#ture

You look back on some little decision you made and realize all the things that happened because of it, and you think to yourself "if only I'd known," but, of course, you couldn't have known. ↗

— Mary Downing Hahn

#mystery #decisions

Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#literature #shakespeare #literature

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#atheism #god #nature #pantheism #religion

OPENING VERSES by PASTOR THIEME HEB 4:12 The word of God is alive and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 2TI 3:16-17 All Scripture is God breathed and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be mature, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. 2TI 2:15 Study to show yourself approved unto God as a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. ↗

— R.B. Thieme Jr.

#scripture

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#disappointment #emotions #english #excitement #fail

I asked the feedlot manager why they didn't just spray the liquefied manure on neighboring farms. The farmers don't want it, he explained. The nitrogen and phosphorus levels are so high that spraying the crops would kill them. He didn't say that feedlot wastes also contain heavy metals and hormone residues, persistent chemicals that end up in waterways downstream, where scientists have found fish and amphibians exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#factory-farming #feedlots #manure #pollution #nature

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#christopher-hitchens #humour #literature #writing #write

Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood. ↗

— Jane Yolen

#disease #literature #magic

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book--that string of confused, alien ciphers--shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. ↗

— Alberto Manguel

#childhood #literature #reading #stories #words

She asked where he lived. Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning. ↗

— J.M. Barrie

#fantasy #peter-pan #fantasy