#quen

As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaged in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence. Shame never came into it. He embraced his new identity as a coward. He would run in the other direction. He would lie down and cry and put his arms over his head or play dead. It didn't matter what he had to do, he would do it and be glad. ↗

— Lev Grossman

#cowardice #fear #martial-heroics #physical-violence #playing-dead

Se antes de cada acto nosso nos puséssemos a prever todas as consequências dele, a pensar nelas a sério, primeiro as imediatas, depois as prováveis, depois as possíveis, depois as imagináveis, não chegaríamos sequer a mover-nos de onde o primeiro pensamento nos tivesse feito parar. ↗

— José Saramago

#inspirational #inspirational

Love makes a subtle man out of a crude one, it gives eloquence to the mute, it gives courage the cowardly and makes the idle quick and sharp. ↗

— Juan Ruiz

#cowardly #crude #eloquence #gives #idle

Planetologist call it the conundrum of unforeseen ecological consequence. I call it the whack-a-mole rule of human meddling. She clasped both hands like a child hammering. WHACK! We change something here. Oops, that makes another problem pop up there where we didn't expect it. WHACK! So, we whack that mole. Oops! We're so smart that we're a menace. ↗

— Robert Buettner

#human-nature #human-superiority #humanity #humans #meddlers

You took a life and the theft went unpunished. God didn't strike you down. The sky didn't fall. The morning after, you turned on the faucet and water still came out... It was still good when you raised your arm for a cab and one came towards you out of the flow like magic. You did things that were supposed to end you and found they were only things that changed you. It was a disappointment and a revelation and a bereavement and a new thrilling nudity. It was the basic prosaic obscenity: You kept going. ↗

— Glen Duncan

#killing #murder #remorse #change

No one ever became, or can become truly eloquent without being a reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language. ↗

— Fisher Ames

#became #become #being #bible #eloquent

Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable. ↗

— Aneurin Bevan

#consequently #disagreeable #duty #made #reading

Even such an obvious idea as to observe an animal with vertigo or to rotate an animal did not occur to him, in spite of the fact that he conducted numerous vertigo experiments with human subjects and made frequent use of animal experiments. ↗

— Robert Barany

#conducted #did #even #experiments #fact

We're in a tightening cycle and the reason is the economy is growing, there's no expectation that the global economy and the Polish economy as a consequence could slow down dramatically. ↗

— Marek Belka

#could #cycle #down #dramatically #economy

Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career, and consequences of human values. ↗

— Sidney Hook

#consequences #human #human values #kind #knowledge