#our

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#courage #courage-to-be-oneself #independent-thought #lightning #lightning-rod

It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners. It was understood that whoever was caught doing this received a severe beating. A number of us decided to pay the price for the privilege of preaching, so we accepted their [the communists' ] terms. It was a deal; we preached and they beat us. We were happy preaching. They were happy beating us, so everyone was happy. ↗

— Richard Wurmbrand

#courage #persecution #preaching #courage

Even as our economy starts to pick up, and new jobs are created, there is a risk that young people in Britain won't get the chances they deserve because businesses will continue to look elsewhere. ↗

— Iain Duncan Smith

#britain #businesses #chances #continue #created

Love wasn't put in your heart to stay. Love isn't love until you give it away. ↗

— Michael W. Smith

#give #heart #love #put #stay

One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage. ↗

— Robert Fulghum

#courage

What is this powerful have over my tub? Surely, I am transfixed by your firecracker charm and your suspended electrified wit. ↗

— Isabel Yosito

#charm #electrified #i #i am #over

May love's kindred treasure box fling your luminescent glove. ↗

— Isabel Yosito

#fling #glove #kindred #love #may

Show your bluebell passion with every step you take. Infuse your corporeal mind, body and spirit with atomic sense of urgency, purpose and apple juice. ↗

— Isabel Yosito

#atomic #body #every #every step #infuse

I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#change

The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish form our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#death #joy #life #support #courage