“
I want you to walk out of here tonight not loving me more, but loving yourselves more.
”
”
Lady Gaga (Lady Gaga - The Fame)
“
One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.
”
”
Edward Abbey
“
just remember: i love you, and love yourselves. 'cause, little monsters, you were born that way baby.
”
”
Lady Gaga (Lady Gaga - The Fame)
“
Women can go over it again and again in their minds, finding all kinds of deficiencies in themselves-"I didn't do this right," "I wasn't good enough," "I didn't love him the way I should," "she came in here and outperformed me"-but the fact still remeinas that he didn't have any business cheating. So women need to realease themselves from the blame of a cheating man's actions-just do that for yourselves. Because holding on to that baggage can be paralyzing; it can cripple you and keep you from performing in your next encounter. You simply cannot drive forward if you're focused on what's happening in the rearview mirror.
”
”
Steve Harvey (Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment)
“
I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for your happiness. I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
“
Because I think she loves you more than she loves sex. And you love her more than you love alcohol, but you two just haven’t let yourselves believe it yet.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Addicted for Now (Addicted #3))
“
Don't punish yourselves for people's ignorant reactions to what we all are. Don't let ignorance win. Let love.
”
”
Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
“
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
”
”
Charlie Chaplin
“
Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.
”
”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“
We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. This is insanity. Feed yourselves. Feed your loved ones. And for God's sake feed your children.
”
”
Alton Brown
“
I come across too much material on "how to make a man want you", "how to make a man commit", "how to make a man finally pop the question", "how to make a man take you seriously", "how to get into a man's emotions." And I laugh. My dear fellow women, enough! Do not busy yourselves with such things! Instead, fall in love with yourself!
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
You yourself never loved; you never love!
Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?
”
”
Bram Stoker
“
Why do all men have to suck? I knew you all sucked and still I stupidly fell in love with one of you. Why? Why would I be such a masochist? You pour your heart out to a man and what does he do? ‘Could you change the channel, babe?’ You’re all pathetically cold. You don’t care about anyone but yourselves! (Kat)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter, #11))
“
Gentle souls!
You play your love on the violin.
The crude ones play it on the drums violently.
But can you turn yourselves inside out, like me
And become just two lips entirely?
”
”
Vladimir Mayakovsky
“
Love’? What do you know about love?”
"It’s at the heart of every story,” Rollo said with authority. “If humans could avoid falling in love, you would never get yourselves into any trouble.
”
”
Jessica Day George (Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow)
“
You seem to take things so personally, hating people and worshipping them--always thinking people are so important--especially yourselves. You just ask to be kicked around. I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it--on the inside.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Love of the Last Tycoon)
“
The suffragettes didn't starve themselves for the vote, so that you girls could starve yourselves for a man.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (The Hypnotist's Love Story)
“
Regardless of what else he is, he is still a child, as they all are. And don’t all children deserve to be protected? To be loved and nurtured so that they may grow and shape the world to make it a better place? In that way, they are no different than any other child in the village, or beyond. But they’re told they are, by people such as yourselves, and people who govern them and our world. People who put rules and restrictions in place to keep them separated and isolated. I don’t know what it will take to change that, if anything. But it won’t start at the top. It’ll start with us.
”
”
T.J. Klune (The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1))
“
You shall love beyond yourselves some day! So first, learn to love. And for that you have to drink the bitter cup of your love.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
“
Ask yourselves, young people, about the love of Christ. Acknowledge His voice resounding in the temple of your heart. Return His bright and penetrating glance which opens the paths of your life to the horizons of the Church’s mission. It is a taxing mission, today more than ever, to teach men the truth about themselves, about their end, their destiny, and to show faithful souls the unspeakable riches of the love of Christ. Do not be afraid of the radicalness of His demands, because Jesus, who loved us first, is prepared to give Himself to you, as well as asking of you. If He asks much of you, it is because He knows you can give much.
”
”
Pope John Paul II (The Meaning of Vocation)
“
You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
“
Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
I used to think that loving somebody meant sacrificing anything for them. I thought it meant writing them a blank cheque. I thought it meant that you would die without each other. But it turns out that death and a broken heart are not he same.
These days, I think that love is not so dramatic as all that. Maybe loving somebody means simply they bring out the best in you, and you bring out the best in them - so that together, you are always the best possible versions of yourselves.
”
”
Leila Sales (Tonight the Streets Are Ours)
“
This world is unforgiving and cruel to those it judges as even the slightest bit outside the norm. If anyone should be kind, understanding, accepting, loving to their fellow outcasts, it’s you. All of you. You are the guardians of the secrets of the universe, beloved of worlds that most will never dream of, much less see … can’t you see where you owe it to yourselves to be kind? To care for one another? No one outside this room will ever understand what you’ve been through the way the people around you right now understand.
”
”
Seanan McGuire (Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1))
“
Like love, people don't live inside of life, life lives inside of you. Open yourselves upto it and there's no stopping your heart.
”
”
Carroll Bryant
“
Do not think of yourself as a crescent moon, waiting for someone else to fill in the missing part of you. When you stand alone like a full moon, already complete in yourself, you will meet another person who is whole and complete just like you, and between you two, a healthy relationship can grow. Do not try and fit yourselves to each other to make one whole moon. Instead, be more like two full moons. You’ll respect each other’s individuality and interests while creating a relationship in which each of you shines brightly on the other
”
”
Haemin Sunim (Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection)
“
Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition, read the dry sardonic remarks of cynical philosophers like Cioran or even Carl Schmitt, read newspapers, read those who despise, dismiss or simply ignore poetry and try to understand why they do it. Read your enemies, read those who reinforce your sense of what's evolving in poetry, and also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are.
”
”
Adam Zagajewski (A Defense of Ardor: Essays)
“
SELFLESS LOVE.
If you have a special person in your life, but you find yourselves arguing, irritated and/or fighting out of the blue… you both need to try to step back and be selfless and think of the other person... with no ego of your own. No ego. We are ALL dealing with our own tough issues. We may keep them to ourselves, but we all have struggles. If you BOTH allow yourselves to step into each others shoes- to have the awareness and respect for each others issues and struggles... that will most likely allow the love that you have for each other to shine through at its brightest.
