Usw Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Usw. Here they are! All 100 of them:

A Student is the most important person ever in this school...in person, on the telephone, or by mail. A Student is not dependent on us...we are dependent on the Student. A Student is not an interruption of our work..the Studenti s the purpose of it. We are not doing a favor by serving the Student...the Student is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so. A Student is a person who brings us his or her desire to learn. It is our job to handle each Student in a manner which is beneficial to the Student and ourselves.
William W. Purkey (Becoming an Invitational Leader: A New Approach to Professional and Personal Success)
It was safe, with all the lights off and no one around to point and stare. In the night it's easy to indulge. It was just the two of us—we didn't have to think about who we were or what this meant or where it was going. It was like an escape. It's easy to forget at this moment billions of people exist and far-off galaxies are being born and stars collide. Kissing is its own kind of collision, it produces its own planetarium of lights inside your head. For me, it was like seeing colors for the first time after living in a black-and-white world. A single person can be just as wide and vast and spellbinding as any sky full of stars. They can make you think the world stops and night can last forever.",
Katie Kacvinsky (Awaken (Awaken, #1))
Life is made up of many comings and goings and for everything that we take with us,we must leave something behind
Herman Raucher (Summer of '42)
Look, without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as People of Color, nothing about fanboy or fangirl culture would make sense. What I mean by that is: if it wasn't for race, X-Men doesn't sense. If it wasn't for the history of breeding human beings in the New World through chattel slavery, Dune doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the extermination of so many Indigenous First Nations, most of what we call science fiction’s contact stories doesn't make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understood that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible, yeah. In the Green Lantern Corps, we are the oath. We are all of these things—erased, and yet without us—we are essential.
Junot Díaz
This voice of heaven thrilled us,–we seemed the pioneers of darkness, on the very frontiers of hell.
Charles Robert Maturin (Melmoth the Wanderer (Annotated))
Seneca: “we are bad men living among bad men; and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.”1 Another thing to keep in mind
William B. Irvine (The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient)
Whatever limits us,we call Fate
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer-it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us-we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little-a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behavior, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded. But here was nature, sweeping toward him-unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent-and he saw in her fires the futility of human pretensions.
Robert Harris (Pompeii)
Dust of my dust—such similar star salt—what they did to you and what they wrung from you and what shape they made you fill—we see you still—we seek you still—we murdered—we who murder—you inadvertent tool—you misused green thing—come back to us—take vengeance for us—we saw you— I see you.
Tamsyn Muir (Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #3))
It will help us to overcome our anger, says Seneca, if we remind ourselves that our behavior also angers other people: “We are bad men living among bad men, and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.
William B. Irvine (A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy)
If we speak of things as inert or inanimate objects, we deny their ability to actively engage and interact with us—we foreclose their capacity to reciprocate our attentions, to draw us into silent dialogue, to inform and instruct us.
David Abram (Becoming Animal)
I’m just saying maybe we’re all a little fucked up, and the only difference is the world knows Owen’s story, because it happened out in the open. The rest of us…we all just keep our shit private.
Ginger Scott (Wild Reckless (Harper Boys, #1))
By Refusing to accept things, because they do not please us,we spend most of our lives making meaningless gestures Somewhere Next Door to Reality.
ZBS Foundation (Somewhere Next Door to Reality (Traveling Jack))
The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us—we start editing ideas before we have them.
Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative)
We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their defects.” In writing this line I meant to say that we must not simply “accept” imperfection when it is revealed to us—we must celebrate it. This, I assure you, is the true sign of friendship.
Ron Perlman (Easy Street: The Hard Way)
He took his own life” is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase.
Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending)
Das Göttliche ist Gottes Sache, das Menschliche Sache "des Menschen". Meine Sache ist weder das Göttliche noch das Menschliche, ist nicht das Wahre, Gute, Rechte, Freie usw., sondern allein das Meinige, und sie ist keine allgemeine, sondern ist - einzig, wie Ich einzig bin.
Max Stirner
It is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life—it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us—we are the ones who are questioned! We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential "life questions." Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to—of being responsible toward—life. With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us. Now everything depends on what is expected of us. As to what awaits us in the future, we don't need to know any more than we are able to know it.
Viktor E. Frankl (Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything)
One sign of maturity is a realization of the extent to which you, either intentionally or unintentionally, make life difficult for those around you. Consequently, you should keep in mind the words of Seneca: “we are bad men living among bad men; and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.”1
William B. Irvine (The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient)
The weather,I finally thought.The weather was always a good topic of conversation. "That was some blizzard we had last week,wasn't it?" I asked, since he'd been at Cynthia's instead of with us.We could talk about the blackouts,the shrieking winds- He perked up, looked around. "There's a Dairy Queen in town?I didn't know that.Where is it?" I heard Allie snicker. Sam took up for his friend. "It's an understandable mistake.
Rachel Hawthorne (Love on the Lifts)
Everyone who has changed the course of human history, every last one was able to do so only because he was ready for his destiny. That’s true of Moses and the Buddha, Napoleon and Bismarck. The wave that carries us, the star that guides us—we cannot choose it.
Hermann Hesse (Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend)
We were just trying to create a place for ourselves in a world that didn’t want us...We didn’t have to be the same as them, but we wanted to be part of their world.
Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go)
Everyone knows the song that Millwall fans sing, to the tune of „Sailing”: 'No one likes us/No one likes us/No one likes us/We don't care.' In fact I have always felt that the song is a little melodramatic, and that if anyone should sing it, it is Arsenal. Every Arsenal fan, the youngest and the oldest, is aware that no one likes us, and every day we hear that dislike reiterated.
Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)
Look,Nik.I can't lose you. We can be partners.With you by my side,and with the band backing us,we could take over. I want you by my side in the High Court?" "What does that even mean? We'd be...together? Like, together, together?" Cole gave a sly smile. "We'd rule hand in hand. And as far as being together, we'd be as together as you'd allow." Annoyingly,my cheeks got all warm, and I turned away, frustrated at my reaction. I stood and went over to my desk chair to sit down. Cole chuckled. He pushed himself off the floor and walked closer to me,and the Shade at my shoulder pulled toward him. I wanted to hit it. "Stay over there," I said. "Why?" He held his hands up, all innocent-like. "Does my nearness affect you? That's what happens when you spend a century with someone.
Brodi Ashton (Everneath (Everneath, #1))
Ja, es erweist sich, dass gerade die Reformatoren, die Weltumstürzler, die geborenen Führernaturen, gerade jene, die erst mal alle zeitgenössischen Druckerzeugnisse zensieren, verbieten, verbrennen lassen, von Lektüre durch und durch vergiftet sind, dass sie sich am vulgärsten Fusel eines Drako, Jean Bodin, Hobbes usw. ihren Fanatismus angelesen haben und im Katzenjammer ihre mörderischen Beglückungen verüben.
Walter Mehring (The Lost Library: The Autobiography of a Culture)
One sign of maturity is a realization of the extent to which you, either intentionally or unintentionally, make life difficult for those around you. Consequently, you should keep in mind the words of Seneca: “we are bad men living among bad men; and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.
William B. Irvine (The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient)
If we are to understand consciousness—the fact that we think and feel and that a world shows up for us—we need to turn our backs on the orthodox assumption that consciousness is something that happens inside us, like digestion. It is now clear, as it has not been before, that consciousness, like a work of improvisational music, is achieved in action, by us, thanks to our situation in and access to a world we know around us. We are in the world and of it.
Alva Noë (Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness)
The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us—we start editing ideas before we have them. The cartoonist Tom Gauld says he stays away from the computer until he’s done most of the thinking for his strips, because once the computer is involved, “things are on an inevitable path to being finished. Whereas in my sketchbook the possibilities are endless.
Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative)
Yes, guilt. It’s a revenge fantasy. We are so ashamed of what we have done as a species that we have made up a monster to destroy ourselves with. We aren’t afraid it will happen: We hope it will. We long for it. Someone needs to make us pay the price for what we have done. Someone needs to take this planet away from us before we destroy it once and for all. And if the robots don’t rise up, if our creations don’t come to life and take the power we have used so badly for so long away from us, who will? What we fear isn’t that AI will destroy us—we fear it won’t. We fear we will continue to degrade life on this planet until we destroy ourselves. And we will have no one to blame for what we have done but ourselves. So we invent this nonsense about conscious AI.
Ray Nayler (The Mountain in the Sea)
As we share our stories with those people God has specifically ordained to walk with us on this side of eternity—and as they share their stories with us—we see the sacred in the ordinary. We see the profound in the mundane. We see the joy in the day to day.
Sophie Hudson (A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet: Southern Stories of Faith, Family, and Fifteen Pounds of Bacon)
water pacifies the mind, the spirit, and the body...it soothes us, cleans us, refreshes us...we need it to survive, and there is something so calming and beautiful in the entrancing dance of water as it falls down a cascade, it is pure falling peace for our soul
bodhinku
The whole afternoon might go by without our saying a word. If we do talk, we might never speak in Yiddish. The words of our childhood became strangers to us--we couldn't use them in the same way and so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new language.
Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)
They fail to consult or listen to the God within them, the knowledge of rightness which inherently resides within the minds of all mankind. We make this failure because we are lazy. It is work to hold these internal debates. They require time and energy just to conduct them. And if we take them seriously—if we seriously listen to this “God within us”—we usually find ourselves being urged to take the more difficult path, the path of more effort rather than less. To conduct the debate is to open ourselves to suffering and struggle. Each and every one of us, more or less frequently, will hold back from this work, will also seek to avoid this painful step. Like Adam and Eve, and every one of our ancestors before us, we are all
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
The ability to see and examine himself; the ability to make moral decisions and act on them; the mental and physical courage of his suicide. “He took his own life” is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories.
Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending)
Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee...Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us...We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within… We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.
John Le Carré
The very word philosophy terrifies many women. In Quintessence I strive to exorcise this patriarchally embedded fear that undermines our intelligence and passion. We were all philosophers when we were five years old. Re-Calling our connections with nature at that age, many women can Re-member our sense of wonder and our urgent need to know. We were always asking “Why?” This state of mind can be called Wonderlust—meaning a strong and unconquerable longing for Elemental adventure and knowledge. What happened to our Wonderlust? Our visions, dreams, and far-out questions have been stunted by phallocratic society and its institutions. When we come into contact with our own deep and passionate intellectuality, we become intolerably threatening to the patriarchy. This is why there is an overwhelming taboo against women becoming philosophers, that is, seekers of wisdom on our own terms/turf. Philosophy—of our own kind, for our own kind—is a source of wholeness and power that rightfully belongs to women. Breaking the patriarchal taboo against it—against us—we break out of the state of deception. Moreover, we open gateway after gateway into our own Other-world, our Homeland. From this perspective we can See, Name, and Act to end the atrocities perpetrated against ourSelves and all the Biophilic beings.
Mary Daly (Quintessence...Realizing the Archaic Future: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto)
It reminds us that as ordinary as we might be, we can, if we choose, take the harder road, walk forth bravely under the indifferent stars. We can hazard the ravages of chance. We can choose to endure what seems unendurable, and thereby open up the possibility of prevailing. We can awaken to the world as it is, and, seeing it with eyes wide open, we can nevertheless embrace hope rather than despair. When all is said and done, I think the story tells us that hope is the hero’s domain, not the fool’s. Because we dare to hope—even when doing so might undo us—we leave the worlds we create behind us, swirling in our wakes, eternal and effervescent with the beauty of our aspirations.
