#aged

You must not let me out,' it warned him gently, as it saw his eyes rest on the lock. 'If you release me now that I know my nature, I could not help but unmake the enchantment of the mirrors. You see, they are tame now and they show only what people want and need to see in them. The wildness of them is bound up in my form, though I did not know it for a long time. If I were uncaged, I could not help but tear at the enchantment until I was unnamed. Then I would fly into all of the mirrors and windows and into shining footpaths after rain. The mirrors would become wild and they would be absolutely, utterly truthful. Everything would be seen for what it truly was. My laughter would greet every lie and every pretense. It would rumble like a volcano under the smooth surface of everything. You can imagine the chaos it would cause here, for those who dwell in the greylands do so because the mirrors are tamed. If I were free, people would come to be afraid of them. They would cease to believe in their reflections and eventually they would no longer believe in themselves. No, laughter must remain caged here. ↗

— Isobelle Carmody

#laughter #lies #mirrors #imagination

We naturally try to forget our personal tragedies, serious or trifling, as soon as possible (even something as petty as being scorned or disdained by a stranger on a street corner). We try not to carry these things over to tomorrow. It is not strange, therefore, that the whole human race is trying to put Hiroshima, the extreme point of human tragedy, completely out of mind. ↗

— Kenzaburō Ōe

#responsibility #tragedy #nature

Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought. ↗

— C.J. Sansom

#armageddon #book-of-revelation #cruelty #destruction #fundamentalism

To be the child of a conficted or reputed witch was inherently dangerous; in one pathetic case in Lorraine a young couple were both accused, and it emerged that they had decided to marry after attending an execution at the stake of their respective parents, 'so that they would have nothing to reproach one another with. ↗

— Robin Briggs

#tragedy #witch-hunts #respect

Well, sir. I look at facts. And the fact is that our world is dying and if we don't all do our best to save it, we aren't going to last much longer. ↗

— A.J. Lauer

#environmentalism #science #science

For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#teen-suicide #tragedy #teen

It’s hard to hear over the racket of gunfire. Politicians want to talk about war, but the people want to talk about peace. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#gunfire #guns #peace #people #politicians

The greatest tragedy that can befall a man is never to know who he really is. ↗

— James Carlos Blake

#self-knowledge #tragedy #first-sentence

As far as her mom was concerned, tea fixed everything. Have a cold? Have some tea. Broken bones? There's a tea for that too. Somewhere in her mother's pantry, Laurel suspected, was a box of tea that said, 'In case of Armageddon, steep three to five minutes'. ↗

— Aprilynne Pike

#cold #tea #illusion

Hands that never touch. Lips that never meet. The Almost Lovers, never to be. ↗

— Rae Hachton

#heartbreak #lament #love #lovers-love-story #lovers-sadness