#ii

His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in [occupied] France in that period; laziness became political. ↗

— Iain Pears

#laziness #occupation #occupied-france #politics #war

A GI dreams about a long-haired dictionary because it always opens to the same page. ↗

— Edward R. Prisk

#dreams

Do you guys ever think about how Hitler has affected the whole world? That just one man did all this? I mean, what if he had been a good man, instead? ↗

— Elizabeth Berg

#dreams

When the infernal machine of plantation slavery began to grind its wheels, iron laws of economics came into play, laws that would lead to immeasurable suffering but would also, and equally inevitably, produce new languages all over the world – languages that ironically, in the very midst of man's inhumanity to man, demonstrated the essential unity of humanity. ↗

— Derek Bickerton

#linguistics #equality

Say yes,’ he whispers. ‘Marry me.’ I hesitate. I open my eyes. ‘You will get my fortune,’ I remark. ‘When I marry you, everything I have becomes yours. Just as George has everything that belongs to Isabel.’ ‘That’s why you can trust me to win it for you,’ he says simply. ‘When your interests and mine are the same, you can be certain that I will care for you as for myself. You will be my own. You will find that I care for my own.’ ‘You will be true to me?’ ‘Loyalty is my motto. When I give my word, you can trust me. ↗

— Philippa Gregory

#equality-between-partners #husband-and-wife #love #loyalty #marriage

We had our family patterns and were quite comfortable in them, which made it even more shocking when, just after his eightieth birthday, Papa began bringing up his time as a prisoner of war in Germany. Of course, I had always known that he had served in World War II and been captured, just like I had always know the stories about my grandmother and the build of their house. It's that peculiar type of family memory, where someone has obviously told you but you were too young to remember actually hearing it, so it seems like knowledge that was instilled at birth. Papa never brought it up, and my parents said they hadn't heard him mention it once in the previous fifty years. But suddenly, he was talking. ↗

— Jesse Cozean

#jesse-cozean #memoir #my-grandfather-s-war #patton #world-war-ii

I once asked an old Japanese man why Japan decided to team up with Germany during WWII, and do you know what he told me? Well, you would if you speak Japanese, which I don’t. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#germany #japanese #war #wwii #funny

Seeing no better jobs on the horizon than flipping hamburgers with so much grease it would make Portugal, Italy, and Spain jealous, I decided to go back to school. It reminds me of something Zelda’s mom told her in November 2007: “Some people flip condos and make millions. Your boyfriend couldn’t even flip burgers and make minimum wage. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#condos #depression #economic-depression #economy #horizon

All that technical expertise isn't worth a damn if you don't get the best out of people, though. . . . These were leaders who saw strength in ordinary people and showed them how to break tyranny. ↗

— Noël Coward

#wwii #leadership

Never say that you can't do something, or that something seems impossible, or that something can't be done, no matter how discouraging or harrowing it may be; human beings are limited only by what we allow ourselves to be limited by: our own minds. We are each the masters of our own reality; when we become self-aware to this: absolutely anything in the world is possible. Master yourself, and become king of the world around you. Let no odds, chastisement, exile, doubt, fear, or ANY mental virii prevent you from accomplishing your dreams. Never be a victim of life; be it's conqueror. ↗

— Mike Norton

#can-t #chastisement #conqueror #discouragement #disorder