#war

In Paris, I found myself surrounded by Germans; they were all over the place. They played music, and people would go and listen to them! All along rue de Rivoli, as far as you could see from place de la Concorde, there were enormous swastika banners five or six floors high. I just thought, This is impossible. Imagine that someone comes into your home—someone you don’t like—he settles down, gives orders: “Here we are, we’re at home now; you must obey.” To me that was unbearable. ↗

— Pearl Witherington Cornioley

#nazism #world-war-ii #home

...how impossible it is to really make a choice, when the best choice of all is an option you couldn’t even imagine. ↗

— Laurie J. Marks

#fantasy-fiction #warfare #imagination

As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaged in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence. Shame never came into it. He embraced his new identity as a coward. He would run in the other direction. He would lie down and cry and put his arms over his head or play dead. It didn't matter what he had to do, he would do it and be glad. ↗

— Lev Grossman

#cowardice #fear #martial-heroics #physical-violence #playing-dead

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#behind #face #fall #keep #shadows

No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. ↗

— George Lucas

#inspirational #jedi #life #philosophy #star-wars

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#instinct #knowledge #search #seekers #self-awareness

She didn't belong anywhere and she never really belonged to anyone. And everyone else belonged somewhere and to someone. People thought she was too wonderful. But she only wanted to belong to someone. People always thought she was too wonderful to belong to them or that something too wonderful would hurt too much to lose. And that's why she liked him-- because he just thought she was crazy. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#belonging-to-someone #boy-meets-girl #craziness #crazy #heartwarming

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. ↗

— Michel de Montaigne

#independence #individuality #inspirational #self-assurance #self-awareness

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#war #inspirational

I am who I am; no more, no less. ↗

— Terry Goodkind

#self-awareness #self-realization #inspirational