#gifts

The beauty and gift of truth, is that it is not dependent upon your belief in order to remain true ↗

— A. Dragonblood

#lies #love #truth #beauty

Ky gives me three gifts for my birthday. A poem, a kiss and the hopeless, beautiful belief that things might work. When I open my eyes... I say, "I didn't give you anything for your birthday, i don't even know when it is." And he says, "Don't worry about that" and I say, "What can I do?" and he answers, "Let me believe in this, all of this, and you believe it too." And I do. ↗

— Ally Condie

#believe #birthday-gifts #beauty

The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts. ↗

— Ivan Illich

#actually #always #american #attitude #believe

Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan's way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus' way? WHy else get angry? Isn't it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want? When I choose-and it is a choice-to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective-more expedient-than giving thanks? ↗

— Ann Voskamp

#anger

But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills, And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me, And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth, And all I was, in ashes. - Tithonus ↗

— Alfred Tennyson

#death #gifts #gods #immortality #youth

The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body. ↗

— Quintilian

#body #differs #gifts #infinite #mind

When we must pay the true price for the depletion of nature’s gifts, materials will become more precious to us, and economic logic will reinforce, and not contradict, our heart’s desire to treat the world with reverence and, when we receive nature’s gifts, to use them well. ↗

— Charles Eisenstein

#charles-eisenstein #ecology #economics #gaia #gift-giving

If you learn to really sit with loneliness and embrace it for the gift that it is…an opportunity to get to know YOU, to learn how strong you really are, to depend on no one but YOU for your happiness…you will realize that a little loneliness goes a LONG way in creating a richer, deeper, more vibrant and colorful YOU. ↗

— Mandy Hale

#aloneness #being-yourself #courage #embracing-who-you-are #faith-in-yourself