#aria

Yelena, you've driven me crazy. You've caused me considerable trouble and I've contemplated ending your life twice since I've known you...but you slipped under my skin, invaded my blood and seized my heart. ↗

— Maria V. Snyder

#poison-study #romantic #valek #life

You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather than an asset - that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are justified in supposing that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the unit, stiff and sharp, conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and liking for everything self-dependent, anything an ambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, to attempt through sheer reserve, to confuse presumptions resulting from observation, is idle. You cannot make us think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are brilliant, it is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-eminence. Would you not, minus thorns, be a what-is-this, a mere perculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, the elements, or mildew; but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance without co-ordination? Guarding the infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re- membered too violently, your thorns are the best part of you. ↗

— Marianne Moore

#poem #roses-only #beauty

What we do with our free time is none of your business. Now, why don't you shuffle off to Parffet. I saw him heading toward the latrines. He'll need you to wipe his ass soon. It's the one skill you're most suited for." - Ari, pg. 188. ↗

— Maria V. Snyder

#maria-v-snyder #poison-study #business

Librarians are almost always very helpful and often almost absurdly knowledgeable. Their skills are probably underestimated and largely underemployed. ↗

— Charles Medawar

#business

I am invariably late for appointments - sometimes as much as two hours. I've tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing. ↗

— Marilyn Monroe

#appointments #change #hours #i #i am

By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet. ↗

— Thich Nhat Hanh

#peace #vegetarianism #change

...a book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. If for a hundred and a hundred years everyone had been able freely to handle our codices, the majority of them would no longer exist. So the librarian protects them not only against mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion, the enemy of truth. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#librarians #life

I knew Ginny was lying about that tattoo. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#ron-weasley #death

The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death. There is a kind of gestalt-shift between the two positions which makes it hard to change, and hard to raise questions on the matter at all without becoming embattled. ↗

— Mary Midgley

#ethics #philosophy #vegetarian #vegetarianism #change

Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#freedom #change