Wings Motivational Quotes

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Compassion crowns the soul with its truest victory.
Aberjhani (The River of Winged Dreams)
Love, Mercy, and Grace, sisters all, attend your wounds of silence and hope.
Aberjhani (The River of Winged Dreams)
Your pain is a school unto itself–– and your joy a lovely temple.
Aberjhani (The River of Winged Dreams)
The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorated substance, a fresh flow of ideas, and splendidly revitalized color. In short, the power of a certain kind of dream is such that death need not indicate finality at all but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward.
Aberjhani (The River of Winged Dreams)
When a Wanderess has been caged, or perched with her wings clipped, She lives like a Stoic, She lives most heroic, smiling with ruby, moistened lips once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.
Roman Payne
Feet sandaled with dreams tread paths of vision leading to wisdom’s sharp peaks.
Aberjhani (The River of Winged Dreams)
Nobody thought it could be done, so nobody had tried before. Standing with one foot in the abyss and the other with a foothold in her dreams, she stood on the edge of a cliff. She took one look behind and with one last deep breath, she leapt with reckless certainty and decisive confidence. Blurring through the sky, for a moment she looked like she would fade into darkness, but in the very last moment when everyone else had given up on her, from her back spread wings. With a leap of faith, she learned to fly.
Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
Without being push to the wall, we will have remained in our comfortable zone. But this circumstance challenges us to find the courage to move on.
Lailah Gifty Akita (On Eagles Wings:Rise)
Similar to a butterfly, I've gone through a metamorphosis, been released from my dark cocoon, embraced my wings, and soared!
Dana Arcuri (Reinventing You: Simple Steps to Transform Your Body, Mind, & Spirit)
Death wins nothing here, gnawing wings that amputate–– then spread, lift up, fly.
Aberjhani (Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry)
Soar like an eagle beyond skies of heavens reach; as wings of dreams dance with winds of reality.
Shah Asad Rizvi
Unfurl Your Wings!
Granthana Sinha
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
Atticus Aristotle (Success and Happiness - Quotes to Motivate Inspire & Live by)
Carry your wings of hope so high in the sky that there is no room left for disappointments.
Heenashree Khandelwal
Butterflies don't know their wings' Colors, but others see their Splendor.
Mohith Agadi
Authors don't have wings. We must climb the mountain, not try to fly to its top.
Rodi Szoke
Dream high, beyond the sky; no matter wings so small, keep vision bright; just dare to learn, for you are born to fly.
Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Guru with Guitar)
If you throw a bird off a cliff, you are helping it find its wings.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The accounts of rape, wife beating, forced childbearing, medical butchering, sex-motivated murder, forced prostitution, physical mutilation, sadistic psychological abuse, and other commonplaces of female experi ence that are excavated from the past or given by contemporary survivors should leave the heart seared, the mind in anguish, the conscience in upheaval. But they do not. No matter how often these stories are told, with whatever clarity or eloquence, bitterness or sorrow, they might as well have been whispered in wind or written in sand: they disappear, as if they were nothing. The tellers and the stories are ignored or ridiculed, threatened back into silence or destroyed, and the experience of female suffering is buried in cultural invisibility and contempt… the very reality of abuse sustained by women, despite its overwhelming pervasiveness and constancy, is negated. It is negated in the transactions of everyday life, and it is negated in the history books, left out, and it is negated by those who claim to care about suffering but are blind to this suffering. The problem, simply stated, is that one must believe in the existence of the person in order to recognize the authenticity of her suffering. Neither men nor women believe in the existence of women as significant beings. It is impossible to remember as real the suffering of someone who by definition has no legitimate claim to dignity or freedom, someone who is in fact viewed as some thing, an object or an absence. And if a woman, an individual woman multiplied by billions, does not believe in her own discrete existence and therefore cannot credit the authenticity of her own suffering, she is erased, canceled out, and the meaning of her life, whatever it is, whatever it might have been, is lost. This loss cannot be calculated or comprehended. It is vast and awful, and nothing will ever make up for it.
