#ace

We talk about social service, service to the people, service to humanity, service to others who are far away, helping to bring peace to the world - but often we forget that it is the very people around us that we must live for first of all. If you cannot serve your wife or husband or child or parent - how are you going to serve society? If you cannot make your own child happy, how do you expect to be able to make anyone else happy? If all our friends in the peace movement or of service communities of any kind do not love and help each other, whom can we love and help? ↗

— Thich Nhat Hanh

#family #happyness #peace #service #family

Well, at least you know it works this time," she said, getting on behind him. "If we crash into the parking lot of a Key Food, I'll kill you, you know that?" "Don't be ridiculous," said Jace. "There are no parking lots on the Upper East Side. Why drive when you can get your groceries delivered? ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#food

Speaking the words he had been taught, directing them no longer upward but to the earth on which he knelt, he prayed: 'For what we are about to receive make us truly thankful.' ... he... felt his heart suddenly flow over with thankfulness... like a gush of warm water... All that remains is to live here quietly for the rest of my life, eating food that my own labour has made the earth to yield. All that remains is to be a tender of the soil. ↗

— J.M. Coetzee

#gardening #grace #labour #food

Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#face #humor #mirror #ugliness #humor

In this world, unity is achievable only by learning to unite in spite of differences, rather than insisting on unity without differences. For their total eradication is an impossibility. The secret of attaining peace in life is tolerance of disturbance of the peace. (p. 99) ↗

— Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

#tolerance #life

Annie," Tilly said. "If I wanted to suck vile fluids out of a flaccid and indifferent tube, I'd have stayed on Earth with my husband. ↗

— James S.A. Corey

#food

I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads of history and talked hot and mean about the colored, giving my poor and desperate people a reason to feel superior to somebody, to anybody. I know that even as the words of George Wallace rang through my Alabama, the black family who lived down the dirt road from our house sent fresh-picked corn and other food to the poor white lady and her three sons, because they knew their daddy had run off, because hungry does not have a color. ↗

— Rick Bragg

#george-wallace #hunger #poverty #family

...there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eyes of the people in this [hospital] corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him... there is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He will forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need. I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#grace #mercy #prayer #faith

Grudges are for those who insist that they are owed something; forgiveness, however, is for those who are substantial enough to move on. ↗

— Criss Jami

#forgiveness #grudge #grudges #holding-grudges #moving-on

Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day's chalking. ↗

— Frederick Buechner

#grace #life #forgiveness