, "god of the sea."

Amphitrite's laugh is a soft thing her domain swallows. How foolish.

"I will," he speaks with bared teeth like a roaring beast, "be king of you."

Her laugh bursts. The waves splash with it.

Poseidon -- the fool king -- pulls his head back like he's insulted and a tantruming child. "I am son of Cronus and Rhea," he tells her, unknowing she is there. "You will obey my will."

Amphitrite rises. "I think it will not," she informs him, lips pulled in an effortless grin. To him, it probably appears smug and demeaning. It's not her fault he's made it so easy to humiliate him. "The ocean listens not to those it does not care to. You're best finding a domain somewhere else, little god."

He glares at her. It should be some degree of terrifying, since he aided in the capture and downfall of the Titans, of Cronus, but he is unclaimed and she is in her home.

His glare is about as scary as a baby jellyfish.

"I will be king of the sea," he says.

She sighs. "We have many monarchs already. What need is there for you to be another?" Her eyes rake over him, judging. "This is not where you belong. Go tie yourself somewhere you fit."

His lips lift into a sneer. "I will take this for my domain whatever I must do."

Amphitrite lifts her brows and starts to sink under. "Your lost time, little god." She goes back to her depths. What impudence in that one. The world would not bend to his wiles just because he ended an era of tyranny. He would have to come across a place to store his divinity somewhere else. The ocean would not bend to him. Others have tried.

None succeeded. Becoming patron of the sea is as easy as being accepted by it. If you are not, you will never be.

Simple as that.

-----

"Fool," she scoffs at a whale, running her hand over its flesh. "Why must all new gods think themselves kings of things already claimed? There are plenty of other things they could tie their divinity to."

The whale echoes a call. Amphitrite rubs it soothingly.

"I know." She flicks her gaze to where the fool had been. "Impudence. May the Primordials never let his name be known."

Her hand flexes.

"It is undeserved."

-----

Poseidon is apparently stubborn, alongside his foolishness. Perhaps when this doesn't pan out, he will be god of screeching fools. It suits him much better than the sea and was unclaimed, waiting for him.

He's also screaming for her.

She crests with impatience, shooting him a look packed with all the cold of her domain. He has the sense (not a complete fool then) to fumble some of his confidence. "I told you the ocean would not be yours," she says, "and yet you returned."

"It must be mine," he replies. His eyes dart to the sky, something uneasy flashing across his face. "There is no choice."

She scoffs. "Hardly. There are a thousand unclaimed things you can leer your power over with hardly any struggle at all."

"I will take the sea or have nothing."

Amphitrite tips her chin up. "Enjoy the emptiness then, little god. Try not to let chaos swallow you. She loves the unclaimed."

"I am not unclaimed," he frowns at her. "I choose the ocean."

"Yet it has not chosen you. Take the rejection and find something else."

His lips part. His teeth are flat and unsuited for the blood of ocean living. "I will be patron of the sea no matter what it takes."

"Find a way for it to take you, then. Be a fool. It's amusing."

He strikes at her with divinity her ocean diverts for her. It has little patience for this imposter and his greed, is fed up with his demands. "I am no fool."

"You're demanding gifts like a petulant child." She looks down her nose at him, haughtily lifts her chin to look elsewhere. "I thought you fought in the war."

His chin flies up, features hardening. "I did."

Her lips curve up. "So where is your power? Tell me, great one, what domain is yours?"

His face flushes. She thinks that if she was on land, he'd tackle her. He's apparently not fool enough to dive in the water for her. Unfortunate. It would have been a fun sight. "What is your domain?" he redirects.

"I am Amphitrite," she tells him. Defeat causes his eyes to darken. He recognizes the name. "I am goddess of the deep and the creatures that dwell there."

"A sea patron," he clarifies, lip thrusted out.

One corner of her lip rises without consent. "Yes."

He wrinkles his nose at her reply, staring petulantly at the sand under his bare feet. He drags the ball of his foot against the sand. "So you mock me," he grumbles. "I am just searching for what you have."

Amphitrite laughs. "I belong to the sea," she says, waves lapping against the deep gills slashed on her throat, curling over her collarbones. She looks like her creatures, like a thing of the ocean. It is of no question that she belongs. It is of every question that he does. "You do not. It is as simple as that."

"That will change."

"And I will enjoy your attempt," she promises.

-----

Calypso frowns at her. "You are encouraging him," she accuses.

"What?" Amphitrite lifts her brows and doesn't let her movement to sit beside Calypso lag with the shock. She settles on the sea floor easily, a jellyfish coming to drift by her shoulder. She wraps one of its stinging tendrils around her finger. "I am doing no such thing."

"You are toying with him like a mortal." Calypso continues on unfettered. Little is capable of doing that, if anything is. Amphitrite has not seen anything that is. "Like you're planning on taking him."

Amphitrite shoots a cold look at the other goddess. What accusations. "It is harmless fun."

"He is a god with power yet unknown. It is not wise to taunt what may yet be stronger than you."

"He is a fool," Amphitrite waves her hand. It will not matter. He is determined to take the sea and he will not. He does not fit and does not have the making to force himself to. He seems bound to be a sea god and she thinks he is foolish enough to try until time's end. He may be a strong god, but unclaimed, she will always be more powerful. Such is how divinity works.

Calypso expels a short breath out her nose. "As are you."

"When are you ever wise?" she bites out, cutting the words into blades with her teeth. "You lurk in parts of the sea not yours. You claim to love the sailors you eat. What wisdom is that?"

"Lack of wisdom does not make me a fool," she replies, unbothered by Amphitrite's harshness. "And I am sea patron just as you are. There is no place not fitting me."

"I am queen of the deep." It is hers by her divinity.

Calypso flicks her gaze over. Her face is composed, unflushed, and she looks bored by the conversation. “You never go that deep. No one does. It borders the land of the dead. Do not try to lay your claim over things you do not want.” Her eyes slide away and her mouth purses with a slight twist. Anger? Disgust? Annoyance? “And where I dwell goes deeper than the deep. It is the abyss and you are not goddess of that.”

“It’s the principle of it.”

Calypso laughs. “As if you care for principle. We are both gods of something already claimed. Let details flutter where they must. They are not worth bickering for.”

Amphitrite clicks her tongue. Her sharp fingers dig into her flesh. “Yet bicker you do.”

“You are the one trying to claim what is not yours.”

Amphitrite’s face pinches. “You are irritating, today.” She pushes up, gliding away. “I do not wish to be in your presence.”

She feels Calypso lay back. “As you wish,” she says. “Do think before you flirt with the god. He is trouble.”

Amphitrite snorts as she calls a stream to carry her away. She was not flirting with the fool. She was toying with him. Laughing at his idiocy. In what domain was that flirting?

She was not looking for a husband. She was content with how things were. And even if she wasn’t — she doesn’t wish to wed a fool.

That would be foolish of her.

-----

“Amphitrite,” he calls her by name. She has felt his presence at shore for hours, but did not rise to tease him. Calypso’s words turn in her mind.

She was not looking to court this god. But did it appear that way? Despite the accusation, Calypso was clever. She had sharp eyes.

She would not speak untruths like that, but her honesty can grate. Who was she, to tell Amphitrite what her claim was? Did their domain blessing her with a second form fill her head over capacity? Amphitrite could make her own choices. She did not need a goddess, friend or not, telling her what her intentions were.

She did not need others telling her what she was.

She crests over the waves with her blood pounding hot in her veins. It makes her heart glow, a ruddy red that pierces through her translucent skin, pulsing with the beat of her heart. “Fool,” she spits out.

Poseidon lifts his brows. Something like concern passes over his face. It vanishes just as fast. “I require assistance,” he says. It looks like the words are difficult to say. They should be.

She barks a laugh. He flinches at the sound, like she’d flung a spear of divinity at his head. She throws her head back. She pulls in a breath with a grin that stretches her cheeks. “How does your pride taste?” she asks.

She’s being cruel, she knows, but Calypso thinks she was flirting. She thinks that there was enjoyment here. She wants to control Amphitrite? To tell her the reason she is doing things?

Let her see that she’s wrong. Let her see how her pride tastes when she takes it in her teeth and swallows it whole. Let her realize that sharp eyes and a clever head did not make her all-knowing.

The fool widens his stance, squares his shoulders in a vain attempt to look powerful. His divinity is but a babe in his chest, young and fluttering. “What?”

“You’re eating your pride.” She tilts her head. “Not all of it, apparently, but some. I asked how it tasted.”

“You—” he stabs a finger at her face. “You are rude.”

She chuckles, subdued. “And? What reason is there to be kind?” She rises to her feet and steps closer to the god, the ocean still thinly under her feet, tugging at her ankles. She tilts her head and looks up at him. “You are not anything to fear, little god. Not as you are now.” She steps closer.

The water bids her return. She ignores it. She is not flirting. She is not making an enemy, she is making a point.

Let Calypso see this.

“Anyways, you called me here. It is a blessing that I answered. Are you willing to let rudeness send me back without getting what you were hoping for, whatever it is?”

“No.” His hand makes to reach for her but freezes. His fingers twitch. He lowers his arm. “I— forgive me,” he grits, jaw tight with tension. Is he angry with her? Good.

She hums, not denying or accepting the apology. “What did you call me for?”

“Assistance.”

Amphitrite scoffs. “Of course. You have already said. What assistance do you seek?”

“I,” he takes a breath, “I wish to know how I could become a god of the sea.”

She stares at him, waiting for the joke, the laugh.

It does not come. Right. He is not like Calypso with her sharp humor that is often not humorous at all. He is being serious.

Truly, how did he expect to be a god worth fearing if he has to ask how to gain power?

She sighs, pressing the tips of cold nails to her cheek. “I’ve already told you.” She bends her fingers and presses the bend of them to her cheek. “The ocean must take you in turn. It is not a decision yours alone.”

“How do I… get it to take me, then?”

She considers his question.

“Please it or find a patron to take you instead. It will work as well as the domain taking you itself.”

His eyes spark and his hand lifts again.

“No.” She steps back in the surf. The water rushes in around her. “It takes much strength to take another god and farm their divinity. I have no reason to take that burden for you. Find another.”

“You are the only one I have met,” he explains, an undercurrent chopping his words too close together.

One corner of her lip pulls to the side. “Meet another, then. I will not do your dirty work for you.”

His eyes flash up at the sky as a boom rattles through the air. “I do not have time for that,” he tells her gently, eyes flicking between gray clouds and rust-green eyes.

She looks at the sky and shrugs. A storm. Why does that make him flinch? “That is not my bother.”

She turns on her heel. The ocean welcomes her back, tugging her close. It splashes Poseidon’s feet when he takes two strides after her. His fingers brush her shoulder. “What price would it take?”

Amphitrite rolls her shoulder out of his reach. “Pardon?”

“For you to take me.” She turns to look at him. “What price would you accept?”

She purses her lips. “We would have to wed,” she warns. “We would bound unlike any other.”

His breath shakes. The set of his brow stiffens. “What would it take?” he repeats.

Amphitrite taps her fingers against her mouth. He is desperate enough for this? To bind himself to her for the rest of eternity? “It will not be able to be undone,” she says. “And I do not see you with anything worth paying that price.”

He looks at her, beseeching. “There is no time.”

“So you have said.” What a broken record he was. No time, he must be a sea patron. On and on. Why did she think him entertaining?

Because he humiliated himself and seemed blind to it? It was amusing to watch, at first, before he dredged her in, trying to make a prisoner of a settled goddess. For her to take him in a way that gives him hold over the sea, her own weakens. She loses while he gains.

What could he have to make that trade — that loss — worth it? She did not like him as a god or a man. She liked her domain and her creatures.

It was not worth it, to humor him and his fear.

He drops to his knees. The damp sand caves under the blow. He lowers his head to her. “Please,” he asks. “I will do whatever you require. Anything you ask. I need to be made king of the sea.”

Amphitrite settles, folding her legs beneath her. The water surges and recedes around her collarbone. She takes in a considering breath. He was a son of Cronus, a brother of Zeus. There were tales that they were building a place for gods and something like that would surely be quite powerful. If she aids in his endeavor to be the sea’s face there, perhaps she will be face, too. It could not hurt to have an ally among a leader god, a— what did Calypso tell her that one time? A throned god? There were to be twelve, she thinks and they were to be honored by mortals as no god has before. “Convince me.” She tilts her head and weighs his every twitch in her mind.

Desperate gods are not all that different from desperate mortals. Not if the god is a fool, which this one has proven to be.

He will sacrifice more than he is comfortable to pay if she makes him squirm enough. He will offer enough that the deal goes in her favor.

Amphitrite has always been good at making others uncomfortable.

-----

Calypso’s divinity is an easy thing to bear, when they are in the deep, where Amphitrite is most powerful. When they are closer to shore, it twinges something in her. It makes itself a burden difficult to shake.

Calypso’s fury is a tame thing. Her acts of wrath are not sunken ships and slain sailors. Those are calculated, are not done on whim, is not something she does out of anger.

The only thing her anger does is temper her words into silver blades. She is most eloquent when she is furious.

“You are a fool to be told,” she says, dismissing greeting. The cold bite in her voice sinks into Amphitrite’s chest. Her eyes — do not look furious. She does not look angry at all. Not like Amphitrite expected when she settled her deal with the Olympian and took back to her water.

She looks sad.

The cold thing Calypso placed in her chest pulses. “What do you mean?” She lifts her chin, trying to look unaffected. She does not want to have this conversation so close to the surface, where Calypso’s divinity slips in through her gills as easily as water.

It is too distracting. Too— too easy to succumb to, especially if it with sadness that Calypso confronts her and not anger.

“You struck a deal with the Olympian.” Her eyes drift lower, focused on the joint of her collarbone, the little divot where Calypso’s divinity always rests. “It was not a wise deal to strike.”

Amphitrite waves off the words with a scoff. “However do you mean? I know how to bargain things in my favor.”

Calypso purses her lips out. Her eyes lift. They are sadder, now, and Amphitrite glares to keep them from pulling her in. Calypso’s reasoning was always wise but not always wisest. There were other perspectives that occasionally offered wiser things. This was one of those times. Calypso did not know the deal she struck. How could she? Amphitrite shielded both of their words from sinking in the water and Calypso was not near enough to wriggle around it. “Do you.”

She does not say it like a question.

“Yes,” she affirms anyways, her eyes reshaping into a frosty glare.

Calypso’s brow lifts. “Right.” Her eyes sink towards the ocean floor.

Amphitrite propels herself back. She speaks with a lifted lip. “Do not patronize me,” she warns. “I know what I’ve done.”

Their eyes reconnect. Calypso’s gaze is like an anchor, dragging her down. “I doubt that,” she whispers. “I really do.”

“You don’t know,” Amphitrite says, a steep edge to her words. She doesn’t know. She can’t. But that gaze, that sadness — she clearly thinks she knows something. But what?

“For your sake, I hope I don’t.” She bows her head and does nothing as Amphitrite pushes herself forwards and sinks back to her domain. The water pulses with Calypso’s sorrow. It coats Amphitrite’s teeth until the cold of the deep freezes it out and even then, it lingers.

