#war

I hear Warner laugh. I see him smile. It's the kind of smile that transforms him into someone else entirely, the kind of smile that puts stars in his eyes and a dazzle on his lips and I realize I've never seen him like this before. I've never seen his teeth--so straight, so white, nothing less than perfect. A flawless, flawless exterior for a boy with a black, black heart. It's hard to believe there's blood on the hands of the person I'm staring at. He looks soft and vulnerable--so human. His eyes are squinting from all his grinning and his cheeks are pink form the cold. He has dimples. He's easily the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And I wish I'd never seen it. ↗

— Tahereh Mafi

#dimples #dog #warner #beauty

[On Female Attraction to Men in Uniform] That male military persona feeds a subconscious, passive-aggressive female desire to dominate the warrior as he is perceived an iconic example of masculinity (particularly amongst traditionally warlike cultures). The damsel in distress theme always struck me as embodying this: the hapless, innocently beautiful woman unwittingly enraptures the heroic male so completely that he would risk all to submit to her at his own peril, and quite in spite of it. ↗

— Tiffany Madison

#literature #military-theory #passive-aggressive #romantic-themes #warrior

The world was so beautiful when regarded like this, without searching, so simply, in such a childlike way. Moons and stas were beautiful, beautiful were bank and stream, forest and rocks, goat and gold-bug, flower and butterfly. So lovely, so delightful to go through the world this way, so like a child, awake, open to what is near, without distrust. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#beauty

Mute in that golden silence hung with green, Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyes Remembrance of all beauty that has been, And stillness from the pools of Paradise. ↗

— Siegfried Sassoon

#poetry #sassoon #world-war-one #wwi #beauty

I figure I’d find my way to beauty eventually. And I’d find absolution because I’d know, I earned the love of that woman, a woman who’s got so much to her it’ll take years to dig down and find the heart of her, that would be my reward.” Ohmigod. Ohmigod! Ohmigod! ↗

— Kristen Ashley

#beauty

But Fazire didn’t do exactly what she said. He did make her perfect. He made her bright and funny and very, very talented. He made her sweet and thoughtful and very, very caring. He made her generous and kind and very, very loving He decided not to make her beautiful, at least not at first, because she should know humility and not grow up with conceit. Though, she would become a beauty, a splendid beauty beyond compare. Just… later. ↗

— Kristen Ashley

#beauty

Ah, my dear friend, cheer up... After all, we have peace! And because there is peace, the occupiers can't behave so abominably anymore. All right, we're not free. But we are used to that, Mr. Kujawski. After all we were both born into slavery, and we will die in it. Oh yes, at first they'll exploit us ruthlessly. Fourteen hours of slave labor a day. A bowl of watery soup. Whippings, beatings... But that will pass with time. Because there is peace, they won't have a chance to get any new slaves. They'll have to take good care of those have already. Cheer up, dear Mr. Kujawski... [...] Arbeit macht frei, work makes man free, and it makes him especially so in the sunshine of European peace. We will lack only one thing. Only one! The right of dissent. The right to say out loud that we want a free and independent Poland, that we want to brush our teeth and go on holiday in our own way, conceive children and work our own way, think in our own way, live and die. This is the one thing you will find missing in the sunshine of European peace, which you, my friend, hold to be the highest good. ↗

— Andrzej Szczypiorski

#poland #war #world-war-ii #beauty

To be or not to be tethered to the sordid, sickly, stinking, sappy apron strings of Hollywood and its endless fondness for fu**ing your sh** up. If Shakespeare were alive today, I bet he’d write a scintillating soliloquy about the Broken Brood of Big Shots. I bet he’d help you out, Micky Affias, ol’ Will the Bard would. Listen, we’ll come visit you. Okay? I’ll dress up as William Shakespeare, Lucent as Emily Dickinson, and beautiful ‘Ray’ as someone dashing and manly like Jules Verne or Ernest Hemingway, and we’ll write on your white-room walls. We’ll write you out of your supposed insanity. I love you, Micky Affias. -James (from "Descendants of the Eminent") ↗

— Tim Cummings

#afterlife #astrology #brothers #children-of-celebrities #class-struggle

Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate. ↗

— Alice Walker

#men

Hunting hawks did not belong in cages, no matter how much a man coveted their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They were far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful. ↗

— Lois McMaster Bujold

#cage #hawk #miles-vorkosigan #unrequited-love #warrior-s-apprentice