#ah

And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his? ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#noah #religion #religion

Do what you do only for God's sake, start for God's sake, work for God's sake, and act within the sphere of God's good approval. ↗

— Said Nursi

#allah #do #god #religion #work

Keep on the watch and pray ↗

— Jehovah

#jehovahs #pray #prayer #religion #religion

[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred. ↗

— Richard Francis Burton

#art

Just because something's damaged doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated with respect.' 'Ad,' Wallace said, 'it's a coffee table, not an orphan. ↗

— Sarah Dessen

#sarah-dessen #respect

My hips bristle with totems and talismans, proof that I am not simply a character in a fixed book or film. I am no single narrative. As neither Rebecca de Winter nor Jane Eyre, I am free to revise my story, to reinvent myself, my world, at any given moment. Advancing beside Archer, I am resplendent in my savage finery of seized power. In my service charge the collected blackguards of a dozen tyrants now dispatched to a lesser oblivion. My fingers, stained crimson with the blood of despots, are not the fingers which paged through the paper lives of helpless romantic heroines. No more am I a passive damsel who waits for circumstance to decide her fate; now have I become the scalawag, the swashbuckler, the Heathcliff of my dreams bent on rescuing myself. For now do I embody all the traits I had so hoped to find in Goran. Meaning: No longer am I limited. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#damned #dreams

Hopefully, you will glimpse something of your own life’s journey and with Elemental’s Power of Illuminated Love, possibly recognize and celebrate something you had not been able to recognize or celebrate before. ↗

— Luther E. Vann

#art #creativity #gift-books #jepson-center-for-the-arts #national-poetry-month

I have a heart, says science, but I am a monster, says society. ↗

— Tahereh Mafi

#unravel-me #science

My dad said to me a few years ago: "There's no harm in thinking." We were talking about Crazy Uncle Albert and whether it was right to use your brain to build weapons. He said, "You can't expect people not to think. Not to know things just because they COULD be bad." I said, "Yeah, but then they built it and a hundred thousand people died." My dad laughed and said there were a lot of steps between the thinking and the doing. Which I know, duh. All I was saying is that when you think of doing something, you don't always know the consequences. For a while people THOUGHT about building the bomb, but nothing happened. In the end it was a lot of different people doing a lot of different things, most of which had nothing to do with the bomb, that did make it happen. I think about that sometimes. Who was the person who had the first thought, the one that started it all? And after they had the thought, what was the first thing they did? I know my uncle never thought, Hey, all this great science- one day I'll use it to kill a whole bunch of people. You just look at his picture; he's not that kind of person. And yet, I guess in a way he sort of is. ↗

— Mariah Fredericks

#head-games #judith-ellis #mariah-fredericks #thinking #science

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#mahatma-gandhi #strength #will #strength