#superstition

Most people who offer their help do it to make themselves feel better, not us. To be honest, I don't blame them. It's superstition: If you give assistance to the family in need... if you throw salt over your shoulder... if you don't step on the cracks, then maybe you'll be immune. Maybe you'll be able to convince yourself that this could never happen to you. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#help #precaution #superstition #family

Nat Parson says it's the devil's mark." "Nat Parson's a gobshite." Maddy was torn between a natural feeling of sacrilege and a deep admiration of anyone who dared call a parson 'gobshite. ↗

— Joanne Harris

#superstition #nature

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge. ↗

— Voltaire

#human #human spirit #ignorance #infantile #knowledge

I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely. ↗

— Anne Tyler

#actual #actual process #closely #examining #i

Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. ↗

— William Kingdon Clifford

#clog #delivers #every #fatal #help

I don't have any superstitions, but what I always travel with is my pillow and my coffee. ↗

— Natalie Coughlin

#any #coffee #i #i always #pillow

I have only one superstition... Touch all the bases when I hit a home run. ↗

— George Herman

#hit #home #home run #i #only

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition. ↗

— Jose Bergamin

#doubt #leaves #place #superstition #which

The nations were awakened from the sleep of death, as the words of eternal life flowed from the Apostles' lips, - the temples of superstition were shut or destroyed, and churches were planted in every part of the civilized world. ↗

— John Strachan

#awakened #churches #civilized #civilized world #death

We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves -- that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) -- who want to lead the sort of life which we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us. An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#commandments #god #life #morality #morals