#iv

Whoa." Adrian leapt up and rushed to Jill's side. "You need to let this go. What, are you going to start a fight with some girl?" Reed turned his glare on Adrian. "Stay out of this." "The hell I will! You're crazy." If anyone had asked me to make up a list of people most likely to risk a fight in defense of a lady's honor, Adrian Ivashkov would have been low on that list. Yet there he stood, face hard and hand sitting protectively on Jill's shoulder. I was in awe. And impressed. ↗

— Richelle Mead

#reed-lazar #rose-hathaway #honor

Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#dignity #double-standards #empowerment #feminism #gender

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it. ↗

— Tallulah Bankhead

#southern #trouble

And at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind ‒ graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens. And if you are very, very lucky, there are a few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last ‒ and yet will remain with you for life. Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#life #living #lucky #mirth #pain

I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#failure

What is a genius? A person who demands little to nothing from others, but is often found extremely difficult to have around. ↗

— Criss Jami

#creative #different #difficulties #distinction #envy

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#secession #men

All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best ↗

— O. Henry

#hypocrisy #liars #hypocrisy

Maxim 3: An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody. -The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries ↗

— Howard Tayler

#humour #mercenaries #military #ordnance #rules-to-live-by

Maxim 18: If the officers are leading from in front, watch out for an attack from the rear. -The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries ↗

— Howard Tayler

#military #rules-to-live-by #suspicion #unexpected #military