There will be ups and downs- feelings of being under-appreciated for both. It will happen. But let that be the worst that happens. Unity through diversity. That's the greatest love. A selfless love. It’s paradoxical, but you each would get back more than you give out. That's the love that conquers all things that’s mentioned in the Bible. It will be challenging for both of you, but well worth it.
”
”
José N. Harris
“
Ladies, get confident about yourselves, build up your self-worth and esteem, love yourself and be proud of your achievements and your man will adore you for life.
”
”
Jaachynma N.E. Agu (The Prince and the Pauper)
“
Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love
that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man.You are
the tree of Life. Beware of fractionating yourselves. Set not a fruit against a fruit, a leaf against a leaf, a bough against a bough; nor
set the stem against the roots; nor set the tree against the mother-
soil. That is precisely what you do when you love one part more than
the rest, or to the exclusion of the rest. No love is possible except
by the love of self. No self is real save the All-embracing Self.
Therefore is God all Love, because he loves himself. So long as you
are pained by Love, you have not found your real self, nor have you
found the golden key of Love. Because you love an ephemeral self, your
love is ephemeral.
”
”
Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
“
Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends?
”
”
Walter Kirn
“
As God adds his ‘Yes’ to your ‘Yes,’ as he confirms your will with his will, and as he allows you, and approves of, your triumph and rejoicing and pride, he makes you at the same time instruments of his will and purpose both for yourselves and for others. In his unfathomable condescension God does add his ‘Yes’ to yours; but by doing so, he creates out of your love something quite new – the holy estate of matrimony…
”
”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison)
“
You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.
”
”
Stephen King (Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6))
“
Motormouth: So this is love? Well, love is a gift and a lot of people forget that. So you two better brace yourselves for a whole lot of ugly coming your way on a never ending train of stupid.
Penny: So you met my mom?
”
”
Mark O'Donnell (Hairspray: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Hit Broadway Musical (Applause Books))
“
It’s loneliness. Even though I’m surrounded by loved ones who care about me and want only the best, it’s possible they try to help only because they feel the same thing—loneliness—and why, in a gesture of solidarity, you’ll find the phrase “I am useful, even if alone” carved in stone. Though the brain says all is well, the soul is lost, confused, doesn’t know why life is being unfair to it. But we still wake up in the morning and take care of our children, our husband, our lover, our boss, our employees, our students, those dozens of people who make an ordinary day come to life. And we often have a smile on our face and a word of encouragement, because no one can explain their loneliness to others, especially when we are always in good company. But this loneliness exists and eats away at the best parts of us because we must use all our energy to appear happy, even though we will never be able to deceive ourselves. But we insist, every morning, on showing only the rose that blooms, and keep the thorny stem that hurts us and makes us bleed hidden within. Even knowing that everyone, at some point, has felt completely and utterly alone, it is humiliating to say, “I’m lonely, I need company. I need to kill this monster that everyone thinks is as imaginary as a fairy-tale dragon, but isn’t.” But it isn’t. I wait for a pure and virtuous knight, in all his glory, to come defeat it and push it into the abyss for good, but that knight never comes. Yet we cannot lose hope. We start doing things we don’t usually do, daring to go beyond what is fair and necessary. The thorns inside us will grow larger and more overwhelming, yet we cannot give up halfway. Everyone is looking to see the final outcome, as though life were a huge game of chess. We pretend it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose, the important thing is to compete. We root for our true feelings to stay opaque and hidden, but then … … instead of looking for companionship, we isolate ourselves even more in order to lick our wounds in silence. Or we go out for dinner or lunch with people who have nothing to do with our lives and spend the whole time talking about things that are of no importance. We even manage to distract ourselves for a while with drink and celebration, but the dragon lives on until the people who are close to us see that something is wrong and begin to blame themselves for not making us happy. They ask what the problem is. We say that everything is fine, but it’s not … Everything is awful. Please, leave me alone, because I have no more tears to cry or heart left to suffer. All I have is insomnia, emptiness, and apathy, and, if you just ask yourselves, you’re feeling the same thing. But they insist that this is just a rough patch or depression because they are afraid to use the real and damning word: loneliness. Meanwhile, we continue to relentlessly pursue the only thing that would make us happy: the knight in shining armor who will slay the dragon, pick the rose, and clip the thorns. Many claim that life is unfair. Others are happy because they believe that this is exactly what we deserve: loneliness, unhappiness. Because we have everything and they don’t. But one day those who are blind begin to see. Those who are sad are comforted. Those who suffer are saved. The knight arrives to rescue us, and life is vindicated once again. Still, you have to lie and cheat, because this time the circumstances are different. Who hasn’t felt the urge to drop everything and go in search of their dream? A dream is always risky, for there is a price to pay. That price is death by stoning in some countries, and in others it could be social ostracism or indifference. But there is always a price to pay. You keep lying and people pretend they still believe, but secretly they are jealous, make comments behind your back, say you’re the very worst, most threatening thing there is. You are not an adulterous man, tolerated and often even admired, but an adulterous woman, one who is ...
”
”
Paulo Coelho (Adultery)
“
My dear young friends, I want to invite you to "dare to love". Do not desire anything less for your life than a love that is strong and beautiful and that is capable of making the whole of your existence a joyful undertaking of giving yourselves as a gift to God and your brothers and sisters, in imitation of the One who vanquished hatred and death for ever through love (cf. Rev 5:13).
Love is the only force capable of changing the heart of the human person and of all humanity, by making fruitful the relations between men and women, between rich and poor, between cultures and civilizations. (Message for the 22nd World Youth Day: Palm Sunday, 1 April 2007)
”
”
Pope Benedict XVI
“
These [the armed forces] are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where.... Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.
”
”
Abraham Lincoln (Selected Speeches and Writings)
“
Aligning with yourself, then another and you both aligning yourselves together further in harmony will summon source energy in ways you couldn’t imagine.
”
”
Shalom Melchizedek (Cosmic Sexuality)
“
Love isn't locking yourselves in or hiding where everything is perfect. Love is facing the world and its tests together, even if you fail them.
”
”
Soman Chainani (A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil: The Camelot Years, #2))
“
Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still), feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and confidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required moment command and withdraw. That is the way to get on, and be respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair.
