#ling

God's relationship with man does not work in a way in which man stumbles and then God has to drop what he is doing in order to lift him up; rather, man stumbles so that God can lift him up. Hence it is utterly impossible to truly diminish his glory. ↗

— Criss Jami

#failure #falling #glory-of-god #god #healing

Theirs was the eternal youth of an alternating self, a youth with the constant although unfulfilled promise of growing up ↗

— Flora Rheta Schreiber

#amnesia #dissociation #dissociative-amnesia #dissociative-identity-disorder #fugue

It would seem that the more irresponsible and crafty one is, the more likely one is to have a talent for storytelling. ↗

— Osamu Dazai

#japanese #storytelling #japan

Kissing in front of the loveless is an act of cruelty. ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#maggie-stiefvater #cruelty

He who fights with guns and knives is a coward! For how easy is it to kill with the single pull of a trigger? And how does human flesh stand to a sharpened metal? Even an idiot can kill with a gun and a knife! A man needs no courage at all to stand behind these things that make him feel invincible and bigger than he ever will be! I don't say that no one should fight! Because battles must be fought, and wars will always be won! But let those who fight, fight with bare hands! The measure of true strength! With his hands and feet and nothing but! The country with truly strong men is able to have soldiers that need not a knife, that need no guns! And if you can soar even higher than that; fight with your pens! Let us all write! And see the substance of the man through his philosophies and through his beliefs! And let one philosophy outdo another! Let one belief outlast another! And let this be how we determine the outcome of a war! ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#battles #battling #bravery #courage #cowardice

It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare’, of the ‘rules of civilized warfare’, and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress… What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world. ↗

— James Connolly

#civilized #death #destruction #elite #humanity

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#escape #escapism #fiction #interpretation #narrative

hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic... ↗

— Van Morrison

#ocean #sailing #sea #ocean

Since the notion that we should all forsake attachment to race and/or cultural identity and be “just humans” within the framework of white supremacy has usually meant that subordinate groups must surrender their identities, beliefs, values, and assimilate by adopting the values and beliefs of privileged-class whites, rather than promoting racial harmony this thinking has created a fierce cultural protectionism. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#killing-rage #racism

It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean. ↗

— Jon J. Muth

#neighbors #spelling #zen #ocean