#tory

Ah? A small aversion to menial labor?" The doctor cocked an eyebrow. "Understandable, but misplaced. One should treasure those hum-drum tasks that keep the body occupied but leave the mind and heart unfettered. ↗

— Tad Williams

#imagination #labor #my-life-story #treasures #imagination

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#procrastination

For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#environment #environmental-determinism #history #societies #environmentalism

I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another. ↗

— Julie Orringer

#stations-of-the-cross #love

Half of writing history is hiding the truth. ↗

— Joss Whedon

#foucault #history #lies #truth #lie

Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. ↗

— Sarah Vowell

#coffee #history #coffee

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#belief #rewriting-history #sherlock-holmes #belief

Constantine saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing this inscription: conquer by this. At the sight, he himself was struck with amazement and his whole army also. ↗

— Eusebius

#church-history #constantine #orthodoxy #patristics #saints

You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it. ↗

— Roger Kahn

#defeat #victory #life

Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#good #history #invincibility #tyrants #victory