#w

it's not his body that changes right away. it's something inside. he says he wants to be a little weaker. i don't understand. i say 'thinner?' and he says 'no, i want to be stronger in a different way.' not because of me, but for me. ↗

— David Levithan

#strength #weight #change

Town and Country Foods Town and Country Foods ↗

— Town and Country Foods

#food

We make a home for ourselves, every time we work on something: actors, writers, singers, building these little nests in our gypsy souls, in place of the ones we so seldom seem to make in our own lives. And then suddenly it's over, and we have to start again. ↗

— Alan Brennert

#imagination #writers #writing #home

[Saying] No to racial injustice means a call to look our own bigotry straight in the eye, and No to world hunger calls upon us to recognize our own lack of poverty. No to war requires us to come to terms with our own violence and aggression, and no to oppression and torture forces us to deal directly with our own insensitivities. And so all our No's become challenges to purify our own hearts. In this sense, confrontation always includes self-confrontation. (p. 123-124) ↗

— Henri J. M. Nouwen Donald P. McNeill Douglas A. Morrison

#confrontation #poverty #racism #self-confrontation #war

–¿No te importa siquiera a dónde voy? –dijo él. –¿Qué si estoy yendo al Infierno? –Siempre quise ver el Infierno, –dijo Cecily con calma. –¿No lo quiere todo el mundo? –La mayoría de nosotros pasamos el tiempo luchando para mantenernos al margen de él ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#spanish #will-herondale #spanish

It's the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else's pain. ↗

— Pat Barker

#pain #awareness

But how could anyone who's ever seen a summer - big explosion of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey - pick the snow? ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#snow

The bird dares to break the shell, then the shell breaks open and the bird can fly openly. This is the simplest principle of success. You dream, you dare and and you fly. ↗

— Israelmore Ayivor

#birds #break #can-do-spirit #dare #dare-to-win

One of the grat tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practise the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterised by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practise the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonising gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#love-in-action #martin-luther-king-jr #peace #war #words

Intellectual 'work' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle-bow in his hand, who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him - why, certainly he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair - but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash also. ↗

— Mark Twain

#change