#rita

Give men your ear, but not your heart. Show respect for those in power, but don't follow them blindly. Judge with logic and reason, but comment not. ↗

— Christopher Paolini

#eragon #garrow #inheritance #inspirational #intelligence

The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe. ↗

— Criss Jami

#atheism #atheist #beginning #belief #cause

A saving, though an immethodical knowledge of Christ, will bring us to heaven, John 17: 2, but a regular and methodical, as well as a saving knowledge of him, will bring heaven into us, Col. 2: 2, 3. ↗

— John Flavel

#heaven #knowledge #puritans #salvation #life

By the second day, the song lyrics had faded, but in their place came darker irritations. Gradually, I started to become aware of a young man sitting just behind me and to the left. I had noticed him when he first entered the mediation hall, and had felt a flash of annoyance at the time: something about him, especially his beard, had struck me as too calculatedly dishevelled, as if he were trying to make a statement. Now his audible breathing was starting to irritate me, too. It seemed studied, unnatural, somehow theatrical. My irritation slowly intensified - a reaction that struck me as entirely reasonable and proportionate at the time. It was all beginning to feel like a personal attack. How much contempt must the bearded meditator have for me, I seethed silently, deliberately to decide to ruin the serenity of my meditation by behaving so obnoxiously? Experienced retreat-goers, it turns out, have a term for this phenomenon. The call it 'vipassana vendetta'. In the stillness tiny irritations become magnified into full-blown hate campaigns; the mind is so conditioned to attaching to storylines that it seizes upon whatever's available. Being on retreat had temporarily separated me from all the real causes of distress in my life, and so, apparently, I was inventing new ones. As I shuffled to my narrow bed that evening, I was still smarting about the loud-breathing man. I did let go of the vendetta eventually - but only because I'd fallen into an exhausted and dreamless sleep ↗

— Oliver Burkeman

#meditation #mind #power #thinking #life

That’s the last time I put you in charge of the tequila when we’re making margaritas ↗

— JoAnne Kenrick

#gypsy #haunted #joanne-kenrick #margarita #margaritas

I fall in love with Britain every day, with bridges, buses, blue skies... but it’s a brutal world, man. ↗

— Pete Doherty

#love #pete-doherty #love

Just like a murderer jumps of nowhere in an ally, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once ↗

— Michail Bulgakov

#love

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#commonwealth #duty #finest-hour #men

He knew all the stories. His grandfather had given them to him when he sat between the old man’s knees as a child. It was a comfort, though, to hear them again. To call them to mind. All these stories that made him more than just a vintner and more than just a man who carried a spear whom other men were willing to follow. More than just a man who lay dying. The stories made him one of the People, who would never die. ↗

— Stant Litore

#heritage #stories #men

(On Captain Britain) "Every British person thinks he's got the same accent as them. The air around him is warm like a summer meadow. He smells of honey. I've seen grown men weep at the sight of him. ↗

— Paul Cornell

#men