-----

“You are a fool to be told.”

“You struck a deal with the Olympian.”

“It was not a wise deal to strike.”

Calypso’s words have bad habit of festering in Amphitrite’s mind. She tries to brush them off, to leave them to float at the surface, but they sink right alongside her, anchored with steel to her throat. It is a chained collar of worry.

“Do you.”

“I doubt that.”

Patronization that is actually worry. Amphitrite has never known Calypso to needlessly worry.

The words she speaks are always anchored with truth. Weight. Her words never float because there is reason behind each syllable.

Her nails dig into her palms, seeping the water in divinity that will only be hers alone for precious little time. Was Calypso right to be concerned?

An eel skims over her shoulder, curling around to brush against her arm. Amphitrite strokes it with the hand not bloodied in divinity. “What do you think?” she asks. She lifts her other palm and stares at the dull gold. “Was it a mistake?”

The eel swims away.

Amphitrite’s ankle twitches. “What help,” she says. She closes her fingers over her palms, shoulder jolting with the pressure.

What help indeed. What mistake did Calypso see in the deal she made? What flaw was she being blind to?

The dark curls around her. The deep embraces her in its chill and its emptiness. No matter how poor a deal she made, it will still be here whenever she needs it. Her domain will not disappear because she’s abandoning it. It will not abandon her in equal turn.

That is not what it wishes to do.

It chose Amphitrite as a queen and it has little choice but to respect her decisions. If she wishes to deal herself to an Olympian, to bend herself in the way that bends her domain — then it has little option but to obey. Their queen has commanded.

It may be her last order.

-----

"Little king," Amphitrite greets, tilting her chin.

Poseidon’s eyes glint. He looks pleased in a way that worries her, now. Before, she had thought it was just satisfaction at getting what he had spent sun-turns cajoling for.

Had he played her? Had she stepped into his trap? Was he wise enough to set one?

Was she foolish enough to fall for it?

The concern must be showing on her face, because Poseidon’s mouth twists into a grin. Easy and proud, like a king’s.

She was making him king.

He was getting everything he’d asked for. What was he sacrificing to her, to even the field? A few promises a wise man could eventually wriggle his way out from? Some words that could be torn apart?

Words unsworn on the Styx?

Her chin dips as she swallows. Her eyes do not leave her future spouse. The companion she’s going to swear her future and her divinity to.

Calypso had her reason to worry, did she not?

No. Yes.

Poseidon may not be the fool she thought. That much is becoming true. But she is no less wise. The deal may be skewed, but it is not one-sided. It is not unfair.

Amphitrite would never swear herself to anything that could be turned upon her. She does not make a habit of underestimating an enemy enough that she bares her belly to them, that she leaves herself entirely at their mercy.

Poseidon thought her a fool, and struck his bargain on that option. Amphitrite thought him a fool, and struck a deal that could work even if he turned out to be wise.

She does not nest all of her creatures in the same section of sea.

-----

It is not painful.

It feels like it should be. Ripping one’s divinity from their blood should be an excruciating thing. But it is painless.

Her divinity slips from her body like her blood had earlier, when she cut her palm in her heightened emotional state.

It is simple, in other words. So very simple.

Her creatures lurk around them both in the ceremony, netted above them like an elaborate trap. As if either of them could decide to switch their mind now.

Deals have been made. Divinity should not turn back on their blatant word.

“Careful with your words, little god,” she warns, tilting her head as she examines him. He is nice looking, she supposes, though she doesn’t think him nice enough to warrant wedding him. But there are worse looking things she could tie herself to.

As if that was consolation, but it was nice. Her heirs, at least, would have chances to become more.

He lifts his chin at her before tucking it back into place. He is taller, technically, though Amphitrite keeps her feet off the floor so their eyes are level. The sea feels far more frigid than usual.

Is it her domain, mourning what she used to be? Is it mourning her choice to make this god it so obviously rejected its king?

Is it her almost-wedded, already controlling what is all around him?

No. Her domain would not grant him his gifts until it was due.

The vows, too, feel as if they should stick in her throat or come out bubbling in electrified acid. But they, too, are easy. They slip out like the fine silk donning them both, silks dyed matching shades of blue.

The color suits her well. It offsets her hair. It does not suit him. It is not ill-suiting, but it does not suit him as well as the color of the domain he’s to control should. The color should, when worn, appear as if it is the only color that would do him justice. It should be the only thing that fits the divinity humming under his skin.

On him, it is just a color.

A nice color and nothing more.

It was not what it should be. He was a false king. His divinity was not made to churn the tides and her domain was not made to crash under his order. She was not made to be bound like this and he was not made to be bound to her.

After, when her divinity is raw in her chest, glowing heart pulsing weakly behind glass ribs, she takes his hand. “I hope you find this worth it,” she says, looking at him through her lashes.

He squeezes her hand and pulls his back. “Of course it was,” he replies.

She wonders if he can feel the strings wrapped around his joints. If he can feel the pull over him she has knotted in his chest. He made her swear to him the rights of her divinity, the capability of making ocean obey his command.

She made him swear his devotion to her will.

Can he feel that? Does he know the depth of that vow? That they were more than words and that as her divinity is bound to him, his is bound to her similarly?

It was, as Calypso said, an unfair deal. But it was unfair for them both. Painful like stabs and broken bone. Like horse and cow. Weak comparability.

They were both losers. That was unquestionable.

It was silly of Calypso, though, to think that Amphitrite did not know what she was doing.

She was no stranger to making deals.

-----

“So it is done.” Calypso is lying on the floor, observing the sharp points of nails she isn’t bothering to blunt. She doesn’t like to bother with shedding all the features of the predator she is, especially right after she’s taken a ship to sate her appetite.

Amphitrite never bothers to look mortal. It is not the form that is natural, like it is (more or less) for most of the divine. She is queen of the sea and she looks the part. She is of the sea and one could tell at a glance. “Yes,” she replies, digging up sand with her fingers.

Hers are sharper, technically, as Calypso’s aren’t really nails. They’re more akin to the suckers that line her arms when she is Kraken, just lengthened and enlarged to fit the rough anatomy of human fingers. If she gets them in something, there is no getting them out.

They are dangerous in a different way.

“Have the effects settled yet?” Calypso lifts her chin and the movement allows Amphitrite to see the thick bob of a swallow. As if she was uncertain. Concerned.

Amphitrite thought they were done with that. The deal is done. Calypso does not know better.

“What effects?” she asks, though her bones throb with the fragility of her lessened divinity. She’s been weak, since she wed the fool king, but it is strengthening slowly. She will be back to normal. It may take some decades to be back completely, but that is nothing to her.

Calypso’s breath bubbles up. “Of gifting away your divinity.” She tilts her head and slides her gaze over. “How fares your hold on your domain?”

“It is fine,” Amphitrite defends instantly. She pauses. Is it? Usually, she is approached and surrounded by the wildlife she rules over but that has been absent. It is an effect of her weak divinity. When that is back, so will they.

The sailor goddess hums, noncommittal. “I would be wary of each irregularity.”

“There has been none.”

Calypso’s eyes roam the empty water around them. It looks casual enough, but this is Calypso. She is making a show of looking, turning her head when there is no need. “Right,” she says. “Still. Do not say I did not try to warn you of the danger you enrolled for.”

“It was not dangerous.”

That, Calypso does not answer.

-----

Poseidon is building them a castle. He is insisting upon it. “What kind of rulers would we be,” he says, his hands clasped around her arms too tightly, “if we did not have a throne?”

Amphitrite pries her way out of his grip. “No rulers at all,” she replies. She looks at the construction, at the rising architecture of gems and coral. It is a beautiful thing, already, not even half built, but she is beginning to be aware of the dangers Calypso spoke of.

Her divinity is tied to her husband and he is, in turn, binding it to this castle. To the throne that will be hers. He has not admitted as such, but her divinity hums in the desire, the attempt. She would point it out, would fight, but there is little point to. She cannot undo what is done. She will have to live with her vow and attempt to find some other way out.

“It is beautiful,” she tells him, because he wants to hear it and it will do no harm to be on his good side.

He beams, watching the construction with pride. “Is it not?”

No, her domain whispers in her ear, monotone and sad at once. It does not have emotion like the living, but she can feel its mourning all the same. When it had accepted her as a patron, it was not for this. It is not.

Her domain sympathizes, in the only way it can. It does not offer help. It could, she believes, shatter their deal if it wished, but. The ocean takes after its namesake. Oceanus does not care for what happens in his home and body and neither does the ocean. They are, in fact, one in the same.

Amphitrite holds her eyes shut a moment. “You can go to Olympus,” she tells him.

His head whips over, a fight brimming on his tongue.

“That construction is more important for you to oversee. I can handle this.”

He squints.

She laughs, tilting her head mischievously. “Do you not trust me, husband dear?”

His mouth parts and he bites the words back with a click. “No,” he says. But, all the same, he turns to join his brothers in the making of a place for gods.

She smiles at his retreat. It looks like silver.

The new husband is so hungry for recognition, he’ll want to spend his days on the throne that matters. There was no glory in being a sea king, if you were searching for masses of mortal worship. The ocean would not provide that.

So she had the mercy of knowing he would not be a constant fixture at her side. She could pretend everything was sparkling, in his absence. That her throne was hers alone.

Despite the horror it took to get it — she’s liking the idea of a palace. Of a throne. Of the comfort of knowing her place in mortal’s mind is secure. She can lounge, now, and still be remembered just the same.

Tension leaks from her shoulders.

She thinks she could learn to like this. She did, after all, gain more than she gave.

What was a little divinity, in the end, for a palace and memory steadfast?

-----

Calypso is… displeased is the kind way to put it but neither of them are kind. She is appalled in a wrathful, furious way. That still feels too kind. Calypso feels more Kraken than goddess.

“Pardon?” she asks, sharp teeth snapping around the word.

“You heard me,” Amphitrite says, leaning back against a wall of her new palace, rubies studded around her in a bloody halo. “Do not feign deafness.”

Calypso laughs. There’s a wildness in the gesture, a feral sort of energy to it that raises Amphitrite’s guard. “I must be going so,” she says. “Because surely I did not hear you right.”

“You did,” Amphitrite confirms.

Calypso looks at her like. Like she’d just admitted to relinquish her divinity for a mortal child. Like the very idea is too wild even for them. “What ill poisoned your mind?” she asks. Her arms gesture around to the glimmering castle. “This was not worth the price. It is a thing. You could have done this yourself if you wished.”

Amphitrite watches the outburst languidly. She has never seen Calypso so active. Even when they are racing and she is enjoying herself, there is a relaxed sort of grace to her movements, a backing of calm that permeates through anything else. Even when she is worked up, there is still sense about her. Amphitrite cannot find any now. “You wouldn’t understand. Not with your mind pried shut.”

“He fooled you.”

“He did no such thing. I am aware of the deal I made.”

Calypso scoffs. “Then you are the foolish one. You may not understand the gravity yet, but this choice will grow to haunt you.”

“Sure it will.” Amphitrite looks down her nose. “I fail, though, for the record, to see how this,” she wiggles her fingers outward, gesturing to the palace, “could ever be something I’d regret.”

Calypso’s mouth parts. She bites her words back with a tense jaw. “I suppose we will just see then,” she says, voice back to its typical distanced tone.

Amphitrite nods. “We will.”

Calypso nods back. She does not look pleased, still and that is not entirely a surprise. She is so rarely pleased, when things do not go the way she thinks is best. But she is not entirely displeased, either, which is an accomplishment alone, even if a miniscule one. She eyes the walls of coral and gems, mouth twisting down as she takes in the opulence of it.

It is about the reaction Amphitrite expected. Calypso’s tastes are simple and this is anything except. But that was fine. The palace was not for Calypso nor would she reside there. So it did not matter if she liked it. It was to Amphitrite’s taste and it was to be home.

A place easy to pin. There were perks to having a place to settle and Amphitrite fully intends to take advantage of them. Having mortals on hand was one. She’d always wanted to keep one long term. Her chance for that had come.

Calypso’s eyes drift back to Amphitrite. There is something in her gaze that tries to tug at Amphitrite’s divinity. It has weight that Amphitrite has never felt, not when she is this deep, in the heart of her domain. She swallows it down.

“So we will,” Calypso repeats.

Amphitrite knows she is right. This castle is to be a kind of prison for them both, her and her new husband. There was no worry in that. Calypso did not know details and she was assuming the worst. It was a sweet thought. Her fault for not believing in Amphitrite’s cruelness, however. She knew how to deal herself sweetness from a bitter fool.

Still, to be a good sport, she nods.

Time will prove one of them wrong.

*****

This is still all drippingmoon's fault. Hope you liked what I created.

Tags: @caffeinewitchcraft @super-writer-gal @drippingmoon @blindthewind @notwritinganyflufftoday @mel-writes-with-her-dragons

[learning-islam-together]

Alhumdulillah, today is the 20th day of sˤawm or siyam (fasting)] in the USA, April 21st of 2022.

RAMADAN REFLECTION SERIES 2022

ALLAH WANTS US TO CHANGE OUR CONDITIONS

SURAH AL~RA’AD (chapter 13) AYAT 11 :~ “Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves”

This is an important verse which indicates that Allah Azawa Jal, in His perfect justice and wisdom does not change the condition of the people from good to bad or from bad to good, from ease to hardship or from hardship to ease, unless they change their condition themselves. As practicing Muslims we understand that we are created with free will which comes with accountability.

The objective of Allah’s ‎(عَزَّ وَجَلَّ) infinite wisdom behind this is to test us if we are worthy of His ‎(عَزَّ وَجَلَّ) magnificent lofty heavens that He’s ‎(عَزَّ وَجَلَّ) prepared for us scrutinizing every minute detail for our eternal pleasure therein. To enable this purpose of our creation, we are tested wisely according to our strength, inner and outer by blessing us with the free will to change our conditions for the better or worse.

Allah ‎(عَزَّ وَجَلَّ) explains to us in suraah 67 (Mulk), ayaat 2:~ “He who created Death and Life, that He may try which of you is best in deed” and our Eminently Gracious Lord assures us in suraah 2 (Baqarah), 286:~ “God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done, and suffers its bad.”

Respected sisters and brothers, this Ramadan would be a good time to make even more positive changes what is within us to get us in Paradise, in sha Allah. May Allah Ta’ala help us all to accomplish our ultimate destination ~ ameen ya Ghafoor ar~Raheem.

[jokikudistrict]

Enter MACBETH | Hideo + Yata | Chapter 3 | Talent Tour

The most expected thing would likely be for Hideo to perform a scene from one of his films. But though he’d considered it, ultimately it hadn’t seemed like the best idea. For one thing, most of the movies he’s been in hadn’t really had the kind of scenes that could be played out in short by one or two people. A lot of horror lost its true impact outside its proper context, without the necessary build-up and atmosphere.

Aside from that, though, he’d also felt that most of the usable options weren’t appropriate for the setting. It didn’t seem right to stage a scene featuring torture or murder or monologues about being trapped considering the circumstances they were all in. Fortunately, Yata had helped him figure out a good alternative, and so…

Hideo waits with them behind the fountain in the park, just out of sight as the audience arrives, fidgeting anxiously with his prop weapon. And once it seems like everyone who’s coming is gathered, he takes a deep breath and steps out.