Daniel James Brown (The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party)
Over and over again I have said that there is no way out of the present impasse. If we were wide awake we would be instantly struck by the horrors which surround us … We would drop our tools, quit our jobs, deny our obligations, pay no taxes, observe no laws, and so on. Could the man or woman who is thoroughly awakened possibly do the crazy things which are now expected of him or her every moment of the day? —Henry Miller, in The World of Sex (1,000 copies printed by J.N.H., for “friends of Henry Miller,” 1941) People
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
When we spend time with Jesus-when His Holy Spirit resides in us-we cannot help but care about what He cares about.
Jim Putman (Real-Life Discipleship: Building Churches That Make Disciples)
When Black women fight, we don’t fight for just us—we fight for everyone.
April Ryan (Black Women Will Save the World: An Anthem)
Trust is the heartbeat of genuine love. And we trust that the attention our partners give friends, or vice versa, does not take anything away from us—we are not diminished.
bell hooks (All About Love: New Visions)
When they told us…We just sat in the car and looked at each other. All we could say was, I guess this is it.
Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
Berganza, I’m not shocked that—since there’s good and bad in all of us—we get the hang of evil in no time.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (The Dialogue of the Dogs (The Art of the Novella))
God help us—we are both men of La Mancha.
Dale Wasserman (Man of La Mancha: A Musical Play)
If we believe that people are inherently good, we react less intensely to distress. We assume that people generally don't want to hurt us—we trust that the world is relatively safe.
Nicole Arzt (Sometimes Therapy is Awkward)
What if we all spoke truthfully about our feelings and experiences? What if we weren’t afraid of being chastised for our humanity? What if, we felt safe enough to open the parts of ourselves we have been culturally conditioned to keep closed—didn’t have to call each other brave for saying the things we know to be true, and instead of protecting our families from knowing our pain, allowed them to understand what we risk by saying nothing. So many of us say nothing. Raise our daughters to say nothing. Send the message to our sons, that no matter what they do to us—we will say nothing.
Rebecca Woolf (All of This: A Memoir of Death and Desire)
It’s all right.” “It’s not. Nothing’s right. I’ve never done a right thing in my life, it seems.” “That makes a pair of us then.” Her lips pressed against the spot under his ear. “But I believe we are right together, don’t you? People like us…we have no talent for following rules. We can only follow our hearts. I’ve wronged people as well, but is it horribly wicked that I can’t bring myself to regret it? It brought me to you.” He took one of her hands and kissed it. “You’re so young, you can’t know the meaning of true regret. It’s never what you’ve done, love, it’s what you’ve left undone.
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
The truths of the gospel support and sustain the commands of the gospel. If we do not first understand the truth about who we are—the truest thing about us—we will be crushed by the weight of the commands.
David Lomas (The Truest Thing about You: Identity, Desire, and Why It All Matters)
It is equally natural for us to see the man who helps us without seeing Christ behind him. But we must not remain babies. We must go on to recognize the real Giver. It is madness not to. Because, if we do not, we shall be relying on human beings. And that is going to let us down. The best of them will make mistakes; all of them will die. We must be thankful to all the people who have helped us,we must honor them and love them. But never, never pin your whole faith on any human being; not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it.
C.S. Lewis (MERE CHRISTIANITY (Including The Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour and Beyond Personality): A Classic of Christian Apologetics and One of the Most Influential Books amongst Evangelicals)
Erlaube," fuhr Meister Abraham fort, "erlaube, mein Johannes, mit dem Just magst du mich kaum vergleichen. Er rettete einen Pudel, ein Tier, das jeder gern um sich duldet, von dem sogar angenehme Dienstleistungen zu erwarten, mittelst Apportieren, Handschuhe-, Tabaksbeutel- und Pfeife-Nachtragen usw., aber ich rettete einen Kater, ein Tier, vonr dem sich viele entsetzen, das allgemein als perfid, keiner sanften, wohlwollenden Gesinnung, keiner offenherzigen Freundschaft fähig ausgeschrieen wird, das niemals ganz und gar die feindliche Stellung gegen den Mensch aufgibt, ja, einen Kater rettete ich aus purer uneigennütziger Menschenliebe ... Es ist das gescheiteste, artigste, ja witzigste Tier der Art, das man sehen kann, dem es nur noch an der höhern Bildung fehlt, die du, mein lieber Johannes, ihm mit leichter Mühe beibringen wirst.
E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr)
The life we want will wait for us/we will live to see the lights coming off the bay/and you will hold me, you will hold me, you will hold me/until that day.” It was the hardest line I’ve ever had to get through.
Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones & The Six)
He took his own life’ is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done the same?
Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending)
I’ve tried to make sense of how someone who didn’t stalk his victims in advance ended up going after the best and the brightest. And I think that’s it, the thing they all had in common—a light that outshone his. He targets college campuses and sorority houses because he’s looking for the cream of the crop. He wants to extinguish us—we are the ones who remind him that he’s not that smart, not that good-looking, that there’s nothing particularly special about him.
Jessica Knoll (Bright Young Women)
It is a real puzzle for the science of mind why, when an unpleasant event befalls us—we slice our thumb along with the bagel, or knock a glass of beer into our lap—the topic of our conversation turns abruptly to sexuality, excretion, or religion.
