#provoking

The importance of setting a date, as in choosing a colour, is a matter of selection. Orange may be seen equally well as 'the decline and fall of red' or 'the rise and triumph of yellow'. ↗

— Donald Thomas

#history #thought-provoking #dating

While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't. It's a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you're deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person's entire life story—their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that's better not done. ↗

— Alyson Noel

#thought-provoking #inspirational

Just when you’ve squared up to the solemn realisation that life is a bitch, it turns round and does something nice, just to confuse you. - Emily Spitzer, The Better Mousetrap ↗

— Tom Holt

#life

The great artists of finance like Morgan and Rockefeller weren't deflected. They wanted and got money, just simple money. What they did with it afterward is another matter. I've always felt they got scared of the ghost they raised and tried to buy it off. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#money

I suddenly began to realize that everybody in America is a natural-born thief. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#nature

If a man cannot serve two masters, neither can Christianity, or several thousand of them as the case may be. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#christian #christianity #god #one-christ-one-church #religion

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#science #thought-provoking #science

What work do I have to do then?" said Will, but went on at once, "No, on second thought, don't tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because it'll feel as if I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#materialism

So I have just one wish for you – the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#freedom

Lead us not into temptation' often means, among other things, 'Deny me those gratifying invitations, those highly interesting contacts, that participation in the brilliant movements of our age, which I so often, at such risk, desire.' Reflections on the Psalms, ch 7 ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#age