#sent

Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces. You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew. I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it. ↗

— Iain Pears

#civilization #denunciation #evil #good #jews

Imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present. ↗

— John Green

#inspirational #present #imagination

In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving "as if" they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#freethought #philosophy #bullying

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#teenagers

Mystics are not themselves. They do not exist in selves. They move as they are moved, talk as words come, see with sight that enters their eyes. I met a woman once and asked her where love had led her. Fool, there's no destination to arrive at. Loved one and lover and love are infinite. ↗

— فرید الدین عطار

#sword-sentiments #love

The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#love

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#greatest #poem #states #themselves #united

The only practical thing to do with the absent-minded is to put them in retirement homes when they are born and admire their artwork when they are senile. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #practical #funny

Existing is going through the motions of life with no zeal and feeling you have no control; living means embracing all that this large world has to offer and not being afraid to take chances. The beauty of living is knowing you can always start over and there's always a chance for something better. ↗

— J'son M. Lee

#living #living-in-the-present #living-life-to-the-full #living-life-to-the-fullest #living-well

Newspapers represent everything that is wrong with the world, in a slant that is too accurate, on print that is too high-grade. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #newspapers #representation #funny