#end

In yourself right now is all the place you've got. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#empowerment #independence #individuality #self-assurance #self-awareness

Pain is subtle. He has cold grey fingers. His voice is horse from crying & screaming... When people try to avoid him, he follows them silently & turns upas the bartender, or the bus driver... Pain has an elaborate filing system for keeping track of everyone... Pain respects people who are willing to take risks. If you... face him directly, he will give you a special ointment so your wounds don't fester. ↗

— J. Ruth Gendler

#poetic #qualities #ruth-gendler #respect

While he spoke, my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger — look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair — soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?" Still indomitable was the reply — "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth — so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am quite insane — quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot." I did. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#empowerment #independence #individuality #integrity #self-assurance

When we take your person into account, you who are a young maiden, to whom God gives the strength and power to be the champion who casts the rebels down and feeds France with the sweet, nourishing milk of peace, here indeed is something quite extraordinary! For if God performed such a great number of miracles through Joshua who conquered many a place and cast down many an enemy, he, Joshua, was a strong and powerful man. But, after all, a woman – a simple shepherdess – braver than any man ever was in Rome! As far as God is concerned, this was easily accomplished. But as for us, we never heard tell of such an extraordinary marvel, for the prowess of all the great men of the past cannot be compared to this woman's whose concern it is to cast out our enemies. This is God's doing: it is He who guides her and who has given her a heart greater than that of any man. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#empowerment #feminism #freedom #gender #joan-of-arc

The task that remains is to cope with our interdependence - to see ourselves reflected in every other human being and to respect and honor our differences. ↗

— Melba Pattillo Beals

#respect

In the midst of these fine gentlemen with their great names and their ancient traditions of respectability, the two women sat face to face, exchanging tender glances, triumphant and supreme in the tranquil abuse of their sex, and their open contempt for the male. And the gentlemen applauded them. ↗

— Émile Zola

#gender-roles #respect

Upon the publication of Goethe’s epic drama, the Faustian legend had reached an almost unapproachable zenith. Although many failed to appreciate, or indeed, to understand this magnum opus in its entirety, from this point onward his drama was the rule by which all other Faust adaptations were measured. Goethe had eclipsed the earlier legends and became the undisputed authority on the subject of Faust in the eyes of the new Romantic generation. To deviate from his path would be nothing short of blasphemy. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#classics #drama #faust #faust-legend #faustian

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#debt #deficit-spending #government #loans #political-science

Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness. ↗

— Aleister Crowley

#always #cleverness #discovering #fuss #magical

Perhaps eggs are like neurons, which also are not replenished in adulthood: they know too much. Eggs must plan the party. Sperm need only to show up- wearing top hat and tails, of course. ↗

— Natalie Angier

#gender #science #sex #science