#irs

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#first #founder #human #hurled #instead

When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly. ↗

— Jen Knox

#jen-knox #musical-chairs #philosophy #psychology #reading

What is a staircase, but a corridor improved by elevation? ↗

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

#stairs #architecture

I wish I had known more firsthand about the concerns and problems of American businesspeople while I was a U.S. senator and later a presidential nominee. That knowledge would have made me a better legislator and a more worthy aspirant to the White House. ↗

— George McGovern

#american #better #businesspeople #concerns #firsthand

[A]rt can’t ever be programmatic . . . it needs on the contrary to be complicating, subtle, questioning, doubtful and doubting. ↗

— Tony Leuzzi

#art

A more accurate statement would be that I was the first person since Jedi who was permitted to stick a fork into the piecrust to see if there was still any steam underneath. ↗

— Timothy Zahn

#any #first #fork #i #into

Me dad planted that tree,’ she said absently, pointing out through the old cracked window. The great beech filled at least half the sky and shook shadows all over the house. Its roots clutched the slope like a giant hand, holding the hill in place. Its trunk writhed with power, threw off veils of green dust, rose towering into the air, branched into a thousand shaded alleys, became a city for owls and squirrels. I had thought such trees to be as old as the earth, I never dreamed that a man could make them. Yet it was Granny Trill’s dad who had planted this tree, had thrust in the seed with his finger. How old must he have been to leave such a mark? Think of Granny’s age, and add his on top, and you were back at the beginning of the world. ↗

— Laurie Lee

#memoirs #nature #tree #age

The only true love is love at first sight; second sight dispels it. ↗

— Israel Zangwill

#love #love at first sight #love is #only #second

Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. It’s beautiful and messy, cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there’s no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is irrevocably changed. ↗

— J.M. Darhower

#love #love-at-first-sight #beauty

Lena's hair was sticking out in about fifteen directions, and her eyes were all small and puffy from crying. So this was what girls looked like in the morning. I had never seen one, not up close. ↗

— Kami Garcia

#first-love #morning #beauty