#over

The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don't have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made. ↗

— F. Sionil José

#philippines #poverty #prostitution #social #women

To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self.... And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one's self. ↗

— Søren Kierkegaard

#anxiety #self-discovery #consciousness

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot. ↗

— Mark Twain

#man #recovery #right #wisdom #wrong

Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#louisa-may-alcott

Men will allow God to be everywhere but on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to dispense His alms and bestow his bounties. they will allow Him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends Hes throne, His creatures then gnash their teeth. And we proclaim an enthroned God, and His right to do as He wills with His own, to dispose of His creatures as He thinks well, without consulting them in the matter; then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on His throne is not the God they love. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon His throne whom we trust. ↗

— Charles H. Spurgeon

#grace #man #power #sin #sovereignty

The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor. ↗

— Dorothy Day

#christianity #gospels #poor #poverty #gospel

Women writers make for rewarding (and efficient) lovers. They are clever liars to fathers and husbands; yet they never hold their tongues too long, nor keep ardent typing fingers still. ↗

— Roman Payne

#fathers #husbands #liars #lovers #lying

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad. ↗

— Erica Jong

#bad #erica #girl #good #jong

The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human (and nonhuman) impoverishment. ↗

— Derrick Jensen

#entropy #environmental-degradation #global-industrial-economy #impoverishment #economy

Oh, God, Francesca,Now there’s a good one.Why?Why? Why?” He gave each one a different tenor, as if he were testing out the word, asking it to different people. “Why?” he asked again, this time with increased volume as he turned around to face her. “Why? It’s because I love you, damn me to hell. Because I’ve always loved you. Because I loved you when you were with John, and I loved you when I was in India, and God only knows I don’t deserve you, but I love you, anyway.” Francesca sagged against the door. “How’s that for a witty little joke?” he mocked. “I loveyou. I loveyou, my cousin’s wife. I loveyou, the one woman I can never have. I loveyou, Francesca Bridger-ton Stirling. ↗

— Julia Quinn

#julia-quinn #lover #love