#owe

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ↗

— Colette

#curiosity #flowers #friendly #friends #grief

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#culture #names #power-of-words #responsibility #wisdom

I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#love #power #death

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. ↗

— Elie Wiesel

#injustice #may #must #never #powerless

She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time. ↗

— Stephen Chbosky

#time

When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch. ↗

— Bette Davis

#double-standards #empowerment #feminism #gender #hypocrisy

How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill. ↗

— Kristin Cashore

#power #strong #unfair #weak #women

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute. ↗

— Rebecca West

#empowerment #feminism #opinions #women #womens-liberation

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic. ↗

— Diane Setterfield

#power-of-words #work

you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. ↗

— Stephen King

#positive-thinking #self-empowerment #writing #think