#relatives

Leonard is far and away my least favorite relative, and I have no clue why I call him one night, collect, very late, and give him an involved and scrupulously fair edition of the whole story. We end up arguing. Leonard maintains that I am just like our mother and suffer from an unhappy and basically silly desire to be perfect; I sat that this has nothing constructive to do with anything I've said, and furthermore I fail to see what's so bad about wishing to be perfect, since being perfect would be...well, perfect. Leonard invites me to think about how boring it would be to be perfect. I defer to Leonard's extensive and hard-earned knowledge about being boring, but do point out that since being boring is an imperfection, it would by definition be impossible for a perfect person to be boring. Leonard says I've always enjoyed playing games with words in order to dodge the real meanings of things; this segues with suspicious neatness into my intuitions about the impending death of lexical utterance, and I'm afraid I indulge myself for several minutes before I realize that one of us has severed the connection. I curse Leonard's pipe, and his wife with a face like the rind of a ham. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#language #perfection #relatives #death

Worship Allah and associate nothing with Him, and to parents do good, and to relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbor, the neighbor farther away, the companion at your side, the traveler, and those whom your right hands possess (slaves). Indeed, Allah does not like those who are proud and boastful. [Al-Qur'an Surah Nisa 4:36] ↗

— Asma Naqi

#life #needy #neighbors #orphans #parents

One well-meaning aunt had even told Amanda of her belief that the Lord had kept her from marrying solely to provide someone to take care of her ailing parents. Amanda would have preferred the Almighty had made other arrangements. Apparently it had not occurred to anyone that Amanda might have caught a husband, had the remaining years of her youth not been expended in caring for her mother and father. ↗

— Lisa Kleypas

#relatives #romance #spinsters #life

In the beginning of the human race there was no genetic load which would cause undesirable traits such as appear in offspring of marriages between relatives today. ↗

— Walter Lang

#beginning #between #cause #genetic #human

Well, if you don't want your relatives and friends to die, help me spread the news. Let people know about immortality device. That way, your loved ones won't die. ↗

— Alex Chiu

#device #die #friends #help #immortality

For those of us who have lost loved ones in their prime - as I did when my father and other relatives succumbed - even one of those years would have been a precious gift. ↗

— Michael Milken

#did #even #father #gift #i

The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder. ↗

— Jim Morrison

#destroy #faces #force #kind #loving

I feel that each and every one of us as individuals has a responsibility to one another. None of us would be here without the help of someone else - whether it be guardians, teachers, parents, relatives, etc. - someone contributed to your well being as a person. We're all connected in so many different ways. ↗

— Alonzo Mourning

#being #connected #contributed #different #different ways

I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter. ↗

— Edvard Munch

#any #believing #christians #conceive #continued

As I get older, all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children, any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one's friends' and relatives' children. ↗

— P. J. O'Rourke

#any #become #becomes #children #cruelty