Andrea Dworkin (Right-Wing Women)
It is a bird’s imagination, not its wings, that determines how high it can fly.
Matshona Dhliwayo
When push to the wall. You have to develop strategies to scale over the wall.
Lailah Gifty Akita (On Eagles Wings:Rise)
Not all things that fall down break. Some develop wings.
Neelam Saxena Chandra
There are only so many times you can roll a dice, before it lands on a six.
Tene Edwards (Walk With Wings)
Turbulence breaks a tree’s branches, but only tickles an eagle’s wings.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Celebrate who you are and what you stand for. Give wings to your dreams and live your aspirations. You've got only one life- live it in the best way you possibly can.
Roopleen
My duty is to pray. I know God hears my prayers.
Lailah Gifty Akita (On Eagles Wings:Rise)
When we can see the star of desire in our sky, we can use our wings of hope and our air of love to reach it.
Imania Margria
A bird in a nest is secure, but that is not why God gave it wings.
Matshona Dhliwayo
You're not winged because you are flying on a dragon
Cass Ark Galleas (About Myself)
The key to my motivation has always been to look at how far I had still to go rather than how far I had come.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (Wings of Fire)
Growl, you live in a slime lair and maintain an identity as the mysterious overlord of an undersea city, you command a fleet of meat dreadnaughts with crews of humanoid whale people, and you're currently reclining in a pulsating mass of gelatinous goo that looks like it escaped from hell's own Jell-O mold--so excuse the fuck out of me if I question your motives.
Christopher Moore (Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings)
Transformation is not a kind place, it’s chaotic and a source of inner conflict because it is not a ‘safe’ place, but it is a place of growth; a place of rebirth where you can restart and realign with who you are. We can learn so much from the caterpillar that grows its butterfly wings in the ache and darkness of its own cocoon; and is reborn, beautiful and free, with wings to fly. This is the true meaning and profoundness of transformation; it is where the truest parts of you can emerge and you transition into the most intuitive and vibrant canvas of yourself.
Christine Evangelou (Stardust and Star Jumps: A Motivational Guide to Help You Reach Toward Your Dreams, Goals, and Life Purpose)
TOBY: The world can move or not by changing some words.
Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing Script Book)
Skill gives you legs to jog, talent gives you legs to run, brilliance gives you legs to sprint, but genius gives you wings to fly.
Matshona Dhliwayo
When the nest becomes too small a bird is ready to spread its wings and fly.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Do not quit. Hang on the wings of hope.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
You'll always be curious yet deliriously sinking into whatever your nightmare is until you let your wings know you're serious by leaping into your wildest dreams of self love.
Curtis Tyrone Jones
You always drop by, to en- lighten my mind, when my wings are feeling heavy & i've forgotten how to fly.
Curtis Tyrone Jones
Energy drinks like Red Bull may give you wings for the moment, but in time it takes away your basic physical and mental wellness and leads to disastrous psychiatric and physiological conditions.
Abhijit Naskar (Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost)
Christ in me” means Christ bearing me along from within, Christ the motive power that carries me on, Christ giving my whole life a wonderful poise and lift, and turning every burden into wings . . . not as something you have to bear but as something by which you are borne.
James Bryan Smith (The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows (The Apprentice Series Book 1))
You wake up and you realised, you suddenly have have wings? What will you do? You'll go and cut those, because that's what they thought you. They taught you to be sorry for everything. They thought you to be normal.
Karishma Magvani
For communication to be effective, especially in matters as life-defining as the gospel message, truth and relevance are the two indispensable wings on which it is borne.
Ravi Zacharias (Is Your Church Ready?: Motivating Leaders to Live an Apologetic Life)
We do not just go through life blindly,we create our own journey. Your faith has sculpted you into the human being you have become.
