#tho

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us. ↗

— St. Anthony the Great

#christian #coptic #modernity #orthodox #saint

Love is a beautiful, wonderful, and even sacred thing, but until it arrives, shouldn’t we give ourselves permission to thrive? ↗

— Mandy Hale

#happiness #happy-life #love #loving-yourself #positive-thinking

Prophets borrow the omniscience of God to speak with the insolence of angels. But we are only impressed with their authority when they talk to us humbly, as men of inferior rank. ↗

— Bauvard

#authority #god #prophets #men

They paid people to write books!!! Until that moment I had a vague idea that books were produced in factories, like tires, or else they grew on trees, like money. ↗

— Gary Reilly

#writing #money

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#does #man #motives #noblest #stupid

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#science #motivational

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE ↗

— Mark Twain

#preface #reading #warning #motivational

C’est moi, c’est moi,’tis I,' I told him. It seemed appropriately melodramatic, though I didn’t know if he’d catch the reference. I shouldn’t have worried. Unexpectedly, he laughed. “Trust you to quote Lancelot rather than Guinevere. ↗

— Patricia Briggs

#mercy-thompson #musical-theater-reference #paranormal #sexism #shifter

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#darwinism #eugenics #natural-selection #planned-parenthood #population-control

We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought. ↗

— Thomas Bernhard

#extinction #failure #thought #nature