#russ

Say I feel all sad and self-indulgent, then get stung by a wasp, my misery feels quite abstract and I long just to be in spiritual pain once more - 'damn you tiny assassin, clad in yellow and black, how I crave my former innocence where melancholy was my only trial'. ↗

— Russell Brand

#faith #pain #russell-brand #wasps #faith

It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst! ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#belief #christianity #faith #russia #faith

On the Russian revolutionaries: To leave your parents, faithful and loyal subjects of the Emperor, to leave your profession, to desist from having children, to lose your fortune, and to give up your civil honor, all for revolutionary conviction, makes for a league of more practical proof than any religious order. ↗

— Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

#russian #sacrifice #faith

Flannery O’Connor’s writing is quite dark, but it is so because she believes in the Devil, and in the Fall, and in humanity as it is. Novels that avoid the horror of human existence in this time between Eden and New Jerusalem can reinforce a Christian’s tendency to Pelagianism. The Christian gospel isn’t “clean” and “safe” and “family-friendly.” It comes to its narrative climax at a bloody Place of the Skull and in a borrowed grave. (http://bit.ly/KZS8Zh) ↗

— Russell Moore

#family

That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war. ↗

— David Benioff

#history #inspirational #jewish #jews #pessimism

Wings are freedom only when they are wide open in flight. On one's back they are a heavy weight. ↗

— Marina Tsvetaeva

#russian-poetry #tsvetaeva #wisdom #freedom

So when Putin goes out to buy a Coke, thirty seconds later it is known in Washington DC. ↗

— Julian Assange

#politics #russia #us #freedom

Friendship is merely a glorified expression. In reality it is nothing but a reciprocal outpouring of slops. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#friendship

I swim with all my strength. No superhuman surge, or pony heroics; it's just me at my most desperate. ↗

— Karen Russell

#karen-russell #home

In the beginning, fifty hours sounded like a bleak ocean of time, more hours than Sawtooth wanted to spend with himself, let alone with another person. Now he needs the girl to sit and measure time with him, the way the neighbor woman needs her prescription mirror so that she doesn't forget her own face. ↗

— Karen Russell

#out-to-sea #home