#sm

To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being "in the know," cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to a creeping bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit... A praying life is just the opposite. It engaged evil. It doesn't take no for an answer. The psalmist was in God's face, hoping, dreaming, asking. Prayer is feisty. Cynicism, on the other hand, merely critiques. It is passive, cocooning itself from the passions of the great cosmic battle we are engaged in. It is without hope. ↗

— Paul E. Miller

#prayer #dreams

I realized I was a country person - I'm just not used to small spaces. ↗

— Alice Walker

#i #just #person #realized #small

We are gods with anuses. ↗

— Ernest Becker

#human-condition #humor #philosofy #psychology #religion

A man is always devoted to something more tangible than a woman - the idea of her. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #idealism #love #men-and-women #funny

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #atheist #christianity #death #god

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#equality #exercise #give #great #great souls

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#feature #flower #great #intuition #life

I deliberately fly in and out of LA for as small a time as humanly possible. ↗

— Eric Bana

#fly #humanly #i #la #out

As neither of these two great research scientists was able to find the solution to the mystery, it is small wonder that none of their contemporaries were able to do so either. ↗

— Robert Barany

#contemporaries #either #find #great #mystery

I think the American people are very smart in understanding our country is very trustworthy with nuclear weapons. We've had them from the beginning. But they have also been critical for keeping the world more at peace than it would have been if it hadn't been for the American nuclear umbrella. ↗

— Haley Barbour

#american #american people #been #beginning #country