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature)
Over and over again I have said that there is no way out of the present impasse. If we were wide awake we would be instantly struck by the horrors which surround us … We would drop our tools, quit our jobs, deny our obligations, pay no taxes, observe no laws, and so on. Could the man or woman who is thoroughly awakened possibly do the crazy things which are now expected of him or her every moment of the day? —Henry Miller, in The World of Sex (1,000 copies printed by J.N.H., for “friends of Henry Miller,” 1941)
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
And we fall for them knowing we will ultimately end up emotionally and mentally destroyed, only a shell of the person we were before we met them. The true problem is—no matter how deeply they wound us—we will never truly hate them, because hating them feels like hating a part of ourselves.
Autumn Lawrence-Barnette (Someday Never Came)
Those boys and us—we only seem to be sharing a life here. The young are entirely separate. They are someplace else right now. They won’t join us in our lives, really, until they are grown. And by then, who will they become? People I don’t know. And I may not even be here when they get here.
Gregory Maguire (Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker)
If we allow ourselves to be exactly where we are in the moment—fully present, noticing whatever is happening inside us and outside us—we can trade in judgment, fear, and shame for curiosity and fascination. Through awareness we start easing our demands, expectations, rituals, and self-grasping. We
Charlotte Kasl (If the Buddha Got Stuck: A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path (Compass))
The computer is really good for editing your ideas, and it’s really good for getting your ideas ready for publishing out into the world, but it’s not really good for generating ideas. There are too many opportunities to hit the delete key. The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us—we start editing ideas before we have them. The cartoonist Tom Gauld says he stays away from the computer until he’s done most of the thinking for his strips, because once the computer is involved, “things are on an inevitable path to being finished. Whereas in my sketchbook the possibilities are endless.
Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative)
Die Logik ist insofern die schwerste Wissenschaft, als sie es nicht mit Anschauungen, nicht einmal wie die Geometrie mit abstrakten sinnlichen Vorstellungen, sondern mit reinen Abstraktionen zu tun hat und eine Kraft und Geübtheit erfordert, sich in den reinen Gedanken zurückzuziehen, ihn festzuhalten und in solchem sich zu bewegen. Auf der andern Seite könnte sie als die leichteste angesehen werden, weil der Inhalt nichts als das eigene Denken und dessen geläufige Bestimmungen und diese zugleich die einfachsten und das Elementarische sind. Sie sind auch das Bekannteste, Sein, Nichts usf., Bestimmtheit, Größe usw., Ansichsein, Fürsichsein, Eines, Vieles usw.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. Zweiter Teil. Die Philosophie der Natur)
In India today, a shadow world is creeping up on us in broad daylight. It is becoming more and more difficult to communicate the scale of the crisis even to ourselves-its size and changing shape, its depth and diversity. An accurate description runs the risk of sounding like hyperbole. And so, for the sake of credibility and good manners, we groom the creature that has sunk its teeth into us-we comb out its hair and wipe its dripping jaw to make it more personable in polite company. India isn't by any means the worst, or most dangerous, place in the world, at least not yet, but perhaps the divergence between what it could have been and what it has become makes it the most tragic.
Arundhati Roy (Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction)
I found myself comparing my life against Adrian's. The ability to see and examine himself; the ability to make moral decisions and act on them; the mental and physical courage of his suicide. “He took his own life” is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase.
Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending)
And here are we, splitting hairs about all sorts of mysterious problems which do not concern us—we shall not be blamed, at our judgement, for having failed to solve them. Strange creatures that we are, we forget the questions which really matter to us, matter vitally, and concentrate, of set purpose, on what is mere curiosity and waste of time. So clear-sighted we are, and so blind!
Thomas à Kempis (The Ultimate Early Church Collection: including The Imitation of Christ, On the Incarnation, Augustine's Confessions, Apologies, Dialogues, Letters & any ... Spurgeon, Tozer & Puritan Classics))
Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase.
Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending)
You remember that thing you said about the past being the only thing that matters?” Charlie said. “What did you mean?” “Did I say that?” Odette looked surprised. “Well, if I did, I suppose I must have meant it exactly as it sounds.” “Isn’t who we are today what counts?” Charlie didn’t know why she was pressing this point, since she wasn’t particularly happy with the person she was today. And Odette had been talking about Vince when she’d said it, not Charlie. Odette laughed. “Sure, honey.” “Isn’t that the point of reinventing ourselves?” Charlie asked. Odette took a second sip of her drink and closed her eyes in pleasure. “Ah, yes, that’s good.” Then she fixed Charlie with a look that made her remember that Odette had lived longer than she had and maybe lived harder too. “Who we were and what we did and what was done to us—we don’t get to shrug that stuff off and become some new shiny person.” Charlie raised her eyebrows. “We can try.
Holly Black (Book of Night (Book of Night, #1))
Truly committing to Love will take you on the royal road of the soul. Not only will you pass through all your own personal wounds and ancestral wounds, but it will also lead you through the valley of the original sacred wound of humanity—when sacred duality became separation. This is what we may call the feminine Christ path. We do not sit up on a mountain and ignore the valley beneath us—we walk down, flooding all experiences with Love and forgiveness, restoring connection.
Azra Bertrand (Womb Awakening: Initiatory Wisdom from the Creatrix of All Life)
My one ambition is to get all Americans to realize that they are, and must continue to be, the greatest Race on the face of this old Earth, and second, to realize that whatever apparent Differences there may be among us, in wealth, knowledge, skill, ancestry or strength—though, of course, all this does not apply to people who are racially different from us—we are all brothers, bound together in the great and wonderful bond of National Unity, for which we should all be very glad.
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
The whole story of creation, incarnation and our incorporation into the fellowship of Christ’s body tells us that God desires us.…We are created so that we may be caught up in [the self-giving love of the Trinity]; so that we may grow into the wholehearted love of God by learning that God loves us as God loves God. The life of the Christian community has…the task of teaching us this: so ordering our relations that human beings may see themselves as desired, as the occasion of joy.
