By itself, one small win may seem unimportant, writes Dr. Karl Weick in a seminal paper for American Psychologist in 1984. A series of wins at small but significant tasks, however, reveals a pattern...
Married people, for instance, are demonstrably happier than single people; does this mean that marriage causes happiness? Not necessarily. The data suggest that happy people are more likely to get...
At night Tyrion would oft hear her praying. A waste of words. If there are gods to listen, they are monstrous gods who torment us for their sport. Who else would make a world like this, so full of...
"Do you mean to spend your whole life running away?" Tyrion asked before she could slip back out the door. That stopped her. Her cheeks turned a bright pink, and he was afraid she was about to start...
My Lord Father! How joyful it is to find you here! Lord Tywin did not move from his seat, but cast a long, searching glance at his deformed son. "I see, the rumors of your death were unfounded." "I'm...
He may not look as tall or strong as some, but he is worth more than all of them. - Lysa
It was too wet to see the sun go down, too grey to see the moon come up.
She would be no one if that was what it took. No one had no holes inside her.
'R'hllor, come to us in our darkness,' she called. 'Lord of Light, we offer you these false gods, these seven who are one, and him the enemy. Take them and cast your light upon us, for the night is...
Here and now, with winter soon upon us, that is a different matter. It is time to begin growing up.
A brigand, a barber, a beggar, two orphans, and a boy whore. With such do we defend the realms of men.
Has my tale turned you speechless? Come, curse me or kiss me or call me a liar. Something.
Your strength is the strength of stones. Suddenly
Money is power and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it.
But it was a moral issue, too, and a number of Northern women felt they had an obligation to fight an institution that broke up families and subjected young women to sexual molestation. Abolition of...
He was too clever. If you're that clever you can argue yourself into anything. You just leave common sense behind.
... perhaps the sweetest moment in writing is the arrival of that idea for a book which never has to be written, which is never sullied with a definite shape, which never needs to be exposed to a less...
She'd been imagining for the last fifteen or more years that if you disappeared, if you abandoned a wife and child, you did so for a better life: more happiness, more sex, more money, more of whatever...
To the victims of homophobia, patriarchy, street harassment and intolerance: don't worry, we'll put a lid on Muslim immigration. There
Puritanism, wrote H.L. Mencken, whose lifetime spanned the first progressive era, is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.
I didn't put you in a prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars.
Oh of course - how ridiculous of me! cried Mrs. Wilkins, flushing scarlet. It's because - she floundered - it's because the immortals somehow still seem alive, don't they - as if they were here, going...
All she remembered was that Caligula had planned to torture his wife to find out why he was so devoted to her. What was David's excuse, she wondered.
The shock of standing again under the wide pale sky, completely exposed. This must be what the oyster feels when the lemon juice falls.
But when Anthony kissed her, she felt as if she were losing her mind. And when he kissed her twice, she wasn't even sure if she wanted it back!
A large, interconnected population meant faster cumulative invention – a surprising truth even to this day, as Hong Kong and Manhattan islands demonstrate.
The richer and more market-oriented societies have become, the nicer people have behaved.
So – as animal experiments have suggested – oxytocin does not affect reciprocity, just the tendency to take a social risk, to go out on a limb.
He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had, furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand. And the fact of the matter was that he had just barely...
Extraordinary that those who command the perquisites of place are those most ready to ignore them! It is as if the blessings of Providence are specious, and notable only in their absence. Ah well, I...
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order...
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the...
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great....