#ra

He doesn't need my help coming up with pranks. He's got too many ideas of his own. - Daja referring to Briar in their first year at Discipline cottage ↗

— Tamora Pierce

#daja #mischief #pranks #discipline

Almost any idea is good if a man has ability and is willing to work hard. The best idea is worthless if the creator is a loafer and ineffective. ↗

— William Feather

#inspirational

Even as she spoke, silver blue flashed on her other side and then Illium was standing beside her, his wing touching Elena's in an intimacy that made Raphael raise an eyebrow. Illium's lips curved in a wicked smile that did little to hide the intensity of his emotions. I would not watch you die again, Sire. His veins stood out against his skin as he gripped the wrist of one hand with the other. Raphael met those eyes of gold that had stood beside him for centuries. If I had done so, I would have gone knowing you would keep my heart safe. Illium's gaze went to Elena. Always. ↗

— Nalini Singh

#elena #illium #raphael #intimacy

When Jesus was wrapping up his days on earth, he didn't tell us to go to church. He didn't tell us to engage in a spiritualized version of channel surfing, as we hop from place to place in search of just the right programming to entertain us. He told us to get out and actually do the stuff he'd already been doing, painting the hope of God's reign on the canvas of God's world. He told us we're artists. ↗

— Richard Dahlstrom

#church #god #hope #inspirational #jesus

I learned a little of beauty - enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth - and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#death #literary-tradition #truth #beauty

It does wonders for my own psyche to turn envy into inspiration. No matter how successful we become, we're never above that. ↗

— Hillman Curtis

#design #envy #inspiration #psyche #self

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, do you think ghosts will do it after? ↗

— Kabir

#metaphysics #spirituality #metaphysics

[Mindfulness] is not concerned with anything transcendent or divine. It serves as an antidote to theism, a cure for sentimental piety, a scalpel for excising the tumor of metaphysical belief. (130) ↗

— Stephen Batchelor

#metaphysical-beliefs #mindfulness #piety #theism #transcendence

The average IQ in America is—and this can be proven mathematically—average. ↗

— P.J. O'Rourke

#humour #iq-tests #maths #math

Here: an exercise in choice. Your choice. One of these tales is true. She lived through the war. In 1959 she came to America. She now lives in a condo in Miami, a tiny French woman with white hair, with a daughter and a grand-daughter. She keeps herself to herself and smiles rarely, as if the weight of memory keeps her from finding joy. Or that's a lie. Actually the Gestapo picked her up during a border crossing in 1943, and they left her in a meadow. First she dug her own grave, then a single bullet to the back of the skull. Her last thought, before that bullet, was that she was four months' pregnant, and that if we do not fight to create a future there will be no future for any of us. There is an old woman in Miami who wakes, confused, from a dream of the wind blowing the wildflowers in a meadow. There are bones untouched beneath the warm French earth which dream of a daughter's wedding. Good wine is drunk. The only tears shed are happy ones. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#dreams