Judie McCarty (Finding Your Wings: Unleashing Your Creative Powers)
When deciding whether or not to go for your dream, remember that you don't need a bigger net, you just need bigger wings.
Sheri Fink
Don’t let either hate or evil conquer you.
Lailah Gifty Akita (On Eagles Wings:Rise)
Let me nurture my wings, for I was born to fly.
Ankita Singhal
You shall overcome every limitation and soar high on Eagle’s wing.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
Why crawl like a caterpillar when you have the wings to be a butterfly?
Faraaz Kazi (More Than Just Friends)
Children dwell in their dreams. Get them the wings and they'll fly.
Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Guru with Guitar)
Peace became my motivation, and I did everything to maintain
Sejal Badani (Trail of Broken Wings)
Please don't be overly sober with your precious wings, it's your addiction to freedom that makes me think that i too can defy gravity.
Curtis Tyrone Jones
On Hallows Eve, we witches meet to broil and bubble tasty treats like goblin thumbs with venom dip, crisp bat wings, and fried fingertips. We bake the loudest cackle crunch, and brew the thickest quagmire punch. Delicious are the rotting flies when sprinkled over spider pies. And, my oh my, the ogre brains all scrambled up with wolf remains! But what I love the most, it’s true, are festered boils mixed in a stew. They cook up oh so tenderly. It goes quite well with mugwort tea. So don’t be shy; the cauldron’s hot. Jump in! We witches eat a lot!
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
I told you it would be difficult! If I were you I would just not bother trying these tasks! They are great challenges, clearly too great for you.” said Guya, but there was a certain sparkle in his eye as he said it. “I shall complete your tasks, ” said Yoshiko firmly. “And I’ll be back sooner than you think!” With that he spread his wings to head for Fire School. “Oh and one more thing Guya” Yoshiko added. Perhaps when I return you will be so kind as to stop calling me a little dragon!” As Yoshiko flew off Guya chuckled to himself.
Julia Suzuki (Yoshiko and the Gift of Charms (The Land of Dragor))
Someday you shall meet someone Who's gonna look at you in awe- Flying high, wings all spread, And wonder how it'd be like To clip those wings, Tie those feet down, And cage you forever... When you hit the ground, Remember to run
Sanhita Baruah
What do Halloween creatures eat? Hot spider soup with pumpkin meat and toasted, no-salt, bat-wing chips, served best with Transylvania dips. A thistle-horehound salad mix has added crunch from sun-dried ticks. The plat du jour is hairy beast fried crisp in grimy goblin grease. Now, don’t forget dessert so sweet; try puss-cream pie or candied feet!
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
That hurts so wonderfully. Thank you.' He laughs, making his way up to the tense muscles of my thighs. 'Trust me, my motives aren't altruistic, Violence. I'll take any excuseI can get to put my hands on you.' The scruff on his cheeks scrapes my palms as I slide my hands down the sides of his face to cup the back of his neck. 'The feeling is more than mutual.
Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
Things I love about spring are these: Blooming flowers on fruit-bearing trees. Fire-red tulips—their first reveal— Followed by sun-yellow daffodils. Trees acquiring new coats of green. Natural waterfalls glistening. The chirps and melodies of birds. Throaty ribbits of frogs overheard. A passing whiff of mint to smell, Oregano and basil as well. Colorful butterflies with wings. Fuzzy, industrious bees that sting. Sunlight waning late in the day. Warm breezes causing willows to sway. Most of all, a sense of things new, Including budding feelings for you.
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
Life ought to be live with great optimism.
Lailah Gifty Akita (On Eagles Wings:Rise)
A small idea with wings will take you higher than a big one with legs.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Never lose hope! You are capable of holding on to hope.
Lailah Gifty Akita (The Wings of Hope: Survivor)
I guess that’s what being Spider-Man means. Helping everyone, even when it doesn’t seem like a huge deal.
