#against

It was easy, terribly easy, to become with time a middle-aged spinster with a sharp tongue. She would have to guard against this. ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#middle-age #sharp-tongue #spinster #age

It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul. ↗

— Paul Hoffman

#cale #destruction #easier #easy #english-quote

It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth. ↗

— David Cecil

#evil #faith #fanaticism #fundamentalism #good-intentions

Help me, Mikey, she wanted to say. I’m afraid. More afraid than you’d ever believe.’ And he’d take her hand and they’d fly across the rooftops and up into space and sit on some planet and watch a double sunrise or maybe a star being born or some other event that no human had ever seen, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her. And she’d tell him everything. ↗

— Jenny Downham

#jenny-downham #made-me-cry #romance #you-against-me #young-adult

For this is the mark of a wise and upright man, not to rail against the gods in misfortune. ↗

— Aeschylus

#gods #man #mark #misfortune #rail

A more effective international disease surveillance system is essential for global security both against a bioterrorist attack or a naturally occurring disease. ↗

— Daniel Akaka

#attack #both #disease #effective #essential

You see, I have in my teaching - I always say I've done it for a hundred years and have had thousands of students - I have always spoken against just falling onto your knees for so-called accidents, I mean a result you are not responsible for. ↗

— Josef Albers

#against #always #done #falling #had

I believe the biggest themes of life are put into the best focus when held up against the very sharp light of mortality. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#believe #best #biggest #focus #held

We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for, and that is, freedom, democracy and the fight against disease, poverty and terrorism. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#democracy #disease #fight #freedom #intimidated

Private religious speech can't be discriminated against. It has to be treated equally with secular speech. ↗

— Samuel Alito

#against #discriminated #equally #private #religious