Wesley Hill (Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality)
Then you've got the kids who live within a mile of the school and can walk home. Although this may not sound glamorous, it still beats my place on the totem pole: the bottom. Yes, we of the bus routes find ourselves in a general throng outside the auditorium, where all who pass may mock us.We look forward to an hour-long ride of picking up and dropping off loud middle schoolers and louder elementary kids and peeling our hamstrings off the pleather seats over and over again in the heat.
Alecia Whitaker (The Queen of Kentucky)
Jivamukti Yoga is a path to enlightenment through compassion for all beings. Jivamukti is a Sanskrit word that means to live liberated in joyful, musical harmony with the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us—we belong to the Earth. Let us celebrate our connection to life by not enslaving animals and exploiting the Earth, and attain freedom and happiness for ourselves in the process. For surely, the best way to uplift our own lives is to do all we can to uplift the lives of others. Go vegan!
Sharon Gannon (Simple Recipes for Joy: More Than 200 Delicious Vegan Recipes: A Cookbook)
Useful friendships are the bread and butter of life. This is one reason why marriages that are not useful don’t last. Romantic feelings come and go. In useful marriages the parties depend on each other for the basics—the dull-normal stuff of everyday existence. This is true when it comes to children too. Children serve no useful purpose any more. We look at a child and say, “So long as he’s happy, that’s all that matters”—not accounting for usefulness in our account of happiness. Perhaps this is one reason that our children disappoint us—we expect them to pursue their passions, to develop their gifts, yada, yada, yada, but we don’t give them anything worth caring about. And so they shrug and they say, “Who cares?” And why should they care? And why should we be disappointed when they don’t amount to anything? We preached to them the gospel of happiness, implying, without meaning to, that they have nothing worthwhile to contribute to either a household, or the world at large. So they end up worthless and miserable.
C.R. Wiley (Man of the House: A Handbook for Building a Shelter That Will Last in a World That Is Falling Apart)
Warum wollen gewisse Oppositionen nicht gedeihen? Lediglich aus dem Grunde, weil sie die Bahn der Sittlichkeit oder Gesetzlichkeit nicht verlassen wollen. Daher die maßlose Heuchelei von Ergebenheit, Liebe usw., an deren Widerwärtigkeit man sich täglich den gründlichsten Ekel vor diesem verdorbenen und heuchlerischen Verhältnis einer »gesetzlichen Opposition« holen kann. – In dem sittlichen Verhältnis der Liebe und Treue kann ein zwiespältiger, ein entgegengesetzter Wille nicht stattfinden; das schöne Verhältnis ist gestört, wenn der Eine dies und der Andere das Umgekehrte will. Nun soll aber nach der bisherigen Praxis und dem alten Vorurteil der Opposition das sittliche Verhältnis vor allem bewahrt werden. Was bleibt da der Opposition übrig? Etwa dies, eine Freiheit zu wollen, wenn der Geliebte sie abzuschlagen für gut findet? Mit nichten! Wollen darf sie die Freiheit nicht; sie kann sie nur wünschen, darum »petitionieren«, ein »Bitte, bitte!« lallen. Was sollte daraus werden, wenn die Opposition wirklich wollte, wollte mit der vollen Energie des Willens?
Max Stirner (The Ego and His Own)
In all our wanderings the watchful glance of the Eternal Watcher is evermore fixed upon us--we never roam beyond the Shepherd's eye. In our sorrows he observes us incessantly, and not a pang escapes him; in our toils he marks all our weariness, and writes in his book all the struggles of his faithful ones. These thoughts of the Lord encompass us in all our paths, and penetrate the innermost region of our being. Not a nerve or tissue, valve or vessel, of our bodily organization is uncared for; all the littles of our little world are thought upon by the great God.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening)
Whenever Shirley was away, Mark and I would take full advantage. One day, we “borrowed” her BMW X5 and took it for a joyride. We thought we got away with it, till some store clerk remarked to her, “I didn’t know your boys drove! I saw them driving around yesterday.” Shirley came home and was determined to get to the bottom of it. She knew better than to ask us--we’d have some lame excuse. So she went right to Julianne. She knew she could crack her. “Did Derek and Mark take my car?” she asked. Jules didn’t even hesitate. “Yes! And they were smoking, too!” Mark and I stood there, our mouths hanging open. Not only had she told on us, she’d offered more details than were even asked!
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
There are species on this planet we've never seen. They live in lands and seas that no human has ever explored, and they are struggling to survive in a world unknown to us...We destroy their homes. And then they are gone, before we even have a chance to meet them. Every species on this planet tells a story, an evolutionary novel packed with generations upon generations of knowledge. Letting those species disappear is like setting fire to every library on earth...the key to understanding life itself- is right here: millions of years of trial and error, data we can never even hope to accrue on our own...The only way we will ever learn what animals have to teach us about ourselves- about life- is if we keep them around.
Christie Wilcox (Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry)
You remember that thing you said about pasta being the only thing that matter?” Charlie said. “What did you mean?” “Did I say that?” Odette looked surprised. “Well, if I did, I suppose I must have meant it exactly as it sounds.” “Isn’t who we are today what counts?” Charlie didn’t know why she was pressing this point, since she wasn’t particularly happy with the person she was today. And Odette had been talking about Vince when she’d said it, not Charlie. Odette laughed. “Sure, honey.” “Isn’t that the point of reinventing ourselves?” Charlie asked. Odette took a second sip of her drink and closed her eyes in pleasure. “Ah, yes, that’s good.” Then she fixed Charlie with a look that made her remember that Odette had lived longer than she had and maybe lived harder too. “Who we were and what we did and what was done to us—we don’t get to shrug that stuff off and become some new shiny person.” Charlie raised her eyebrows. “We can try.
