#dec

At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit's idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it away from him. ↗

— Richard Adams

#leadership #courage

I realize that the decision might be simple. It will require a great act of selflessness to choose Abnegation, or a great act of courage to choose Dauntless, and maybe just choosing one over the other will prove that I belong. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#courage

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. ↗

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#courage

Well, actually, I had been working as a consultant to former companies of Enron, or predecessor companies of Enron and, so, I joined in 1990 to really start our wholesale merchant business. ↗

— Jeffrey Skilling

#been #business #companies #consultant #enron

My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language. ↗

— James Thurber

#decline #english #english language #expression #fact

I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows. ↗

— Katherine Graham

#decide #democracy #flourishes #government #i

(Decadent style) is ingenious, complicated, learned, full of shades of meaning and research, always pushing further the limits of language... forcing itself to express in thought that which is most ineffable, and in form the vaguest and most fleeting contours; listening that it may translate them to the subtle confidences of the neuropath, to the avowals of aging and depraved passion, and to the singular hallucinations of the fixed idea verging on madness... In opposition to the classic style, it admits of shading, and these shadows teem and swarm with the larvae of superstitions, the haggard phantoms of insomnia, nocturnal terrors, remorse which starts and turns back at the slightest noise, monstrous dreams stayed only by impotence, obscure phantasies at which daylight would stand amazed, and all that the soul conceals of the dark, the unformed, and the vaguely horrible, in its deepest and furthest recesses. ↗

— Théophile Gautier

#decadents #age

He said that we belonged together because he was born with a flower and I was born with a butterfly and that flowers and butterflies need each other for survival. ↗

— Gemma Malley

#butterflies #butterfly #death #flower #flowers

I love you Anna Covey,' he said, his voice barely audible. And slowly, clumsily, he leant forward, and his lips found hers, and Anna felt him kiss her awkwardly, she knew that she wasn't a Surplus any more. And nor was Peter. ↗

— Gemma Malley

#death #declaration #gemma #kiss #life

He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#decisions #doubts #death