#of

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#love #love-of-god #suffering #imagination

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering.... The love of God did not protect His own Son.... He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#christian #god #hard-times #jesus #love

Humans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals. At the same time they never cease trying to escape from what they imagine themselves to be. Their religions are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed. In the twentieth century, the utopias of Right and Left served the same function. Today, when politics is unconvincing even as entertainment, science has taken on the role of mankind's deliverer. ↗

— John Gray

#freedom

Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I’ll be dead,' you’ve said the word 'I,' and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul—it was a consequence of grammar. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#the-year-of-the-flood #imagination

After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there. ↗

— Gertrude Stein

#interior-life #life-of-the-mind #writers #writing #imagination

Occasionally, there are battles in the sky. One likes to imagine the angels are always triumphant. One does not like to think of the ancient and terrible scales balancing the infernal and divine as wobbling back and forth. Tilting freely, to and fro. One does not like to think that sometimes it is the angel that falls. ↗

— Holly Black

#angels #holly-black #imagination

The parties with the most gain never show up on the battlefield. ↗

— Naomi Klein

#war #capitalism

I’ve long believed that for an award to gain prestige, all it takes is having one famous person win it—even if that one person doesn’t know about the award or the fact that they’ve won it. That’s why last year’s “Albatross Harbor’s Man of the Year Award” went to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And from all the votes this year (one), it looks like the winner will be me. I’ve already begun writing my acceptance speech. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#funny #man-of-the-year #prestige #sir-arthur-conan-doyle #funny

I situate myself, and seat myself, And where you recline I shall recline, For every armchair belonging to you as good as belongs to me. I loaf and curl up my tail I yawn and loaf at my ease after rolling in the catnip patch." (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP) ↗

— Henry N. Beard

#humor #leaves-of-grass #song-of-myself #walt-whitman #humor

Bryan helped me up.  "How can you be so good one minute then clumsy the next?" I shrugged.  "I've never been very athletic.  Not unless you count fencing." "You made fences? ↗

— John Corwin

#funny #john-corwin #stupid #sweet-blood-of-mine #funny