#sent

…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future. ↗

— Chaim Potok

#davita #harp #past #planning #potok

Silver nitrate and water in a super soaker," he told her. "My own invention. Ought to be good at twenty feet, kind of like wasp spray." Oh. "You get me the nicest things." "Anybody can get jewelry. Posers ↗

— Rachel Caine

#morganville-vampires #presents #shane-collins #present

Marley was dead: to begin with. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#christmas

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#philosophy #first-sentence

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. ↗

— Shirley Jackson

#escapism #first-sentence #opening-lines #reality #sanity

Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#prison

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment. ↗

— Elbert Hubbard

#being #criticism #endure #final #final proof

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD. ↗

— William Lloyd Garrison

#free-speech #protest #slavery #justice

All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #ethical #francione #moral-imperative

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that. ↗

— Alice Walker

#been #being #byproduct #come #fairly