I saw the switch flip in their eyes. I saw that flicker of threat. The way their stances shifted into those of aggression that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. They were disgusted by me. I was no longer a friend, a peer, someone to play with. I was an easy target. I was prey.
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The most interesting idea is that countries become great powers due to their mastery of the most important technologies of the day — gunpowder, sailing ships, steam power, mass production, steel, the combustion engine, industrial chemicals, electricity, airplanes, and so on. It's also possible to imagine that leading nations fall behind due to technological disruption. Britain's industrial revolution made mercantile trade less pivotal as a source of national wealth, so the Netherlands fell behind.
Noah Smith
Everything had fallen away from him during those years: money, power, fame; nothing was certain for him anymore: not life, not health, not happiness; all had been called into question for him: vanity, ambition, relationships. Everything was reduced to bare existence. Burnt through with pain, everything that was not essential was melted down — the human being reduced to what he was in the last analysis: either a member of the masses, therefore no one real, so really no one — the anonymous one, a nameless thing (!), that "he" had now become, just a prisoner number; or else he melted right down to his essential self.
Viktor Frankl
Before giving up drinking, I had very little earnestness at my command. I drank in order to give myself permission to talk openly, or at great length, or to heighten the sensation of listening or being listened to. Drinking is way easier than saying that you want to talk to someone, or don't.
Sarah Miller