#nth

And those characters [in a fairy tale] dwell in a moral world, whose laws are as clear as the law of gravity. That too is a great advantage of the folk tale. It is not a failure of imagination to see the sky blue. It is a failure rather to be weary of its being blue- and not to notice how blue it is. And appreciation of the subtler colors of the sky will come later. In the folk tale, good is good and evil is evil, and the former will triumph and later will fail. This is not the result of the imaginative quest. It is rather its principle and foundation. It is what will enable the child later on to understand Macbeth, or Don Quixote, or David Copperfield. ↗

— Anthony Esolen

#fairy-tales #good-and-evil #imagination

If I had but two loaves of bread, I would sell one and buy hyacinths, for they would feed my soul. ↗

— Mohammad

#inspirational #religious #inspirational

The difficulty in dealing with a maze or labyrinth lies not so much in navigating the convolutions to find the exit but in not entering the damn thing in the first place. Or, at least not yet again. As a creature of free will, do not be tempted into futility. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#choices #free-will #futility #labyrinth #inspirational

…excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand. ↗

— William Blake

#enthusiasm #inspiration #intellectual #madness #inspirational

I know what cancer was. How is it like humankind?" Sek Hardeen's perfectly modulated, softly accented tones showed a hint of agitation. "We have spread out through the galaxy like cancer cells through a living body, Duré. We multiply without thought to the countless life forms that must die or be pushed aside so that we may breed and flourish. We eradicate competing forms of intelligent life. ↗

— Dan Simmons

#overpopulation #superiority-complex #intelligence

A leader takes people where they would never go on their own. ↗

— Hans Finzel

#leadership #servanthood #leadership

Is Jase already gonna marry you?” I start coughing again. “Uh, No. No, George. I’m only seventeen.” As if that’s the only reason we’re not engaged. “I’m this many.” George holds up four, slightly grubby fingers. “But Jase is seventeen and a half. You could. Then you could live in here with him. And have a big family.” Jase strides back into the room, of course, midway through this proposition. “George. Beat it. Discovery Channel is on.” George backs out of the room but not before saying, “His bed’s really comfortable. And he never pees in it. ↗

— Huntley Fitzpatrick

#humour #jase #samantha #family

We are such spendthrifts with our lives, the trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out. ↗

— Paul Newman

#environment #farmer #inspirational #sainthood #sustainability

For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it? A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#happiness #intrisic-motivation #stoicism #life

I've done smarter things in my life. Once, for example, I threw myself out of a moving car in order to take on a truckload of lycanthropes singlehandedly." ~Harry Dresden ↗

— Jim Butcher

#lycanthrope #stupid-decisions #life