Affliction is the good man's shining scene; prosperity conceals his brightest ray; as night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.
~ Edward Young



Next word: lustre

One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect . ~ William Hazlitt


Next word; defect

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It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.~Joseph Addison

Next word: imperfection

Usefulness is not impaired by imperfection . You can still drink from a chipped cup.
~ Greta K. Nagel



Next word: Usefulness

The only usefulness of a map or a language depends on the similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map-languages. ~ Alfred Korzybsk


Next word; map

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How we remember, what we remember, and why we remember form the most personal map of our individuality.~Christina Baldwin

Next word: individuality

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Next word: rugged

It is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.
~ William Lamb Melbourne



Next word: steep

Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo style of architecture. ~ Ernest Hemingway


Next word; cuckoo

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The merry cuckoo, messenger of spring,
His trumpet shrill hath thrice already sounded:
That warns all lovers wait upon their king,
Who now is coming forth with garland crowned.
~Edmund Spenser, Amoretti, XIX

Next word: shrill

Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard in the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn. And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last!
~ J.R.R. Tolkien



Next word: courtyard

He liked to bet with the other justices, over lots of things, such as how deep snow was going to fall in the courtyard , ~ Joseph Hoffman


Next word; snow

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In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
~Christina Rossetti, In the Bleak Midwinter (1872)

Next word: bleak

If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope and we can work.
~ Jacques Cousteau



Next word: logical

Science seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical manner imagined by outsiders . Instead, its steps forward (and sometimes backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultural traditions play major roles. ~ James D. Watson


Next word; outsiders

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In fact, they recapitulate the story of Christianity word for word, like the inevitable course of some unsightly disease: criminal ignorance, brutish stupidity, self-righteous bigotry, paranoid fear of outsiders. For the cultist, psychiatrists, the media, Government agencies have become Satan incarnate. Like the fundamental Christians, they have to be right.~William S. Burroughs

Next word: cultist

This cultist's blasphemouscynical promise to resurrect those killed in the terrorist act is blasphemous to all those who suffered in this dreadful tragedy.
~ Vladimir Ustinov



Next word: blasphemous

I imagine we'll start off with: Great opportunity to come into a dysfunctional organisation , work for two shareholders who are at each other's throats, expect to receive the occasional barrage of emails and the odd derogatory, blasphemous phone message, ~ Chris Corrigan


Next word; organisation

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Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.~Dave Barry

Next word: nickel

You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few nickels in the machine.
~ Flip Wilson


Next word: jackpot