#if

Healthy" and "diseased," as Susan Sontag points out...are often subjective judgments that society makes for its own purposes. Women have long been defined as sick as a means of subjecting them to social control. ↗

— Naomi Wolf

#aging #beauty #body-image #cosmetic-surgery #cosmetics

The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms. Everything is more beautiful when they have passed. ↗

— Madame Necker

#lovers #storms #summer #beauty

It is beautiful to talk about beautiful things and even more beautiful to silently gaze at them. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#beauty #dejan-stojanovic #gaze #literature #literature-quotes

Thirty-nine years of my life had passed before I understood that clouds were not my enemy; that they were beautiful, and that I needed them. I suppose this, for me, marked the beginning of wisdom. Life is short. ↗

— Iimani David

#iimani-david #life #wisdom #beauty

There have been plenty of chances to close my eyes and go back to the sleep of my life as it was, but I hadn't taken any of them. Do I wish now that I had? It's hard to answer that question, as the wraiths move closer. ↗

— Lisa Unger

#beauty

She knew all about love—that beautiful, exquisitely painful but precious journey. ↗

— Mary Hart Perry

#love #romance #beauty

The sign of a true woman isn't the ability to recite French poetry or play the pianoforte or cook Chateaubriand. The sign of a true woman is learning to listen to her own voice even when society does its best to drown it out. ↗

— Eve Marie Mont

#romantic #woman #beauty

A pearl is a beautiful thing that is produced by an injured life. It is the tear [that results] from the injury of the oyster. The treasure of our being in this world is also produced by an injured life. If we had not been wounded, if we had not been injured, then we will not produce the pearl. ↗

— Stephan Hoeller

#beauty

People expected something for nothing, that’s why they did nothing so beautifully these days. ↗

— Holly Hood

#humans #irionic #life #love #beauty

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake. She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back. Sleepy air seemed to have followed her. The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs. ↗

— Markus Zusak

#friendship #german #jewish #sleep #the-book-thief