”
”
William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair)
“
Bella: How could I live with myself when it’s my fault? None of you should be risking yourselves for me –
Jasper: Bella, Bella, stop. You’re worrying all the wrong things, Bella. Trust me on this – none of us are in jeopardy… Our family is strong. Our only fear is losing you.
Bella: But why should you –
Alice: It’s been almost a century that Edward’s been alone. Now he’s found you. You can’t see the changes that we see, we who have been with him for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you?
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
“
Light the Christmas candles for your children! Let them sing carols! But don't delude yourselves, don't content yourselves year after year with the shabby, pathetic, sentimental feeling you have when you celebrate your holidays! Demand more of yourselves! Love and joy and the mysterious thing we call "happiness" are not over here or over there, they are only "within yourselves.
”
”
Hermann Hesse (If the War Goes on: Reflections on War and Politics (English and German Edition))
“
But the seven of you have something that nobody else ever had; time. All the time in the world. Time enough to grow indescribably close. Time enough to learn how to care for each other, to allow yourselves to be cared for. And, in the case of Barry and Lup, time enough to fall, deeply, and truly, in love.
”
”
Griffin McElroy
“
No relationship is perfect, but if you soften up and allow yourselves to mold into one person, instead of two separate people sharing a home, you will find it much easier and more beautiful.
Be one and let no one tear you apart.
”
”
Marilyn Grey (Down from the Clouds (Unspoken #2))
“
You remember what else I said to you that day in the drawing room,” he said. “I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for either of yours. I would give over my own life for your happiness. I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that. It is unfair to tell you this, I know, when you can do nothing about it.” He took a shuddering breath. “How you must despise me.
”
”
Cassandra Clare
“
Pray calm yourselves. I have eleven children, and I am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she'll wake when she tires of it. A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.
”
”
Arthur Miller (The Crucible)
“
Everybody is Beautiful and Unique in Their Own Special Way, Beauty goes Beyond the Outer Appearance. I think it's More Important to have a Beautiful Mind. Stop Comparing Yourselves Amongst Yourselves. Nobody is like You and Never will be You. Stop being Jealous of Others. Stop Hating on Others. Appreciate your Qualities and Characteristics.
”
”
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
“
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.
But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?
Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.
I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.
Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.
Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows -- then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason."
And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky -- then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion."
And since you are a breath in God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.
”
”
Kahlil Gibran
“
The future says:
Dear mortals;
I know you are busy with your colourful lives;
I have no wish to waste the little time that remains
On arguments and heated debates;
But before I can appear
Please, close your eyes, sit still
And listen carefully
To what I am about to say;
I haven't happened yet, but I will.
I can't pretend it's going to be
Business as usual.
Things are going to change.
I'm going to be unrecognisable.
Please, don't open your eyes, not yet.
I'm not trying to frighten you.
All I ask is that you think of me
Not as a wish or a nightmare, but as a story
You have to tell yourselves -
Not with an ending
In which everyone lives happily ever after,
Or a B-movie apocalypse,
But maybe starting with the line
'To be continued...'
And see what happens next.
Remember this; I am not
Written in stone
But in time -
So please don't shrug and say
What can we do?
It's too late, etc, etc, etc.
Dear mortals,
You are such strange creatures
With your greed and your kindness,
And your hearts like broken toys;
You carry fear with you everywhere
Like a tiny god
In its box of shadows.
You love festivals and music
And good food.
You lie to yourselves
Because you're afraid of the dark.
But the truth is: you are in my hands
And I am in yours.
We are in this together,
Face to face and eye to eye;
We're made for each other.
Now those of you who are still here;
Open your eyes and tell me what you see.
”
”
Nick Drake
“
What do you experience on perceiving yourselves lovely within?
”
”
Plotinus (An Essay on the Beautiful From the Greek of Plotinus)
“
The more ready you are to give yourselves to God and to others, the more you will discover the authentic meaning of life.
”
”
Jason Evert (Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves)
“
Stop feeling useless and worthless. Stop drowning in regret. Stop listening to the persistent voice of your past failures. You were that child once, who Margo would have killed for. Fight for yourselves. You have a right to live, and to live well. You’ll inherit flaws; you’ll develop new ones. And that’s okay. Wear them, own them, use them to survive. Don’t kill others; don’t kill yourselves. Be bold about your right to be loved. And most importantly, don’t be ashamed of where you’ve come from, or the mistakes you’ve made. In blindness, love will exhume you.
”
”
Tarryn Fisher (Marrow)
“
I wonder if you sisters full understand the greatness of your gifts and talents and how all of you can achieve the "highest place of honor" in the Church and in the world. One of your unique, precious, and sublime gifts is your femininity, with its natural grace, goodness, and divinity. Femininity is not just lipstick, stylish hairdos, and trendy clothes. It is the divine adornment of humanity. It finds expression in your qualities of your capacity to love, your spirituality, delicacy, radiance, sensitivity, creativity, charm, graciousness, gentleness, dignity, and quiet strength. It is manifest differently in each girl or woman, but each of you possesses it. Femininity is part of your inner beauty.
One of your particular gifts is your feminine intuition. Do not limit yourselves. As you seek to know the will of our Heavenly Father in your life and become more spiritual, you will be far more attractive, even irresistible. You can use your smiling loveliness to bless those you love and all you meet, and spread great joy. Femininity is part of the God-given divinity within each of you. It is your incomparable power and influence to do good. You can, through your supernal gifts, bless the lives of children, women, and men. Be proud of your womanhood. Enhance it. Use it to serve others.
”
”
James E. Faust
“
Simply give to yourselves that which you need – which is love and appreciation without judgment.
”
”
Réné Gaudette
“
Monks, even if bandits were to savagely sever you, limb by limb, with a double-handled saw, even then, whoever of you harbors ill will at heart would not be upholding my Teaching. Monks, even in such a situation you should train yourselves thus: 'Neither shall our minds be affected by this, nor for this matter shall we give vent to evil words, but we shall remain full of concern and pity, with a mind of love, and we shall not give in to hatred. On the contrary, we shall live projecting thoughts of universal love to those very persons, making them as well as the whole world the object of our thoughts of universal love — thoughts that have grown great, exalted and measureless. We shall dwell radiating these thoughts which are void of hostility and ill will.' It is in this way, monks, that you should train yourselves.
