#endo

My faith is very private to me. It plays an important part in my life, but I do not try and throw my beliefs at others. I have tremendous respect for all faiths and beliefs, but have a deep concern that religion and faith are currently a long way apart from each other. ↗

— Rick Wakeman

#beliefs #concern #currently #deep #each

Well, it was one of my most gratifying experiences because I could devote my knowledge and my talent for the good for the City of Washington, and all the Federal projects where the Fine Arts Commission had jurisdiction, and it was a tremendous experience. ↗

— Felix de Weldon

#because #city #commission #could #devote

What I got out of it was a great experience working with great people and it becoming a tremendous - basically - a family at the end that none of us wanted to leave. ↗

— Shane West

#becoming #end #experience #family #got

That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind. ↗

— William Wordsworth

#back #behind #bright #bring #find

The television business is actually going through a tremendous transition, but I think at the end of the day, television is still paramount. ↗

— Jeff Zucker

#business #day #end #end of the day #going

Whenever I open one of your emails it’s like you’re right there next to me, whispering your most personal computer virus into my hard drive. ↗

— Benson Bruno

#funny #humor #innuendo #intimacy #funny

What was it you called me? Hell’s overlord who wields his lucky pen like it’s… what was that last part?” Enough! Elise’s tolerance disappeared in a sulfurous cloud of smoke. “Hell’s overlord who wields his lucky pen like it’s his staff of masculinity,” she ground out, then lowered her head and furiously pounded on the laptop’s keyboard. Luc laughed and the hairs at the nape of her neck prickled. “Staff of masculinity. How could I have forgotten that? You could have just said—” Her cheeks burned red hot. “I made that up before I knew you liked to beat your lucky pen against the desk.” He turned in his seat and smiled the smile that never failed to raise her body temperature a hundred degrees. “And it was that particular phrase which made your habit of sucking on pen caps all the more bearable.” She glared at him and his smile widened. “Don’t make me get up and come near your desk, Lucien Masters.” “Getting up and coming near my desk are the least of my worries,” he replied in a husky, Southern rumble. ↗

— Elijana Kindel

#sexual-innuendos #humor

We live in a culture of reductionism. Or better, we are living in the aftermath of a culture of reductionism, and I believe we have reduced the complexity and diversity of the Scriptures to systematic theologies that insist on ideological conformity, even when such conformity flattens the diversity of the Scriptural witness. We have reduced our conception of gospel to four simple steps that short-circuit biblical narratives and notions of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven in favor of a simplified means of entrance to heaven. Our preaching is often wed to our materialistic, consumerist cultural assumptions, and sermons are subsequently reduced to delivering messages that reinforce the worst of what American culture produces: self-centered end users who believe that God is a resource that helps an individual secure what amounts to an anemic and culturally bound understanding of the 'abundant life. ↗

— Tim Keel

#christendom #culture #leadership

Love grows more tremendously full, swift, poignant, as the years multiply. ↗

— Zane Grey

#grows #love #more #multiply #poignant

He had lived his life as a good father but now Oscar Mendoza saw again his life as a boy. A daughter was a battle between fathers and boys in which the fathers fought valiantly and always lost. He knew that one by one each of his daughter would be lost, either honorably in the ceremony of marriage or, realistically, in a car pointed out towards the ocean well after dark. In his day, Oscar himself had made too many girls forget their better instincts and fine training by biting them with tender persistence at the base of their skull, just where the hairline grew in downy wisps. Girls were like kittens in this way, if you got them right at the nape of their neck, they went easily limp. Then he would whisper his suggestions, all the things they might do together, the wonderful dark explorations for which he was to be their guide. His voice traveled like a drug dripped down the spiraling canals of their ears until they had forgotten everything, until they had forgotten their own names, until they turned and offered themselves up to him, their bodies sweet and soft as marzipan. ↗

— Ann Patchett

#life