#v

We like to admit to only that which already glows, although it is nobler to support brightness before it glows, not afterwards. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #brightness #dejan-stojanovic #glow #literature

For several moments, Mary couldn't hear anything over the violent pounding of her pulse. ↗

— Y.S. Lee

#excitement #thriller #young-adult-fiction #thriller

The excitable observer will pass judgement first and then make knowledge conform to judgement; the prudent observer will first learn to know and then judge according to knowledge. ↗

— Thomas Cleary

#knowledge #observer #conformity

When the preponderance of human beings choose to act with justice and generosity and kindness, then learning and love and decency prevail. When the preponderance of human beings choose power, greed, and indifference to suffering, the world is filled with war, poverty, and cruelty. ↗

— Mary Doria Russell

#war #love

‎I was satisfied with haiku until I met you, jar of octopus, cuckoo's cry, 5-7-5, but now I want a russian novel, a 50-page description of you sleeping, another 75 of what you think staring at your window. ↗

— Dean Young

#poetry #love

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#activism #agitation #dissent #human-rights #liberties

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do? ↗

— William Makepeace Thackeray

#satire #vanity #satire

Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form. ↗

— Stendhal

#novels #satire #social-criticism #satire

Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxwork displays, film shows, telescreen programs all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked. ↗

— George Orwell

#orwell #russian-revolution #satire #satire

So much is asked of parents, and so little is given. ↗

— Virginia Satir

#given #little #much #parents