”
”
Gautama Buddha
“
My darling, you can’t see it, can you? How like the moon you are. Both of you so timid in yourselves; hiding pieces from the world. Then, there are those rare moments when you both are full, and it becomes hard to look away. You are beautiful.
”
”
Alexandria Drzewiecki
“
All my life I was driven by the loyalty of caring for the people I loved...I was taught that nothing was more important than such care. But your family showed me differently. You cared equally as much about those you loved-you would do anything for them. But you also allowed yourselves to love...more. You loved your enemies. You loved your friends.
”
”
Nadine Brandes (Romanov)
“
Without self-knowledge you have no root in yourselves personally; you may endure for a time, but under affliction or persecution your faith will not last. This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church. They cast off the form of truth, because it never has been to them more than a form. They endure not, because they never have tasted that the Lord is gracious; and they never have had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.
”
”
John Henry Newman (Parochial and Plain Sermons)
“
I am just a guy, doing my best to be the best person I can be.
And, every once in a while, I fuck up the moment I’m in.
Please. Get over it. Get over yourselves. Get over this weird need to be morally superior to me and to the other people in this world.
And let me be imperfect. I assure you, my imperfections drive me to improve.
Let me love myself. I assure you, loving myself despite my faults will only make me a better person.
Let me be my own judge. I assure you, I’ll be more fair and just than you ever will.
Let me be the owner of my own intentions. I assure you, there isn’t another soul on earth who knows what my real intentions are but me.
Love and acceptance despite ongoing and glaring imperfection is all I’ve ever tried to attain with this blog. For me. For you. For everyone. And I’ll never stop.
”
”
Dan Pearce (Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One)
“
Hatred and greed are heavy loads. Your motive, on the other hand, is love. And instead of priding yourselves on your cunning, you recognize how weak you are...so weak that you must depend totally on the Spirit of God.
”
”
Brother Andrew (God's Smuggler)
“
Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn't I better end my "Notes" here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be begging to be under control again at once. I know that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your miseries in your underground holes, and don't dare to say all of us-- excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that "all of us." As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write more from "Underground."
[The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not
refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop
here.]
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead)
“
The apostle Paul says in Romans 13:14, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” In other words, do not put yourself in a place where you can fall.
”
”
Ravi Zacharias (I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love)
“
Yes, Mom. It did. Your love was like organ donation. You and Dad and Leo gave me pieces of your hearts and lungs and skeletons so I could put myself back together again. And now you hardly have the strength to stand up and keep breathing yourselves. I think about that so often, and I think about all the girls who don’t have you. I feel like I only just managed to survive this. How the hell does everyone who doesn’t have you as their mom even stand a chance?” Good luck having a daughter and not going to pieces when you hear that.
”
”
Fredrik Backman (The Winners (Beartown, #3))
“
You don't believe in unconditional love. Neither does Alex. So you both threw away the best thing you ever had because you didn't believe in each other or yourselves.
”
”
Jennifer Crusie (Anyone But You)
“
Tonight," he announced, "is the night we take back that village. And we're not going to do it by marching in lines or committing acts of brave idiocy. We're going to do it by being men. Manly men. The kind of men a woman wants to take control."
Brows wrinkled in confusion.
"But . . ." The blacksmith looked around the group. "We are men. Last I checked, anyhow."
"It's not just a matter of having the proper equipment. It's using the equipment properly." Leaping up on a crate, Colin spread his arms wide. "Look at me. Now look at yourselves. Now look back at me. I am the man you want to be like."
Dawes crossed his arms. "Why is that, precisely?"
"Do you know how many women I've bedded?" When Rufus and Finn perked, he waved at them. "Have a guess, boys."
"Seventeen," offered Finn.
"More."
"Eighteen."
"Still more."
"Er . . . nineteen?"
"Oh, for the love of God," he muttered. "We'll be here all day. Let's just call the number more than you can imagine. Because clearly, that is the case." Under his breath, he added, "Perhaps higher than you know how to count.
”
”
Tessa Dare (A Night to Surrender (Spindle Cove, #1))
“
I have made up my mind to say my say. I shall do it kindly, distinctly; but I am going to do it. I know there are thousands of men who substantially agree with me, but who are not in a condition to express their thoughts. They are poor; they are in business; and they know that should they tell their honest thought, persons will refuse to patronize them—to trade with them; they wish to get bread for their little children; they wish to take care of their wives; they wish to have homes and the comforts of life. Every such person is a certificate of the meanness of the community in which he resides. And yet I do not blame these people for not expressing their thought. I say to them: 'Keep your ideas to yourselves; feed and clothe the ones you love; I will do your talking for you. The church can not touch, can not crush, can not starve, cannot stop or stay me; I will express your thoughts.
”
”
Robert G. Ingersoll (The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child)
“
There is a sign on the gate of this [BYU] campus that reads: 'Enter to learn; go forth to serve.' I invite you, every one of you, to make that your motto. Mediocrity will never do. You are capable of something better. Give it your very best. You will never again have such an opportunity. Pray about it. Work at it. Make it happen. Drink in the great knowledge here to be obtained from this dedicated faculty. Qualify yourselves for the work of the world that lies ahead. It will largely compensate you in terms of what it thinks you are worth. Walk the high road of charity, respect, and love for others and particularly those who are less fortunate.
”
”
Gordon B. Hinckley
“
The way of life can be free and beautiful!!!
...don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
”
”
Charlie Chaplin
“
If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all from yourselves, said the modern Christ.
But none of us could bear to pass through the tunnel which led from the house into the world on the other side of the walls, where there were leaves on the trees, where water ran beside the paths, where there was daylight and joy. We could not believe that the tunnel would open on daylight: we feared to be trapped into darkness again; we feared to return whence we had come, from darkness and night. The tunnel would narrow and taper
down as we walked; it would close around us, and close tighter and tighter around us and stifle us. It would grow heavy and narrow and suffocate us as we walked.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (House of Incest)
“
Luke’s not a bad man, or even an unlikable one,” she went on. “Just a man. You’re all the same, great big hairy moths bashing yourselves to pieces after a silly flame behind a glass so clear your eyes don’t see it. And if you do manage to blunder your way inside the glass to fly into the flame, you fall down burned and dead.
