#or

The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists exists; what is is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality—it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see. ↗

— Terry Goodkind

#sword-of-truth #life

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of. ↗

— Sebastian Junger

#army #combat #life #marine-corps #military

But our lives were not as they seemed, were they, Sophia? No one's life ever is. ↗

— Jean Plaidy

#life #queen-victoria #life

Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me. ↗

— Lois McMaster Bujold

#humor #life #morals #humor

For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history – perhaps most – it can seem as if the whole impulse of fashion has been to look maximally ridiculous. If one could be maximally uncomfortable as well, the triumph was all the greater. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#history #humor #humor

Our evening-long tango of stares had my head spinning. ↗

— Jennifer Comeaux

#young-adult-romance #life

The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe. ↗

— Criss Jami

#atheism #atheist #beginning #belief #cause

I’ve often wished that I had some suave and socially acceptable hobby that I could fall back on in times like this. You know, play the violin (or was it the viola) like Sherlock Holmes, or maybe twiddle away on the pipe organ like the Disney version of Captain Nemo. But I don’t. I’m sort of the arcane equivalent of a classic computer geek. I do magic, in one form or another, and that’s pretty much it. I really need to get a life, one of these days ↗

— Jim Butcher

#humor

He who does not get fun and enjoyment out of every day... needs to reorganize his life. ↗

— George M. Adams

#organization #life

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail. ↗

— Laurence Sterne

#reading #writing #life