#esp

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. ↗

— Yann Martel

#despair #expression #hell #life

Sometimes a great wound or concussion of the head, especially which happens by falling headlong from an high place, brings a prejudice and weakness to the animal faculty, dulling the understanding. ↗

— Thomas Willis

#brings #dulling #especially #faculty #falling

In fact I enjoyed every minute of my life at King's, especially the discovery of French and German literature. ↗

— Patrick White

#enjoyed #especially #every #fact #french

First, I'd become an avid reader of blogs, especially music blogs, and they seemed to be where the critical-thinking action was at, to have the kind of energy that I associate with rock writing of the 1970s or Internet e-mail discussion lists a decade ago. ↗

— Carl Wilson

#ago #associate #avid #become #blogs

Furthermore, the spirit of enterprise which had its first intellectual development in England has especially flourished here as well as throughout all of Canada, while the same spirit has become less virile in the land of its origin. ↗

— Charles E. Wilson

#canada #development #england #enterprise #especially

I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#educated #fundamentalists #highly #i #including

He stops pacing. 'I know, Miranda, I did it because I—' 'Stop! Don't say it. I don't want to hear you say it.' 'I have to say it,' Noah says. 'No, you don't.' If I hear him say the word love, I don't know what I'll do. I still have my gun. Maybe one day I can forgive him, but all chance of that goes out the window if he claims he did it for love. If you love someone, the idea is respect them enough to trust them. Not to take away their freedom. Their life. ↗

— Dan Krokos

#respect #forgiveness

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#forgiveness #immorality #redemption #religion #responsibility

There is no way, believe me, despite my name being Winfield, and loving the game dearly. It wasn't in the cards. I didn't know what it was going to take to get here. ↗

— Dave Winfield

#believe #cards #dearly #despite #game

My skin still crawls if you call me a movie star. I get embarrassed. I think, don't be ridiculous. Maybe it's because I'm British. To me, Julia Roberts that's a movie star. But when people do call me one, that, I think, is an enormous compliment but, my God, is that a responsibility! ↗

— Kate Winslet

#british #call #compliment #embarrassed #enormous