#pee

The essence of America – that which really unites us — is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion – it is an idea — and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. That it doesn’t matter where you came from but where you are going. ↗

— Condoleezza Rice

#patriotic #speech #inspirational

I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured. ↗

— President James A. Garfield - courtesy of Millard's "Destiny of the Republic"

#inspirational #speeches #inspirational

Don’t be jealous if I spend 50% of my time with you, and 50% of my time with others, because you get 100% of 50%, while all the others have to share that other 50%.” This is the speech I’ve prepared to tell my wife in the future, when I’m spending a majority minus one percent of my time with my clones. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#jealous #jealousy #majority #marriage #share

Sick and disoriented, I'm able to form only one thought: Peeta Mellark just saved my life. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#katniss-everdeen #peeta-mellark #life

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#harvard-commencement-speech #life

Probably? So you're asking me to trust my life to steel wool and peanut butter?" "Poisoned peanut butter." "Cal, I don't care if it's nuclear peanut butter. ↗

— Scott Westerfeld

#cal #peanut #peeps #poisoned #scott-westerfeld

It was like being in a car with the gas pedal slammed down to the floor and nothing to do but hold on and pretend to have some semblance of control. But control was something I'd lost a long time ago. ↗

— Nic Sheff

#control #life #speeding #life

So, kiss the girl. Buy the dress. Take a vacation. Join the circus. Order the fried frog legs. Try out for the play. Learn to snowboard. Do something that scares the shit out of you. Or something that makes you happy. Or something that makes you cry. Whatever it is, do something that makes you feel. Because feeling nothing is no way to go through life. ↗

— Valérie Thomas

#motivational #life

I know a person who, though no poet, composed some verses in a very short time, which were full of feeling and admirably descriptive of her pain: they did not come from her understanding, but, in order the better to enjoy the bliss which came to her from such delectable pain, she complained of it to her God. She would have been so glad if she could have been cut to pieces, body and soul, to show what joy this pain caused her. What torments could have been set before her at such a time which she would not have found it delectable to endure for her Lord's sake? ↗

— Teresa of Ávila

#catholic #chapter-xvi #masochism #submission #life

It's not irrelevant, those moments of connection, those places where fiction saves your life. It's the most important thing there is. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#life