While all the time out there in the cool night there’s food, and love, and baby moths to get. But do you see it, do you want it? No! It’s back after the flame again, beating yourselves senseless until you burn yourselves dead!
”
”
Colleen McCullough
“
You cannot be consistently fair or just or kind or generous or loving without courage. It is time for you to decide privately, secretly, in your own place inside yourselves, what you will do. You have to come to peace with a peaceful heart.
”
”
Maya Angelou
“
That love, which is the highest joy, which is divine simplicity itself, is not for you moderns, you children of reflection. It works only evil in you. As soon as you wish to be natural, you become common. To you nature seems something hostile; you have made devils out of the smiling gods of Greece, and out of me a demon. You can only exorcise and curse me, or slay yourselves in bacchantic madness before my altar. And if ever one of you has had the courage to kiss my red mouth, he makes a barefoot pilgrimage to Rome in penitential robes and expects flowers to grow from his withered staff, while under my feet roses, violets, and myrtles spring up every hour, but their fragrance does not agree with you. Stay among your northern fogs and Christian incense; let us pagans remain under the debris, beneath the lava; do not disinter us.
”
”
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (Venus in Furs)
“
I come not, Ambrosia for any of the purposes thou hast named," replied Marcela, "but to defend myself and to prove how unreasonable are all those who blame me for their sorrow and for Chrysostom's death; and therefore I ask all of you that are here to give me your attention, for will not take much time or many words to bring the truth home to persons of sense. Heaven has made me, so you say, beautiful, and so much so that in spite of yourselves my beauty leads you to love me; and for the love you show me you say, and even urge, that I am bound to love you. By that natural understanding which God has given me I know that everything beautiful attracts love, but I cannot see how, by reason of being loved, that which is loved for its beauty is bound to love that which loves it; besides, it may happen that the lover of that which is beautiful may be ugly, and ugliness being detestable, it is very absurd to say, "I love thee because thou art beautiful, thou must love me though I be ugly." But supposing the beauty equal on both sides, it does not follow that the inclinations must be therefore alike, for it is not every beauty that excites love, some but pleasing the eye without winning the affection; and if every sort of beauty excited love and won the heart, the will would wander vaguely to and fro unable to make choice of any; for as there is an infinity of beautiful objects there must be an infinity of inclinations, and true love, I have heard it said, is indivisible, and must be voluntary and not compelled. If this be so, as I believe it to be, why do you desire me to bend my will by force, for no other reason but that you say you love me? Nay—tell me—had Heaven made me ugly, as it has made me beautiful, could I with justice complain of you for not loving me? Moreover, you must remember that the beauty I possess was no choice of mine, for, be it what it may, Heaven of its bounty gave it me without my asking or choosing it; and as the viper, though it kills with it, does not deserve to be blamed for the poison it carries, as it is a gift of nature, neither do I deserve reproach for being beautiful; for beauty in a modest woman is like fire at a distance or a sharp sword; the one does not burn, the other does not cut, those who do not come too near. Honour and virtue are the ornaments of the mind, without which the body, though it be so, has no right to pass for beautiful; but if modesty is one of the virtues that specially lend a grace and charm to mind and body, why should she who is loved for her beauty part with it to gratify one who for his pleasure alone strives with all his might and energy to rob her of it?
”
”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
“
What we need is to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. What are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. Do not look for Jesus away from yourselves. He is not out there; He is in you. Keep your lamp burning, and you will recognize Him.
”
”
Mother Teresa (No Greater Love)
“
Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel: Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, & not pronounce heartily! That to Labour in Knowledge. is to Build up Jerusalem: and to Despise Knowledge, is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders. And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another; calling it pride & selfishness & sin; mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift. which always appear to the ignorance-loving Hypocrite, as Sins. but that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel Man. is not so in the sight of our kind God.
”
”
William Blake (Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion)
“
You wished for me, Athenians; I am here. Do not question me, do not hurt me; I am the wish sprung from your heart, and if you wound me your heart will bleed for it. Your love made me. Do not take it away; for without love I am a temple forsaken by its god, where dark Alastor will enter. It was you, Athenians, who conjured me, a daimon whose food is love. Feed me, then, and I will clothe you with glory, and show you to yourselves in the image of your desire. I am hungry: feed me. It is too late to repent.
”
”
Mary Renault (The Last of the Wine)
“
I know nothing that I may say can influence you," he said. "You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel." Here
”
”
Jack London (The Iron Heel)
“
Whatever we think and feel will colour what we say or do. He who fears, even unconsciously, or has his least little dream tainted with hate, will inevitably, sooner or later, translate these two qualites into action. Therefore, my brothers, live courage, breathe courage and give courage. Think and feel love so that you will be able to pour out of yourselves peace and serenity as naturally as a flower gives forth fragrance. Peace be unto all!!!
”
”
Dhan Gopal Mukerji (Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon)
“
It’s funny, how for an entire lifetime we keep thinking ‘How’ will our life-partner look like, how will he be? How will he react to a particular situation? How will he get angry, and how will we love and pamper him? We have so many questions like if he will accept me the way I am? Or if I have to change for him? We all have made plans for our future, subconsciously. We don’t exactly plan out everything with a pen and paper, it’s something that happens automatically, just like an involuntary action. Whenever we are alone and our mood is good, we usually think about our life with our partner. The days and nights in his arms, and the time that we will reserve for him.
But when all that turns into reality, it’s strikingly different. Everything that you thought, seems to be a joke, and life laughs at you from a distance! You are helpless and can’t do anything about it, but have to accept it the way it is. You are totally caught into a web of dilemmas and problems before you realize that this is the time you waited for, and that this is the time you dreamt about! You have to make efforts, compromises, sacrifices and you have to change yourselves too sometimes to make things work.
You can never expect to get a partner exactly the way you thought or dreamt about. It’s always different in reality and it’s always tough to make both ends meet for a relationship to work, but you have to! It’s your relationship, if you won’t work for it, who else will?
”
”
Mehek Bassi
“
Perhaps there was no answer right from the start. Humans lose sight of this... They fear the truth that they cannot comprehend. There are no true boundaries between good and evil in this world. Heaven and Hell do not really exist. The real truth is something you must discover for yourselves, as you stumble through suffering and confusion.