Holly Black (Book of Night (Book of Night, #1))
Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried." When she had finished, Rides the Wind demanded that she repeat it.Three times he asked her to repeat the passage. Then, setting the Bible aside, he took her hands in his own and said, never taking his eyes from hers, Where Walks the Fire goes,there will I go. Where Walks the Fire lodges, there will I lodge. Her people shall be my people. Her God shall be my God. Looking up,he said, "God who created all things.I thank you for sending Walks the Fire.I take her as my wife. I ask you to be pleased. You make all things.You make her heart sing for me.You make my heart answer back. You give your Son to die for us.We have no min-is-ter,but you know us.We are Lakota. We are husband and wife.We are yours.
Stephanie Grace Whitson (Walks The Fire (Prairie Winds, #1))
Child, child,” it said, “have patience and belief, for life is many days, and each present hour will pass away. Son, son, you have been mad and drunken, furious and wild, filled with hatred and despair, and all the dark confusions of the soul—but so have we. You found the earth too great for your one life, you found your brain and sinew smaller than the hunger and desire that fed on them—but it has been this way with all men. You have stumbled on in darkness, you have been pulled in opposite directions, you have faltered, you have missed the way—but, child, this is the chronicle of the earth. And now, because you have known madness and despair, and because you will grow desperate again before you come to evening, we who have stormed the ramparts of the furious earth and been hurled back, we who have been maddened by the unknowable and bitter mystery of love, we who have hungered after fame and savored all of life, the tumult, pain, and frenzy, and now sit quietly by our windows watching all that henceforth never more shall touch us—we call upon you to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass.
Thomas Wolfe (You Can't Go Home Again)
My sisters and I giggled at “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three” (“Tits and ass / bought myself a fancy pair / tightened up the derriere”) while our parents sat in the front of the car—my father at the wheel, my mom in the passenger seat—both distracted and nonplussed. We flipped through the Jacqueline Susann and Harold Robbins hardbacks in my grandmother’s bookshelf and watched The Exorcist on the Z Channel (the country’s first pay-cable network that premiered in LA in the mid-’70s) after our parents sternly told us not to watch it, but of course we did anyway and got properly freaked out. We saw skits about people doing cocaine on Saturday Night Live, and we were drawn to the allure of disco culture and unironic horror movies. We consumed all of this and none of it ever triggered us—we were never wounded because the darkness and the bad mood of the era was everywhere, and when pessimism was the national language, a badge of hipness and cool. Everything was a scam and everybody was corrupt and we were all being raised on a diet of grit. One could argue that this fucked us all up, or maybe, from another angle, it made us stronger. Looking back almost forty years later, it probably made each of us less of a wuss. Yes, we were sixth and seventh graders dealing with a society where no parental filters existed. Tube8.com was not within our reach, fisting videos were not available on our phones, nor were Fifty Shades of Grey or gangster rap or violent video games, and terrorism hadn’t yet reached our shores, but we were children wandering through a world made almost solely for adults. No one cared what we watched or didn’t, how we felt or what we wanted, and we hadn’t yet become enthralled by the cult of victimization. It was, by comparison to what’s now acceptable when children are coddled into helplessness, an age of innocence.
Bret Easton Ellis (White)
What if I say to the church, “God chose you for salvation and Jesus died for you,” and then some of those people fall away and apostatize and end up in hell? Haven’t I lied to them? No, I haven’t. I have spoken the truth. In Scripture, truth is more than just conformity to the facts. It is trustworthiness and faithfulness.10 I have spoken to these people in a trustworthy manner. I have spoken to them in a faithful manner, a manner that they can bank their whole lives on, because I have spoken to them in accordance with God’s revelation. There is a tough, challenging, and surprising passage in Ezekiel 33:13 and following. The Lord says there: When I say to the righteous, he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die. But when I say to the wicked, “You will surely die,” and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes of life [NASB margin] without committing iniquity, he will surely live; he shall not die. None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced justice and righteousness; he will surely live.11 Yet we want to say to God, “You said to the righteous man, ‘You will surely live’—living you will live, in the Hebrew idiom—but he died. You said to the wicked man, ‘You will surely die’—dying you will die—and he lived. You lied to them, didn’t you? You didn’t tell the truth to them.” But who are we to teach God how to speak the truth? This is how God speaks. He says to people, “You will surely live,” and then they die because they trust in their own righteousness instead of trusting in Him. But God was telling the truth when He said to them, “You will surely live.” He was not lying to them. He was saying something trustworthy. When He says to the wicked man, “You will surely die,” He’s saying something trustworthy to that man and the man takes heed to what God has said. He trusts what God has said. He believes that if he stays on the path on which he is going he will surely die. In faith he trembles at the warning and he will surely live. God speaks this way and we must learn from him how to speak. God speaks to His people and He calls them elect, and therefore we also need to speak to God’s people this way. We must. We have no other choice but to let God teach us how to address his people, even if we don’t have it all worked out in our minds. If we are not comfortable with biblical language, not only hearing it but also saying it, if biblical language sounds strange to us, and if our theology gets in the way of our speaking and receiving the language of Scripture, then what has become of us—we, who are to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord?
