#ss

Be as successful as a Smith. ↗

— Gregory C Dugger

#family #goals #motivational #success #work-ethic

You and me,” he echoed, tilting my face up to his. I stared back into his eyes. They were clear of sleep and nightmares now. “Always.” I told him, my lips curving into a smile. That had been his line once, now it was mine. “Always,” Balik murmured against my jawbone the words grazing my skin as I arched my neck backwards. “You and me, always.” His whisper mingled with the kisses he brushed along my throat. I closed my eyes and drifted away with him. ↗

— Melanie Cusick-Jones

#love #love

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#love #family

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#forgiveness

To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it. ↗

— Confucius

#grudges #forgiveness

At the unconscious level, Americans believe that good people succeed, that success is bestowed upon you by God. Your success demonstrates that God loves you. ↗

— Clotaire Rapaille

#americans #code #culture #divine #god

As often as we made love I remembered what my poet told me, that this man was born of a goddess, the force that moves the stars and the waves of the sea and couples the animals in the fields in spring, the power of passion, the light of the evening star. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#mythology #passion #poetry #love

There is the love that I love but don't want to love and try to bleed out so the love that I want but don't want, can die a tragic death. And as it lays dying, I'm touched with remorse, feel regret, and try to keep it beating. If it does, I panic, and go through the cycle all over again. What do you call that except pure madness? I'm a catastrophic tsunami on any man who tries to love me. And if I really care about a man, you would think I would be sweet and supportive, but instead I set fires and dare them to walk through them. ↗

— Donna Lynn Hope

#mad-love #passion #death

Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here's what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last. ↗

— Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

#grief #loss #death

She watched as the dancing lights of madness swirled and flickered in his eyes like the fires of hell, and she knew that there would never be anything that could quench those fires except death. Vanessa knew that Jango had become his own Grim Reaper. ↗

— Cedric Nye

#death #grim-reaper #hell #horror #madness