#th

He kissed her. Without warning, without permission. Without even deciding to do it, but simply because he couldn't have done anything else. He needed that breath she was holding. It belonged to him, and he wanted it back. ↗

— Tessa Dare

#one-dance-with-a-duke #regency #stud-club #historical

I'm learning not to hope for what I can't control... ↗

— Leila Meacham

#women-s-strength #historical

Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God. ↗

— John Green

#faith

A hero can go anywhere, challenge anyone, as long as he has the nerve. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#chiron #hero #percy-jackson-and-the-olympians #rick-riordan #ultimate-guide

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be. ↗

— John Connolly

#childhood #child

Whoa," said Nico as he climbed off the bus. "Is that a climbing wall?" "Yeah," I (Percy) said. "Why is there lava pouring down it?" "Little extra challenge..." - Percy ↗

— Rick Riordan

#climbing-wall #lava #nico-di-angelo #percy-jackson #percy-jackson-and-the-olympians

A wager?" I repeated. "Yes," he said, and gave me a slow smile, bright with challenge. ... "Stake?" I asked cautiously. He was still smiling, an odd sort of smile, hard to define. "A kiss." My first reaction was outrage, but then I remembered that I was on my way to Court, and that had to be the kind of thing they did at Court. And if I win I don't have to collect. I hesitated only a moment longer, lured by the thought of open sky, and speed, and winning. "Done," I said. ↗

— Sherwood Smith

#meliara #shevraeth #vidanric #wager #challenge

Angelica didn’t care if she was forbidden from doing something because she relished in the challenge of finding the answer. She needed to know everything because a lack of knowledge terrified her. Angelica was forever afraid of things she didn’t know or didn’t understand. Thus, she opened the attic door… ↗

— Rachel M. Greenebaum

#challenge

This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. ↗

— Elizabeth I Tudor

#thankfulness #historical

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world. — Winston S. Churchill ↗

— Ellen Brazer

#espionage #historical-novel #history #holocaust #intrigue