Or rather, a tall man wearing armor (well, costume armor, but the way he wears it carries the illusion) strides into view, sword drawn and at the ready, a wide, wild smile on his face, the confidence of an animal that finds itself cornered by what it thinks are lesser predators.

“Why should I play the Roman fool, and die on mine own sword?” Amused incredulity saturates the lines, and yet there’s something, about the forcefulness of it, perhaps, or the tension in the way he holds his sword, that gives the impression of some level of desperation. “Whiles I see lives, the gashes do better upon them!” Hideo’s English is impeccable, and his voice is strong, projecting wonderfully, not sounding like his own at all.

Yatagarasu strides in immediately after. Today they would be a God of Theatre as well. They too were dressed in the proper regalia, and looked rather convincing… despite the big happy mask still obscuring their features. (How else would they know it was them aiding the Horror Star?) This had been quite exciting. Acting was far more strenuous than their talent, in a physical sense. Luckily, their enthusiasm for the task substituted their lack of experience. 

“Turn, hellhound, turn!” they barked. Their English wasn’t as polished as their scene partner’s, their accent exceptionally heavy, but their volume nearly matched, making for a somewhat convincing portrayal.

Hideo does not break character, and it is Macbeth who goes still at the command, at the voice of his much feared former friend.

“Of all men else I have avoided thee,” He says before he turns, the bravado of a moment ago dulled, frustrated. When he does turn it’s sudden and violent, expression a cold warning, “But get thee back. My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already.” The threat is obvious, but so is the regret, the sorrowful almost-plea. They were not always enemies. This Macbeth will not lay down and die, but nor is he eager to carry more guilt than he already does.

Yata, no, Macduff regarded their enemy with a slow tilt of their head. “I have no words.” the infliction was just as frigid, tone sharp as their blade. (Speaking of, it was time to raise it!) They pointed the prop in Hideo’s direction, stepping closer. “My voice is in my sword!”

A easy, loose languidness came with their continuing approach. Every inch of their act had been choreographed to a tee which no doubt explained their confidence and lack of a cane. However, judging by their movement, a cool saunter, Yata seemed more prepared to dance than spar. This wasn’t a burdened man out to avenge his family and countrymen from a delusioned megalomaniac. It was more of a... friend(?) reciting lines and having too fun while doing it. They were called plays for a reason, right?

“Thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out!”

Their fake swords clash, Hideo swinging his with an air of violent resignation so convincing that it’s almost a shock the sound of metal on metal doesn’t ring out into the air. Of course these aren’t real blades, but the fight choreography, while simple and well rehearsed, is (perhaps surprisingly) quite engaging. Hideo clearly has experience with stage-fighting, enough that the battle between Macbeth and Macduff is tense and fierce to watch, though anyone with any real knowledge of swordplay would likely notice how perfectly timed and scripted each strike was, that the swords are intentionally aiming to hit each other rather than their wielders.

They fight, and as they do Macbeth seems to gain and lose confidence by turns, with every blow, every ‘near miss’, until he laughs, a high and bitter sound, stepping close to cross their blades and say in a strained taunting tone, “Thou losest labour! As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air with thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.” He pushes them back, a haughty, triumphant action that leaves him half-open for a moment, as if defying them to keep attacking. “Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests, I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born.”

Oh boy, this was the really fun part. Yata remained in character despite their internal hindrance. Hideo or Macbeth or whatever was so intense! But, of course he was, being his talent and all. The AMSRtist relied on the soft pattern created by the faux weapons. The duo struck there, here, here, and there again, according to their ears. They managed to spit their next line with pure malice and mocking, “Despair thy charm, and let the angel whom thou still hast served tell thee Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped!”

The words seem to have an immediate effect, Macbeth stepping back as if stunned, eyes wide and then, settling into a kind of betrayal. He raises his sword as if to strike- or to throw it down, though he does neither, tension in every line. “Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,” his voice quakes with what wants to be denial but is instead realization, painful and absolute defeat, his last line of defense stripped of the assurance he relied on. And it dips slightly, an indication that, were he not still projecting for the audience, he would be speaking more softly, a shamed admittance. “For it hath cow'd my better part of man. And be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense, that keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope.” He lowers his sword, angry, but not with Macduff, but rather with the ones who fed him the false prophecy, the twisted words that, in his belief of them, led to all of this. “I'll not fight with thee.”

His quarrel is not with Macduff, not anymore. For this moment, at least, Macbeth has regained a shred of his humanity, seen the full scope of his wickedness in his failure, a failure that was always his true destiny.

Wait. No. They lied. THIS was the fun part! Yatagarasu chest swelled with pride. They crept forward, blade pointed upward until it rested under Macbeth’s chin. “Then yield thee, coward”, Yata crooned back, more teasing than intimidating,“and live to be the show and gaze o' the time! We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, painted on a pole, and underwrit, 'Here may you see the tyrant~’”

Despite the… liberties, Yatagarasu takes with the lines, Hideo doesn’t break character, and it’s still Macbeth who answers, angrily smacking the blade pointed at him aside with his own and hissing through clenched teeth, “I will not yield to kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, and to be baited with the rabble's curse!” In an instant the tyrant is back, the man with so much blood on his hands, the man who sought to be a king. He knows now that he is doomed, but seeing no way out but through he rallies for his last stand. “Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed, being of no woman born, yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff! And cursed be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'”

He throws himself into the duel, a man who has nothing left to lose but pride, and nothing to gain but death by sword. Still he is fierce, in his final moments, this last defeat, as the fight carries them back to the fountain, off the ‘stage’ as it were, and the end of the scene.

And only then does Hideo finally relax, sliding out of the character with a sheepish smile and a quick, anxious bow, “Um, okay that’s it! Sorry if it was… too long or… or too short… or anything…” He reaches up to brush a bit of sweat off his forehead, eager to get out of the fake breastplate and into cooler clothes again, though he turns to murmur something to Yata before they can depart with the crowd.

[bluesmemethings]

Lord of Shadows starters

“like weapons, do you?”

“it must be worth a lot.”

“how do you know that?”

“people keep telling me that but it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“we bear the glories and the burdens of our names, the good and the bad our ancestors have done, through all our lives.”

“people are flawed.”

“I’m a pretty big deal.”

“so you were planning on running away I take it?”

“I don’t belong here.”

“I don’t need you. I don’t need any of you.”

“you might think you want to die, but trust me --- you don’t.”

“that’s basically a squid, right?”

“I’ve never been awarded a fish before.”

“I have won for you a fish, my fair one.”

“I couldn’t keep a fish alive, I kill plants just by looking at them.”

“does anyone want to tell him that goldfish are freshwater fish and can’t survive in the ocean?”

“just tell me that he makes you happy.”

“there’s a disturbing smell of calamari wafting from your general direction.”

“I wouldn’t be worried about him, I might be worried about you.”

“he’s just a kid.”

“you look like a cop.”

“you didn’t really think that would work, did you?”

“it could’ve worked.”

“a strange evening, forsooth.”

“don’t you ‘forsooth’ me.”

“most of us mind being naked in front of strangers.”

“really? you’ve never swum naked in the ocean?”

“are you on the floor?”

“I shouldn’t feel bad, right? He was a terrible person. I had to do it.”

“when people die, our dreams of what they could be die with them. even if ours is the hand that ends them.”

“tell me something fun. you haven’t talked about your love life in ages.”

“there’s never going to be anyone else for me.”

“everyone’s afraid of dying.”

“I realize it sounds ridiculous, but I know what I know.”

“I knew I was going to die, and I wasn’t scared.”

“I trust you to not ever give up.”

“don’t poke me with any of your weird little magic wands.”

“so what happens to me?”

“I mean your house is pretty screwed up with your agoraphobic uncle and your weird brother.”

“no, they’re afraid of you. there’s a difference.”

“have you ever wanted a really up-close look at a gross tentacle?”

“no one ever seems to say yes to that question.”

“who wants to carry the tentacle?”

“you’ve got to be kidding, I’m not jumping off that.”

“my father warned me you people would try to kill me.”

“yeah? and what happens if I splatter myself all over the floor?”

“you drive me wild with your sexy talk.”

“who knows what desires a sea demon might possess?”

“I mock you with my sugar cravings.”

“you have blood on your hand.”

“his hair’s too good. I don’t trust people with hair that good.”

“I’ll crash the wedding. I’ll jump out of the cake, but not in a sexy way. Like, with grenades.”

“he lied to me and I forgave him, and then he lied to me again --- what kind of idiot am I?”

“when someone’s been part of your life for that long, cutting them out is like cutting the roots out from under a plant.”

“if you make a wish on it, it’ll come true.”

“look, just let me beat him up for you. you’ll feel so much better.”

“I could beat him up with my feet. they’re registered as lethal weapons.”

“we’re going to get revenge on (name) by folding his towels?”

“there are ways you could hurt him without touching him.”

“no one can read someone else’s mind or guess their reasons. not even you, (name).”

“your heart feels something for her.”

“you and I, together, it would have been . . . such an easy thing.”

“passion is not easy. nor is the lack of it.”

“not everyone has the training to use every tool, and a weapon you don’t know how to wield is wasted.”

“am I the only one who’s read X-Men and realizes why this is a bad idea?”

“I didn’t realize I was lost. I never felt lost.”

“am I imagining you? I was thinking about you and now here you are.”

“when a decision like that is made by a government, it emboldens those who are already prejudiced to speak their deepest thoughts of hate. they assume they are simply brave enough to say what everyone really thinks.”

“no. that was not a human noise.”

“I need you. you might be surprised to hear that.”

“didn’t you all just catch a murderer?”

“besides, what else are you going to do? run away? and go where?”

“fiction is truth, even if it is not fact.”

“tell me again why you think they’re up to something?”

“it’s strange, the things that blind us.”

“I hate feeling like this. I hate being afraid. it makes me feel weak.”

“the way boys tell each other they love each other is very odd.”

“I’m going to use every bad word I know, and look up some new ones.”

“in sum, you may have to launder some of your own towels.”

“the only things he shares with his father are moodiness and a penchant for burglary.”

“it’s a lot more complicated than that, believe me.”

“is there some reason you don’t want to kiss me?”

“okay, I guess that suggestion was a little out of bounds.”

“not bad. you really put your back into it. I didn’t expect that.”

“an arranged marriage? how mundane and medieval.”

“I just don’t believe in doing something for nothing.”

“you’ve had enough dancing. and drinking.”

“I liked dancing with you.”

“I have never known anyone as human as you.”

“I never thought you’d even look at me, not someone like you.”

“you thought you were kissing me because you were intoxicated, not because you wanted to, or because you actually like me.”

“will you not come back to my arms for more kisses?”

“come and speak your words of challenge to my blade.”

“it’s not our strongest position, but it’s something.”

“(name) ! that’s how you black out and wake up the nest day under a bridge with a tattoo that says ‘I LOVE HELICOPTERS��.“

“sometimes we must deceive the ones we love.”

“I cannot be the instrument that causes him pain.”

“you enter a cave. inside the cave is an egg, lit from within and glowing. you know it beats with your dreams --- not the ones you have during the day, but the ones you half-remember in the morning. it splits open. what emerges?”

“you will be the champion of your people.”

“show no mercy, (name).”

“is that a ferret?”

“all that death and destruction and what will you gain?”

“whatever gods have done this, they are gracious to bring me the one my soul loves, in my last moments.”

“It is true as they say, the pain leaves you as you die.”

“I don’t need help! I don’t need to be saved!”

“I was baptized in blood and fire.”

“you are soft, gentle as angels are gentle.”

“you think angels are gentle. they are anything but.” 

“they bring justice in blood and heavenly fire. they take vengeance with fists of iron.” 

“their glory is such it would burn out your eyes if you looked at them. it is a cold and brutal glory.”

“do you think I am someone who has anything to lose?”

 “I might kill you for being so stupid.”

“weasel face, you’re surprisingly helpful when you want to be.”

“I said I was tired of threatening you, not that I was going to stop doing it.”

“how did you know I would need saving?”

“don’t feel bad, he always falls asleep yelling that.”

“I spent so much time looking for revenge, but finding it didn’t make me happy.”

“I will always choose you, too.”

“I thought I would die this night. I was prepared for it. I was ready.”

“for any blood ritual, willing blood is better than unwilling.”

“I would rather be mad in my way than yours.”

“I would bargain with you, and here are things I would not have you be ignorant of when we do.”

“times change, and so do alliances.”

“that is beyond your power.”

“are they ever useful?”

“you’re staying within these walls and that’s final.”

“I will always come back to you (name).”

“I don’t believe in providence, or an interventionist Heaven.”

“are you quoting shakespeare?”

“speaking of dreams, you have been in mine, and often.”

“we could together slay a frost giant or devour a deer.”

“then what are you doing here, if you are not family?”

“I sense the distance but do not understand its cause.”

“it’s clear none of you have practice in observing the dead.”

“I have done everything to get your attention outside of smacking you in the head with a ouija board.”

“is he in Heaven? I mean, it seems so unlikely.”

“if you steal any of the books from the library, I will know, and you’ll be sorry.”

“in my time children were seen and not heard, and they certainly didn’t complain.”

“it is better that you go, that I might forget your fair, cruel face, and heal my heart.”

“your pretense does not fool me, gnome. my eye will be upon you.”

“more scones, less death.”

“I didn’t know you were that invested in our relationship.”

“so you admit that you’re a control freak?”

“draw me like one of your french girls.”

“the first time we watched Titanic, you cried.”

“we’ll have to figure another way in.”

“who would ever want movies or TV when there are books?”

“so tell them I ran off there and you had to catch me.”

“no trespassers usually means the local kids have made it into a hang out and the whole place is covered with empty candy wrappers and booze bottles.”

“this doesn’t look deserted. not by a long shot.”

“why are you trying to ruin y good time?”

“I get my caffeine the way right-thinking people get it. from chocolate!”

“the only people that know about (name) are people he wants to know.”

“it’s not your fault, (name), she’s just being cruel.”

“Holmes never lets Watson do the talking. Watson is backup.”

“war like this benefit no one.”

“when you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

“not my favorite nickname. I prefer ‘Our Lord and Master’ or maybe ‘Unambiguously the Hottest’.”

“was that before or after you attacked him?”

“is this about my boyfriend? jealous, (name)?”

“love me, because nobody ever has.”

“that’s the problem with revenge --- you wind up destroying the innocent as well as the guilty.”

“is this like when the family dog dies and they say he’s living on a farm now?”

“you don’t know a lot of things about me.”

“sadly, that is his name. hence his life of evil.”

[modestybae]

So according to that hadith everything is destined so what’s the point of doing anything?

There’s adifference between the Islamic concept of destiny and the free will we humanbeings possess – we’re free to choose our actions but God has ultimate controlover the outcome of those actions. According to teachings of Islam, God (Allah in Arabic) has given humansfree will to make choices in their lives but only God has foreknowledge of ourdestiny, and He has total control over it.

