#grit

You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle. ↗

— Gertrude Stein

#integrity

Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun. ↗

— Leonardo da Vinci

#truth #integrity

In a culture that is becoming ever more story-stupid, in which a representative of the Coca-Cola company can, with a straight face, pronounce, as he donates a collection of archival Coca-Cola commercials to the Library of Congress, that 'Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories,' it is perhaps not surprising that people have trouble teaching and receiving a novel as complex and flawed as Huck Finn, but it is even more urgent that we learn to look passionately and technically at stories, if only to protect ourselves from the false and manipulative ones being circulated among us. ↗

— George Saunders

#manipulation #story #integrity

The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written. (Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935) ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#expectations #honesty #integrity #on-writing #pandering

Greed (as Ling): You humans always get all "holier-than-thou" when it comes to this stuff... I really don't get you. Edward: It's called having integrity. You should try it sometime ↗

— Hiromu Arakawa

#edward-elric #fullmetal #humor #integrity #ling

The decent, strong person had to do decent, strong things like love unlovable people and keep peace even when it wasn't easy. ↗

— Mary Connealy

#integrity #love

I know that what you call 'God' really exists, but not in the form you think; God is primal cosmic energy, the love in your body, your integrity, and your perception of the nature in you and outside of you. ↗

— Wilhelm Reich

#god #integrity #love #nature #love

Unless today is well lived, tomorrow is not important. ↗

— Alan Sakowitz

#character #community #family #financial-thriller #inspirational

[A]s though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him, thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession before thou gavest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou shouldst have had little trust in me I vehemently grieved and was ashamed. For I (God [knows]) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the Vulcanian fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but with thee. But now, more than ever, if it be not with thee, it is nowhere. For without thee it cannot anywhere exist. ↗

— Héloïse d'Argenteuil

#celibacy #convent #dignity #following #grief

I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#empowerment #flaws #freedom #gender #ideal-woman