#story

And the only sign of life is the ticking of the pen, introducing characters to memory like old friends. ↗

— Fish

#story #writing #life

I have seen ministers of justice, clothed in magisterial robes and criminals arraigned before them, while life was suspended on a breath in the courts of England; I have witnessed a congress in solemn session to give laws to nations;...but dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains at midnight, in a dungeon, in an obscure village of Missouri. ↗

— Parley P. Pratt

#orsen-f-whitney #life

The young man looked down from the cart at the people in front of him. Jonah felt his teacher’s eyes meet his own, and for a fraction of a second a smile played on the prisoner’s lips. Then he glanced toward heaven and spoke. “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. ↗

— Anna Myers

#heroes #history #nathan-hale #patriotism #revolutionary-war

We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how we make sense of our lives and of the world. When we’re distressed and go to therapy, our therapist’s job is to help us tell our story. Life doesn’t come with plots; it’s messy and chaotic; life is one damn, inexplicable thing after another. And we can’t have that. We insist on meaning. And so we tell stories so that our lives make sense. ↗

— John Dufresne

#fiction #novel #story #storytelling #life

My wish has always been to write my own story, to create a life that’s worth writing about. But is a story worth anything at all if I have no one to tell it to? ↗

— Charlotte Eriksson

#life-and-living #life-story #loneliness #solitude #story

Man makes history; woman is history. The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cultureless. If we look back we find that it is synonymous with life itself. ↗

— Oswald Spengler

#iron-logic #nature #truth #life

Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#history #ignorance #ignorance

The world is round. ↗

— Christopher Columbus

#science

He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch. ↗

— Dava Sobel

#invention #inventors #science #science

A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger. ↗

— Ben Okri

#mythology #stories #storytelling #life