Tounderstand the Islamic perspective on destiny and free will, we first need toknow a few basic facts which form the foundation of faith for Muslims:

1- God isthe Only Sustainer of the whole universe and He is the Most Merciful. The Quranbegins with, “Praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds, the Lord of Mercy, theGiver of Mercy…” (1:1-2)

2- God hascreated humans in the finest state. God mentions in the Quran: “We havecertainly created man in the best of stature.” (95:4)

3- Theprimary objective of human life is to worship God. “And I did not create thejinn and mankind except to worship Me.” (Quran, 51:56). It must be noted thatthe Islamic concept of worship encompasses all human endeavors that are pursuedfor just ends, and in accordance with God’s commandments.

4- Our lifeis a test and we’ll be judged for our actions in the hereafter.  God says in the Quran, “Blessed be He inWhose hands is Dominion; and He over all things hath Power; He Who createdDeath and Life, that He may try which of you is best in deed: and He is theExalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving.” (67:1-2).

5- He’s AllWise, and He tests us according to our strength.  The Quran cites: “God does not burden anysoul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done, andsuffers its bad.” (2:286)

6- God isOmniscient and Omnipresent – i.e., he is fully aware of His creation and isalways present.  He is also All Powerful,so whatever He decrees takes place, and whatever He does not will does nothappen. God – there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of[all] existence. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongswhatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Who is it that canintercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is [presently]before them and what will be after them, and they encompass not a thing of Hisknowledge except for what He wills. His Throne extends over the heavens and theearth, and their preservation tires Him not. And He is the Most High, the MostGreat. (2:255)

In otherwords, humans are God’s best creation who have a special purpose in life, i.e.,to worship Him. Islam teaches that in order for us to freely perform in thetest of life, He has given us free will to lead our lives as we wish, but theoutcome of each of our actions is governed by the will of God. If God does notwill for something to take place, it will not happen no matter how hard we try.And if He wills for something to occur, it will transpire no matter what we doto stop it.

One may saythen, “What’s the use of striving in this life if we will get what is alreadydecreed by God?”  This seems logical, butit is, of course, a misconception. In fact, Islam places great emphasis onmaking efforts towards a desired end. In the Quran, God says, “And that thereis not for man except that [good] for which he strives And that his effort isgoing to be seen – Then he will be recompensed for it with the fullestrecompense And that to your Lord is the finality”(53:39-42).

Again,making an effort is part of the power we have in the form of free will – if wewaste it away with a complacent attitude, then we’re being ungrateful for theblessing we have. We must do everything within our power to optimize our lives– at the same time, we must recognize that God’s power and domain are fargreater. He is not thinking only about us, but for the entire humanity, thewhole world, nay, the universe itself! He is the One who, through destiny,balances the lives of humans, animals, plants, while at the same timeharmonizing planets and other celestial bodies.

Many peopleprotest that if God controls everything, why does He allow massacres ofinnocent people, torture, disease and the worst forms of evil to exist? Indeed,Islam does not ascribe evil to God. God allows tragedy and misery to take placein this world for reasons which often escape humans; it could be a test forthose people, a form of purification, or warning for the rest of us torehabilitate our lives. The Ultimate Truth is known only to God and ourconviction is that God is Just and Good, even in those matters where we do notunderstand His Will. The Quran gives us a glimpse of this in the interactionbetween Moses and a learned man in Chapter 18, verses 60 through 82.

In addition,God has ordained accountability for humans on the Day of Judgment, when He willreward us for obeying Him and acting righteously in this world or punish us fortransgressing His limits and living a whimsical existence. This further provesthe importance of free will in our lives. God will judge us according to thechoices we make in this life, not based on the destiny He has decreed for us.The Quran confirms this as: “Whoever does righteousness – it is for his [own]soul; and whoever does evil [does so] against it. And your Lord is not everunjust to [His] servants.” (41:46).  

The Impactof Belief in Divine Destiny:

Truly, whenwe accept the Divine Destiny we lead a more satisfying and productivelife.  When we don’t get what we wish orstrive for, our belief in divine destiny prevents us from becoming despondentor frustrated.  We accept the tragedy asa test from God and submit to His will with patience and dignity.

And if ourplans work successfully or something good happens to us, belief in divinedestiny will prevent us from becoming too boastful or arrogant.  Many successful people feel that their wealthand status are because they are smarter, wiser, stronger, or just moredeserving of success than others.  Butthe truth is, they may have made certain choices, it is God who made thosechoices work out well for them.

God says inthe Quran, “No misfortune can happen, either in the earth or in yourselves,that was not set down in writing before We brought it into being––that is easyfor God–– so you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain.God does not love the conceited, the boastful” (57:22-24). This mindset helpsus live a fulfilling and happy life.  Webecome more thankful and learn to give empowering meanings to our experiences,whether good or bad.

The beliefin divine destiny is also a great source of courage.  When we know that no calamity or harm cantouch us without the will of God and the time of our death is prefixed, we leada righteous and valiant life.  Quranmentions:

“Say, ‘Onlywhat God has decreed will happen to us. He is our Master: let the believers puttheir trust in God.’” (9:51)

“Whereveryou may be, death will overtake you, even if you should be within towers oflofty construction…” (4:78)

Inconclusion, Destiny is one of the articles of faith in Islam. It teachesMuslims to make the most out of their resources and leave the results to God.

Sources: 1. https://www.whyislam.org/on-faith/destiny-and-free-will/

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F6KL8poW8A

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ar4cu5znTI 

Hope this was clarifying enough. Jazak(i) Allah khair 

[focusontheeasternlightning-blog]

How to Read God’s Words to Achieve Good Results? Give You 2 Ways

Hello brothers and sisters of Our Daily Devotionals,

As a Christian, I know that I need to read God’s words every day, for only by reading and practicing God’s words can I obtain the truth and make progress in life. But now, I am confronted with a problem, which is how I should read God’s words to achieve good results.

 Although I kept reading the Bible and God’s words every day in my years of believing in the Lord, after reading God’s words I merely understand some literal meanings and nothing more. I’m very worried about it, so I want to seek for fellowship: How can I read the words of God to have good results? I look forward to receiving your reply as soon as possible. Thank you!

Sincerely yours, Brother Liu Chen

Hello Brother Liu Chen,

Thank God for His love. You said that you don’t have a way to achieve good results from reading God’s words. Now you are anxious to seek. We can see that you are a person who seeks truth with a humble heart. The Lord Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).

As Christians, it is truly very crucial to know the right way to read God’s words to achieve the proper effect. This is an important part concerning whether we can obtain truth and grow in life. We used to be like you: We persisted in practicing spiritual devotions and reading God’s words every day, but only understood a bit of literal meaning of God’s words. Because of this, we were troubled. However, afterward, through God’s words and the fellowship of brothers and sisters, we found the way and knew how to read God’s words to achieve good results.

1: When reading God’s words, we should pay attention to quieting our hearts before God, pondering His will and His requirements of us from His words.

God’s words say: “Wholehearted devotion to the words of God mainly means seeking the truth, seeking God’s intention within His words, focusing on grasping the will of God, and understanding and obtaining more truth from the words of God. When reading His words, Peter was not focused on understanding doctrines and he was even less focused on obtaining theological knowledge; instead, he was focused on understanding the truth and grasping God’s will, and achieving an understanding of His disposition and His loveliness. He also tried to understand the various corrupt states of man from God’s words, and understand the corrupt nature of man and man’s true shortcomings, achieving all aspects of the demands God makes of man in order to satisfy Him. He had so many correct practices within the words of God; this is most in line with God’s will, and it is man’s best cooperation in his experience of the work of God.”

From God’s words we can see that when reading God’s words, we cannot merely understand their literal meaning, but must also seek which aspects of the truth they are related to, what God’s intention is, what God’s requirements for us are, and how we should practice to be in line with His will.

For example, we read these words of the Lord Jesus: “But let your communication be, Yes, yes; No, no: for whatever is more than these comes of evil” (Matthew 5:37). How should we ponder the inner meaning of these words spoken by the Lord Jesus? Why does He require that of us?? In addition, which aspects of the truth are these words related to? We should be quiet before God and ponder carefully. Through contemplating, we can see that these words concern the truth of being an honest person, and of living out the likeness of a real man, and that they are also directed at our corrupt disposition. We have been corrupted by Satan too deeply, so we often put the fame and gain, status, personal benefits above all else. When we do something related to them, in order to maintain our own benefits, we will lie and cheat involuntarily. This is the natural expression of our craftiness and selfishness. For instance, we didn’t spread the gospel recently due to our fleshly things. But when the church leader asked us whether we spread the gospel, we were afraid that if we spoke truthfully, the leader would blame us for shouldering no burdens and being unfaithful to the Lord. So, in order to maintain our face and status in the leader’s heart, we said that we did it. This is not telling the truth, but lying and deceiving. It was out of our cunning nature that we said these words. In other words, we were exhibiting Satan and had no human likeness; we were distrusted by man and despised by God. After pondering these, we had some understanding of these words of the Lord Jesus, knowing that it’s very important to speak honestly and to be an honest person. When encountering something concerning our own personal benefits, we are willing to betray our satanic nature, be an honest person, and live out the likeness of a real man. This is the person loved by God.

Just like that, when reading God’s words, if we frequently practice quieting our heart before Him to ponder His words, we will gradually gain some insight into His intention, His requirements for us, and how we should do. This is the result that can be achieved through quieting our heart before God and pondering His words.

2: When reading God’s words, we should integrate them with our own situation and problems, seek God’s will in everything, and practice in line with His requirements in order to enter into the reality of the truth of His words.

God’s words say: “Is your understanding of truth integrated with your own states? In real life, you first have to think of which truths relate to the people, things, and objects you have encountered; it is among these truths that you can find God’s will and connect what you have encountered with His will.” From God’s words we can see that it is critical that when pondering God’s words, we need to integrate the people, things, and objects that we encounter in our real life to seek the truth. When encountering practical situations and difficulties, we should integrate the problems to seek the relevant truth, pray to God and grasp His will. Then we should check our opinions and viewpoints on people or things as well as our words and behaviors to see whether they are in line with truth and God’s words, how we should deal with God’s requirements, and how to practice properly. Only by practicing to ponder God’s words in this way can we obtain benefits and good results in understanding truth and entering into the reality of God’s words.

For example: Of all God’s requirements for us, there is a most crucial one. God says: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment” (Matthew 22:37–38). If we don’t integrate these words with our practical states at ordinary times, we can’t easily understand the truth within it, and we sometimes even believe that we have been someone who loves the Lord and that everything we do have been in line with God’s will when we have spent a bit for God. It is just like when we worked and spent for God, gave up a lot, and endured some suffering in the midst of the work, we would feel that we were qualified to be elected as church leaders. However, during elections, we were not selected for leadership. After that, our strength to spend for God got smaller and smaller, our motivation for the work was lost, our situation got worse and worse, and our spirits became darker and darker. When we prayed to and turned back to God, we thought of God’s words: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). Pondering God’s words, we reflected upon ourselves: Where did we express any love for the Lord with all our heart? Our working and sacrificing are a transaction with God. We wanted to win fame and fortune and position by the price we had paid, but as a result, when we failed to reach our own aims, we lost our energy. Only through this matter did we see clearly that our sacrifices were all paid for our own benefit. We thought of the story of Peter recorded in the Bible. When the Lord Jesus committed the church to him and asked him to shepherd God’s sheep, Peter neither laid conditions nor made deal with the Lord. Instead, he only sought how to bring brothers and sisters before God, and sought to satisfy God’s heart’s desire in his work. Therefore, he could bear the testimony of loving God to the utmost and submitting even to death in the end. From this, we can see that all those who love and satisfy God with all their hearts and minds spend for God without their own intentions and objectives, and that everything they do is completely for loving and satisfying God. At that time, we understood God’s requirements and got some practical knowledge of loving God with all our hearts and minds. We were willing to repent to God, betray our own intentions and purposes, and practice according to God’s requirements. Later on, when we saw ourselves reveal wrong intentions and desires in our expending for God, we would consciously forsake them and pursue to satisfy God with all our hearts and minds. Therefore, when reading God’s words, we should integrate them with our practical states to ponder God’s words. Only in this way can we easily obtain the work of the Holy Spirit and understand God’s will.

Brother Liu Chen, we hope our fellowship can help you a bit. In reading God’s words, may all of us maintain a heart of seeking the truth, carefully ponder His words, and pay attention to seeking each of God’s words to see what intentions and requirements of God are involved within His words. Meanwhile, we should also integrate our practical states, ponder and seek according to God’s words. As we practice and exercise constantly in this way, we will truly enter into God’s words and gain the truth and life that God bestows upon us. Thank God! All the glory be to God!

Our Daily Devotionals

[comebeforegod]

How to Read God’s Words to Achieve Good Results? Give You 2 Ways

Hello brothers and sisters of Our Daily Devotionals,

As a Christian, I know that I need to read God’s words every day, for only by reading and practicing God’s words can I obtain the truth and make progress in life.

 But now, I am confronted with a problem, which is how I should read God’s words to achieve good results. Although I kept reading the Bible and God’s words every day in my years of believing in the Lord, after reading God’s words I merely understand some literal meanings and nothing more. I’m very worried about it, so I want to seek for fellowship: How can I read the words of God to have good results? I look forward to receiving your reply as soon as possible. Thank you!

Sincerely yours, Brother Liu Chen

Hello Brother Liu Chen,

Thank God for His love. You said that you don’t have a way to achieve good results from reading God’s words. Now you are anxious to seek. We can see that you are a person who seeks truth with a humble heart. The Lord Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).

As Christians, it is truly very crucial to know the right way to read God’s words to achieve the proper effect. This is an important part concerning whether we can obtain truth and grow in life. We used to be like you: We persisted in practicing spiritual devotions and reading God’s words every day, but only understood a bit of literal meaning of God’s words. Because of this, we were troubled. However, afterward, through God’s words and the fellowship of brothers and sisters, we found the way and knew how to read God’s words to achieve good results.

1: When reading God’s words, we should pay attention to quieting our hearts before God, pondering His will and His requirements of us from His words.

God’s words say: “Wholehearted devotion to the words of God mainly means seeking the truth, seeking God’s intention within His words, focusing on grasping the will of God, and understanding and obtaining more truth from the words of God. When reading His words, Peter was not focused on understanding doctrines and he was even less focused on obtaining theological knowledge; instead, he was focused on understanding the truth and grasping God’s will, and achieving an understanding of His disposition and His loveliness. He also tried to understand the various corrupt states of man from God’s words, and understand the corrupt nature of man and man’s true shortcomings, achieving all aspects of the demands God makes of man in order to satisfy Him. He had so many correct practices within the words of God; this is most in line with God’s will, and it is man’s best cooperation in his experience of the work of God.”

From God’s words we can see that when reading God’s words, we cannot merely understand their literal meaning, but must also seek which aspects of the truth they are related to, what God’s intention is, what God’s requirements for us are, and how we should practice to be in line with His will.

