#mma

If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: "Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being." Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. (23) ↗

— Sam Harris

#morality #religion #imagination

Toys? When a man—a dom—said toys, he didn’t mean stuffed animals or baseballs. ↗

— Cherise Sinclair

#erotica #to-command-and-collar #baseball

It's my opinion, with some people, just knowing they are alone, living inside of their own miserable, self hating, dysfunctional mind, with their own immature, insecure, self pitying self is its own revenge. Their existence is their karma. ↗

— Colleen Truscott Fry

#dysfunctional #heartbreak #immaturity #karma #misery

But Gemma, you could change the world." "That should take far more than my power," I say. "True. But change needn't happen all at once. It can be small gestures." "Moments. Do you understand?" He's looking at me differently now, though I cannot say how. I only know I need to look away... We pass by the pools, where the mud larks sift. And for only a few seconds, I let the magic loose again. "Oi! By all the saints!" a boy cries from the river. "Gone off the dock?" an old woman calls. The mud larks break into cackles. "'S not a rock!" he shouts. He races out of the fog, cradling something in his palm. Curiosity gets the better of the others. They crowd about trying to see. In his palm is a smattering of rubies. "We're rich mates! It's a hot bath and a full belly for every one of us!" Kartik eyes me suspiciously. "That was a strange stroke of good fortune." "Yes it was." "I don't suppose that was your doing." "I'm not sure I don't know what you mean," I say. And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time. ↗

— Libba Bray

#gemma-doyle #kartik #luck #magic #small

The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#grammar

People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else. ↗

— B.R. Myers

#grammar #language #grammar

This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#grammar

Perhaps the window is not a sun but an asterisk, interrupting the grammar of the sky, with me sitting below it like a footnote. ↗

— China Miéville

#grammar

Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing. ↗

— John H. McWhorter

#grammar

The English language is a work in progress. Have fun with it. ↗

— Jonathan Culver

#grammar #language #grammar