#dl

First of all, Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. If anything at all, it is realistic, for it takes a realistic view of life and the world. It looks at things objectively (yathābhūtam). It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool's paradise, nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary fears and sins. It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquility and happiness. ↗

— Walpola Rahula

#buddhism #middle-path #middle-way #objectivism #objectivity

You can only control your own actions. Not other people’s reactions. ↗

— Emily Giffin

#action

We would send them all to hell! And hell they would go! ↗

— Thomas Ferreolus

#drama #iraq-war #middle-east-conflicts #war #iraq

The Iraqi sun quickly heated the air to an unbearable one hundred twenty three degree’s, causing an unquenchable thirst to boil up in him. Thomas then dropped his rifle under his right arm, where it hung beneath his pit by a strap called a fast sling, there the weapon dangled under his sweat soaked uniform. ↗

— Thomas Ferreolus

#drama #iraq-war #middle-east-conflict #war #iraq

Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#change

But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived? ↗

— Markus Zusak

#cowardice

The problem is that most people spend their lives looking but not truly seeing, or, as Sherlock Holmes, the meticulous English detective, declared to his partner, Dr. Watson, “You see, but you do not observe. ↗

— Joe Navarro

#sherlock-holmes

Omne ignotum pro magnifico, ↗

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

#sherlock-holmes

ALL HE COULD SEE, IN EVERY DIRECTION, WAS WATER. It was June 23, 1943. Somewhere on the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, Army Air Forces bombardier and Olympic runner Louie Zamperini lay across a small raft, drifting westward. Slumped alongside him was a sergeant, one of his plane’s gunners. On a separate raft, tethered to the first, lay another crewman, a gash zigzagging across his forehead. Their bodies, burned by the sun and stained yellow from the raft dye, had winnowed down to skeletons. Sharks glided in lazy loops around them, dragging their backs along the rafts, waiting. ↗

— Laura Hillenbrand

#world-war-ii

When we make friends then we change from being animals to being human. ↗

— Stephen Richards

#friendliness #friends #friendship #friendship-and-love #friendship-true-and-loyal