For example, we read these words of the Lord Jesus: “But let your communication be, Yes, yes; No, no: for whatever is more than these comes of evil” (Matthew 5:37). How should we ponder the inner meaning of these words spoken by the Lord Jesus? Why does He require that of us?? In addition, which aspects of the truth are these words related to? We should be quiet before God and ponder carefully. Through contemplating, we can see that these words concern the truth of being an honest person, and of living out the likeness of a real man, and that they are also directed at our corrupt disposition. We have been corrupted by Satan too deeply, so we often put the fame and gain, status, personal benefits above all else. When we do something related to them, in order to maintain our own benefits, we will lie and cheat involuntarily. This is the natural expression of our craftiness and selfishness. For instance, we didn’t spread the gospel recently due to our fleshly things. But when the church leader asked us whether we spread the gospel, we were afraid that if we spoke truthfully, the leader would blame us for shouldering no burdens and being unfaithful to the Lord. So, in order to maintain our face and status in the leader’s heart, we said that we did it. This is not telling the truth, but lying and deceiving. It was out of our cunning nature that we said these words. In other words, we were exhibiting Satan and had no human likeness; we were distrusted by man and despised by God. After pondering these, we had some understanding of these words of the Lord Jesus, knowing that it’s very important to speak honestly and to be an honest person. When encountering something concerning our own personal benefits, we are willing to betray our satanic nature, be an honest person, and live out the likeness of a real man. This is the person loved by God.

Just like that, when reading God’s words, if we frequently practice quieting our heart before Him to ponder His words, we will gradually gain some insight into His intention, His requirements for us, and how we should do. This is the result that can be achieved through quieting our heart before God and pondering His words.

2: When reading God’s words, we should integrate them with our own situation and problems, seek God’s will in everything, and practice in line with His requirements in order to enter into the reality of the truth of His words.

God’s words say: “Is your understanding of truth integrated with your own states? In real life, you first have to think of which truths relate to the people, things, and objects you have encountered; it is among these truths that you can find God’s will and connect what you have encountered with His will.” From God’s words we can see that it is critical that when pondering God’s words, we need to integrate the people, things, and objects that we encounter in our real life to seek the truth. When encountering practical situations and difficulties, we should integrate the problems to seek the relevant truth, pray to God and grasp His will. Then we should check our opinions and viewpoints on people or things as well as our words and behaviors to see whether they are in line with truth and God’s words, how we should deal with God’s requirements, and how to practice properly. Only by practicing to ponder God’s words in this way can we obtain benefits and good results in understanding truth and entering into the reality of God’s words.

For example: Of all God’s requirements for us, there is a most crucial one. God says: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment” (Matthew 22:37–38). If we don’t integrate these words with our practical states at ordinary times, we can’t easily understand the truth within it, and we sometimes even believe that we have been someone who loves the Lord and that everything we do have been in line with God’s will when we have spent a bit for God. It is just like when we worked and spent for God, gave up a lot, and endured some suffering in the midst of the work, we would feel that we were qualified to be elected as church leaders. However, during elections, we were not selected for leadership. After that, our strength to spend for God got smaller and smaller, our motivation for the work was lost, our situation got worse and worse, and our spirits became darker and darker. When we prayed to and turned back to God, we thought of God’s words: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). Pondering God’s words, we reflected upon ourselves: Where did we express any love for the Lord with all our heart? Our working and sacrificing are a transaction with God. We wanted to win fame and fortune and position by the price we had paid, but as a result, when we failed to reach our own aims, we lost our energy. Only through this matter did we see clearly that our sacrifices were all paid for our own benefit. We thought of the story of Peter recorded in the Bible. When the Lord Jesus committed the church to him and asked him to shepherd God’s sheep, Peter neither laid conditions nor made deal with the Lord. Instead, he only sought how to bring brothers and sisters before God, and sought to satisfy God’s heart’s desire in his work. Therefore, he could bear the testimony of loving God to the utmost and submitting even to death in the end. From this, we can see that all those who love and satisfy God with all their hearts and minds spend for God without their own intentions and objectives, and that everything they do is completely for loving and satisfying God. At that time, we understood God’s requirements and got some practical knowledge of loving God with all our hearts and minds. We were willing to repent to God, betray our own intentions and purposes, and practice according to God’s requirements. Later on, when we saw ourselves reveal wrong intentions and desires in our expending for God, we would consciously forsake them and pursue to satisfy God with all our hearts and minds. Therefore, when reading God’s words, we should integrate them with our practical states to ponder God’s words. Only in this way can we easily obtain the work of the Holy Spirit and understand God’s will.

Brother Liu Chen, we hope our fellowship can help you a bit. In reading God’s words, may all of us maintain a heart of seeking the truth, carefully ponder His words, and pay attention to seeking each of God’s words to see what intentions and requirements of God are involved within His words. Meanwhile, we should also integrate our practical states, ponder and seek according to God’s words. As we practice and exercise constantly in this way, we will truly enter into God’s words and gain the truth and life that God bestows upon us. Thank God! All the glory be to God!

[seeking-the-mercy-of-allah]

Whatever is in the heavens and in the earth belongs to God and, whether you reveal or conceal your thoughts, God will call you to account for them. He will forgive whoever He will and punish whoever He will: He has power over all things. The Messenger believes in what has been sent down to him from his Lord, as do the faithful. They all believe in God, His angels, His scriptures, and His messengers. ‘We make no distinction between any of His messengers,’ they say, ‘We hear and obey. Grant us Your forgiveness, our Lord. To You we all return!’- God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done, and suffers its bad- ‘ Lord, do not take us to task if we forget or make mistakes. Lord, do not burden us as You burdened those before us. Lord, do not burden us with more than we have strength to bear. Pardon us, forgive us, and have mercy on us. You are our Protector, so help us against the disbelievers.’ #surahbaqarah

[shaxnetwork]

Destiny

Predestination: An Islamic Perspective

To understand the Islamic perspective on destiny and free will, we first need to know a few basic facts which form the foundation of faith for Muslims:

1-      God is the Only Sustainer of the whole universe and He is the Most Merciful. The Quran begins with, “Praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy…” (1:1-2)

2-      God has created humans in the finest state. God mentions in the Quran: “We have certainly created man in the best of stature.” (95:4)

3-      The primary objective of human life is to worship God. “And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship me.” (Quran, 51:56). It must be noted that the Islamic concept of worship encompasses all human endeavours’ that are pursued just ends, and in accordance with God’s commandments.

4-      Our life is a test and we’ll be judged for our actions in the hereafter.  God says in the Quran, “Blessed be He in Whose hands is Dominion; and He over all things hath Power; He Who created Death and Life, that He may try which of you is best in deed: and He is the Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving.” (67:1-2).

5-      He’s All-Wise, and He tests us according to our strength.  The Quran cites: “God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear: each gains whatever good it has done, and suffers its bad.” (2:286)

6-      God is Omniscient and omnipresent – i.e., he is fully aware of His creation and is always present.  He is also All Powerful, so whatever He decrees takes place, and whatever He does not will do not happen. God – there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of [all] existence. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Who is it that can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is [presently] before them and what will be after them, and they encompass not a thing of His knowledge except for what He wills. His Throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and their preservation tires Him not. And He is the Most High, the Most Great. (2:255)

In other words, humans are God’s best creation who have a special purpose in life, i.e., to worship Him. Islam teaches that in order for us to freely perform in the test of life, He has given us free will to lead our lives as we wish, but the outcome of each of our actions is governed by the will of God. If God does not will for something to take place, it will not happen no matter how hard we try. And if He wills for something to occur, it will transpire no matter what we do to stop it.

One may say then, “What’s the use of striving in this life if we will get what is already decreed by God?”  This seems logical, but it is, of course, a misconception. In fact, Islam places great emphasis on making efforts towards the desired end. In the Quran, God says, “And that there is not for man except that [good] for which he strives And that his effort is going to be seen – Then he will be recompensed for it with the fullest recompense And that to your Lord is the finality”(53:39-42).Again, making an effort is part of the power we have in the form of free will – if we waste it away with a complacent attitude, then we’re being ungrateful for the blessing we have. We must do everything within our power to optimise our lives – at the same time; we must recognise that God’s power and domain are far greater. He is not thinking only about us, but for the entire humanity, the whole world, nay, the universe itself! He is the One who, through destiny, balances the lives of humans, animals, plants, while at the same time harmonising planets and other celestial bodies.Many people protest that if God controls everything, why does He allow massacres of innocent people, torture, disease and the worst forms of evil to exist? Indeed, Islam does not ascribe evil to God. God allows tragedy and misery to take place in this world for reasons which often escape humans; it could be a test for those people, a form of purification, or warning for the rest of us to rehabilitate our lives. The Ultimate Truth is known only to God and our conviction is that God is Just and Good, even in those matters where we do not understand His Will. The Quran gives us a glimpse of this in the interaction between Moses and Khidr in Chapter 18, verses 60 through 82.

Story of Musa and Khidr

 Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said:

Once Moses stood up and addressed Bani Israel. He was asked who the most learned man amongst the people was. He said: "I." Allah admonished him as he did not attribute absolute knowledge to Him (Allah). So, Allah said to him: 'Yes, at the junction of the two seas there is a slave of mine who is more learned than you." Moses said: "0 my Lord! How can I meet him?" Allah said: "Take a fish and put it in a large basket and you will find him at the place where you will lose the fish."

Moses took a fish and put it in a basket and proceeded along with his (servant) boy, Yusha Ibn Nun, till they reached the rock where they laid their heads (i.e. lay down). Moses slept, and the fish, moving out of the basket, fell into the sea. It took its way into the sea (straight) as in a tunnel. Allah stopped the flow of water over the fish and it became like an arch (the Prophet Muhammad pointed out this arch with his hands). They travelled the rest of the night, and the next day Moses said to his boy (servant): "Give us our food, for indeed, we have suffered much fatigue in this journey of ours." Moses did not feel tired till he crossed that place which Allah had ordered him to seek after. His boy (servant) said to him: "Do you know that when we were sitting near that rock, I forgot the fish, and none but Satan caused me to forget to tell (you) about it, and it took its course into the sea in an amazing way?" So there was a path for the fish and that astonished them. Moses said: 'That was what we were seeking after."

So both of them retraced their footsteps till they reached the rock. There they saw a man lying covered with a garment.

 Moses greeted him, and he replied saying: "How do people greet each other in your land?" Moses said: "I am Moses."

The man asked: "Moses of Bani Israel?" Moses said: 'Yes, I have come to you so that you may teach me from those things which Allah has taught you."

He said: "0 Moses! I have some of the knowledge of Allah which Allah has taught me and which you do not know, while you have some of the knowledge of Allah which Allah has taught you and which I do not know." Moses asked: "May I follow you?" He said: "But you will not be able to remain patient with me, for how can you be patient about things which you will not be able to understand?" Moses said: 'You will find me if Allah so will, truly patient and I will not disobey you in aught."

So both of them set out walking along the sea-shore. A boat passed by them, and they asked the crew of the boat to take them on board. The crew recognised Al-Khidr, so they took them on board without fare. When they were on board the boat, a sparrow came and stood on the edge of the boat and dipped its beak once or twice into the sea. Al-Khidr said to Moses: "0 Moses! My knowledge and your knowledge have not decreased Allah's knowledge except as much as this sparrow has decreased the water of the sea with its beak." Then suddenly Al-Khidr took an adze and pulled up a plank, and Moses did not notice it till he had pulled up a plank with the adze. Moses said to him: "What have you done? They took us on board charging us nothing, yet you have intentionally made a hole in their boat so as to drown its passengers. Verily, you have done a dreadful thing." Khidr replied: "Did I not tell you that you would not be able to remain patient with me?" Moses replied: "Do not blame me for what I have forgotten, and do not be hard upon me for my fault." So the first excuse of Moses was that he had forgotten.

When they had left the sea, they passed by a boy playing with other boys. Al-Khidr took hold of the boy's head and plucked it with his hand like this. (Sufyan, the sub-narrator gestured with his fingertips as if he were plucking some fruit.) Moses said to him: "Have you killed an innocent person who has not killed any person? You have really done a horrible thing." Al-Khidr said: "Did I not tell you that you could not remain patient with me?" Moses said: "If I ask you about anything after this, don't accompany me. You have received an excuse from me."

Then both of them went on till they came to some people of a village, and they asked its inhabitants for food but they refused to entertain them as guests. Then they saw therein a wall which was just going to collapse and Al Khidr repaired it just by touching it with his hands. (Sufyan, the sub-narrator, gestured with his hands, illustrating how Al-Khidr passed his hands over the wall upwards.) Moses said: "These are the people, whom we have called on, but they neither gave us food, nor entertained us as guests, yet you have repaired their wall. If you had wished, you could have taken wages for it."

Al-Khidr said: "This is the parting between you and me, and I shall tell you the explanation of those things on which you could not remain patient."

 1)The boat belonged to some needy people who made their living from the sea and I damaged it because I knew that coming after them was a king who was seizing every [serviceable] boat by force.

 2)The young boy had parents who were people of faith, and so, fearing he would trouble them through wickedness and disbelief, we wished that their Lord should give them another child– purer and more compassionate– in his place.

3) The wall belonged to two young orphans in the town and there was buried treasure beneath it belonging to them. Their father had been a righteous man, so your Lord intended them to reach maturity and then dig up their treasure as a mercy from your Lord. I did not do [these things] of my own accord: these are the explanations for those things you could not bear with patience.’” (18: 66-82)

 The Prophet added: "We wish that Moses could have remained patient by virtue of whom Allah might have told us more about their story." (Sufyan, the sub-narrator, said that the Prophet said: "May Allah bestow His Mercy on Moses! If he had remained patient, we would have been told further about their case.")'

 In addition, God has ordained accountability for humans on the Day of Judgment, when He will reward us for obeying Him and acting righteously in this world or punish us for transgressing His limits and living a whimsical existence. This further proves the importance of free will in our lives. God will judge us according to the choices we make in this life, not based on the destiny He has decreed for us. The Quran confirms this as: “Whoever does righteousness – it is for his [own] soul; and whoever does evil [does so] against it. And your Lord is not ever unjust to [His] servants.” (41:46).  

The Impact of Belief in Divine Destiny

Truly, when we accept the Divine Destiny we lead a more satisfying and productive life.  When we don’t get what we wish or strive for, our belief in divine destiny prevents us from becoming despondent or frustrated.  We accept the tragedy as a test from God and submit to His will with patience and dignity.

And if our plans work successfully or something good happens to us, belief in divine destiny will prevent us from becoming too boastful or arrogant.  Many successful people feel that their wealth and status are because they are smarter, wiser, stronger, or just more deserving of success than others.  But the truth is, they may have made certain choices, it is God who made those choices work out well for them.

God says in the Quran, “No misfortune can happen, either in the earth or in yourselves, that was not set down in writing before We brought it into being––that is easy for God–– so you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain. God does not love the conceited, the boastful” (57:22-24). This mindset helps us live a fulfilling and happy life.  We become more thankful and learn to give empowering meanings to our experiences, whether good or bad.

