#image

The self-esteem of western women is founded on physical being (body mass index, youth, beauty). This creates a tricky emphasis on image, but the internalized locus of self-worth saves lives. Western men are very different. In externalizing the source of their self-esteem, they surrender all emotional independence. (Conquest requires two parties, after all.) A man cannot feel like a man without a partner, corporation, team. Manhood is a game played on the terrain of opposites. It thus follows that male sense of self disintegrates when the Other is absent. ↗

— Antonella Gambotto-Burke

#boys #center #centre #conquest #femininity

I would willingly pass my life writing and re-writing the same book - that one book every writer carries within him - the image of his own soul. ↗

— Ignazio Silone

#re-writing #soul #writing #life

Our approach to reality, our sense of reality, cannot assume that the text of nature, the book of life, is a cryptogram concealing just a single meaning. Rather, it is an expanding riddle of a multiplicity of resonating images. ↗

— Peter Redgrove

#meaning #nature #reality #symbols #life

Value yourself for what the media doesn't - your intelligence, your street smarts, your ability to play a kick-ass game of pool, whatever. So long as it's not just valuing yourself for your ability to look hot in a bikini and be available to men, it's an improvement. ↗

— Jessica Valenti

#body-image #feminism #media #beauty

I should have realized, when Cathal kissed me in the hallway, that my response was the first raindrop heralding a storm. ↗

— Juliet Marillier

#love #metaphor #love

The author recognizes the power of the persecuting tribe referring to members of hers consistently as "snakes" or "roaches". This dehumanizing language, she realizes, seeps into the subconscious and makes it easier to forget that fellow humans were created in God's image. ↗

— Immaculee Ilibagiza

#language #words #holocaust

Telling yourself you like the way you look is easy. Believing it is an entirely different kettle of whales. ↗

— Andrew Biss

#self-esteem #self-image #body-image

People peep into boxes at moving stereoscopic prints, imagining they're in other worlds, and the crowd around a glassblower wonders whether icicles have formed in summer. Potted trees revive and suddenly look fresh when a florist sprinkles water on them, while papier-mâché turtles hanging out for sale move in the wind and take on souls. ↗

— Haruo Shirane

#hiraga-gennai #imagery #japanese #imagination

To ugly ducklings everywhere, Don't worry about those fluffy yellow morons: They'll never get to be swans ↗

— Zoë Marriott

#cool #cute #funny #humor-inspirational #humorous

Few witnesses agree, and fewer still were granted a glimpse of the Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine. Its course took it under the earth and down hills, gouging up the land beneath the luxurious homes of wealthy mariners and shipping magnates, under the muddy flats where sat the sprawling sawmill, and down along the corridors, cellars, and storage rooms of general stores, ladies' notions shops, apothecaries, and yes ... the banks. ↗

— Cherie Priest

#home