#p

The beauty of the ragamuffin gospel lies in the insight it offers into Jesus: the essential tenderness of His heart, His way of looking at the world, His mode of relating to you and me. 'If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says, but watch what he does. ↗

— Brennan Manning

#ragamuffin-gospel #beauty

People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born. And I am turning into a vampire. ↗

— M.T. Anderson

#thirsty #vampire #beauty

I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead. ↗

— John Fowles

#control #kidnap #beauty

A poem was a box for your soul. That was the point. It was the place where you could save bits of yourself, and shake out your darkest feelings, without worrying that people would think you were strange. While I was writing, I would forget myself and everyone else; poetry made me feel part of something noble and beautiful and bigger than me. [...] I slid them under the carpet as soon as they were done, all the images and rhymes wrestled into place. By the time I had copied them out, I found I had memorized every line. Then they would surprise me by surging through me, like songs I knew by heart. ↗

— Andrea Ashworth

#writing #beauty

He opened his mouth to say that she looked extremely beautiful and deserved armfuls of roses, but the words were lost in committee somewhere, shuffled aside by the parts of his head that worked full-time at avoiding ridicule. ↗

— Helen Simonson

#beauty

Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away. ↗

— Jennifer Donnelly

#class-struggle #excess #french-revolution #grandeur #louis-xiv

I'm hoping you end up happily married to the man of your dreams and have a hoard of beautiful kids that'll keep you on your toes by turning your neighbours into various types of pond-life." He then shot her his signature grin. "But if it happens to be me, then I wouldn't say no." (Karl to Elena in The Witching Pen) ↗

— Dianna Hardy

#elena #humor #humorous #karl #paranormal-romance

How beautiful a day can be, when kindness touches it! ↗

— George Elliston

#kindness #beauty

Everything, no matter how beautiful, is only with us for awhile. ↗

— Geoff Ryman

#beauty

One of the most powerful lessons in life is to recognize that no one can give you power, and many people don’t want you to have it. You have to find the courage to seize it, own it and hold on! ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#courage #power #rights #self-esteem #strength