#rise

She couldn’t take her eyes from the dancing flame. No, this was so wrong. Candles should be used for meditation…for romance. Or on a birthday cake at least. So where was the cake? The present? The song? As he stepped closer to her—as the damned flame got way too close—she started singing. “Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me…” Marcus paused, looking at her in disbelief. See. I knew he didn’t have a sense of humor. “Happy birthday, dear Gabi”—she lifted her head and blew out the candle—“happy birthday to me. ↗

— Cherise Sinclair

#erotica #make-me-sir #humor

Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us. ↗

— Pope Benedict XVI

#learning #love #spirit #surprise #truth

As a captain whose vessel is about to crash on the rocks empties its souls of doubt, so are the hesitant useful for throwing off of an enterprise nearing its end: blame must be cast in failure, profits divided easily in success. ↗

— Bauvard

#doubt #enterprises #failure #funny #hesitancy

Okay, you’re older. Not much, really. And considering you love staying in shape and I refuse to run, we’ll probably get all old and crippled at the same time. If not, then I’ll learn to use a cane, and I’ll get to beat on your ass for a change. ↗

— Cherise Sinclair

#erotica #make-me-sir #change

[Internationa] Aid is just another praetorian business enterprise. ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#colonialism #enterprise #foreign-aid #international-politics #international-relations

The morning always has a way of creeping up on me and peeking in my bedroom windows. The sunrise is such a pervert. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#morning #pervert #strange #sunrise #change

Life is so full of unpredictable beauty and strange surprises. Sometimes that beauty is too much for me to handle. Do you know that feeling? When something is just too beautiful? When someone says something or writes something or plays something that moves you to the point of tears, maybe even changes you. ↗

— Mark Oliver Everett

#life #surprises #beauty

We must prepare the ground for creativity. And if this also gives rise later to success in the economic sense, success in terms of Euros and Cents, this will by no means reduce my joy. ↗

— Johannes Rau

#cents #creativity #economic #euros #gives

You have to be very rich to afford Labour, with 66 tax rises since they came in power. ↗

— John Redwood

#came #labour #power #rich #rises

Regular crises perpetuate the past by reinvigorating cycles which started long ago. In contrast, (capital-C) Crises are the past's death knell. They function like laboratories in which the future is incubated. They have given us agriculture and the industrial revolution, technology and the labour contract, killer germs and antibiotics. Once they strike, the past ceases to be a reliable predictor of the future and a brave new world is born. ↗

— Yanis Varoufakis

#cycles #economics #industrial-revolution #technology #death