#light

Grady’s a man of action who craves excitement and needs plenty of activity, and he’s seen precious little of either in the ten or so years he’s been our sheriff. Well, let’s just say that since Candi Heart came to town, he’s had plenty to keep him busy, what with the stream of crimes that follows her around. And then there’s the mystery surrounding the woman herself. Suffice to say, Candi’s not quite what she appears and leave it at that. ↗

— Deborah Grace Staley

#business

For thousands of years humans were oppressed— as some of us still are— by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea.* Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun. And that the stars were very far away. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#greece #ionia #knowledge #learning #reality

Wouldn’t that be an incredibly stupid thing to do? To say ‘I never want to smoke again’, then spend the rest of your life saying ‘I’d love a cigarette.’ That’s what smokers who use the Willpower Method do. No wonder they feel so miserable. They spend the rest of their lives desperately moping for something that they desperately hope they will never have. ↗

— Allen Carr

#life

Oh, the shame that I suffer now . . . the shame of a vanquished King.” And those were the last words of Henry Plantagenet. ↗

— Jean Plaidy

#love

I fell, as they say. Into love. I practiced saying it, first to myself, in my head. I believed in it. I did. I thought love and I bought it completely. I was excited by my belief but was careful not to let this excitement influence or manipulate the belief in any way. The belief had to be pure. So I said it to her, I love you, and she said it back. And this was our contract. We treated the words seriously and respected that they came with implications. ↗

— Kyle Beachy

#love

But whenever I see it happen, I always want to say the same thing. Good luck. Because you still have a woman in front of you, my friend. And you are still a man. It’s still two human beings trying to get along, so it’s going to become complicated. And love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#love

Over the vistas broke a cold gray light, such as seen in those false dawns that are neither night nor true morning, when the world and all its contents seem but shapes of mist, formed in vain hope and desire... If you awake from troubled sleep at such a time, you can only sit by the window and think of those that have been lost to you, those that followed your parents into those cold and heartless regions below the grass, silent and dark. Eventually, morning comes and the world resumes its solidity, but another tiny thread of ice has been stitched into your heart forever. ↗

— K.W. Jeter

#death #false-dawns #grass #gray-light #heart

Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi. ↗

— Tahir Shah

#enlightenment #india #travel #varanasi #business

Love makes you stupid. Love makes you weak. Love will kill you all one day, and it’s going to kill you today. ↗

— J.X. Burros

#love #scarlet-spotlight #vampire #death

A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work; you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope. ↗

— Steven Pressfield

#love