The belief in divine destiny is also a great source of courage.  When we know that no calamity or harm can touch us without the will of God and the time of our death is prefixed, we lead a righteous and valiant life.  Quran mentions:

“Say, ‘Only what God has decreed will happen to us. He is our Master: let the believers put their trust in God.’” (9:51)

“Wherever you may be, death will overtake you, even if you should be within towers of lofty construction…” (4:78)

In conclusion, Destiny is one of the articles of faith in Islam. It teaches Muslims to make the most out of their resources and leave the results to God.

[atttitudeofgratitude]

Wednesday, July 12th, 2017

TODAY I CAN: - [x] Daily Word  I BREATHE IN COMFORT AND I EXHALE LOVE. - [x] LOVE ❤️ - [x] Meditate 😌💨 - [x] Journal 📚📖🖊📝 - [x] COLORING!🖍 - [x] Glutes 1 - [x] GLO 🔆 - [x] Happier 2017! - [x] MOVE 🏃🏼‍♀️ MEDITATING — Gratitude!, MY BODY, Who I am, BREATHING 😊💨 🎶🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ - [x] DANCING!👯🎶🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️😍😊 - [x] STRENGTH 💪🏽 - [x] BBG ARMS & ABS! 🏋🏼‍♀️💪🏽 ** I AM STRONG! I HAVE STRONG ABS! Leg not hurting! 🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ - [x] STRETCHING MY BODY BREATHING 😊💨 - [x] YOGA 🤸🏼‍♀️ HEADSTANDS! 4. LEGS UP THE WALL Legs Up the Wall is a full-body balm. It alleviates headaches, calms the mind, relieves low-back pain and soothes swollen, tired legs. The move: Place one hip against your headboard and swing your legs up it. Keep your butt as close to the headboard as possible. Close your eyes and take 5–10 breaths here. - [x] GLUTES - [x] FOAM ROLLING HOUSTON HOME!😇💛✨ EARLY! **** NICK SYMMONDS LIKED ONE OF MY PHOTOS! Email to Lino! GRATITUDE 🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ PRAYERS! 🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ Email!, NIKKI😍❤️, WALKS, Productivity! ** MY LIFE 😍❤️😊💛✨ 🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ MARISSA!😍❤️💛✨ "That stress was there for a reason. To make this feeling!! I'm so extremely happy. I wanted to share this with you because it reestablished my confidence in the universe and flow of things. And I hope it does for you too ❤️" ***** WALKS WITH HOUSTON😇💛✨ LOVE 😍❤️💛✨ TODAY I: - [x] RUN 🏃🏼‍♀️😍❤️😍😍😍 - [x] JOURNEY - [x] Article - [x] INSTAGRAM 1 - [x] Email?! - [x] Finish and upload Health and Fitness! ✔️ - [x] Check answers - [x] PICTURES - [x] Dishes - [x] Instagram 2 ****** WALK WITH HOUSTON 😇💛✨ LOVE😍❤️💛✨ - [x] FOLD LAUNDRY - [x] Tomorrow! - [x] BE GRATEFUL 🙏🏽🙌🏽✝️ - [x] LOVE MYSELF 😍❤ AIR RELAX! - [ ] SLEEP 😴💤 Comfort I BREATHE IN COMFORT AND I EXHALE LOVE. A breathing meditation by Buddhist monk Thich Nhất Hanh shares: Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Engaging in mindful breathing meditation such as this centers me and provides comfort from any perceived fears. If I feel disconnected or overwhelmed by life experiences, I can turn to this mindful practice. I begin by allowing my mind to release thoughts of the past or future. Each inhale and exhale becomes a focal point moving me from outer to inner experience. Mentally speaking today’s affirmation, I bring my awareness to Spirit. It is here that I find the peace of God within. I breathe in comfort and I exhale love. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father ... comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word. —2 Thessalonians 2:16, 17 The Lord is my strength — Psalm 28:7 - [x] Happier 2017! Make Small Gestures of Good Citizenship Bring your old magazines to the gym so other people can read them. Pick up trash that other people have left behind. Offer to give someone directions. When you act in a kind and considerate way, you'll feel happier. - [x] Journey! Carry one another's burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. — Galatians 6:2 Father, you have borne my burden. Help me bear the burdens of others so they can know Your grace. Make sure you get enough sleep every night, and other things start to fall into place. There is no reason not to prioritize your health, no matter how busy you are. Being healthy is a win-win; it gives you more energy, so that you can be more productive, feel great, and have more of everything in life. It’s tempting to believe the lie of this world, that we must fight to be on top. But in the kingdom of God there is always enough for everyone." - @kaitiestoddard You are exactly where you need to be. Trust the universe. The way I see it, you can either struggle against the currents. Or you can embrace the pull of the tides, let go and float with the flow the universe intended. 
Let go of stress. Let go of negativity. Let go of expectations. Breathe in, breathe out and relax to the reassurance that everything happens for a reason 💛 you will be okay ✨ — Sjana "It's good to do uncomfortable things- it's weight training for life" —Anne Lamott 🙌🏻 Life's dark places are opportunities to trust God knows the way. — Sharon Jaynes God turns our pain into purpose, our misery into ministry, and our devastation into anointed messages of hope and restoration.
- @sharonejaynes "As I express my gratitude I become more deeply aware of it. The greater my awareness, the greater my need to express it. What happens here is a spiraling ascent, a process of growth in ever expanded circles around a steady center. Start a SPIRALING ASCENT this #GratiTuesday: "A lot of recent writing on gratitude makes it sound like an insurance policy - as if the reason to feel grateful is to make sure that good things will continue to come our way. That feels spiritually materialistic - true gratitude is a natural response to the miracle of life as we experience it moment to moment, a sense of abundance from the heart that is independent of our desires for the future. Whatever we focus on tends to increase. Even if nothing more or better happens, our eyes are opened to the gift that we're always there..." R.J. RYAN sending you loving light and a reminder to love your body extra today. Yoga makes me love all the weird squish that happens when in unusual poses and love my body for its strength and abilities. 💕✨ — veggiekins Running is about finding your inner peace, and so is a life well lived. — Dean Karnazes No matter how you feel, get up, get dressed, put some music on and get it done!! You got this!! — Kayla Itsines "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Sometimes... life is wonderful and fitness is all about Instagram transformations and feeling amazing inside and out. . ...other times fitness is the only thing you have left.. it's the only thing that's yours ...and yours alone. It's not the number on the scale or the inches lost or gained ...it's 30 selfish minutes of venting frustration and drowning out ... Know your worth 💛 Every day offers us all new opportunities to experience what we love. That's magic. "Allow beauty to shatter you regularly. The loveliest people are the ones who have been burnt and broken and torn at the seams yet still send their open hearts into the world to mend with love again, and again, and again. You must allow yourself to feel your life while you’re in it." — Victoria Frederickson How often do you pause to breathe in the beauty, and capture the moment in the camera of your mind? ✨ There is a growing body of research to support the positive effects of this gratitude practice called "SAVORING.” Savoring is the concept that being mindfully engaged and aware of your feelings during positive events can increase happiness in both the short- and long-term. As one researcher describes it, “It is like swishing the experience around in your mind.” ~ Fred Bryant, PhD What if instead of trying to weigh less we tried to BE more — Dorothy Beal I think sometimes we just need to hear this. We just need someone to be PROUD and say "you go girl... you got this". So incase someone hasn't said this to you this week, here you go 😘 "May the God of peace be with all of you. Amen." — Romans 15:33 Relying on anything other than God to feed our soul will only keep us in an ordinary, common relationship with Him. We’ll have all of His power, strength and wisdom available to us, but we’ll settle for the world’s morsels instead. And unless we choose to feast on God’s promises, we’ll spiritually starve ourselves. Having an uncommon hunger for God is something we have to cultivate. It’s something we can ask Him to give us. Let’s do that today. acceptance can bring you joy Happy Wednesday, awesome humans! Everything will be so good so soon just hang in there & don't worry about it too much the road to finding a treatment that works for you, you’re probably going to fail a treatment (or quite a few treatments!) along the way. That doesn’t mean you’re out of the race. You just have to brush yourself off and keep running. The race we’re in doesn’t have a finish line or a course map. You’re just running toward what you can see — the steps directly in front of you. The rest will reveal itself in time. 🎈🏃‍♀️ projecthappiness_org#WellnessWednesday Tip: Every habit has "ACTIVATION ENERGY" that is required to get started. Harvard happiness expert, Shawn Achor, explains this 20 second spark you need to start: "In physics, activation energy is the initial spark needed to catalyze a reaction. The same energy, both physical and mental, is needed of people to overcome inertia and kickstart a positive habit. There are multiple ways to do this, but the main rule of thumb for happiness habits is: You need to reduce the activation energy you need to do positive habits and increase it to do negative habits. So make new healthy habits 20 seconds easier to start." . "Conquering hills today prepares you for conquering mountains tomorrow." She's spirited, soulful and full of the essence of summer. *** Sunshine flows through her veins, bubbles through her body and pours out over everyone she encounters, washing over the earth like warm waves. Physical progress and visual changes are SLOW. This is one of the reasons I focus so much on the non-physical benefits of exercise, if you get your sweat in and make healthy choices to fuel your body and take care of yourself, you will FEEL good! With consistency the physical changes will follow. 💙👊🏼💦 — Kelsey Wells And may your first love last forever. P.S. YOU are your first love. Take care of yourself. Today, take care of yourself the way you would someone you love... I have a place to live, water, food and freedom. I am grateful. 💛✨🌏 ** ✝️ Commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. — Proverbs 16:3

[vernicle]

Born Free on thr Planate

[ad_1]

A B BARDHAN –"The honeymoon period is over It's only a question of filing divorce papers."   

A BUDDHIST PROVERB –"You can explore the universe looking for somebody who is more worthy of your love and affection than you are yourself, and you will not find that person anywhere."   

A CORNELIUS CELSUS –"Live in rooms full of light. Avoid heavy food. Be moderate in the drinking of wine. Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics. Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water Change surroundings and take long journeys. Strictly avoid frightening ideas. Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements. Listen to music."    

A COUNTRY SAYING –"Your talent is God's gift to you. How you use it is your gift to God."  

A COURSE IN MIRACLES –"There is a place in you where there is perfect peace. There is a place in you where there is nothing impossible."    

A COURSE IN MIRACLES –"You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attests to what you believe. Let us be glad that you will see what you believe and that it has been given to you to change what you believe."     

A COURSE IN MIRADES –"Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is proof of self-deception. It is not fact at all. There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen aright."  

A DYING RAVANA TO RAMA –"Things that are bad for you seduce you easily; you run towards them impatiently But things that are actually good for you fail to attract you; you shun them creatively, finding powerful excuses to justify your procrastination. That is why I was impatient to abduct Sita, but avoided meeting you."    

A FRENCH PROVERB –"Gratitude is the heart's memory."  

A FUNGUS –"A fungal perspective on human purpose: The idea of the individual — and there is no fungal, equivalent — arose during a period of rapid change in human society in the abstract, individualism looked defensible, even appealing. The ideal individual was to be educated and enlightened, someone we'd all like to know. However, as a practical matter, the culture of enlightened individualism reformed itself after a brief period into a cult of personal freedom. Over the next several centuries, unbridled personal freedom and chance distributions of natural resources led to the creation of certain wealthy and isolated colonies of humans. Their prosperity excited envy and the rest of the world did what they could to emulate them. Large populations of humans moved from a very simple experience of the natural world to the expectation of a lifestyle similar to what the exploiters were enjoying. This clamour for plenitude —for meat in daily diets, for manufactured goods, for personal comfort, for leisure activities — put enormous stress on the biosphere."       

A P J ABDUL KALAM –"The country's economy is poised to grow at 7% this year... there will be a new deal for rural India... My government is committed to reining in the rate of inflation as it hurts the poor the most... The government will deal resolutely with any attempts to disturb law and order and deny a life of peace and security to any citizen." 

A P J ABDUL KALAM –"We should go ahead with the civilian nuclear deal with the US."      

A P JABDUL KALAM –"There was a majestic scene of Life Tree Cluster of tall and straight Nag Phali grove... Multi-layered, each flower plant bubbling with life, We approached very close! to the happy plants Astonished to see Nature's wonder... Again the great divine echo enters all around us Flowers blossom, radiate beauty and spread perfume And give honey, On the eve of life Flowers silently fall to the earth, they belong. Oh my creation this is mission of human life You are born, live life of giving  And bond the human life Your mission is the Life Tree. My blessings to you my creation. Oh my human race! Let's sing the song of creation."        

A PARTHASARATHY –"There is only one religion which is the soul of Christianity or Islam; Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever it be. It is that by which you gain the ultimate experience. The experience into which merge all distinctions of caste, colour and creed, all doctrines and dogmas, your body, mind and intellect, time, space and causation, this world and all other imaginary worlds. Any systematic attempt which you undertake to reach that infinite state of being is religious."

A SCHWEITZER –"One truth stands firm. All that happens in the world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, offers world history."   

A TENNYSON –"That each, who seems a separate whole/ Should move his rounds, and fusing all/ The skirts of self again, should fall/ Remerging in the general Soul."  

A TIBETAN SAYING –"Signs from the soul come silently, as silently as the sun enters the world."   

A W PINERO –"Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young."

A YUSUF ALI –"A number of pagan superstitions arose from minds, which, not understanding the hidden secrets of nature, attributed certain phenomena to divine anger and were assailed by superstitious fears which haunted their lives... Superstition is due to ignorance, and is degrading to men and dishonours God."  

A YUSUF ALI –"Be clean and pure... Be faithful in your trusts, learn obedience, and settle your quarrels under the guidance of God's Apostle. Ever keep away From hypocrisy and every kind of falsehood. Then will you be admitted to a glorious fellowship with the highest and noblest in the spiritual world."        

A YUSUF ALI –"In working for peace there may be a certain risk of treachery on the other side. We must take that risk: Because the man of God has God's aid to count upon and the strength of the united body of the righteous." 

A YUSUF ALI –"The Brotherhood of truth is one in all ages. It is narrow men who create sects, Let them not think that the goods Of this world can shield them from evil Or its consequences. God's truth and his messenger can be known to all: for He in His Mercy Has given us faculties and judgment, if we Would but use them. The Message is not, New: all Creation proclaims it High Above all is the Lord of Glory Supreme!"

A YUSUF ALI –"The regulations are again and again coupled with an insistence on two things: the facilities and concessions given; and the spiritual significance of the fast without which it is like an empty shell without a kernel. If we realise this, we shall look upon Ramadan, not as a burden, but as a blessing, and shall be duly grateful to the lead given to us in this matter."

SAYWELL –"Youth is like cordite, quite innocuous in free air hut highly explosive in confinement."   

TERANCE –"You will know the real meaning of love only when you fall in it."

A.A.MILNE –"I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me."

A.BARTLETL GAIMATTI- "There are those who lust for the simple answer of doctrine or decree ...  they are the terrorists of the mind."

A.C. CARLSON –"Good work is never done in cold blood; heat is needed to forge anything. Every great achievement is the story of a flaming heart."    

A.E. BARR- "Whatever the scientists may say, if we take the supernatural out of life, we leave only the natural."

A.J. AYER –"No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine."        

