#r

You want us all to be snake-charmers and scorpion-eaters," he raged, at one point in their conversation ... "Naturally," Eunice replied in her most provoking manner. "It would be far preferable to being a nation of tenth-rate pseudo-civilized rug-sellers. ↗

— Paul Bowles

#nature

Oh, for Christ's sake. Nothing is going to make your boy straight, Elaine. I didn't drag him into anything. But you're absolutely right. This is a battle for his soul, and while you may think I'm Lucifer, you sure as hell aren't God. This isn't about you or me. It's about the gift that defines his soul more than you or I will ever hope to do. If he doesn't have that for himself, neither of us will have anything. ↗

— Joey W. Hill

#thomas #nature

Understanding character is a vital part of the process of finding a relationship partner and developing a strong and vibrant relationship together. ↗

— Susanne M. Alexander

#relationship-advice #relationship

Sometimes being a good mother gets in the way of being a good person. ↗

— Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

#mother #independence

Even now I'll see her looking at him, her eyes milky yet full of longing, and all he ever gives her is a gentle, absent nod. Perhaps this is the nature of true deprivation - a lifetime of love, tenderly spurned. ↗

— Jane Avrich

#love #love

You need to decide what works for you. But ultimately, hold out for adoration and respect ↗

— Catherine Sanderson

#respect

As you notice your whole being, your entirety, your wise inner nature, there are messages there for you. Quietly give permission for your wholeness, your entirety, to share its deepest wisdom. ↗

— Janet Gallagher Nestor

#mindfulness #self-awareness #spirituality #stress-relief #wellbeing

If the metaphors in everyday speech are a clue, then all of us associate blankness with virtue rather than with nothingness. Think of the moral connotations of the adjectives: clean, fair, immaculate, lily-white, pure, spotless, unmarred and unsullied. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#nature

Even when you're keeping score, golf is all about focusing on the shot at hand, the total score being a sum of those shots. On magic mushrooms, each shot was an act of self-expression - a karate kick, a pirouette, a paintbrush stroke. The course was an aren, a stage, and a canvas. That's the way it felt playing in the backcountry, too. Going beyond the simple visual appreciation of a landscape and interacting with it beyond the reach of the physical body. Launching shots across canyons and rivers and down mountainsides and beaches. The motion of the body determining the motion of the ball - its flight an extension of the body like a spider riding the wind on a silken thread or a perfectly cast fly arcing down onto the surface of the water. This is the part of the game that is hard for nongolfers to see. You have to play to feel it. It isn't visible through the TV screen or from outside the picket fences and privet hedges. The forest gets lost in tress of tartan and argyle, visors and V-necks. Golf seems to be one thing but is very much another, and backcountry golf and mushroom night golf are as true to the nature of the game as any stuffy country club championship or Saturday Nassau or fourball. ↗

— John Dunn

#golf #john-dunn #loopers #nature

Franklin, I was absolutely terrified of having a child. Before I got pregnant, my visions of child rearing- reading stories about cabooses with smiley faces at bedtime, feeding glop into slack mouths- all seemed like pictures of someone else. I dreaded confrontation with what could prove a closed, stony nature, my own selfishness and lack of generosity, the thick tarry powers of my own resentment. However intrigued by a “turn of the page,” I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else’s story. And I believe that this terror is precisely what must have snagged me, the way a ledge will tempt one to jump off. The very surmountability of the task, its very unattractiveness , was in the end what attracted me to it. (32) ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#motherhood #nature