#over

I calculated how easy it would be to pull a chair next to the windowsill, climb up, and simply allow my body to fall four stories to the street. Then an inner voice broke in, "There's got to be something more. Go find it. ↗

— Debra Moffitt

#non-fiction-books-inspirational #spiritual-journey #spiritual-life #spirituality #inspirational

Take off your coat." "Excuse me?" "Take it off." "No." "I want it off." "Then I suggest you hold your breath. Won't affect me in the slightest, but at least the suffocation will help pass the time for you. [Vishous to Jane] ↗

— J.R. Ward

#j-r-ward #jane #lover-unbound #vishous #help

Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#discoveries #experience #foreign-countries #life #life-changing

What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given 'class' labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#class-warfare #politics #poverty #change

..things are never as complicated as they seem. It is only our arrogance that prompts us to find unnecessarily complicated answers to simple problems. ↗

— Muhammad Yunus

#complication #poverty-alleviation #simplicity #social-change #change

Because to the poor, books are not diversions. Book are siege weapons. ↗

— Joe Queenan

#poverty #diversity

A few days later, Tuesday quietly crossed our apartment as I read a book and, after a nudge against my arm, put his head on my lap. As always, I immediately checked my mental state, trying to assess what was wrong. I knew a change in my biorhythms had brought Tuesday over, because he was always monitoring me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Breathing? Okay. Pulse? Normal. Was I glazed or distracted? Was I lost in Iraq? Was a dark period descending? I didn't think so, but I knew something must be wrong, and I was starting to worry...until I looked into Tuesday's eyes. They were staring at me softly from under those big eyebrows, and there was nothing in them but love. ↗

— Luis Carlos Montalván

#dog #dog-lover #dogs-loyalty #iraq #iraq-war

Fear of change was a weakness ↗

— J.R. Ward

#black #black-dagger #black-dagger-brotherhood #brotherhood #dagger

The only problem with seeing people you know is that they know you. ↗

— Brent Runyon

#introvert #introverts #journalism

[Saying] No to racial injustice means a call to look our own bigotry straight in the eye, and No to world hunger calls upon us to recognize our own lack of poverty. No to war requires us to come to terms with our own violence and aggression, and no to oppression and torture forces us to deal directly with our own insensitivities. And so all our No's become challenges to purify our own hearts. In this sense, confrontation always includes self-confrontation. (p. 123-124) ↗

— Henri J. M. Nouwen Donald P. McNeill Douglas A. Morrison

#confrontation #poverty #racism #self-confrontation #war