#ali

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it. ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#materialism #want #yearning #jealousy

Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky webs across the sky. In daydreams, we can maneuver with poise, foiling an opponent, scoring high on fields of glory while crowds cheer, cutting fast to the heart of an adventure. But what dream state is love? Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate –love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as gladiators. ↗

— Diane Ackerman

#nature #psychology #science #sexuality #dreams

[M]en, though they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits. It's just like the crow, when it produces white nestlings: it is so stricken by envy, knowing how black it is itself, that it kills its own offspring out of pique. ↗

— Moderata Fonte

#dignity #empowerment #envy #feminism #gender

It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished. ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#christianity #church #expectations #god #happiness

I don't believe in fashion. I believe in costume. Life is too short to be same person every day. ↗

— Stephanie Perkins

#individuality #self-expression #life

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression's actual essence, which is an overwhelming estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage with the world, the more perfidiously happy-faced the rest of humanity seems for continuing to engage with it. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#anomie #depression #life

Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?" says Peeta. "It costs everything you are. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#murder #life

Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#forced #honesty #identity #lies #life

I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#sex #sexuality #life

I believe in going with the flow. I don't believe in fighting against the flow. You ride on your river and you go with the tides and the flow. But it has to be your river, not someone else's. Everyone has their own river, and you don't need to swim,float,sail on their's, but you need to be in your own river and you need to go with it. And I don't believe in fighting the wind. You go and you fly with your wind. Let everyone else catch their own gusts of wind and let them fly with their own gusts of wind, and you go and you fly with yours. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#flowing #flying #human #individuality #inspirational