#rain

It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas. ↗

— Edward Bond

#comes #containing #democracy #genes #ideas

They've never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove to Washington the traffic was so bad that I could have made better time with a horse. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#brook #change #earth #environment #history

Within the shadows of honor, courage often walks in silence. -Engraved on the monument Clay built ↗

— Lorraine Heath

#clay #lorraine-heath #courage

Boys [should be] inured from childhood to trifling risks and slight dangers of every possible description, such as tumbling into ponds and off of trees, etc., in order to strengthen their nervous system... They ought to practice leaping off heights into deep water. They ought never to hesitate to cross a stream over a narrow unsafe plank for fear of a ducking. They ought never to decline to climb up a tree, to pull fruit merely because there is a possibility of their falling off and breaking their necks. I firmly believe that boys were intended to encounter all kinds of risks, in order to prepare them to meet and grapple with risks and dangers incident to man’s career with cool, cautious self-possession... ↗

— R.M. Ballantyne

#child-training #courage #courage

You think the only battles fought are done so with rifles, and the only wounds that kill draw blood. You think courage is loud, boisterous, and proud. Mrs. Warner, I don't think you have a clue as to what this memorial truly represents." -Clay to Meg ↗

— Lorraine Heath

#clayton #lorraine-heath #meg #courage

I've enjoyed training again, I've enjoyed pushing myself in the pool and I'll keep on swimming until I feel I cannot get any more out of myself. ↗

— Ian Thorpe

#any #cannot #enjoyed #feel #get

Since we humans have the better brain, isn't it our responsibility to protect our fellow creatures from, oddly enough, ourselves? ↗

— Joy Adamson

#brain #creatures #enough #fellow #fellow creatures

The brain, he writes, is like Kublai Khan, the great Mongol emperor of the thirteenth century. It sits enthroned in its skull, "encased in darkness and silence," at a lofty remove from brute reality. Messengers stream in from every corner of the sensory kingdom, bringing word of distant sights, sounds, and smells. Their reports arrive at different rates, often long out of date, yet the details are all stitched together into a seamless chronology. The difference is that Kublai Khan was piecing together the past. The brain is describing the present—processing reams of disjointed data on the fly, editing everything down to an instantaneous now. How does it manage it? ↗

— Burkhard Bilger

#data #david-eagleman #processing #senses #dating

The book was not new. Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates. A rent book. A lending library of elaborate smut. I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat. A racket like that, out in the open on the boulevard, seemed to mean plenty of protection. I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it. ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#rain #smoking #dating

Nothing before you counts," he said. "And I can't even imagine an after." She shook her head. "Don't." "What?" "Don't talk about after." "I just meant that... I want to be the last person who ever kisses you, too.... That sounds bad, like a death threat or something. What I'm trying to say is, you're it. This is it for me. ↗

— Rainbow Rowell

#rainbow-rowell #swoons #death