#minding

Ersken gathered the dice, put them in the cup they had used for play, and tucked it inside one bound Rat's shirt. "Let that be a lesson to you not to gamble," he told the Rat soberly. "The trickster asks you pay for any luck you may have, one way or another." "Bless the boy, he's a priest with it," one of the Goddess warriors said with a grin. "After this, laddie, what's say I take you home and rub some of that off yez?" Ersken actually winked at her! "Forgive me, gracious warrior, but my woman would turn me into something unnatural if I took you up on your kind offer," he replied as if he truly regretted it. "She's a mage and I'd best stay devoted. ↗

— Tamora Pierce

#gamblers #graceful-letdown #guards #repriminding #forgiveness

A billion and a half human souls, who had been given the techniques of music and the graphic arts, and the theory of technology, now had the others: philosophy and logic and love; sympathy, empathy, forbearance, unity, in the idea of their species rather than in their obedience; membership in harmony with all life everywhere. A people with such feelings and their derived skills cannot be slaves. As the light burst upon them, there was only one concentration possible to each of them—to be free, and the accomplished feeling of being free. As each found it, he was an expert in freedom, and expert succeeded expert, transcended expert, until (in a moment) a billion and a half human souls had no greater skill than the talent of freedom. ↗

— Theodore Sturgeon

#reminding #art

To a young man, even a student of the most fabulous and powerful school on the Civilized Worlds, the times during which he comes to maturity always seem normal no matter how extraordinary, how turbulent with change they really are. Imminent change and danger act as drugs upon the human brain, or rather, as rich foods that nourish the urge toward more life. And how easily one becomes used to such nourishment. Those who survive the signal events of history – the wars, plagues, alien contacts, vastenings, speciations and religious awakenings – develop a taste for ferment and evolution next to which all the moments of 'normal' existence will seem dull, flat, meaningless. (Indeed, viewed from a godly coign of vantage across more than two million years, nothing about humankind's astonishing journey from the grassy veldts of Afarique to the galaxy's cold, numinous stars can be seen as normal.) ↗

— David Zindell

#reminding #change

If you have to keep reminding yourself of a thing, perhaps it isn't so. ↗

— Christopher Morley

#perhaps #reminding #thing #you #yourself

I had some difficult times when I first moved to Los Angeles when people would tell me I was saying things wrong. I felt different although my mum kept reminding me it was OK to be different. ↗

— Lily Collins

#angeles #be different #different #difficult #difficult times

The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at crossroads. ↗

— Flann O'Brien

#given #irish #jobs #majority #members

I remember reminding myself that beauty is an opinion, not a fact. And it has always made me feel better. ↗

— Hayden Panettiere

#beauty #better #fact #feel #i

True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be. ↗

— Ralph W. Sockman

#far #highly #how #how far #humility

You're going through the horror of it, you're going through the isolation of it but you're being empowered by reminding yourself that you're connected to everybody else. ↗

— Adam Arkin

#connected #else #empowered #everybody #everybody else

There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business. ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#provocative #business