A.P.GOUTHEV –"TO GET PROFIT WITHOUT RISK, EXPERIENCE WITHOUT DANGER, AND REWARD WITHOUT WORK, IS AS IMPOSSIBLE AS IT IS TO LIVE WITHOUT BEING BORN."    

A.YUSUF ALI- "In working for peace their nay be a certain risk of treachery on the other side. We must take that risk of treachery on the other side. We must take that risk: Because the man of God has God's aid to count upon and the strength of the righteous."

AARON MACHADO –"The imaginary friends I had as a kid dropped me because their friends thought I didn't exist."    

ABBIE HOFFMAN –"Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade it is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit."

ABDUL KALAM AZAD –"I am part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality. I am indispensable to this noble edifice and without me this splendid structure of India is incomplete."

ABDUL RAHMAN RAHI –"Shadows:Give up questioning your destiny and hope of eternity, if you can get hold of a few moments, enjoy them... Opening the eyes exposed my dreams to the evil eye; Many surging vernal breasts became scorched wilderness. Take a look around and you see a sizzling fair, Reckon a thought and a lone crow in the void. The days gone by i longed to create stars, I wrack my brains now to give myself a name. All beliefs are like withered greenery on the uplands, All consciousness is like an infuriated serpent. All gods are mine own shadows, All monsters like my animated self. Halls appear to be furnished with the gibberish of monkeys, Comb the forests to robe saints. What kind of steering and whither the shore, The boat is drifting unguided in the dark. 0 danseuse, circle round him disrobed."   

ABDUL-BAHA –"The art of music is divine and effective. It is the food of the soul and spirit. Through the power and charm of music the spirit of man is uplifted."    

ABDUL-BAHA –"The fundamental truth of the Manifestations is peace. This underlies all religion, all justice." 

ABDU'L-BAHA –"Those who have passed on through death, have a sphere of their own. It is not removed from ours; their work, the work of the Kingdom, is ours; but it is sanctified from what we call 'time and place'. Time with us is measured by the sun. When there is no more sunrise, and no more sunset, that kind of time does not exist for man. Those who have ascended have different attributes from those who are still on earth, yet there is no real separation."             

ABDU'L-BAHA –"Were one to observe with an eye that discovers the realities of all things, it would become clear that the greatest relationship that binds the world of being together lies in the range of created things themselves, and that cooperation, mutual aid and reciprocity are essential characteristics in the unified body of the world of being, inasmuch as all created things are closely related, each influenced by the other or derives benefit therefrom, either directly or indirectly."     

ABDU'L-BAHA, -"The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly Until womankind reaches the same degree as man, until she enjoys the same arena of activity extraordinary attainment for humanity will not be realised,  humanity cannot wing its way to heights of real attainment."  

ABDULHAK SINASI –"Do not dismiss the dish saying that it is just, simply food. The blessed thing is an entire civilisation in itself."   

ABDULLAH ANSARI –"Others fear what the morrow may bring. I am afraid of what happened yesterday."        

ABE LEMONS –"The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off."  

ABEL AS SALAM IBNMW –"MASHISH, 0 God, drown me in the essence of the Ocean of Divine Solitude, so that I neither see nor hear nor find nor feel except through it."

ABEL STEVENS- "Politeness is the art of choosing among one's real thoughts."

ABHIMANYU S SIMHARA- "Love is pristine in character and indestructible by nature."

ABIGAIL VAN BURDEN –"The best index of a person's character is he treats people who can't do him ay good, and how he treats people who can't fight back."

ABIGAIL VAN BUREN –"The less you talk, the more you're listened to." 

ABRAHAM COWLEY –"The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again, The plants suck in the earth and are with constant drinking fresh and fair."   

ABRAHAM COWLEY –"The world's scene of change, and to be/ constant in nature were inconstancy."     

ABRAHAM HESCHEL –"Prayer takes the mind out of the narrowness of self-interest, and enables us to see the world in the mirror of the holy."    

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the fruit at length falls into his lap."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedom, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all."      

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."   

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Few can be included to labour exclusively for posterity. Posterity has done nothing for us."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice."   

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life."     

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve."    

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."        

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"No other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labour with cultivated thought as agriculture."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."       

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Study and get ready and someday my chance will come."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"The best way to get a had law repealed is to enforce it strictly."       

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all in their separate and individual capacities." 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite."   

ABRAHAM LINCOLN- "The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"The world has never had a good definition of the world liberty."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."  

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilisation." 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"When I do good, I feel good and when I do badly, I feel bad and that is my religion." 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN –"You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn."   

ABRAHAN LINCOLN-" I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice."

ABRAM URBAN –"In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful."

ABU SA'ID –"The personality absolute, manifest in all creation fine, If thou desire to know of His pervading the universe, the reality and sign, Go! And on the surface of wine observe the bubble, see how the wine is within the bubble and the bubble within the wine."     

ABU SAID IBNABI 'L-KHAYR –"Love that One who, when you shall cease to be, will not Himself cease to be, that you may become one who will never cease to be."         

ABU SULAYMAN AL-DARANI –"When the gnostic's spiritual eye is opened, his bodily eye is shut: They see nothing but Him."             

ABU-AT-ALA-AL-MA 'ARRI –"The world holds two classes of men — intelligent men without religion, and religious menwithout intelligence." 

ABUL KALAM AZAD –"If we lose Hindu-Muslim unit it would be whole humanity's loss... Eleven hundred years of common history have enriched India with our common achievements. Our language, our poetry, our literature, our culture, our art, our dress, manners and customs — everything bears the stamp of our joint endeavours. This joint wealth is the heritage of our common nationality."

ACTS 22:28 –"And the chief captain answered: With a great sum I obtained this freedom. And Paul said: But I was born free."

ADABELLA RADICI –"A flower's appeal is in its contradictions - so delicate in form yet strong In fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect."   

ADAM SMITH –"Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production."    

ADAM SMITH –"The most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country."   

ADAM SMITH –"The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only-capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations." 

ADAM SMITH –"What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?"

ADEL BESTAVROS –"Patience with others is love, patience with self is hope and patience with god is faith."   

ADELINE KNAPP –"I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness."

ADELLE DAVIS –"We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are."  

ADELONA –"Just be who you are. You lack nothing. You connect the heavens to the earth in a most sacred way. Your body is the temple. Your heart is the faces always celebrate the joy that lies within the temple of your heart."

ADIAI E STEVENSON –"Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans."

ADIAI E. STEVENSON –"There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody." 

ADIAI STEVENSON –"We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, committed for our safety to its security and peace, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft."

ADIDI STEVENSON –"Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely."  

ADIIN SINCLAIR –"Everything is possible for the person who believes."         

ADIIN SINCLAIR –"You are the embodiment of the information you choose to accept and act upon."          

ADLAI E STEVENSON –"Is citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled... the beginning and the end."    

ADLAI STEVENSON –"A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who noticed you."

ADLAI STEVENSON –"A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular."

ADLAI STEVENSON- "Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age."

ADMENNE RICH –"Lying is done with words and also with silence."     

ADMIRAL GRACE HOPPER –"If it's a good idea, go ahead. It is much easier to apologies than to get permission."

ADMIRAL HYMAN RICKOVER –"Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience."   

ADOLF HITLER- "What luck for the rulers that man do not think."

ADOLPH HITLER –"The broad mass of a nation … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one."

AESCHYLUS –"Oaths are not surety for a man, but the man for the oaths."

AESCHYLUS –"There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls."   

AESCHYLUS –"There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief."

AESOP –"He that is neither one thing nor the other has no friends."  

AESOP- "Take no sorrow of the things lost which may not be recovered."

AESOP'S PABLES-II –"The Buddha knew and learned the wisdom when he enunciated worldly pleasures. According to him beauty, wealth and fame can lead to endless suffering. By overcoming them, you can steer your life towards love, wisdom and compassion."   

AFDOUS HUXLEY –"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."   

AFRICAN PRAYER (GUINEA) –"Father, 0 mighty Force That Force which is in everything, / Come down between us, fill us, / until we become like Thee, until we become like Thee."   

AFRICAN PROVERB –"However long the night, dawn will break." 

AFRICAN PROVERB –"If you refuse to be made straight "when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry."   

AFRICAN PROVERB –"If you want to know the end, look at the beginning."   

AFRICAN PROVERB –"There is no way out of the desert except through it."        

AGASTYA- "If this world did not exist, we would not exist and there will be no evil."

AGATHA CHRISTIE –"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all 1 still knew quite certainly that to be alive is a grand thing."  

AGATHA CHRISTIE - "It is sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody."

AGATHA CHRISTIE –"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one."   

AGATHA CHRISTIE –"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."

AGATHA CHRISTIE –"Where large sum of money concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody."

AGNES REPPLIER –"Democracy forever teaches us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities."   

AGNES REPPLIER –"There are few  nudities so objectionable as the naked truth."

AGNES REPPLIER –"There is little nudity as objectionable as the naked truth."

AGNESS REPPLIR- "Democracy forever teases is with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements."

AHMAD BIN ISA AL-KHARRAZ –"Do not occupy your precious time except with the most precious of things, and the most precious of human things is the state of being occupied between the past and the future." 

AIKEN DRUM –"A beauty parlor is a place where women curl up and dye."

AINSLIE T EMBREE –"Before his death, Guru Gobind Singh pronounced the end of the line of succession of gurus and declared that henceforth the function of the guru as teacher and final authority for faith and conduct was vested in the community and in the scriptures, the Adi Granth. It came to be known as the Guru Granth Sahib, occupying the same place in Sikh veneration that was given to the living gurus."   

AITAREYA BRAHMANA –"Walking & Well-being There is no happiness for the man who does not travel. Living in the society of men, the best man becomes a sinner. For Indra is the friend of the traveller. Therefore wander."

AITKEN ROSHI –"Renunciation is nor getting rid of the things of the world, but accepting that they pass away."      

AJ CROPLEY –"The creative thinker is flexible and adaptable and prepared to rearrange his thinking."

AJ MUSTE –"There is no way to peace; peace is the way."

AJAHN CHAH –"When your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you."

AKAN PROVERB'(GHANA) –"It is because one antelope will blow the dust from the other's eye that two antelopes walk together."   

AKEEM OLAJUWON –"I've always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best.     

AKHENATON –"As a camel beareth labour, and heat, and hunger, and thirst, through deserts of sand, and fainteth not; so the fortitude of a man shall sustain him through all perils."   

AKHENATON –"The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubtedth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance."

AKSHAYE KHANNA –"Everything you do, teaches you something. Everybody you work with, you get something from him or her and they get something from you... If you don't experience what is not good for you, or what you don't enjoy or hasn't shaped up to your expectations, then it is difficult to make a judgment about your choices for the future."   

AL BATT –"The secret of happiness is to make others believe that they are the cause of it."  

AL CAPONE – "You can get more with a nice word and a gun them you can with a nice word."

AL CAPONE –"You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot further with a smile and a gun."

AL GORE –"I drive a hybrid. And I encourage people to make environmentally conscious choices."     

AL HALLAJ –"I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart, and i said: Who Art Thou? He said: Thou."              

AL JUSTICE –"God is the totality of life and all that exists and our awareness of this totality This concept of God is a superstructure for the huge breadth of awareness, from the grandest to the smallest... As soon as you hem God in, paint a relief, watch Ben Hur, and have Him figured out, you realise He's something more — much more."      

Al McGUIRE –"Winning is over emphasised. The only time it is really important is in surgery and war."  

AL PASINO – "It is easy to fool but it's hard to feel the heart."

AL SHARPTON –"Who defines terrorists f Today's terrorist is tomorrow's friend."    

AL SUHRAWARDI –"Music does not give rise in the heart to anything which is not already there: so he whose inner self is attached to anything else than God is stirred by music to sensual desire, but the one who is inwardly attached to the love of God is moved, by hearing music, to do His will... Common folk listen to music according to nature, and novices listen with desire and awe. Listening to music brings to saints vision of Divine gifts and graces... Finally, there is the listening of the spiritually perfect, to whom, through music, God reveals Himself unveiled."   

AL SUHRAWARDI –"Music does not give rise, m the heart, to anything which is not already there: so he whose inner self is attached to anything else than God is stirred by music to sensual desire, but the one who is inwardly attached to the love of (5od is moved, by hearing music, to do His will..."          

ALAIN RENE LESAGE –"Justice is such a fine thing that we cannot pay too dearly for it."   

ALAN ALDA –"No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness."   

ALAN COHEN –"There is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."            

ALAN GREENSPAN –" In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation."        

ALAN GREENSPAN –"How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?"    

ALAN GREENSPAN –"I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly, clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said."

ALAN JAY LERNER –"All I want is a room Somewhere Far away from the cold night air; With one enormous chair... Oh, wouldn't it belo-ver-ly?"   

ALAN KAY –"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."    

ALAN LAKEIN –"Failing to plan is planning to fail." 

ALAN SHEPARD –"If somebody said before the flight, 'Are you going to get carried away S looking at the Earth from the Moon?" I would have said, "No, no way". But yet when I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried."     

ALAN WATTS –"Happiness is not a result to be attained through action, but a fact to be realized through knowledge. The sphere of action is to express it, not to gain it."

ALAN WATTS –"I have realized that the past and the future are real illusions that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is."  

ALAN WATTS –"Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command."      

ALAN WATTS –"This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realise it is play."      

ALAN WATTS –"We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin."   

ALANBENNETT –"I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control."  

ALBERT BNSTEIN –"The important thing is not to stop questioning."

ALBERT CAMUS –‘It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners."

ALBERT CAMUS- " Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend."

ALBERT CAMUS –"An intellectual is someone whose wind watches itself."

ALBERT CAMUS –"Being happy does not mean everything's perfect, it means you have decided to look beyond the imperfections."

ALBERT CAMUS –"By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more."  

ALBERT CAMUS- "Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question."

ALBERT CAMUS- "Don't wait for judgment, it takes place everyday."

ALBERT CAMUS- "Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend."

ALBERT CAMUS- –"Every achievement is servitude. It derives us to a higher achievement."

ALBERT CAMUS-–"Every achievement is servitude. It derives us to a higher achievement."

ALBERT CAMUS-–"Gazing up at the stars, for the first time, i laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe."     

ALBERT CAMUS-–"In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."    

ALBERT CAMUS-–"It's kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money." 

ALBERT CAMUS –"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."

ALBERT CAMUS-- "There are more things to admire in man than to despise."

ALBERT CAMUS-–"Too many have, dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity."

ALBERT CAMUS-–"We can't do without dominating others  or being served...Even the man on the bottom rung still has his wife, or his child. If he's a bachelor, his dog. The essential thing, in sum, is being able to get angry without the other person being able to answer back."

ALBERT CAMUS-–"We turn towards God only to obtain the impossible."  

ALBERT CAMUS-–"With Us gazing up at the stars, for the first time, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe."

ALBERT CAMUS-–"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."     

ALBERT EINSTEIN-  "The best part of loving is not hoping that a person loves you so much as you do, but in knowing that you love her for more than you can."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature." 

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."  

