#m

It is often said, inside the Church and out of it, that there is something grotesque about lectures on the sexual life when delivered by those who have shunned it. Given the way that the Church forbids women to preach, this point is usually made about men. But given how much this Church allows the fanatical Mother Teresa to preach, it might be added that the call to go forth and multiply, and to take no thought for the morrow, sounds grotesque when uttered by an elderly virgin whose chief claim to reverence is that she ministers to the inevitable losers in this very lottery. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#church #mother-teresa #sexual-life #life

There's no backward and no forward, no day other than this. You fill your cart as you go, and that's that. ↗

— John Burnham Schwartz

#philosophy #time #vision #whimsy #life

In fiction, the characters have their own lives. They may start as a gloss on the author’s life, but they move on from there. In poetry, especially confessional poetry but in other poetry as well, the poet is not writing characters so much as emotional truth wrapped in metaphor. Bam! Pow! A shot to the gut. ↗

— Jane Yolen

#emotion #fiction #poems #poetry #reading

Johannes had once said that violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easer to use your hands to strike a blow than to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to the problem. ↗

— Anne Holm

#i-am-david #life #smart #stupidity #violence

If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most Ill-adapted to its purpose in the world: for it is absurd to suppose that the endless affliction of which the world is everywhere full, and which arises out of the need and distress pertaining essentially to life, should be purposeless and purely accidental. Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional occurrence; but misfortune in general is the rule. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#opening-lines #life

Jay advanced. For the second time in his life, he didn’t give a shit what anyone else said about his choice in a lover. He seized Lincoln by the waist and crushed his mouth to the other man’s. Lincoln spread his lips and grabbed hold of Jay. No hesitation. No delay. Everything faded but the strength of that kiss, the power, the depth, the drive of man against man. ↗

— Sloan Parker

#life

Maybe that's my problem. Maybe I am one of the undead. Vampires are pale, cold, and skinny like me. They secretly hate the tast of blood, hate the way they make people cry, hate graveyards and coffins and the beast that drives them. They will lie about hating it until someone drives a stake through their heart. wintergirls ↗

— Laurie Halse Anderson (Author)

#thoughts-on-life #life

It has always been on the written page that the world has come into focus for me. If I can piece all these bits of memory together with the diaries and letters and the scribbled thoughts that clutter my mind and bookshelves, then maybe I can explain what happened. Maybe the worlds I have inhabited for the past seven years will assume order and logic and wholeness on paper. Maybe I can tell my story in a way that is useful to someone else. ↗

— Nancy Horan

#life-story #memoir #writing #life

Adventure, my dear, is as much a state of mind as anything else. One can travel the world and never find the excitement to be found within arm's reach. Remain true to yourself, but understand happiness may not always be found in the plans we have laid out for ourselves, but rather in the unforeseen turns life takes us. Do not close your mind, or your heart, to the unexpected twists of life. It is those unexpected paths that could well lead to the greatest adventures of all. - The Dowager Duchess to Marianne in The Marriage Lesson ↗

— Victoria Alexander

#the-marriage-lesson #life

As soon as I had proved this and, of course, also the normal pointing action and reactions in all other extremities and joints, I stopped the experiment. ↗

— Robert Barany

#also #course #experiment #had #i