#then

I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all--and the foundation for our collective survival. ↗

— Jacqueline Novogratz

#introspection #society #strengthening-relationships #relationship

For, from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night. And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power. ↗

— Thomas Hobbes

#belief #catholic-church #fairies #heathen #materialism

Hey, can I see that sword you were using?" I showed him Riptide, and explained how it turned from a pen into a sword just by uncapping it. "Cool! Does it ever run out of ink?" "Um, well, I don't actually write with it." "Are you really the son of Poseidon?" "Well, yeah." "Can you surf really well, then?" I looked at Grover, who was trying hard not to laugh. "Jeez, Nico," I said. "I've never really tried." He went on asking questions. Did I fight a lot with Thalia, since she was a daughter of Zeus? (I didn't answer that one.) If Annabeth's mother was Athena, the goddess of wisdom, then why didn't Annabeth know better than to fall off a cliff? (I tried not to strangle Nico for asking that one.) Was Annabeth my girlfriend? (At this point, I was ready to stick the kid in a meat-flavored sack and throw him to the wolves.) ↗

— Rick Riordan

#athena #grover-underwood #nico-di-angelo #percy-jackson #poseidon

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#experience #logic #reason #science #then

There is love there. And then there's times when I can't even stomach Simon. You don't have to sit next to him. That's all I have to say. ↗

— Paula Abdul

#him #i #love #next #say

I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders. ↗

— Chinua Achebe

#begin #color #different #different color #different kind

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. ↗

— Chinua Achebe

#begin #even #far #identify #might

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#contradiction #here #hoped #involved #merely

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him. ↗

— Aesop

#doubtful #enemy #friend #him #how

It came to me then in a flash that obviously the temperature of the water was responsible for the nystagmus. ↗

— Robert Barany

#flash #me #obviously #responsible #temperature