#de

This sadness is one of the great trials of the human experiment. As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift - or curse, perhaps - of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#death

In the boundaryless forests, there’re dancers of nude. Yet in the confines of pasture, there’s promise of food. On which is your side? Ô, but tarry and bide, ere you decide, in both do confide. ↗

— Roman Payne

#growing-up #life #poems #poetry #rhymes

Clearly God was in some kind of mood on my birthday. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#cancer #death #family #jesse #jodi-picoult

If I told you to wish for good health, you would think I'm ridiculous; but when I exchange the word "wish" for the word "pray", you believe it can work. That is the disempowering delusion religions have brought us. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#delusion #health #pray #religion #wish

When the stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? ↗

— William Blake

#god #religion #tyger #experience

When we replace a sense of service and gratitude with a sense of entitlement and expectation, we quickly see the demise of our relationships, society, and economy. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#entitlement #gratitude #inspirational #motivational #relationships

As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn’t have it. It seemed to come later on, possibly as a result of school itself. That sounded right, and the more he thought about it the more right it sounded. Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A’s. Originality on the other hand could get you anything – from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it. ↗

— Robert M. Pirsig

#grades #imitation #learning #rhetoric #school

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds and binding with briars my joys and desires. (from 'The Garden of Love') ↗

— William Blake

#joy #love #religion #experience

...stooping very low, He engraves with care His Name, indelible, upon our dust; And from the ashes of our self-despair, Kindles a flame of hope and humble trust. He seeks no second site on which to build, But on the old foundation, stone by stone, Cementing sad experience with grace, Fashions a stronger temple of His own. ↗

— Patricia St. John

#despair #grace #holy-spirit #hope #love

What?" I said, suspicion starting to rise in me. "When did they start coming after you?" "Was it— was it after the oil-slick Hummer crash?" the Gasman asked Iggy tentatively. My eyes widened. Oil-slick Hummer crash? Iggy rubbed his chin, thinking. "Or maybe it was more— after the bomb," the Gasman said in a low voice, looking down. "I think it was the bomb," Iggy agreed. "That definitely seemed to tick them off. ↗

— James Patterson

#gazzy #humor #iggy #maximum-ride #the-gasman