Brittney Morris (Wings of Fury (Spider-Man: Miles Morales))
You can cage their wings, you can't cage their spirit.
Sarvesh Jain (The Awakening Wisdom of Life: Probably the best Quotation Book in the world)
Soar your wings high in the heavenly sky.
Lailah Gifty Akita
When God pushes you off a cliff, it is your faith He wants you to use as wings.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Listen to the arts of kids, their hands when tied have wings.
Ymatruz (The Coffee Cries Foul)
A bird must have faith in its wings if it wants to fly.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A butterfly's wings grow because a caterpillar dared to believe it could fly.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away.
Ellen Gould White (Stewardship: Motives of the Heart : Ellen G. White Notes 1Q 2018)
Having wings to fly but not being allowed to spread them freely is what nightmares are made of.
Shina Reynolds (A Light in the Sky (Clashing Skies, #1))
you do not need the sky to fly, you need wings to fly ~ Zoya
Archana Kapoor Nagpal | Zoya
With stardust on my wings, I am pure reckoning magic.
Cheyenne Sioux (Sincerely Yours Forever, C.s.)
The sky is always open. You can fly anytime you like. Just make sure there is enough fuel within you and your wings are intact.
Bhuwan Thapaliya (Safa Tempo: Poems New & Selected)
Find your wings and follow your dreams...because you were made to fly.
Lin Rajan Thomas (Every Sparrow Was Made to Fly (Inspiring Voices))
And the Flight goes on, beyond the Wing" Tania Tome (C)(C)
Tânia Tomé
Fly out of the Wing" Tania Tome (C) (P)
Tânia Tomé
My work has wings because of you. Thank you for the support.
Mitta Xinindlu
In the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, we find a gentle reminder to appreciate the small moments in life and to find joy in life’s simple pleasures.
Shree Shambav (Life Changing Journey - 365 Inspirational Quotes - Series - I)
I just want to live till I Die. I want to open my wings and fly. - RVM.
R.V.M.
An eagle with one wing has a better chance of flying than a turkey with two.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If you were born to rise you will yearn for the stars, even if you have no wings.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The wings that don't unfold don't fly.
Kangoma Kindembo
Gun-carrying men are not just motivated by crime and insecurity but also by a loss of American values, a loss of masculine dignity, and a loss of confidence in the state.
Jeffrey Toobin (Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism)
I came to believe that my true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play. It transcends the ego. I came to understand that there is an Authentic 'I' within - an 'I am', or divine spark within the soul.
Sue Monk Kidd (Sue Monk Kidd 2 books collection set: secret life of bees, invention of wings)
I watched as he ignored the world and focused on his hands. He creased a simple paper plane and dreamt of other lands. I watched him reach to throw that plane into the open sky. A passing breeze upheld its wings and made the paper fly. I watched a pleasant smile control his lips throughout the flight, until the little paper plane had floated out of sight. I hoped to see him chase the plane into the light of day. Instead, he creased another one and threw it too away.
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
It is GOOD to cherish your yesterdays; It is BETTER to dream your tomorrows; but it is BEST to live your today's! Remember to hold fast to your dreams, for if your dreams die, then your life is like a bird with broken wings that cannot fly.
Donald Pillai
The Secret to Flight Don't flap your wings so hard. It only exhausts you. Close your eyes. Lean into the currents, say yes. Let the wind raise you higher and higher. So easy. That's what Eagles do. Oh, this is the secret to life as well.
Kamal Ravikant (Rebirth: A Fable of Love, Forgiveness, and Following Your Heart)
What is it to discover you have wings? What is it to be afraid of your wings? What is it to discover at the end of your life that you had wings and never flew? What is it to find out that you were hidden from yourself? What is it to be forgotten? Each day we are forgotten by ourselves through ourselves, For we do not believe, in who we are.
