#well

There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally. ↗

— Michel de Montaigne

#the-good-life #life

Like it or not, there are people who are capable to love genuinely and kill brutally. The amazing thing about that, few of those could even sleep well like babies in the night. ↗

— Toba Beta

#baby #brutally #genuinely #kill #life

I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#boswell #corrupt #corruption #freedom #johnson

You want to fall, that's all. You think it can't go on like that. It's as if your life is a perch on the edge of a cliff and going forward seems impossible, not for a lack of will, but a lack of space. The possibility of another day stands in defiance of the laws of physics. And you can't go back. So you want to fall, let go, give up, but you can't. And every breath you take reminds you of that fact. So it goes. ↗

— The Yellow Birds

#life

He blushed to see other Frenchmen overcome with joy whenever they met a compatriot abroad. The would fall on each other, cluster in a raucous group, and pass whole evenings complaining about the barbarity of the locals. These were the few who actually noticed that locals did things differently. Others managed to travel so ‘covered and wrapped in a taciturn and incommunicative prudence, defending themselves from the contagion of an unknown atmosphere’ that they noticed nothing at all. ↗

— Sarah Bakewell

#nationalism #quote #sarah-bakewell #travel #xenophobia

If she loved him the way she said she did, she wanted him whole. Maybe this was what love meant after all: sacrifice and selflessness. It did not mean hearts and flowers and a happy ending, but the knowledge that another's well-being is more important than one's own. ↗

— Melissa de la Cruz

#reality #sacrifice #selflessness #well-being #love

Tessa was laying on her side, her brown hair spread over the pillow, watching Will, whose face was bent over the pages, with a look of tenderness in her eyes, a tenderness mirrored in the softness of Will's voice as he read. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#love #tenderness #tessa-gray #will-herondale #love

Damn, damn, damn," she said. "I never said why I like you, and now I have to go." "That's okay," he said. "It's because you're kind," she said. "And because you get all my jokes..." "Okay." He laughed. "And you're smarter than I am." "I am not." "And you look like a protagonist." She was talking as fast as she could think. "You look like the person who wins in the end. You're so pretty, and so good. You have magic eyes," she whispered. "And you make me feel like a cannibal." "You're crazy." "I have to go." She leaned over so the receiver was close to the base. "Eleanor - wait," Park said. She could hear her dad in the kitchen and her heartbeat everywhere. "Eleanor - wait - I love you. ↗

— Rainbow Rowell

#rainbow-rowell #swoons #love

Loving you was the best mistake I ever made. ↗

— Chelsea M. Cameron

#hunter-zaccadelli #love #mistake #my-favorite-mistake #taylor-and-hunter

If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. ↗

— Ida B. Wells-Barnett

#interracial-interactions #lynching #men