#h

What do you want most in life, Miss Willow?" "For my mother to be well." "Imagine you had that." His fingers rested on the nape of her neck. "What do you want for yourself?" "Peace on earth?" "Come, Miss Willow. I want a serious answer from you. Better yet, a selfish one." Though she stood inches from him, she seemed not to notice their proximity. As a grown man, he could control his base urges. He'd done so for years. He would do better by her than his father and brothers. Slowly, he lifted his fingers from the back of her neck. His palm took their place. Head tilted, she considered him. "You'll laugh." "Try me." "A family. Children." "What? Not thousands of pounds at your disposal? A mansion? Jewels to dazzle you? Servants at your beck and call?" She rested the side of her head against the doorway and looked at him from beneath her thick red lashes. "I always thought I'd be married one day with half a dozen children at my knees." Her eyes danced again, and for a moment, the space of a breath, he was caught like a fly in a web. "I was right about the children at least, though I was sure they'd be mine." "Are you sorry?" What soft skin she had, such a tender nape. "That I'm not a wife and mother?" "Mm." He imagined her with a husband, with children. His children. He saw her gravid by his doing, and him cradling an infant in his arms, the one he'd made in her. He could give her what she wanted, and, of course, he could imagine the act of making her so. ↗

— Carolyn Jewel

#olivia #sebastian #the-spare #family

You can't do that, it makes too much sense. ↗

— Daven Anderson

#insight #philosophy-of-life #life

Apollo wanted out. Out of Aphrodite, out of this bathroom, out of this house, and out of this life. ↗

— Marie Phillips

#life

Better live than dead. ↗

— Touaxia Vang

#hope #inspiriation #life #life

Here we must take account of one of St. Thomas's conceptual distinctions, which at first seems like unnecessary caviling. It is the distinction between "uncreated" and "created" happiness. We have here something which, while not at all obvious, is nevertheless fraught with consequences for our whole feeling about life. Namely, this: what does indeed make us happy is the infinite and uncreated richness of God; but participation in this, happiness itself, is entirely a "creatural" reality governed from within by our humanity; it is not something that descends overwhelmingly upon us from outside. That is, it is not only something that happens to us; we ourselves are intensely active participants in our own happiness. Beatitude - Thomas is saying - cannot possibly be conceived as a merely objective condition of sheer existence. It is not a mere quality, not pure passivity, not simply a feeling. It is something that takes place in the alert core of the mind... Happiness is an act and an activity of the soul. ↗

— Josef Pieper

#aquinas #beatitude #god #happiness #st-thomas

Не сме нито глупави, нито умни.Винаги сме някъде по средата.Това ни уморява и ни прави тъжни.Човек трябва да знае къде му е мястото. ↗

— Erich Maria Remarque

#philosophy-of-life #life

Wer mir den Glauben an die Menschen zurückgibt, gibt mir mein Leben zurück. ↗

— Frank Wedekind

#humanity #life #life

I had no illusions that now, in some final and dramatic flash of revelation, we would understand one another. We were done. It was a fact of my life--intractable and sad--that our relationship had been a failure. Still, with her prognosis came one last chance to be her daughter. [p. 163] ↗

— Dani Shapiro

#life

Largeness is a lifelong matter,” he wrote. “. . . You grow because you are not content not to. You are like a beaver that chews constantly because if it doesn’t, its teeth grow long and lock. You grow because you are a grower; you’re large because you can’t stand to be small. ↗

— William Stegner

#life #life

Count your blessings, discount you’re loses ↗

— John Paul Warren

#john-paul-warren #leadership #pastor-john-paul-warren #sozo-life #leadership