Mimi Novic (The Silence Between the Sighs)
I’m tired of these sophistries. I’m tired of these right-wing fuckers. They wouldn’t lift a finger themselves. They work contentedly in offices and banks. Yet now they sit pontificating in parliament, in papers, impugning our motives, questioning our judgements. And why? Because they themselves need to feel better by putting down everyone whose work is so much harder than theirs. You only have to say the words ‘social worker’…’probation officer’ … ‘counsellor’ … for everyone in this country to sneer. Do you know what social workers do? Every day? They try and clear out society’s drains. They clear out the rubbish. They do what no one else is doing, what no one else is willing to do. And for that, oh Christ, do we thank them? No, we take our own rotten consciences, wipe them all over the social worker’s face, and say ‘if…’ FUCK! ‘if I did the job, then of course if I did it…oh no, excuse me, I wouldn’t do it like that…’ Well I say: ‘OK, then, fucking do it, journalist. Politician, talk to the addicts. Hold families together. Stop the kids from stealing in the streets. Deal with couples who beat each other up. You fucking try it, why not? Since you’re so full of advice. Sure, come and join us. This work is one big casino. By all means. Anyone can play. But there’s only one rule. You can’t play for nothing. You have to buy some chips to sit at the table. And if you won’t pay with your own time…with your own effort…then I’m sorry. Fuck off!
David Hare (Skylight)
Why wish for something that will never be? It ends in nothing but heartbreak. We wish, then we think about how things would be if our wishes came true. And we feel happy thinking about those things. But then we wake up and realise that our wishes don’t have wings. And it hurts because all the happiness that we thought of, was never real. Hold on to what you have, try to find your happiness in what is, rather than what should or could have been.
Faraaz Kazi (More Than Just Friends)
The hands-on approach takes an active interest on a very regular basis in the members' work. The hands-off approach trusts team members and recognizes their need for autonomy to carry out their roles, as they see fit. It hinges on their self-motivation. When the leader goes too far with the hands-on approach, he is seen as an anxious and interfering type. If he goes too far hands-off, he is seen as abdicating his responsibility or not being interested. Today,
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (Wings of Fire)
Fear, anxiety, the terror of mortality—it must be a drag being right-wing. But despite that, in a multinational study, rightists were happier than leftists.42 Why? Perhaps it’s having simpler answers, unburdened by motivated correction. Or, as favored by the authors, because system justification allows conservatives to rationalize and be less discomfited by inequality. And as economic inequality rises, the happiness gap between the Right and the Left increases.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
Facts aside though, I can understand why so many of us might be afraid. As we become anxious, uncertain as to our future and where the nation is headed, that anxiety is being fed around every corner by right-wing commentators bent on using that uncertainty to fuel a political movement. The sad truth is, racial resentments are potent motivators in a nation such as ours, and there is no shortage of mouthpieces prepared to use them to their own ends, a subject to which I now turn.
Tim Wise (Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority)
They did not awaken quickly, nor fling about nor shock their systems with any sudden movement. No, they arose from slumber as gently as a soap bubble floats out from its pipe. Down into the gulch they trudged, still only half awake. Gradually their wills coagulated. They built a fire and boiled some tea and drank it from the fruit jars, and at last they settled in the sun on the front porch. The flaming flies made halos about their heads. Life took shape about them, the shape of yesterday and of tomorrow. Discussion began slowly, for each man treasured the little sleep he still possessed. From this time until well after noon, intellectual comradeship came into being. Then roofs were lifted, houses peered into, motives inspected, adventures recounted. Ordinarily their thoughts went first to Cornelia Ruiz, for it was a rare day and night during which Cornelia had not some curious and interesting adventure. And it was an unusual adventure from which no moral lesson could be drawn. The sun glistened in the pine needles. The earth smelled dry and good. The rose of Castile perfumed the world with its flowers. This was one of the best of times for the friends of Danny. The struggle for existence was remote. They sat in judgment on their fellows, judging not for morals, but for interest. Anyone having a good thing to tell saved it for recounting at this time. The big brown butterflies came to the rose and sat on the flowers and waved their wings slowly, as though they pumped honey out by wing power.
