#river

Freedom comes when you see the built-in contradiction of trying to manipulate something that is going right to begin with.... Stop trying to steer the river. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#river-surrender #freedom

But it was late. We had to go home. We listened to the river singing, the river singing stone. ↗

— Myrna Peña-Reyes

#home

You had to be willing to fight in order for a love story to last a life time. ↗

— Cristina Marrero

#cristy-anne #lesbian #lgbtq #love #queer-youth

You can't tell how heavy somebody else's load is just from looking. The Lord doesn't give us more than we can carry ↗

— Lalita Tademy

#hardness #heavy #lalita-tademy #life #load

I was all the time tugging and carrying water. But now I have a river that carries me. ↗

— D.L. Moody

#river-of-life #spirituality #life

The river and the garden have been the foundations of my economy here. Of the two I have liked the river best. It is wonderful to have the duty of being on the river the first and last thing every day. I have loved it even in the rain. Sometimes I have loved it most in the rain. ↗

— Wendell Berry

#rain #river #love

The test of man then is not, 'How have I believed?' but 'How have I loved?'. The final test of religion is not religiousness, but love: not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. Pastor Henry Drummond, 1890 ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#life

One doesn't love in order to do what is good or to help or to protect someone. If we act that way, we are perceiving the other as a simple object. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#love

Couples stray,” said Edgar. “Part of the breaking-in process.” “Not breaking in, breaking.” Nicola differed sharply. “You can glue people together again. But then your relationship’s like any other repaired object, with cracks, blobs of epoxy, a little askew. It’s never the same. I can see you haven’t a notion what I’m on about, so you’ll have to take my word for it.” “Christ, you’re a babe in the woods.” Edgar stopped slicing tomatoes. “You got it ass-backward. A marriage perched like porcelain on the mantelpiece is doomed. Sooner or later grown-ups treat each other like shit. You gotta be able to kick the thing around, less like china than an old shoe—bam, under the bed, or walk it through some puddles. No love’s gonna last it if can’t take abuse. ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#lionel-shriver #love #love

The baking wind tore at his hat and he held it by the brim with one hand. It relieved him to look at it, for the great river was like a long tale, of both great joy and great woe. And it seemed to be a story road that a person could take, and it would take him to some place where he could free his mind. Men had striven against one another to control the unreeling river-road, battling at New Madrid and Island Number Ten, at Baton Rouge and Vicksburg, in the heat of the summer and the humid choking air of the malarial swamps. But the river carried away men and guns and the garbage of war, covering it over, washing itself clean again as if they had never been. ↗

— Paulette Jiles

#men