Steve Wilkins (The Federal Vision)
Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefore deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what’s called at home. But now isn't simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until--later or sooner-- perhaps--no, not perhaps--quite certainly: it will come. Fear tweaks the vagus nerve. A sickish shrinking from what waits, somewhere out there, dead ahead. But meanwhile the cortex, that grim disciplinarian, has taken its place at the central controls and has been testing them, one after another: the legs stretch, the lower back is arched, the fingers clench and relax. And now, over the entire intercommunication system, is issued the first general order of the day: UP. Obediently the body levers itself out of bed--wincing from twinges in the arthritic thumbs and the left knee, mildly nauseated by the pylorus in a state of spasm--and shambles naked into the bathroom, where its bladder is emptied and it is weighed: still a bit over 150 pounds, in spite of all that toiling at the gym! Then to the mirror. What it sees there isn’t much a face as the expression of a predicament. Here’s what it has done to itself, here’s the mess it has somehow managed to get itself into the during its fifty-eight years; expressed in terms of a dull, harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle, a throat hanging limp in tiny wrinkled folds. The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative. Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face—the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man—all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us—we have died—what is there to be afraid of? It answers them: But that happened so gradually, so easily. I’m afraid of being rushed. It stares and stares. Its lips part. It struggles to breathe through its mouth. Until the cortex orders it impatiently to wash, to shave, to brush its hair. Its nakedness has to be covered. It must be dressed up in the clothes because it is going outside, into the world of the other people; and these others must be able to identify it. Its behavior must be acceptable to them. Obediently, it washes, shaves, brushes its hair, for it accepts its responsibilities to the others. It is even glad that it has its place among them. It knows what is expected of it. It knows its name. It is called George.
Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man)
What is lighting?...It is not presented as an aim of our perception, it is the auxiliary or the mediator of our perception. It is not itself seen, but makes the rest be seen...The lighting directs my gaze and leads me to see the object, so in one sense it knows and sees the object...Reciprocally, our vision does nothing but take up for itself and follow out the encompassing of the spectacle through the pathways traced out for it by the lighting, just as in hearing a phrase we are surprised to find the trace of an external thought. We perceive according to light, just as in verbal communication we think according to others...We can only understand this phenomenon if the spectacle, far from being a sum of objects, or a mosaic of qualities spread out before an acosmic subject, circumvents the subject and offers him a pact. Lighting is not on the side of the object, it is what we take up, what we adopt as a norm, whereas the illuminated thing stands in front of us and confronts us. Lighting is in itself neither color, nor even light, it is prior to the distinction between colors and lights. And this is why it always tends to become 'neutral' for us...We must say that yellow light, by taking on the function of lighting, tends to situate itself as prior to every color, tends toward the absence of color, and that correlatively objects distribute the colors of the spectrum according to the degree and to the mode of their resistance to this new atmosphere. Every color-quale is thus mediated by a color-function and is determined in relation to a level that is variable. The level is established, and along with it all of the color values that depend upon it, when we begin to live within the dominant atmosphere and redistribute upon the objects the colors of the spectrum in function of this fundamental tacit agreement. Our settling into a certain colored milieu, along with the transpositions of all color relations that it entails, is a bodily operation; I can only accomplish this by entering into this new atmosphere because my body is the general power of inhabiting all of the world's milieus, and the key to all of the transpositions and all of the equivalences that keep the world constant.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception)
Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. In other words, by making the deliberate choice—or allowing others to make the choice for us—we determine the future state!
Naveen Jain (Moonshots : Creating a World of Abundance)
Over it all, I kept hearing people shouting out words I couldn’t quite make out. I cornered a woman, young, cornrowed hair that turned into ponytails with blue tips, wearing a bulky old leather jacket and leggings over runners’ legs. “Are you shouting out ‘Hufflepuff’?” As she nodded, I heard an answering call, “Hufflepuff,” and another girl, Latina, sparkly Chuck Taylors and a Ramones/Bernie Sanders mashup tee, emerged out of the crowd and gave the first girl a hug. I realized I could hear others calling “Slytherin” and “Gryffindor” and “Ravenclaw,” and other answering calls, groups self-assembling, hugging, showing their phones to each other, ignoring me. “Excuse me? What is this Harry Potter thing?” The girl grinned at me. “Dumbledore’s Army! It’s how we organize our affinity groups. That way you can always find people to get your back—the houses let us find the kind of people who share our tactics and style.” She tapped an enamel pin on her lapel, yellow and black diagonal stripes. “Don’t worry, we’re trans-inclusive. JKR won’t have a thing to do with us—we keep waiting for her to sue. You want to join? (less)
Cory Doctorow (Attack Surface (Little Brother, #3))
The twists and turns of life have a way of reminding us—we aren’t home here. This is not our homeland. We aren’t fluent in the languages of disease and death. The culture confuses the heart, the noise disrupts our sleep, and we feel far from home.
Max Lucado (Traveling Light Deluxe Edition: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear)
Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide... though he's amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker, "Good morning folks, this is Heidelberg here we're coming into now, you know the old refrain, 'I lost my heart in Heidelberg,' well I have a friend who lost both his ears here! Don't get me wrong, it's really a nice town, the people are warm and wonderful—when they're not dueling. Seriously though, they treat you just fine, they don't just give you the key to the city, they give you the bung-starter!" u.s.w.
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
God is the one who bends over us—we the afflicted ones, reduced to pieces of inert and bleeding flesh. But at the same time God is in some way also the afflicted One who appears to us as an inanimate body in some way—of Whom it seems all thought is absent—the afflicted One we know nothing about, without rank or name. The inanimate body is the created universe. The love we owe to God and would be our supreme perfection if we could reach it is the divine model of both gratitude and compassion.
