#lass

... classical Arabic, being the language of the Qur'an, has not changed at all in fourteen centuries, making the writings of the early Islamic scholars as accessible today as they were then. ↗

— Jim Al-Khalili

#classical-arabic #koran #qur-an #quran #change

Hera said that Hephaestus was the one who made the lovely chariots for Zeus, Poseidon & Hades. Also the one for Helios, the Sun God. And if she married him, he might make one for her too. But she did not tell the young Goddess of Love why none of the Goddesses wanted to marry him in the first instance & that he was ugly & a cripple. She also omitted to tell her that Hephaestus, having created the first woman, Pandora, from clay, had neither the patience nor the inclination to woo & pamper women, let alone put up with the changing moods of the young lovely Goddesses at Olympus. And that even the warlike & down-to-earth Athena had dropped him like a ton of bricks. As Aphrodite did not appear to have any choices, she nodded her head & thus accepted Hera as her future mother-in-law. And this explains one of the greatest mysteries in Greek Mythology: why the loveliest & most beautiful of the Goddesses would agree to marry the ugliest of the Gods. For this mismatch would not have happened if not for Hera. ↗

— Nicholas Chong

#beauty

And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre ↗

— George Orwell

#fiction-novel #philosophical #truth #change

I must endure, fighting the temptation simply to become slack-jawed like most of my school 'peers' (they wish!), who will themselves into a collective, vacant, trancelike state for the duration of each class. (Although I sometimes secretly envy their ability to empty their minds completely for a full fifty minutes, reanimating only at the sound of a bell, like Pavlov's dogs...) ↗

— Beth Fantaskey

#pavlov #school #students #zone-out #dating

You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward! ↗

— Homer

#cowardice #death #greece #war #death

…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives. ↗

— Homer

#death #greece #death

Only the previous day, Arch had found him in a spirit-dance corral, blistering the creatures to the point of death, such was his need to touch and destroy. ↗

— Frank Beddor

#blister #corral #dance #death #destroy

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#fiction #marlow #death

Fine, she wouldn't mind if Kaltain and Perrington met horrible deaths, but Dorian would be there. And Chaol. ↗

— Sarah J. Maas

#death

It's about a young girl who will stop at nothing to be the valedictorian of her class. It's very dark and very wicked, but it's got a great part for a kid, and a great part for an older woman. ↗

— Kevin Williamson

#class #dark #girl #got #great