Christmas in the Underworld was NOT my idea. If I'd known what was coming, I would've called in sick. I could've avoided an army of demons, a fight with a Titan, and a trick that almost got my friends and me cast into eternal darkness. But no, I had to take my stupid English exam.
For all his wisdom, he did not know that love cannot be tested. Honesty can be tested and loyalty. But there is not test for love. Love goes on forever, once it begins, even if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does not die.
... because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it. It's the ones in between that test you. They're the ones that bring questions with them.
Was she acting entirely consciously? No: women are always sincere, even in the midst of their most shocking duplicities, because it is always some natural emotion which dominates them. Perhaps, having given this young man such a hold on her, by having openly demonstrated her affection for him, Delphine was merely responding to a sense of personal dignity, which led her either to revoke any concessions she might have made or, at least, to enjoy suspending them. Even at the very moment when passion seizes her, it is perfectly natural for a Parisian woman to delay her final fall, as a way of testing the heart of the man into whose hands she is about to deliver herself and her future!
"The truth of the matter I believe to be this. There is, as I stated at first, no absolute right or wrong in love, but everything depends upon the circumstances, to yield to a bad man in a bad way is wrong, but to yield to a worthy man in a right way is right. The bad man is a common or a vulgar lover, who is in love with the body rather than the soul; he is not constant because what he loves is not constant; as soon as the flower of physical beauty, which is what he loves, begins to fade, he is gone "even as a dream", and all his professions and promises are as nothing. But the lover of a noble nature remains its lover for life, because the thing to which he cleaves is constant. The object of our custom then is to subject lovers to a thorough test; it encourages the lover to pursue and the bloved to flee, in order that the right kind of lover may in the end be gratified and the wrong kind be eluded; it sets up a kind of competition to determine which kind of lover and beloved respectively belong." --
This life is only a test' is a counter-productive mindset; it encourages wishful thinking toward and elusive and likely non-existent afterlife while often enabling the believer to squander this life as somehow less important.
Stranno e, che vsichki greshki sv'rshvat ednakvo, che vinagi gi povtariame i prod'lzhavame s novi nadezhdi. Tsiala noshch khapem ustni, kh'ltsame v'v v'zglavnitsata s bezpomoshchen gniav i tv'rdo se zaklevame da ostanem samotni, a shchom s'mne, podnasiame dushata si kato nezhen balon ot ts'fnalo glukharche na nasreshchnite vetrove na zhivota i te go roniat i raznasiat. Ala koito spasi samo edno malko pukhche i go vnese na zavet, toi e spasil tsialata si dusha. Tova e gorchiva rabota, no koito ne obr'shcha nezhnoto tsvete na dushata si k'm vetrovete na izpitaniiata, dori tsialoto da go spasi i da go prenese dokrai, toi ne mozhe da pochuvstva, che izobshcho niakoga go e imal.
I don't claim to know an over-arching 'Meaning of Life,' but I do operate under the understanding that life should not be lived under the pretense that it is simply a test propagated by an invisible, intangible, Creator-God. And it should not be spent identifying with religious traditions and organized groups that, historically, have been at the root of a tremendous amount of oppression and violence.
"Paco Fuentes," Mrs. Peterson says, pointing to the table behind Mary. The handsome young man with pale blue eyes like his mother's and smoky black hair like his father's takes his assigned seat. Mrs. Peterson regards her new student over the glasses perched on her nose. "Mr. Fuentes, don't think this class will be a piece of cake because your parents got lucky and developed a medication to halt the progression of Alzheimer's. Your father never did finish my class and he flunked one of my tests, although I have a feeling your mother was the one who should have failed. But that just means I'll expect extra from you."