#raise

We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal. ↗

— Mario Vargas Llosa

#in-praise-of-reading-and-fiction #nobel-prize #reading #life

Choosing one thing over another doesn't necessarily mean we love the thing we choose. If given the choice to eat spinach or broccoli, you may choose broccoli. It may only mean you don't want to eat spinach. Heaven is not for people who just want to skip Hell. Heaven is reserved for those who love Jesus, who have been rescued by Him and who long to praise Him. If someone doesn't have much use for praising Him now, it's foolish to think they're ready for Heaven. ↗

— Matt Chandler

#heaven #hell #jesus #praise #worship

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#praise #men

Jesus! it is the name which moves the harps of heaven to melody. Jesus! the life of all our joys. If there be one name more charming, more precious than another, it is this name. It is woven into the very warp and woof of our psalmody. Many of our hymns begin with it, and scarcely any, that are good for anything, end without it. It is the sum total of all delights. It is the music with which the bells of heaven ring; a song in a word; an ocean for comprehension, although a drop for brevity; a matchless oratorio in two syllables; a gathering up of the hallelujahs of eternity in five letters. ↗

— Charles H. Spurgeon

#praise #music

Neither a life of anarchy nor one beneath a despot should you praise; to all that lies in the middle a god has given excellence. ↗

— Aeschylus

#beneath #despot #excellence #given #god

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#being #difference #free #made #me

To try and raise a budget for a film that is strictly for adults and both strong and graphic in content is not easy, especially when there is pressure to spend serious money on good special effects. ↗

— Dario Argento

#budget #content #easy #effects #especially

Dads. Do your faces light up when you first see your child in the morning or when you come home from work? Do you not understand that a child’s entire sense of value can revolve around what they see in your face when you first see them? ↗

— Dan Pearce

#arguing #break #child #children #dads

When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser. ↗

— Marianne Moore

#appraise #blunder #cannot #chiefly #even

If Congress doesn't raise taxes, you cannot get a private investment account without forgoing a portion, possibly all, of your guaranteed benefit check. ↗

— Grace Napolitano

#benefit #cannot #check #congress #forgoing