You suffering... you dear ones... We who dwell in Heaven... There's only one thing I can do. I can pray that you all never have to be sad. I hope you meet the people that you love. Find the truth. Be happy. Never forget that you were born out of great love. We will meet again. Somewhere, somehow in the great pool of time. We will meet again.
”
”
Kaori Yuki (Angel Sanctuary, Vol. 20)
“
I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk down that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for either of yours. I perhaps that when you told me you did not love me my feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that. It is unfair to tell you this, I know, when you can do nothing about it.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
“
America, how’s your marriage? Your two-hundred-fifty-year-old promise to stay together in sickness and in health? First thirteen states, then more and more, until fifty of you had taken the vow. Like so many marriages, I know, it was not for love; I know it was for tax reasons, but soon you all found yourselves financially entwined, with shared debts and land purchases and grandiose visions of the future, yet somehow, from the beginning, essentially at odds. Ancient grudges. That split you had—that still stings, doesn’t it? Who betrayed whom, in the end? I hear you tried getting sober. That didn’t last, did it? So how’s it going, America? Do you ever dream of each being on your own again? Never having to be part of someone else’s family squabble? Never having to share a penny? Never having to bear with someone else’s gun hobby, or car obsession, or nutrition craze? Tell me honestly, because I have contemplated marriage and wonder: If it can’t work for you, can it work for any of us?
”
”
Andrew Sean Greer (Less Is Lost)
“
In April of 2006, the Church-owned Desert Morning News, in a remarkable week-long series on suicide in Utah, reported: "A former surgeon general who recently spoke in Utah about suicide prevention said he was impressed with the state's warm and friendly people...But, he added, 'In New York, we kill each other. In Utah, you kill yourselves.'" The newspaper gave the shocking statistic that Utah leads the entire nation in suicides among men aged 15 to 24. Utah also has the 11th highest suicide rate over all age groups. (36)
”
”
Carol Lynn Pearson (No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons around Our Gay Loved Ones)
“
If I do not forget about such a trifle as personal success, so that it never crosses my mind, or if it does, is never given a moment’s room there; if the cup of spiritual flattery tastes sweet to me, then I know nothing of Calvary love. Be unanimous among yourselves, not high minded, but accommodating the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion (Romans 12:16). Let my so-called accomplishments slip from my mind that I may not be tempted to think higher of myself than I ought. Help me learn to forget about myself and my accomplishments.
”
”
Amy Carmichael (If)
“
...nothing more excruciating when you are fighting for your life than to have healthy people round you, squabbling over futilities. Who do you love best, and who most do you want with you? Blithering idiots: it's life itself, can't you see? It's life I love best, and life I want with me. Go hang yourselves, all of you, you're only sapping my strength when most I need it. Leave me in peace and let me grapple.
”
”
A.P. . (Sabine)
“
Brace yourselves, girls: Soda is liquid Satan. It is the devil. It is garbage. There is nothing in soda that should be put into your body. For starters, soda’s high levels of phosphorous can increase calcium loss from the body, as can its sodium and caffeine. [Cousens, Conscious Eating, 475] You know what this means—bone loss, which may lead to osteoporosis. And the last time we checked, sugar, found in soda by the boatload, does not make you skinny! Now don’t go patting yourself on the back if you drink diet soda. That stuff is even worse. Aspartame (an ingredient commonly found in diet sodas and other sugar-free foods) has been blamed for a slew of scary maladies, like arthritis, birth defects, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes.2 When methyl alcohol, a component of aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is toxic and carcinogenic (cancer-causing). 3 Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don’t fucking drink it. Perhaps you have a lumpy ass because you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received more complaints about aspartame than any other ingredient to date.4 Want more bad news? When aspartame is paired with carbs, it causes your brain to slow down its production of serotonin.5 A healthy level of serotonin is needed to be happy and well balanced. So drinking soda can make you fat, sick, and unhappy.
”
”
Rory Freedman (Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous!)
“
As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead)
“
I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted mankind. But I never appreciated it. I did not really appreciate the infamies that have been committed in the name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments that Christians used. I saw the Thumbscrew—two little pieces of iron, armed on the inner surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through each end a screw uniting the two pieces. And when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or may be said, 'I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a man to keep him from drowning,' then they put his thumb between these pieces of iron and in the name of love and universal forgiveness, began to screw these pieces together. When this was done most men said, 'I will recant.' Probably I should have done the same. Probably I would have said: 'Stop; I will admit anything that you wish; I will admit that there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves; but stop.'
But there was now and then a man who would not swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now and then some sublime heart, willing to die for an intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would be savages to-night. Had it not been for a few brave, heroic souls in every age, we would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our flesh, dancing around some dried snake fetich.
Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of hatred and death, for what he believed to be the truth.
Heroism did not excite the respect of our fathers. The man who would not recant was not forgiven. They screwed the thumbscrews down to the last pang, and then threw their victim into some dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence and darkness, he might suffer the agonies of the fabled damned. This was done in the name of love—in the name of mercy, in the name of Christ.
I saw, too, what they called the Collar of Torture. Imagine a circle of iron, and on the inside a hundred points almost as sharp as needles. This argument was fastened about the throat of the sufferer. Then he could not walk, nor sit down, nor stir without the neck being punctured, by these points. In a little while the throat would begin to swell, and suffocation would end the agonies of that man. This man, it may be, had committed the crime of saying, with tears upon his cheeks, 'I do not believe that God, the father of us all, will damn to eternal perdition any of the children of men.'
I saw another instrument, called the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would be forced. In this condition, he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and the strain upon the muscles produced such agony that insanity would in pity end his pain.
I saw the Rack. This was a box like the bed of a wagon, with a windlass at each end, with levers, and ratchets to prevent slipping; over each windlass went chains; some were fastened to the ankles of the sufferer; others to his wrists. And then priests, clergymen, divines, saints, began turning these windlasses, and kept turning, until the ankles, the knees, the hips, the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists of the victim were all dislocated, and the sufferer was wet with the sweat of agony. And they had standing by a physician to feel his pulse. What for? To save his life? Yes. In mercy? No; simply that they might rack him once again.
This was done, remember, in the name of civilization; in the name of law and order; in the name of mercy; in the name of religion; in the name of Christ.
