#ego

Pausing in front of her, her mother brushed the hair back from her face and smiled sweetly at her before she kissed her brow. "You've changed much, my little treasure." A stinging wave of grief consumed her as she heard her mother's blessed voice again. Tears welled in her eyes. "I've missed you, Mama." -Seren and her mother, in a dream. ↗

— Kinley MacGregor

#seren #sword-of-darkness #change

Oh no, I'd love to go with you as friends!" said Luna, beaming as he had never seen her beam before. "Nobody's ever asked me to a party before, as a friend! Is that why you dyed your eyebrow, for the party? Should I do mine, too? ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#half-blood #harry #lovegood #luna #party

Romantic Egoist What's better, an idiot who never tries... or an idiot who at least takes a shot? ↗

— Bisco Hatori

#love #ouran #romantic-egoist #love

I speak as if he had no secrets from me. Well, then, you must know I was suffering from love and I knew him as intimately as I knew my own image in a mirror. In other words, I knew him only in relation to myself. ↗

— Angela Carter

#ego #love #love

Everything is a contest. All dealings among men are a contest in which some will succeed and others fail. And some are failing quite spectacularly. ↗

— Brandon Sanderson

#egotism #men #struggle #men

Farewell, I wish our souls may meet with comfort at the journey's end."- The Heavenly Footman: A Puritan's View of How to Get to Heaven. ↗

— John Bunyan

#inspirational

We are on strike against martyrdom—and against the moral code that demands it. We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another. We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men on any terms but ours—and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#ayn-rand #individualism #objectivism #rational-egoism #men

Your transparency is just another one of your disguises, isn't it? ↗

— Gregory Maguire

#lion #wicked #men

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things, the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#pacifism #sacrifice #selfishness #war #men

oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem? ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#love