#roma

In summary, the Romans were opposed to tyranny in any form; and the feature of government to which they gave the most thought was an elaborate system of checks and balances. ↗

— Robert Welch

#balances #checks #elaborate #feature #form

It began with the twitch of her lower lip as it took on a life of its own, rippling outward to the corners of her mouth and forcing them upward into a helpless smile. She instantly clasped one hand over her mouth in a frantic attempt to silence the sound that was coming from her throat. The result was that she half-spluttered, half-coughed, her eyes painfully wide as she desperately wished a hole would emerge in the oriental carpet and mercifully swallow her up. ↗

— Sophie Barnes

#life

When you give your heart away, you usually get it back in pieces, fragments. And often, a great deal of time passes before you realize that every piece wasn’t returned to you—and probably never will be. You crave nothing more than to get those small—but vital—fragments back; to return to the unbroken, undamaged version of yourself. But what's been broken cannot be unbroken, and so all you can do is learn to live with the void of the missing pieces, to somehow find beauty in the wreckage. And so I did. Sophie Lenon ↗

— Krystal McLean

#broken-heart #dark #hope #lovers #romance

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened. ↗

— Tom Wolfe

#anything #art #before #completed #distributed

And I think maybe all women, if they just had a chance, would be romantic and believe in love and not sex. And men believe in sex and not love. ↗

— Beatrice Wood

#chance #had #i #i think #just

I was meant to date the captain of the football team, I was going to be on a romantic excursion every Saturday night, I was destined to be collecting corsages from every boy in town before prom, accepting such floral offerings like competing sacrifices to a Delphic goddess. ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#before #boy #captain #collecting #competing

Well, if you look at the whole story, I mean there's only Jews and Romans in the story. I mean I just wanted to flesh that character out and make that a drama about the people around Christ when he was going through this passion. ↗

— Mel Gibson

#around #character #christ #drama #flesh

I think it's wonderful when a love story begins with a great deal of romance and affection, passion and excitement, that's how it should be. But I don't necessarily know that it's the wisest thing in the world to expect that it ends there, or that it should, 30 years down the road, still look as it did on the night of your first kiss. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#begins #deal #did #down #down the road

Marriage is not simply a romantic union between two people; it's also a political and economic contract of the highest order. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#between #contract #economic #highest #highest order

Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss! ↗

— Oliver Goldsmith

#bliss #charming #colors #consummate #deceptive