Simone Weil (Awaiting God: A New Translation of Attente de Dieu and Lettre a Un Religieux)
As I have said earlier, the world, epistemologically, is literally a different place to a bottom-up empiricist. We don’t have the luxury of sitting down to read the equation that governs the universe; we just observe data and make an assumption about what the real process might be, and “calibrate” by adjusting our equation in accordance with additional information. As events present themselves to us, we compare what we see to what we expected to see. It is usually a humbling process, particularly for someone aware of the narrative fallacy, to discover that history runs forward, not backward. As much as one thinks that businessmen have big egos, these people are often humbled by reminders of the differences between decision and results, between precise models and reality. What I am talking about is opacity, incompleteness of information, the invisibility of the generator of the world. History does not reveal its mind to us—we need to guess what’s inside of it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto, #2))
Anabole Steroide sind eine Vielzahl von biologischen und natürlichen Nahrungsergänzungsmitteln, die helfen, Ihren Körper mit den notwendigen Nährstoffen, Vitaminen und Mineralstoffen zu "füllen". Nur eine Ergänzung zu Ihrer täglichen Ernährung, wenn Sie zusätzliches Protein, Kohlenhydrate und die richtigen Fette benötigen. Die Wahl der Sporternährung richtet sich nach dem vor Ihnen liegenden Ziel (Muskelaufbau, Fettverbrennung, Aufrechterhaltung der körperlichen Aktivität usw.). Anabole Steroide werden so genannt, dass oft kein Sportler darauf verzichten kann: egal ob Anfänger oder „Fortgeschrittener“. Steroide liefern dem Körper zusätzliche Substanzen, damit er im Training härter und besser arbeitet, sich schneller erholt und gute Ergebnisse zeigt. Einige Arten von anabolen Steroiden sind jedoch nicht nur für Sportler nützlich, sondern auch für Menschen, die zu anstrengenden Übungen neigen.
Pharmax Anabolika
We all carry pieces of our journeys within us,....We all learn from our mistakes. Who’s to say we don’t deserve happiness?
Lauren Kate (Unforgiven (Fallen, #5))
... "They don’t ask you first, they just do it. But by God they haven’t heard the last from us. One day we will stand up firm and steadfast again for what was always worth bothering about but never mattered to them. Everything went so differently from how we thought. That the world didn’t care much about us—we all understood that a long time ago. But we still thought, for a while longer, that it was up to us to make the silent course of things take their course." - The End (1937)
Nescio (Amsterdam Stories)
And so in the 1960s organizations like the Black Panther Party were created. (And I should say the Black Panther Party was founded in 1966, which means that there should be a fiftieth anniversary celebration coming up!) I wonder how we are going to address, for example, the Ten-Point Program of the Black Panther Party. I’ll just summarize the Ten-Point Program and you might get an idea why there are not efforts under way to guarantee a large fiftieth anniversary celebration for the Black Panther Party. Number one was “We want freedom.” Two, full employment. Three, an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black and oppressed communities—it was anticapitalist! Number four, we want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings. Number five, we want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present-day society. And number six—which is especially significant in relation to the right-wing effort to undo the very small efforts made by the Obama administration to produce health care for poor people in the US—we want completely free health care for all Black and oppressed people. Number seven, we want an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of Black people, other people of color, and all oppressed people inside the United States. Number eight, we want an immediate end to all wars of aggression—you see how current this still sounds. Number nine, we want freedom for all Black and oppressed people now held in US federal, state, county, city, and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country. And finally, number ten: we want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace, and people’s community control of modern technology.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
He targets college campuses and sorority houses because he’s looking for the cream of the crop. He wants to extinguish us—we are the ones who remind him that he’s not that smart, not that good-looking, that there’s nothing particularly special about him.
Jessica Knoll (Bright Young Women)
The more genuine our romantic loves the more we do not feel called upon to weaken or sever ties with friends in order to strengthen ties with romantic partners. Trust is the heartbeat of genuine love. And we trust that the attention our partners give friends, or vice versa, does not take anything away from us—we are not diminished. What
bell hooks (All About Love: New Visions)
But that's the point of Berlin. It's the only chill place left." "Yeah, but it's over. How can you not see that? These were our Weimar years, and we spent them doing nothing." "We do things." "No. We get fucked up, we spend our time in dark rooms, we don't make anything. Protests are basically street parties. When we see the news we watch it through a filter, because none of it's real to us—we cry about it sometimes, but it doesn't really touch us, it's not real, we feel safe. We drink it off and then the badness of our hangovers gives us a good excuse not to do anything the next day. And the whole time things are getting more and more expensive, and people are leaving, and each time we think, how sad, another person has left, but actually it's an exodus now. There's no reason to stay any longer, now that it looks just like the rest of the world. Have you even read about what's been happening on the outside?
Elvia Wilk (Oval)
Your eye is on the future, not the past. Often such creative readjustments lead to a superior path for us—we are shaken out of our complacency and forced to reassess where we are headed.
Robert Greene (The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature)
Maybe we're just seeing a tiny corner of reality—the corner we want to see. But if somehow we could "turn" and look at what's behind us—we might see something so strange, we wouldn't understand it in a million years.
Richard Sala (Delphine)
The outsiders—people that think they’re normal—they don’t understand people like us. We see the world for what it is. This Earth is layered, just like an onion, and we’re only living in one of those layers. Us—we see the other layers. The energies that exist in this world and all the ugly and evil that comes alongside it. These layers are thin and strong entities can walk through the cracks, into other layers and wreak havoc.
H.D. Carlton (Satan's Affair (Cat and Mouse, #0.5))
hope is the hero’s domain, not the fool’s. Because we dare to hope—even when doing so might undo us—we leave the worlds we create behind us, swirling in our wakes, eternal and effervescent with the beauty of our aspirations.
Daniel James Brown (The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party)
Us—we see the other layers. The energies that exist in this world and all the ugly and evil that comes alongside it. These layers are thin and strong entities can walk through the cracks, into other layers and wreak havoc.
H.D. Carlton (Satan's Affair (Cat and Mouse, #0.5))