#ives

My heart goes out to the brave citizens of Syria, who each day risk and even sacrifice their lives to achieve freedom from a murderous regime. We in Israel welcome the historic struggle to forge democratic, peace-loving governments in our region. ↗

— Shimon Peres

#brave #citizens #day #democratic #each

Thank you sir," she said. "I hope that your friend feels better soon." I shrugged. "The ways of the Lord" I said, "are often dark, but never pleasant. ↗

— Robert B. Parker

#humor #religon #spenser #humor

I took my .38 out and looked to see that there were bullets in all the proper places. I knew there would be, but it did no harm to be careful. And I'd seen Clint Eastwood do it once in the movies. ↗

— Robert B. Parker

#detectives #guns #humor #irony #machos

Some in Westminster have talked about her receiving a state funeral when she dies, which seems a bizarre sort of tribute to someone who believed the state should do as little as possible. It would be far more appropriate to allow competitive bids from private companies to run the funeral arrangements. 'And we now go over live to Westminster, where state leaders are lining up for Lady Thatcher's funeral sponsored by McDonald's. And there we see the coffin respectfully borne on the shoulders of six part-time burger-flippers dressed in the official Ronald McDonald costume, before the private cremation when the body will be flame-grilled with gherkins and a slice of cheese.' It's what she would have wanted. ↗

— John O'Farrell

#history #margaret-thatcher #respect

Katz had read extensively in popular sociobiology, and his understanding of the depressive personality type and its seemingly perverse persistence in the human gene pool was that depression was successful adaptation to ceaseless pain and hardship. Pessimism, feelings of worthlessness and lack of entitlement, inability to derive satisfaction from pleasure, a tormenting awareness of the world's general crappiness: for Katz Jewish paternal forebears, who'd been driven from shtetl to shtetl by implacable anti-Semites, as for the old Angles and Saxons on his mother's side, who'd labored to grow rye and barley in the poor soils and short summers of northern Europe, feeling bad all the time and expecting the worse had been natural ways of equilibriating themselves with the lousiness of their circumstances. Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news. This obviously wasn't an optimal way to live, but it had its evolutionary advantages. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#freedom

Woman was domesticated so that man could be tamed. When will we unite and rise up against the livestock? ↗

— Bauvard

#domesticity #funny #humor #livestock #love

I did not approve of your action—I was merely congratulating myself. What you mistook for clapping was merely me giving myself multiple high fives.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#applaud #applause #approve #clap #clapping

The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person's face. When you forgive, it's like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total. ↗

— Louis Zamperini

#forgiveness #forgives #god #jesus #wwii

We split a bottle of Norman cider. Not everybody sells Norman cider by the bottle. "Has a European feel" Susan said. "That sounds terrific" I said. "Can I have one?" Susan grinned at me. "How did you ever get to be so big without growing up?" she said. "Iron self-control" I said. ↗

— Robert B. Parker

#humor #spenser #humor

You're a hero,' Mom repeated, squeezing my hand and kissing my forehead. 'You saved six lives in that house! Six! Sure, one of them was a creep,' she looked at Lauren, 'but that's what makes it so good. "Love thine enemies."' Lauren smiled at me. 'And don't worry about Curt,' she said. 'We are so broken up.' 'Six lives,' Mom repeated. But I had been trying to save seven. ↗

— Dan Wells

#john-cleaver #saving #six-lives #love