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"All knowledge should be translated into action."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools." 

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Before God we are all equally wise — and equally foolish."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."  

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by; the individual who can labour in freedom."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Golden opportunity never strikes again ad again some times once in a full life span."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love."       

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."             

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism-how passionately I hate them."  

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so impotent a biological phenomenon as first love."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"I don't know with what weapons world War III will be fought, but world War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

ALBERT EINSTEIN- "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"I KNOW NOY WITH WHAT WEAPONS world War III will be fought, but world War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."

ALBERT EINSTEIN- –"I never think of the future -it comes soon enough."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has , thought about as a child."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"I think one of the causes of bad mental health is that people have been raised on love lyrics."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"I want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"If A is success in life then A equals X+Y+Z. X is work, Y is play and Z is keeping your mouth shut." 

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."            

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."       

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"    

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Imagination is more important than knowledge."    

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." 

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"It is not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken you in creative expression and knowledge."        

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

ALBERT EINSTEIN- "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."    

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."      

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."    

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Only a life lived for others is worth living."     

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person."       

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Out of clutter, find simplicity From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Peace can not be kept by force, it ca only be achieved by understanding."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Problems … can not be solved by the level of thinking that created them."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it my self anymore."     

ALBERT EINSTEIN-- "Some times one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others...for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of  sympathy Many times a day, I realise how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labours of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"The best part of loving is not hoping that she loves you as much as you do but in knowing that you love her far more than you can."

ALBERT EINSTEIN –"The highest destiny of individual is to serve rather than to rule."        

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The important thing is not to stop questioning."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day Never lose a holy curiosity."  

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN- "The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know."  

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious — the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science."    

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."          

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion- based on experience and free of dogma."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The telegraph is a kind of very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is mewing in Los Angeles. Radio operates in exactly the same way, except that there is no cat." 

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The wonderful things you learn in schools and colleges are the work of many generations produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labour... And all this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honour it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it over to your children."  

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-- "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is miracle. The other is as if every thing is." 

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." 

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"To have security against atomic bombs and against the other biological weapons, we have to prevent war. At the same time, so long as war is not prevented, all the governments of the nations have to prepare for war, and if you have to prepare for war, then you are in a state where you cannot abolish war."         

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"True religion is real living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and Pm not sure about the universe."        

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Unless it's mad, passionate, extraordinary love, it's a waste of your time."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"We must be prepared to make the same heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war."      

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made." 

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"Were there is love there are no questions."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world."      

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"when you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"where there is love there are no questions."

ALBERT EINSTEIN-–"You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else."   

ALBERT EINSTEIN--"God is subtle, but he is not malicious."

ALBERT GYORYGI –"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."

ALBERT MAGNUS –"Do there exist many worlds, or is there but a single world? This is one of the most noble and exalted questions in the study of Nature."    

ALBERT PIKE –"True thoughts have duration in themselves. If the thoughts endure, the seed is enduring; if the seed endures, the energy endures; if the energy endures, then will the spirit endure. The spirit is thought; thought is the heart; the heart is the fire the fire is the Elixir."

ALBERT SCHWEITZER –"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person."      

ALBERT SCHWEITZER –"By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep and alive."   

ALBERT SCHWEITZER –"Ethical existence is the highest manifestation of spirituality." 

ALBERT SCHWEITZER –"Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing."   

ALBERT SCHWEITZER –"Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory."  

ALBERT SCHWEITZER –"Higher always be your dream and desire To which you aspire. Higher always, Higher always! Though the cloud our perception bars, Beyond are the infinite stars Higher always."   

ALBERT SCHWEITZER- "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to fore stall. He will end by destroying the earth."

ALBERT SCHWEITZER –"Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will — his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals."            

ALBERT SCHWEITZER –"There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats."

ALBERT SCHWEITZER –"Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace." 

ALBERT SZENT-GYORGI –"Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought."  

ALBERT SZENT-GYORGYI –"Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water."

ALBERT SZENT-GYORGYI NAGYRAPOLT –"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."    

ALBERT SZENT-GYVRGI –"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought."    

AL-BUKHARI –"Treat women well, for they have been created from a rib. The rib is most curved in its upper part, so that if you try to straighten it out, it will break, but if you leave it as it is, it will remain intact."

ALBUS DUMBLEDORE –"After all, to the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."

ALBUS DUMBLEDORE –"Dark and difficult times he ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy."   

ALDO LEOPOLD –"Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm."   

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."       

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead."       

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him."

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."  

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"Happiness is like coke— something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else."

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution — then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise."   

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"Single-mindednessis all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful."   

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception."    

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving."

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"Those great motivators of malice and stupidity: proselytsing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols."         

ALDOUS HUXLEY –"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries."         

ALEKSANDER SOLZHENITSYN –"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power — he's free again."

ALEX P SCHMID –"Terrorism is a strategy based on psychological impact. In most cases, their capability is rather slim."

ALEXANDER CHASE –"A soft refusal is not always taken, but a rude one is immediately believed."

ALEXANDER CHASE –"The most imaginative people are the most credulous, for them everything is possible."   

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL –"Great discoveries and achievements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds."    

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL –"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."    

ALEXANDER HAMILTON –"In all legislative assemblies, the greater the number composing them may be, the fewer will be the men who will in fact direct their proceedings."

ALEXANDER HAMILTON –"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything."

ALEXANDER HUME –"Fareweel fareweel, my native home, thy lanely glens and health-clad mountains! Fareweel thy fields o' storied fame, "Thy leafy sparkling fountains. Nae mair I'll climb the Pentlands steep, Nor wander by the Esk's clear river; I seek a name far o'er the deep — My native land, fareweel for ever!"  

ALEXANDER I. SOLZHENITSYN –"We have to condemn the very idea that some people have the right to repress others."

ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN –"Civilisation is not a burden. It is an opportunity."    

ALEXANDER POPE –"All Nature is but art unknown to thee/ All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;/ All discord, harmony not understood/ all partial evil, universal good." 

ALEXANDER POPE –"All nature is but art, unknown to thee; all chance, direction, which thou canst no see. All discord, harmony not understood; all partial evil, universal good. And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, one truth is clear; whatever is is right."    

ALEXANDER POPE –"At length, corruption, like a general flood, shall deluge all."   

ALEXANDER POPE "Be not the first by whom the new are tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

ALEXANDER POPE -"Blest paper-credit! Last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly."

ALEXANDER POPE –"Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends."     

ALEXANDER POPE –"Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest. The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come."  

ALEXANDER POPE –"Not present good or ill the joy or curse, but future views of better or worse."

ALEXANDER POPE - "That true self-love and social are the same."

ALEXANDER POPE –"There is certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit."

ALEXANDER POPE –"Trade it may help, society extend, But lures the Pirate, ant corrupts the friend: It raises armies in a nation's aid, But bribes a senate, and the land's betrayed."   

ALEXANDER POPE –"Welcome the coming, speed the going guest."

ALEXANDER SMITH –"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition."  

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The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires of the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

As he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing [4] his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Henry, languidly. “You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. The Grosvenor is the only place.”

“I don’t think I will send it anywhere,” he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. “No: I won’t send it anywhere.”

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. “Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”

“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”

Lord Henry stretched his long legs out on the divan and shook with laughter.

“Yes, I knew you would laugh; but it is quite true, all the same.”

“Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I really can’t see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you–well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself an exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and consequently he always looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is a brainless, beautiful thing, who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don’t flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him.”

“You don’t understand me, Harry. Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that [5] seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit quietly and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are,–my fame, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks,–we will all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”

“Dorian Gray? is that his name?” said Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward.

“Yes; that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”

“But why not?”

“Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It seems like surrendering a part of them. You know how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?”

“Not at all,” answered Lord Henry, laying his hand upon his shoulder; “not at all, my dear Basil. You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet,–we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the duke’s,– we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very good at it,–much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me.”

“I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry,” said Basil Hallward, shaking his hand off, and strolling towards the door that led into the garden. “I believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.”

“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,” cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the garden together, and for a time they did not speak.

After a long pause Lord Henry pulled out his watch. “I am afraid I must be going, Basil,” he murmured, “and before I go I insist on your answering a question I put to you some time ago.”

“What is that?” asked Basil Hallward, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.

“You know quite well.”

“I do not, Harry.”

[6] “Well, I will tell you what it is.”

“Please don’t.”

“I must. I want you to explain to me why you won’t exhibit Dorian Gray’s picture. I want the real reason.”

“I told you the real reason.”

“No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself in it. Now, that is childish.”

“Harry,” said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, “every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown with it the secret of my own soul.”

Lord Harry laughed. “And what is that?” he asked.

“I will tell you,” said Hallward; and an expression of perplexity came over his face.

“I am all expectation, Basil,” murmured his companion, looking at him.

“Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry,” answered the young painter; “and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly believe it.”

Lord Henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the grass, and examined it. “I am quite sure I shall understand it,” he replied, gazing intently at the little golden white-feathered disk, “and I can believe anything, provided that it is incredible.”

The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup in the grass, and a long thin dragon-fly floated by on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward’s heart beating, and he wondered what was coming.

“Well, this is incredible,” repeated Hallward, rather bitterly,– “incredible to me at times. I don’t know what it means. The story is simply this. Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon’s. You know we poor painters have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious Academicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned half-way round, and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious instinct of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature. My father destined me for the army. I insisted on [7] going to Oxford. Then he made me enter my name at the Middle Temple. Before I had eaten half a dozen dinners I gave up the Bar, and announced my intention of becoming a painter. I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then–But I don’t know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I knew that if I spoke to Dorian I would become absolutely devoted to him, and that I ought not to speak to him. I grew afraid, and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so: it was cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape.”

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”

“I don’t believe that, Harry. However, whatever was my motive,– and it may have been pride, for I used to be very proud,–I certainly struggled to the door. There, of course, I stumbled against Lady Brandon. ’You are not going to run away so soon, Mr. Hallward?’ she screamed out. You know her shrill horrid voice?”

“Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty,” said Lord Henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers.

“I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to Royalties, and people with Stars and Garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and hooked noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was mad of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so mad, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me so afterwards. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other.”

“And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man? I know she goes in for giving a rapid précis of all her guests. I remember her bringing me up to a most truculent and red-faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in the room, something like ’Sir Humpty Dumpty–you know–Afghan frontier–Russian intrigues: very successful man–wife killed by an elephant–quite inconsolable–wants to marry a beautiful American widow–everybody does nowadays–hates Mr. Gladstone–but very much interested in beetles: ask him what he thinks of Schouvaloff.’ I simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. But poor Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants to know. But what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?”

[8] “Oh, she murmured, ’Charming boy–poor dear mother and I quite inseparable–engaged to be married to the same man–I mean married on the same day–how very silly of me! Quite forget what he does– afraid he–doesn’t do anything–oh, yes, plays the piano–or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?’ We could neither of us help laughing, and we became friends at once.”

“Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one,” said Lord Henry, plucking another daisy.

Hallward buried his face in his hands. “You don’t understand what friendship is, Harry,” he murmured,–"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.”

“How horribly unjust of you!” cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back, and looking up at the little clouds that were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk. “Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their characters, and my enemies for their brains. A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain.”

“I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be merely an acquaintance.”

“My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance.”

“And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?”

“Oh, brothers! I don’t care for brothers. My elder brother won’t die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.”

“Harry!”

“My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that we can’t stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathize with the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices of the upper classes. They feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. When poor Southwark got into the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite magnificent. And yet I don’t suppose that ten per cent of the lower orders live correctly.”

“I don’t agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more, Harry, I don’t believe you do either.”

Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard, and tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tasselled malacca cane. “How English you are, Basil! If one puts forward an idea to a real Englishman,– always a rash thing to do,–he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it one’s self. Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it [9] will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don’t propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better than principles. Tell me more about Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?”

“Every day. I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t see him every day. Of course sometimes it is only for a few minutes. But a few minutes with somebody one worships mean a great deal.”

“But you don’t really worship him?”

“I do.”

“How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your painting,–your art, I should say. Art sounds better, doesn’t it?”

“He is all my art to me now. I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the history of the world. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinoüs was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, model from him. Of course I have done all that. He has stood as Paris in dainty armor, and as Adonis with huntsman’s cloak and polished boar- spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms, he has sat on the prow of Adrian’s barge, looking into the green, turbid Nile. He has leaned over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water’s silent silver the wonder of his own beauty. But he is much more to me than that. I won’t tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done since I met Dorian Gray is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way–I wonder will you understand me?–his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now re-create life in a way that was hidden from me before. ’A dream of form in days of thought,’–who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad, –for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty,–his merely visible presence,–ah! I wonder can you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in itself all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body,–how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is bestial, an ideality that is void. Harry! Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me.”

“Basil, this is quite wonderful! I must see Dorian Gray.” Hallward got up from the seat, and walked up and down the [10] garden. After some time he came back. “You don’t understand, Harry,” he said. “Dorian Gray is merely to me a motive in art. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is simply a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I see him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and the subtleties of certain colors. That is all.”

“Then why won’t you exhibit his portrait?”

“Because I have put into it all the extraordinary romance of which, of course, I have never dared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He will never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry,–too much of myself!”

“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”

“I hate them for it. An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. If I live, I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”

“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won’t argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you?”

Hallward considered for a few moments. “He likes me,” he answered, after a pause; “I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. I give myself away. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we walk home together from the club arm in arm, or sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”

“Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger. Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well informed man,–that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, and everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day you will look at Gray, and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won’t like his tone of color, or something. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be [11] perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic.”

“Harry, don’t talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can’t feel what I feel. You change too often.”

“Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.” And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver case, and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and self-satisfied air, as if he had summed up life in a phrase. There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the ivy, and the blue cloud- shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people’s emotions were!–much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One’s own soul, and the passions of one’s friends,–those were the fascinating things in life. He thought with pleasure of the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt’s, he would have been sure to meet Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about the housing of the poor, and the necessity for model lodging-houses. It was charming to have escaped all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to Hallward, and said, “My dear fellow, I have just remembered.”

“Remembered what, Harry?”

“Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray.”

“Where was it?” asked Hallward, with a slight frown.

“Don’t look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt’s, Lady Agatha’s. She told me she had discovered a wonderful young man, who was going to help her in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to state that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no appreciation of good looks. At least, good women have not. She said that he was very earnest, and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horridly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend.”

“I am very glad you didn’t, Harry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you to meet him.”

“Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir,” said the butler, coming into the garden.

“You must introduce me now,” cried Lord Henry, laughing.

Basil Hallward turned to the servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight. “Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I will be in in a few moments.” The man bowed, and went up the walk.

Then he looked at Lord Henry. “Dorian Gray is my dearest friend,” he said. “He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite right in what she said of him. Don’t spoil him for me. Don’t try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. Don’t take [12] away from me the one person that makes life absolutely lovely to me, and that gives to my art whatever wonder or charm it possesses. Mind, Harry, I trust you.” He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against his will.

“What nonsense you talk!” said Lord Henry, smiling, and, taking Hallward by the arm, he almost led him into the house.