1
" So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon’tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-I’veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme….There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bunch of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string. The practice of attaching cups to the ends of string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world’s first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.When the world grew bigger, and there wasn’t enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented.Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person’s silence. "
6
" It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill. "
― Neil Gaiman , Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
7
" [Clayton] Christensen had seen dozens of companies falter by going for immediate payoffs rather than long-term growth, and he saw people do the same thing. In three hours at work, you could get something substantial accomplished, and if you failed to accomplish it you felt the pain right away. If you spent three hours at home with your family, it felt like you hadn't done a thing, and if you skipped it nothing happened. So you spent more and more time at the office, on high-margin, quick-yield tasks, and you even believed that you were staying away from home for the sake of your family. He had seen many people tell themselves that they could divide their lives into stages, spending the first part pushing forward their careers, and imagining that at some future point they would spend time with their families--only to find that by then their families were gone. "
― Larissa MacFarquhar
11
" Lord, set me a path by the side of the road.
I pray this be a part of your plan,
Then heap on the burden & pile on the load,
And I'll trek it the best that I can.
Please bless me with patience,
Touch strength to my back
Then cut me loose and I'll go
Just like the burro toting his pack,
The oxen ploughing his row
And once on this journey, a witness for You
Toward thy way the Truth and the Light
Shine forth my countenance steady and true
For the pathway to goodness and right
And lest I should falter
And lest I should fail
Let all who know that I tried
For I am a bunglar, feeble & frail
When You, dear Lord, I've denied
So blessed be the day Your judgement comes due
And blessed by thy mercies bestowed
And blessed be this journey, all praises to You
For this path by the side of the road "
― Nimblewill Nomad
12
" Lord set me a path by the side of the road,Pray this be a part of your plan.Then heap on the burden and pile on the load'n I'll trek it the best that I can.Please bless me with patience; touch strength to my back;Then cut me loose and I'll go.Just like the burro totin' his pack,The oxen plowin' his row.And once on this journey, a witness for youTo'rd truth, thy way…and the light.Shine bright my countenance steady and true,O'er the pathway to goodness and right.And lest I should falter and lest I should fail,Let all who know that I tried.For I am a blunderer, feeble and frail,When you, dear Lord, I've denied.So blessed be the day your judgement comes due,And blessed be the mercy you showed.Oh blessed be this journey-all praises to youO'er this path by the side of the road. "
18
" Who gave the decisive deathblow to the argument from design on the basis of biological complexity? Both philosophers and biologists are divided on this point (Oppy 1996; Dawkins 1986; Sober 2008). Some have claimed that the biological design argument did not falter until Darwin provided a proper naturalistic explanation for adaptive complexity; others maintain that David Hume had already shattered the argument to pieces by sheer logical force several decades earlier, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Hume 2007 [1779]). Elliott Sober has been among the philosophers who maintain that, as Hume was not in a position to offer a serious alternative explanation of adaptive complexity, it is hardly surprising that 'intelligent people strongly favored the design hypothesis' (Sober 2000, 36). In his most recent book, however, Sober (2008) carefully develops what he thinks is the most charitable reconstruction of the design argument, and proceeds to show why it is defective for intrinsic reasons (for earlier version of this argument, see Sober 1999, 2002). Sober argues that the design argument can be rejected even without the need to consider alternative explanations for adaptive complexity (Sober 2008, 126): 'To see why the design argument is defective, there is no need to have a view as to whether Darwin’s theory of evolution is true' (Sober 2008, 154). "
― Maarten Boudry