#t

Henry," said Charlotte, who appeared to have recovered from her shock, "if you set yourself on fire deliberately, I will institute divorce proceedings. Now sit down and eat your supper. And say hello to our guest. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#clockwork #fire #henry #divorce

Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more of their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination of people not to live without it. ↗

— Morton Hunt

#any #break #break up #determination #failure

Self pity becomes your oxygen. But you learned to breathe it without a gasp. So, nobody even notices you're hurting. ↗

— Paul Monette

#lgbt #queer #self-esteem #self-pity #gay

I thought the whole point of having a gay brother was that they were supposed to be all cool and shit. I’ve got a defective gay. ↗

— T.J. Klune

#gay

Straight? So is spaghetti until you heat it up ↗

— Jet Mykles

#homosexuality #gay

A designer is only as good as the star who wears her clothes. ↗

— Edith Head

#clothes #designer #good #her #only

What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish? There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license. When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects. ↗

— Alexis de Tocqueville

#change

Every one of us is like a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. ↗

— Tevye Fiddler on the Roof

#reality #experience

Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom. ↗

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

#divorce

Is it just me, or do you also think this is unnatural behavior in a female parent? Isn't there a federal law that says mothers are not allowed to laugh at vulnerable male children when they are required to wear stupid clothing to work? There should be. ↗

— A.E. Cannon

#funny #guide #life #loser-s #love