#lest

I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots—written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements—and found that they called themselves Gush Emunim or—it sounded just as bad in English—'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they took the land because god had given it to them from time immemorial. In the noisome town of Hebron, where all of life is focused on a supposedly sacred boneyard in a dank local cave, one of the world's less pretty sights is that of supposed yeshivah students toting submachine guns and humbling the Arab inhabitants. When I asked one of these charmers where he got his legal authority to be a squatter, he flung his hand, index finger outstretched, toward the sky. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#belarus #colonialism #god #guns #gush-emunim

Honor women! They strew celestial roses on the pathway of our terrestrial life. ↗

— Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste

#celestial #honor #life #pathway #pierre

I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love. ↗

— Anne Rice

#deciet #hate #interview-with-the-vampire #lestat #lie

Amal,I believe that most Americans do not love as we do. It is not for any inherent deficiency or superiority in them. They live in the safe, shallow, parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell. ↗

— Susan Abulhawa

#emotions #emotions-love #palestinians #love

The men and women, who desire to obtain seats in the celestial kingdom, will find that they must battle everyday. ↗

— Brigham Young

#men

Nothing is more beautiful than freedom, and nothing more grotesque than its molestation. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#grotesque #molestation #beauty

I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them--one or two of them particularly-- almost as one of their own sex. I mean I have not felt about them as most women are taught to feel--to be on their guard against attacks on their virtue; for no average man-- no man short of a sensual savage--will molest a woman by day or night, at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look 'Come on' he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look it, he never comes. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#fear #men #molest #seduction #sex

I think I'm greedy, but I'm not greedy for money - because that can be a burden - I'm greedy for an exciting life. I want it to be exciting all the time, and I get it, actually. On the other hand, I can find excitement, I admit, in raindrops falling on a puddle and a lot of people wouldn't. I intend to have it exciting until the day I fall over. ↗

— Martin Gayford

#life-to-the-fullest #money

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#does #man #motives #noblest #stupid

All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of the Mediterranean littoral (god having apparently ordered Moses to lead the Jews to one of the very few parts of the region with absolutely no oil at all), that would be bad enough. But in addition, it involved roosting on top of an ever-growing population that did not welcome the newcomers. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#israel #israeli-palestinian-conflict #jerusalem #jews #mediterranean-basin