”
”
Robert G. Ingersoll (The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child)
“
... that eternally restless, eternally unquenched desire for naked paganism, that love that is the supreme joy, that is divine serenity itself- those things are useless for you moderns, you children of reflection. That sort of love wreaks havoc on you. As soon as you wish to be natural you become normal. To you Nature seems hostile, you have turned us laughing Greek deities into demons and me into a devil. All you can do is exorcise me and curse me or else sacrifice yourselves, slaughter yourselves in bacchanalian madness at my alter. And if you ever has the courage to kiss my red lips, he then goes on a pilgrimage to Rome, barefoot and in a penitent's shirt, and expects flowers to blossom from his withered staff, while roses, violets, and myrtles sprout constantly under my feet- but their fragrance doesn't agree with you, So just stay in your northern fog and Christian incense. Let us pagans rest under the rubble, under lava. Do not dig us up. Pompeii, our villas, our baths, our temples were not built for you people! You need no gods! We freeze in your world!
”
”
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (Venus in Furs)
“
We descend upon you and all things—we arrest you all;
We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids;
Through you color, form, location, sublimity, ideality;
Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and determinations of ourselves.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers! you novices!
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward;
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us;
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us;
"We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also;
You furnish your parts toward eternity;
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
”
”
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
“
And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.
”
”
Justin Martyr (The First Apology of Justin Martyr, Addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius; Prefaced by Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Justin)
“
Oh, for shame! You who are educated by a Christian government in the art of war; the practice of whose profession makes you natural enemies of the savages, so called by you. Yes, you, who call yourselves the great civilization; you who have knelt upon Plymouth Rock, covenanting with God to make this land the home of the free and the brave. Ah, then you rise from your bended knees and seizing the welcoming hands of those who are the owners of this land, which you are not, your carbines rise upon the bleak shore, and your so-called civilization sweeps inland from the ocean wave; but, oh, my God! leaving its pathway marked by crimson lines of blood; and strewed by the bones of two races, the inheritor and the invader; and I am crying out to you for justice,—yes, pleading for the far-off plains of the West, for the dusky mourner, whose tears of love are pleading for her husband, or for their children, who are sent far away from them.
”
”
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims)
“
A clatter of metal against the concrete made me look back. Liam had moved on from the car to a nearby pile of bikes that were tangled together like brambles. He picked through the frames and spokes and wheels, working carefully, trying to get down to whatever he'd seen under them....
"Do you actually know how to ride?"
"Do I know how to ride?" Liam scoffed, leaning over the bike's seat so his face was inches from mine. His pale blue eyes were electric with his excitement; they sent a charge through me, sizzling the rest of the world into peaceful, quiet static. That last bit of distance must have been as unbearable to him as it was to me, because his fingers came down over where my hands rested on the busted leather seat. I felt his touch spread over my skin like late afternoon sunshine. His lips skimmed my cheek, his breath warm against my ear as he said in low, honeyed tones, "Not only can I ride, darlin', but I can give you a few pointers–
"Hey, Hell's Angels!" Cole barked. "I didn't bring you in here to shop around for yourselves! Get your assess over here!"
Liam expression clouded over as he pulled back, the fluttering excitement vanishing like a candle blown out. with a single breath. I must have looked as disappointed as I felt, letting out a small sound of irritation, because just like that he was smiling again as he tucked a loose strand of hair back over my ear. A softer, smaller smile than before, but one meant for me. It warmed me down to my bones.
”
”
Alexandra Bracken (Never Fade (The Darkest Minds, #2))
“
In life in general we get back what we put out, if we ever were to find ourselves in a situation where we get back less or even the opposite of what we put out, then we need to get out, take ourselves out of that situation, for it is futile to try to go against the grain of feelings, emotions, life... it is not only going to lead to nowhere but pain, it is also going to lead to loneliness, bitterness, sadness, despair and heartbreak. so for those of you who are going through this currently, brush that crap off of your plate and move on. Those of you that have not experienced this yet, keep your eyes and your ears open, because in most cases it takes a while to see what has been right in front of you hitting you with baseball bats. BE AWARE OF WHAT IS. be aware of what that other person is giving to you. ask yourselves a few questions, 1) am I getting back the love that I am putting out? 2) Do I always have to initiate the conversation? 3) When I do initiate the conversation, do I get a response? 4) if so, is it on par with what I put forth. 5) in most cases of conversation does it seem like I am being ignored? 6) If I reach out to hold his/her hand does it get held back? or am I doing all the holding? ~~ The more of these simple yet profound questions you can answer negatively too. the bigger the chance that you are in a hopeless, futureless, hated by the other person relationship. So, keep your eyes and your ears open, ask yourselves questions and always and I do mean always, Be Aware of everything. it will save you heartache in the future.
”
”
Justin Southwick
“
. . . I bet I'm beginning to make some parents nervous - here I am, bragging of being a dropout, and unemployable, and about to make a pitch for you to follow your creative dreams, when what parents want is for their children to do well in their field, to make them look good, and maybe also to assemble a tasteful fortune . . .
But that is not your problem. Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to live it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it, and find out the truth about who you are . . .
I do know you are not what you look like, or how much you weigh, or how you did in school, or whether you start a job next Monday or not. Spirit isn't what you do, it's . . . well, again, I don't actually know. They probably taught this junior year at Goucher; I should've stuck around. But I know that you feel best when you're not doing much - when you're in nature, when you're very quiet or, paradoxically, listening to music . . .
We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another, especially when it's a really busy person, like you, taking care of the needy, annoying, neurotic person, like you. In fact, that's often when we see Spirit most brightly . . .
In my twenties I devised a school of relaxation that has unfortunately fallen out of favor in the ensuing years - it was called Prone Yoga. You just lay around as much as possible. You could read, listen to music, you could space out or sleep. But you had to be lying down. Maintaining the prone.
You've graduated. You have nothing left to prove, and besides, it's a fool's game. If you agree to play, you've already lost. It's Charlie Brown and Lucy, with the football. If you keep getting back on the field, they win. There are so many great things to do right now. Write. Sing. Rest. Eat cherries. Register voters. And - oh my God - I nearly forgot the most important thing: refuse to wear uncomfortable pants, even if they make you look really thin. Promise me you'll never wear pants that bind or tug or hurt, pants that have an opinion about how much you've just eaten. The pants may be lying! There is way too much lying and scolding going on politically right now without having your pants get in on the act, too.
