#kindlehighlight

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#beauty

had been equally obvious. The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organisers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists and professional politicians. These people, whose origins ↗

— George Orwell

#equality

Each death laid a dreadful charge of complicity on the living; each death was incongenerous, its guilt irreducible, its sadness immortal; a bracelet of bright hair about the bone. ↗

— John Fowles

#death

In the previous few minutes, I had seen the most beautiful thing that eyes can see: the glory of God shining in the radiance of creation. I had heard the most beautiful thing that ears can hear: friends telling friends that they love one another. And I had felt the most beautiful thing that any heart can ever feel: the love of God and the love of others. ↗

— Brian D. McLaren

#beauty

One day Augustus asked Newt to ride along with him, much to Newt’s surprise. In the morning they saw a grizzly, but the bear was far upwind and didn’t scent them. It was a beautiful day—no clouds in the sky. Augustus rode with his big rifle propped across the saddle—he was in the highest of spirits. They rode ahead of the herd some fifteen miles or more, and yet when they stopped to look back they could still see the cattle, tiny black dots in the middle of the plain, with the southern horizon still far behind them. ↗

— Larry McMurtry

#beauty

and like most people who have spent much of their adult life being emotionally dishonest, I overcalculated the sympathy a final being honest would bring ↗

— John Fowles

#life

We take creative license with the fictional narratives that become our memories. Anthologized, these are the tales that become the story of your life. ↗

— Danielle Ganek

#life

In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water. ↗

— Markus Zusak

#evil

I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all. ↗

— Jennifer Egan

#imagination

We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#love