"Ben-Hur"

Hooray! I finally finished. I stayed up late last night to do it. I could hardly put the book down! So, yes, I would definantly reccommend it. Here are some cool quotes from the book.

"Ben-Hur found a certain charm in Iras' prescence. If she looked down upon him from her high place, he made haste to get near her; if she spoke to him, his heart beat out of its usual time. The desire to be agreeable with her was a constant impulse. Objects on the way, though ever so common, became interesting the moment she called attention to them, a black swallow in the air pursued by her pointing finger went off in a a halo; in a bit of quartz or a flake of mica was seen to sparkle in the drab sand under kissing of the sun; at a word he turned aside and brought it to her; and if she threw it away in disappointment, far from thinking of the trouble he had been put to, he was sorry it proved so worhtless, and kept a lookout for something better-a ruby, perchance a diamond. So the purple of the far mountains became intensenly deep and rich if she distinguished it with an exclamation of praise, and when, now then the the curtain of the howdah fell down, it seemed a sudden dullness had dropped from the sky bedraggling all the landscape...For that there is no logic in love, nor the least mathematical element, it is simply natural that she shall fahison the result who has the wielding of the influence."

"Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results acheived by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes or dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the grave are there no dreams."

"Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others. She trembled under the percept that this might be the supreme moment come to him; that as children at birth reach out their untied hands grasping for shadows, and crying the while, so his spirit might, in temporary blindness, be struggling to take hold its impalpable future. They to whom a boy comes asking, 'Who am I, and who am I to be?' have need of ever so much care. Each word in answer may prove to the afterlife what each finger touch of the artist is to the clay he is modelling. "

"There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations; hence the verity of the claim, and the idleness of the disputes about it. A people rise run their race, and die either of themselves or at the hands of another, who, succeeding their power, take possession of their place, and upon their monuments write new names. Such is history. If I were called upon to symbolize God and man in the simplest form, I would draw a straight line and a circle, and of the line I would say, 'This is God, for he alone moves forever straight forward!; and of the circle, 'This is man-such is his progress.' I do not mean there is no difference between the careers of nations; no two are alike. The difference, however, is not, as some say, in the extent of the circle they describe or the space of the earth they cover, but in the sphere of their movement, the highest being near God...A great man, O my boy, is one whose life proves him to have been recognized, if not called, by God."

I love words! I admire people who can put their words together to express their thoughts-thoughts most can't even begin to explain.

By the way, we lost our soccer game again. *sigh*. But it was fun even though the coach TOTALLY yelled at me. That was scary! Anyway, I can't believe it, but I got hit in the head with a ball again. Just like last time. Ridiculous, huh? I also did something to my wrist. A girl and I collided. I think I did some sort of backflip. :) So, luckily, I had this post written out already or it would have taken days. Adois and happy monday!