John Steinbeck (Tortilla Flat)
My approach to training echoed how I climbed. The romance of climbing didn’t interest me. I didn’t seek harps and wings. I heard no opera up there. Instead, my mountains had teeth. The jagged edge we walked up there dragged itself across my throat, and the throats of my friends and peers. I took the mountains’ indifference to life as aggression, and fought back. I armored myself against that indifference; with training, with thinking, with attitude. I trained with friends who shared a similar approach. Our mantra was dark, but it motivated us. When we ran we breathed in rhythm—no matter the speed—and that beat had words: “They all died.” We inhaled and exhaled the great alpine epics—like the tragedy that befell Walter Bonatti’s party on the Freney Pillar—to push ourselves to a place where we would never come up short, physically. The consequences of falling short made training important. I realized early that controlling the things that I could control gave me greater freedom to address the things that I could not control. And the mountains offered those in spades.
Steve House (Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete)
I am very often asked why, at the age of eighty-five, I continue to practice. Tip number eighty-five (sheer coincidence that I am now eighty-five years old) begins with a simple declaration: my work with patients enriches my life in that it provides meaning in life. Rarely do I hear therapists complain of a lack of meaning. We live lives of service in which we fix our gaze on the needs of others. We take pleasure not only in helping our patients change, but also in hoping their changes will ripple beyond them toward others. We are also privileged by our role as cradlers of secrets. Every day patients grace us with their secrets, often never before shared. The secrets provide a backstage view of the human condition without social frills, role-playing, bravado, or stage posturing. Being entrusted with such secrets is a privilege given to very few. Sometimes the secrets scorch me and I go home and hold my wife and count my blessings. Moreover, our work provides the opportunity to transcend ourselves and to envision the true and tragic knowledge of the human condition. But we are offered even more. We become explorers immersed in the grandest of pursuits—the development and maintenance of the human mind. Hand in hand with patients, we savor the pleasure of discovery—the “aha” experience when disparate ideational fragments suddenly slide smoothly together into a coherent whole. Sometimes I feel like a guide escorting others through the rooms of their own house. What a treat it is to watch them open doors to rooms never before entered, discover unopened wings of their house containing beautiful and creative pieces of identity. Recently I attended a Christmas service at the Stanford Chapel to hear a sermon by Rev. Jane Shaw that underscored the vital importance of love and compassion. I was moved by her call to put such sentiments into practice whenever we can. Acts of caring and generosity can enrich any environment in which we find ourselves. Her words motivated me to reconsider the role of love in my own profession. I became aware that I have never, not once, used the word love or compassion in my discussions of the practice of psychotherapy. It is a huge omission, which I wish now to correct, for I know that I regularly experience love and compassion in my work as a therapist and do all I can to help patients liberate their love and generosity toward others. If I do not experience these feelings for a particular patient, then it is unlikely I will be of much help. Hence I try to remain alert to my loving feelings or absence of such feelings for my patients.
Irvin D. Yalom (Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir)
One potential solution for maintaining pleasure while limiting intake comes from recent evidence that a reduction in the motivation to eat a specific food can be induced without ever going near the real thing. Imagine that you are really craving buffalo wings. Now imagine a plate of twenty wings in front of you, all hot and crispy and dripping with buttery hot sauce. Now imagine eating the wings one at a time. Go through the whole sequence in your mind—picking up a drumette or a wingette and biting into it, going through your personal routine for stripping every juicy piece of meat off the bone—and then imagine doing this another nineteen times. By the time you’ve finished this mental exercise, your buffalo wing craving should have severely dissipated, and if a basket of buffalo wings were offered to you right now, you’d eat fewer than if that basket had been plopped in front of you the minute you started wishing for them. What you’ve just experienced is how you can make food less appealing using only your imagination.
