#cons

Don’t think so. We all make our choices, and those choices have consequences. ↗

— Kami Garcia

#consequences #beauty

Modern formulations are necessary even in defense of very ancient truths. Not because of any alleged anachronism in the old ideas – the Beatitudes remain the essential statements of the Western code – but because the idiom of life is always changing ↗

— William F. Buckley

#conservatism #persuasion #phrasing #relevance #change

After modernism, things changed. Indeed, modernism sometimes seems to me like an equivalent of the Fall. Remember, the first thing Adam and Eve did when they ate the fruit was to discover that they had no clothes on. They were embarrassed. Embarrassment was the first consequence of the Fall. And embarrassment was the first literary consequence of this modernist discovery of the surface. "Am I telling a story? Oh my God, this is terrible. I must stop telling a story and focus on the minute gradations of consciousness as they filter through somebody's... ↗

— Philip Pullman

#change

A good conscience is eight parts of courage. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#courage #courage

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism. ↗

— Barry M. Goldwater

#conservatism #government #lobbying #morality #politics

Divide the constant tide and random noisiness of energetic flow, with conscious recurring moments of empty mind, solitude, gratitude and deep...slow...breathing. Of this, the natural law of self-preservation demands. ↗

— T.F. Hodge

#breathing #conscious #deep #divide #division

and I told myself -- as I've told myself before -- that the body shuts down then the pain gets too bad, that consciousness is temporary, that this will pass. But just like always, I didn't slip away. I was left on the shore with the waves washing over me, unable to drown. ↗

— John Green

#death #hazel-grace #pain #sickness #death

Dead men cannot take effective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave. Deeds and actions that energise others belong only to the living. Well, then, look at the facts in this case. The Saviour is working mightily among men, every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world, both within and beyond the Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching. Can anyone, in face of this, still doubt that He has risen and lives, or rather that He is Himself the Life? Does a dead man prick the consciences of men...? ↗

— St. Athanasius of Alexandria

#death #faith #incarnation #jesus #life

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're alone, thinking feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#dreams

...a dream isn't a wish - it's an altered state of consciousness ... ↗

— John Geddes

#state-of-consciousnesssness #wishes #dreams