#ender

You are pure-hearted, Branza, and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart. However sweet that other place was, it was not real. It was an artifact of your mam's imagination; it was a dream of hers and a desire; you could not have stayed there forever and called yourself alive. Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to. (357) ↗

— Margo Lanagan

#dreams

To those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual,or transgender-let me say- you are not alone. You're struggle, for the end to violence and discrimination, is a shared struggle. Today, I stand with you. And I call upon all countries and people, to stand with you too. A historic shift is underway. We must tackle the violence, decriminalize consensual same sex relationships and end discrimination. We must educate the public. I call on this council and people of conscience to make this happen. The time has come. ↗

— Ban Ki-Moon

#gay #lesbian #transgender #education

Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#equality #fear #gender #intelligence #men

In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world. ↗

— Nicholas D. Kristof

#morality #slavery #women #equality

Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#god #love #poverty #presence #spiritual-poverty

Now? I'm just another female faking orgasms to make a man not feel so inadequate. ↗

— Jess C. Scott

#experience-mistakes-wisdom #experiences #gender #love #men-and-women

We come to a corner where there are a few people protesting the festivities. I don't understand this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired. In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don't understand why it's so hard, when it's so obvious. ↗

— David Levithan

#free-of-gender-constraints #love-is-love #omnisexuality #pansexuality #queerness

I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#humility #prayer #surrender #faith

[Adultery] is as great a sin in the husband as in the wife, in fact more so; but ... it is not God's truth but male wickedness that holds men less guilty of the same sin. Men are less often caught or punished for adultery than women, not because they are less guilty but because they are more guilty -- and bolder and more cunning in passsing off their sin, while they practically all support each other in it. It is men who are witnesses, judges, and enforcers of punishment against adultery in women. And because they are deeply guilty of it themselves, they are more or less unanimous in their efforts to back up their promiscuity. ↗

— Anonymous

#clichés #double-standards #fidelity #gender #hypocrisy

There is never a moment when God is not in control. Relax! He’s got you covered. ↗

— Mandy Hale

#faith-in-god #god #peace #positive-thinking #spirituality