Rachel Herz (Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food)
Stop,' I put my hand on Xaden's arm. 'Xaden, stop. If you want me to go with you, I'll go. It's that simple.' His gaze shifts to meet mine and immediately softens. 'No fucking way,' Dain whispers, but it reverberates in my bones like a lightning strike. I pivot, dropping my hand from Xaden's arm, but it's obvious by Dain's expression that he now knows there's something between Xaden and me- and he's hurt. My stomach hits the ground. 'Dain-' 'Him?' Dain's eyes widen and his face flushes. 'You and... him?' He shakes his head. 'People talk, and I thought that's all it was, but you...' Disappointment drops his shoulders. 'Don't go, Violet. Please. He's going to get you killed.' 'I know you think Xaden has ulterior motives, but I trust him. He's had every opportunity and has never hurt me.' I move toward Dain. 'At some point, you have to let this go.' Dain looks horrified for a second but quickly masks it. 'If he's what you choose...' He sighs. 'Then I guess that has to be enough for me, doesn't it?' 'Yes.' I nod. Thank gods all this nonsense is about to be past us. He swallows hard and leans in to whisper. 'I'll miss you, Violet.' Then he pivots on his heel and heads for Cath. 'Thank you for trusting me,' Xaden says as I reach Tairn's foreleg. 'Always.
Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
He spent the morning at the beach. He had no idea which one, just some open stretch of coastline reaching out to the sea. An unbroken mantle of soft grey clouds was sitting low over the water. Only on the horizon was there a glimmer of light, a faint blue band of promise. The beach was deserted, not another soul on the vast, wide expanse of sand that stretched out in front of him. Having come from the city, it never ceased to amaze Jejeune that you could be that alone in the world. He walked along the beach, feeling the satisfying softness as the sand gave way beneath his slow deliberate strides. He ventured as close to the tide line as he dared, the white noise of the waves breaking on the shingles. A set of paw prints ran along the sand, with an unbroken line in between. A small dog, dragging a stick in its mouth. Always the detective, even if, these days, he wasn’t a very good one. Jejeune’s path became blocked by a narrow tidal creek carrying its silty cargo out to the sea. On each side of it were shallow lagoons and rock pools. When the tide washed in they would teem with new life, but at the moment they looked barren and empty. Jejeune looked inland, back to where the dark smudge of Corsican pines marked the edge of the coast road. He traced the creek’s sinuous course back to where it emerged from a tidal salt flat, and watched the water for a long time as it eddied and churned, meeting the incoming tide in an erotic swirl of water, the fresh intermingling with the salty in a turbulent, roiling dance, until it was no longer possible to tell one from the other. He looked out at the sea, at the motion, the color, the light. A Black-headed Gull swooped in and settled on a piece of driftwood a few feet away. Picture complete, thought Jejeune. For him, a landscape by itself, no matter how beautiful, seemed an empty thing. It needed a flicker of life, a tiny quiver of existence, to validate it, to confirm that other living things found a home here, too. Side by side, they looked out over the sea, the man and the bird, two beating hearts in this otherwise empty landscape, with no connection beyond their desire to be here, at this time. Was it the birds that attracted him to places like this, he wondered, or the solitude, the absence of demands, of expectations? But if Jejeune was unsure of his own motives, he knew this bird would have a purpose in being here. Nature always had her reasons. He chanced a sidelong glance at the bird, now settled to his presence. It had already completed its summer molt, crisp clean feathers having replaced the ones abraded by the harsh demands of eking out a living on this wild, windswept coastline. The gull stayed for a long moment, allowing Jejeune to rest his eyes softly, unthreateningly, upon it. And then, as if deciding it had allowed him enough time to appreciate its beauty, the bird spread its wings and effortlessly lifted off, wheeling on the invisible air currents, drifting away over the sea toward the horizon. p. 282-3
Steve Burrows (A Siege of Bitterns (Birder Murder Mystery, #1))
