#lit

When we talk to our fellow men and they tell us about their troubles, we will listen to them carefully if we have love for them. We will have compassion for their suffering and pain, for we are God's creatures; we are a manifestation of the love of God. ↗

— Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

#compassion #council #eastern-orthodoxy #god-s-love #love

Whenever I think of something but can't think of what it was I was thinking of, I can't stop thinking until I think I'm thinking of it again. I think I think too much. ↗

— Criss Jami

#challenge #clever #cognition #cognitive #cognitive-psychology

Obama is not a secret Kenyon, or a secret Muslim, he's a secret Republican. ↗

— Bill Maher

#politics #president-obama #humor

So", says Jack at at last..."you broke up with Connor". Wow. So we're straight to the point. "So", I reply defiantly. "You decided to stay". "Yes, well...", "I thought I might take a closer look at some of the European subsidiaries." He looks up. "How about you?" "Same reason." I nod. "European subsidiaries". ↗

— Sophie Kinsella

#humor #humor

Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying","We understand how it is - we have one, too. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#george-bush #humor #italy #politics #humor

Trying to drown me woman?" 'You can't drown a SEAL,' she said. 'How embarrassing would that be?' 'God yes. Shoot me, hang me, let me die of infection from a hangnail, but don't let me die in the water. They'd send me to hell on principle. ↗

— Maya Banks

#military #navy-seals #humor

Go ahead and laugh at Detroit. Because you are laughing at yourself. ↗

— Charlie LeDuff

#detroit #humor #literature #humor

Don’t let yourself forget how many doctors have died, furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds. How many astrologers, after pompous forecasts about others’ ends. How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality. How many warriors, after inflicting thousands of casualties themselves. How many tyrants, after abusing the power of life and death atrociously, as if they were themselves immortal. How many whole cities have met their end: Helike, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. And all the ones you know yourself, one after another. One who laid out another for burial, and was buried himself, and then the man who buried him - all in the same short space of time. In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on. ↗

— Marcus Aurelius

#spirituality #death

Tombstones covered the dale, the smooth marble surfaces bright. She had spent days here as a teenager, though not out of any awareness of mortality. Like every adolescent, she intended to live forever. ↗

— Thomm Quackenbush

#cemetery #death #immortality #teenager #death

If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution of happiness, strength, and understanding to my being remains to sustain me in an altered world. ↗

— Helen Keller

#grief #hope #immortality #loss #death