#om

If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: "Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being." Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. (23) ↗

— Sam Harris

#morality #religion #imagination

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home. ↗

— Elizabeth Kostova

#home #library #walking

I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I've been in the arena. How comforting the presence of another human being can be. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#companionship #loneliness #comfort

The moment will arrive when you are comfortable with who you are, and what you are– bald or old or fat or poor, successful or struggling- when you don't feel the need to apologize for anything or to deny anything. To be comfortable in your own skin is the beginning of strength. ↗

— Charles B. Handy

#handy #strength #comfort

Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#dignity #double-standards #empowerment #feminism #gender

Toys? When a man—a dom—said toys, he didn’t mean stuffed animals or baseballs. ↗

— Cherise Sinclair

#erotica #to-command-and-collar #baseball

Choosing to be with you isn't a difficult decision, Jacqueline," he breathed, pulling back one final time to stare into my eyes. "It's easy. Incredibly easy. ↗

— Tammara Webber

#novel

Nerd girls are the world’s most underutilized romantic resource. And guys, do not tell me that nerd girls are not hot because that shows a Paris Hilton-esque failure to understand hotness. ↗

— John Green

#nerdiness #romance #romantic

WE two boys together clinging, One the other never leaving, Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making, Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching, Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving. No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening, Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing, Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing, Fulfilling our foray. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#companionship #friendship #life #love #togetherness

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#dignity #empowerment #feminism #gender #history