Oedipa spent the next several days in and out of libraries and earnest discussions with Emory Bortz and Genghis Cohen. She feared a little for their security in view of what was happening to everyone else she knew. The day after reading Blobb's Peregrinations she, with Bortz, Grace, and the graduate students, attended Randolph Driblette's burial, listened to a younger brother's helpless, stricken eulogy, watched the mother, spectral in afternoon smog, cry, and came back at night to sit on the grave and drink Napa Valley muscatel, which Driblette in his time had put away barrels of. There was no moon, smog covered the stars, all black as a Tristero rider. Oedipa sat on the earth, ass getting cold, wondering whether, as Driblette had suggested that night from the shower, some version of herself hadn't vanished with him. Perhaps her mind would go on flexing psychic muscles that no longer existed; would be betrayed and mocked by a phantom self as the amputee is by a phantom limb. Someday she might replace whatever of her had gone away by some prosthetic device, a dress of a certain color, a phrase in a ' letter, another lover. She tried to reach out, to whatever coded tenacity of protein might improbably have held on six feet below, still resisting decay-any stubborn quiescence perhaps gathering itself for some last burst, some last scramble up through earth, just-glimmering, holding together with its final strength a transient, winged shape, needing to settle at once in the warm host, or dissipate forever into the dark. If you come to me, prayed Oedipa, bring your memories of the last night. Or if you have to keep down your payload, the last five minutes-that may be enough. But so I'll know if your walk into the sea had anything to do with Tristero. If they got rid of you for the reason they got rid of Hilarius and Mucho and Metzger-maybe because they thought I no longer needed you. They were wrong. I needed you. Only bring me that memory, and you can live with me for whatever time I've got. She remembered his head, floating in the shower, saying, you could fall in love with me. But could she have saved him? She looked over at the girl who'd given her the news of his death. Had they been in love? Did she know why Driblette had put in those two extra lines that night? Had he even known why? No one could begin to trace it. A hundred hangups, permuted, combined-sex, money, illness, despair with the history of his time and place, who knew. Changing the script had no clearer motive than his suicide. There was the same whimsy to both. Perhaps-she felt briefly penetrated, as if the bright winged thing had actually made it to the sanctuary of her heart-perhaps, springing from the same slick labyrinth, adding those two lines had even, in a way never to be explained, served him as a rehearsal for his night's walk away into that vast sink of the primal blood the Pacific. She waited for the winged brightness to announce its safe arrival. But there was silence. Driblette, she called. The signal echoing down twisted miles of brain circuitry. Driblette! But as with Maxwell's Demon, so now. Either she could not communicate, or he did not exist.
Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49)
Starting with Theodor Adorno in the 1950s, people have suggested that lower intelligence predicts adherence to conservative ideology. Some but not all studies since then have supported this conclusion. More consistent has been a link between lower intelligence and a subtype of conservatism, namely right-wing authoritarianism (RWA, a fondness for hierarchy). ... The standard, convincing explanation for the link is that RWA provides simple answers, ideal for people with poor abstract reasoning skills. The literature has two broad themes. One is that rightists are relatively uncomfortable with ambiguity; ... . The other is that leftists, well, think harder, have a greater capacity for what the political scientist Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania calls "integrative complexity". In one study, conservatives and liberals, when asked about the causes of poverty, both tended toward personal attributions (“They’re poor because they’re lazy”). But only if they had to make snap judgments. Give people more time, and liberals shifted toward situational explanations (“Wait, things are stacked against the poor”). In other words, conservatives start gut and stay gut; liberals go from gut to head. ... Why? Some have suggested it’s a greater respect for thinking, which readily becomes an unhelpful tautology. Linda Skitka of the University of Illinois emphasizes how the personal attributions of snap judgments readily feel dissonant to liberals, at odds with their principles; thus they are motivated to think their way to a more consonant view. In contrast, even with more time, conservatives don’t become more situational, because there’s no dissonance.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)