#tis

Welcome to Paris, Anna. I'm glad you've come. ↗

— Stephanie Perkins

#british-boys #etienne-st-clair #romance #swoon #paris

If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#conformity #future #history #mainstream #new-orleans

Fo' shiz. ↗

— Stephanie Perkins

#british #french

Orion sniffed. "Good. Then, Worthy Centaur, perhaps you could give me a ride to the village on your back. Then I can make a few pennies with my verses while you build us a shack and perform circus tricks for passersby." This was such a surprising statement that Foaly briefly considered jumping into the hole to get away. "This isn't Middle Earth, you know. We're not in a novel. I am not noble, neither do I have a repertoire of circus tricks." Orion seemed disappointed. "Can you juggle at least? ↗

— Eoin Colfer

#centaur #foaly #middle-earth #orion #noble

Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong. ↗

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

#conservatives #democrats #extremism #liberalism #liberals

To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism. ↗

— G. Edward Griffin

#patriotism #corruption

The sad truth about bigotry is that most bigots either don't realize that they are bigots, or they convince themselves that their bigotry is perfectly justified. ↗

— Wayne Gerard Trotman

#bigot #bigotry #bigots #delusion #denial

If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war's perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war's consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining… The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war's refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism, and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless. ↗

— Chris Hedges

#media #patriotism #truth #war #death

Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another. ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#myths #myth

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally. ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#intellectual-sophistication #internet #irony #nerd #nerdery