So bless you. You've done an amazing thing. And you are loved; you're capable of lives of great joy and meaning. It's what you are made of. And it's what you're here for. Take care of yourselves; take care of one another.
And give thanks, like this: Thank you.
”
”
Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)
“
And yet that performance has a method. Trump's artlessness, like Mark Antony's, is only apparent. Listen, for example, as he performs one of his favorite riffs. He begins by saying something critical of Mexicans and Chinese. Then he turns around and says, 'I love the Mexican and Chinese people, especially the rich ones who buy my apartments or stay at my hotels or play on my golf courses.' It's their leaders I criticize, he explains, but then in a millisecond he pulls the sting from the criticism: 'they are smarter and stronger than our leaders; they're beating us.' And then the payoff all this has been leading up to, the making explicit of what has been implied all along. 'If I can sell them condominiums, rent space to them in my building at my price, and outfox them in deals, I could certainly outmaneuver them when it came to trade negotiations and immigration.' (And besides, they love me.)
Here is the real message, the message that makes sense of the disparate pieces of what looks like mere disjointed fumbling: I am Donald Trump; nobody owns me. I don't pander to you. I don't pretend to be nice and polite; I am rich and that's what you would like to be; I'm a winner; I beat people at their own game, and if you vote for me I will beat our adversaries; if you want wonky policy details, go with those losers who offer you ten-point plans; if you want to feel good about yourselves and your country, stick with me.
So despite the lack of a formal center or an orderly presentation, Trump was always on point because the point was always the same. He couldn't get off message because the one message was all he had.
”
”
Stanley Fish
“
Virginity being blown down man will quicklier be blown up; marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is mettel to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept it is ever lost. ‘Tis too cold a companion. Away with ‘t!
There’s little can be said in’t; ’tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity, is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin; virginity murthers itself, and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but loose by’t. Out with ‘t! Within the year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with ‘t! Tis a commodity that will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with ’t, while ’tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion; richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats drily. Marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet 'tis a withered pear! Will you anything with it?
”
”
William Shakespeare
“
WHAT EES ALL DEES STUFF? IN AFRICA WE DOAN HAVE ALL DEES STUFF!! WE HAVE DEE BABEE!!!"
His message was simple. It goes to the heart of what we in HypnoBirthing frequently puzzle over: Why has all the "stuff" that denies the normalcy of birth and portrays it as an inevitably risky and dangerous medical event become a routine part of most childbirth education classes? Why are couples in a low- or no-risk category being prepared for circumstances that only rarely occur? Even more puzzling, why do parents accept the negative premise that birth is a dangerous, painful ordeal at best or a medical calamity at worst? Why do they blindly accept the "one-size-fits-all" approach?"
If what couples are hearing in childbirth classes is far removed from what they want their birthing experiences to be, why do they spend so much time entertaining negative outcomes that can color and shape their birth expectations and ultimately affect their birth experience? In other words, if it's not what they're wanting, why would they "go there"? In HypnoBirthing, we doan have all dees stuff, and deliberately so."
HypnoBirthing helps you to frame a positive expectation and to prepare for birth by developing a trust and belief in your birthing body and in nature's undeniable orchestration of birthing. By teaching you the basic physiology of birth and explaining the adverse effect that fear has upon the chemical and physiological responses of your body we help you to learn simple, self-conditioning techniques that will easily bring you into the optimal state of relaxation you will use during birthing. This will allow your birthing muscles to fully relax. In other words, we will help you prepare for the birth your plan and want for yourselves and your baby, rather than the birth that someone else directs. We will help you look forward to your pregnancy and birthing with joy and love, rather than fear and anxiety.
”
”
Marie F. Mongan (HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method)
“
Any Justification that does not lead to Biblical sanctification and mortification of sinful desires is a false justification no matter how many Solas you attach to it”.
“See that your chief study be about the heart, that there God’s image may be planted, and his interest advanced, and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the love of every sin cast out, and the love of holiness succeed; and that you content not yourselves with seeming to do good in outward acts, when you are bad yourselves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and great work of a Christian is about his heart.” ~ Richard Baxter
Never forget that truth is more important to the church than peace ~ JC Ryle
"Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.” ~ Francis Schaeffer
I am not permitted to let my love be so merciful as to tolerate and endure false doctrine. When faith and doctrine are concerned and endangered, neither love nor patience are in order...when these are concerned, (neither toleration nor mercy are in order, but only anger, dispute, and destruction - to be sure, only with the Word of God as our weapon. ~ Martin Luther
“Truth must be spoken, however it be taken.” ~ John Trapp
“Hard words, if they be true, are better than soft words if they be false.” – C.H. Spurgeon
“Oh my brethren, Bold hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards” – CH Spurgeon
“The Bible says Iron sharpens Iron, But if your words don't have any iron in them, you ain't sharpening anyone”.
“Peace often comes as a result of conflict!” ~ Don P Mt 18:15-17 Rom 12:18
“Peace if possible, truth at all costs.” ~ Martin Luther
“The Scriptures argue and debate and dispute; they are full of polemics… We should always regret the necessity; but though we regret it and bemoan it, when we feel that a vital matter is at stake we must engage in argument. We must earnestly contend for the truth, and we are all called upon to do that by the New Testament.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Romans – Atonement and Justification)
“It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
“Truth bites and it stings and it has a blade on it.” ~ Paul Washer
Soft words produce hard hearts. Show me a church where soft words are preached and I will show you a church of hard hearts. Jeremiah said that the word of God is a hammer that shatters. Hard Preaching produces soft hearts. ~ J. MacArthur
Glory follows afflictions, not as the day follows the night but as the spring follows the winter; for the winter prepares the earth for the spring, so do afflictions sanctified, prepare the soul for glory. ~ Richard Sibbes
“Cowards never won heaven. Do not claim that you are begotten of God and have His royal blood running in your veins unless you can prove your lineage by this heroic spirit: to dare to be holy in spite of men and devils.” ~ William Gurnall
”
”
Various
“
I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost….
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.
To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. …..
Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!
In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!
Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
”
”
Charlie Chaplin (The Great Dictator: Il grande dittatore di Charlie Chaplin)