#vent

It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out. ↗

— Niall Ferguson

#interventionism #isolationism #noninterventionism #realpolitik #sovereignty

And she imagined how things could be later. It was stupid, but the picture just appeared in her mind. Abel and Magnus shoveling snow together... in twenty years, in thirty. Magnus had grown old, his broad back still strong but bent from time, his hair nearly white at the temples. And Abel... Abel was a different Abel, an adult one, one who was absolutely self-confident and didn't let his eyes dart around the room at lunch, as if he were caught in trap. "Nonsense," she whispered. "Thirty years? You don't stay with the person you meet at seventeen... what kind of fairy tale are you living in, Anna Leemann?" And still the picture seemed right. ↗

— Antonia Michaelis

#anna-leemann #love #magnus #seventeen #snow

...Don't insult readers by questioning the extent of their imaginations. Most need only to be nudged to solve a good mystery. ↗

— Peggy Kopman-Owens

#adventure #mystery #suspense #thriller #travel

I don't know about you, but I find the idea of a school at night time - imagining the silent classrooms in total darkness and the playgrounds left lonesome and bare - creepily peculiar. ↗

— Elizabeth Newton

#fiction #night #school #science-fiction #train

I will go forth as a real outlaw," he said, "and as men do robbery on the highway I will do right on the highway; and it will be counted a wilder crime. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#inspirational #justice #inspirational

At last, somebody in line steps forward. “I can commit,” he says. He’s a tall, lean young man with a rifle slung over his back. “What’s your name?” Chris asks. “Andrew,” he replies. “And I’m in.” Chris nods. A few other guys step forward and, after a few moments, the entire crowd of ex-POWs takes one step, signifying their decision. My chest swells with pride – pride for Chris’s leadership, pride for the people willing to give their lives to take down Omega. It’s a rush. ↗

— Summer Lane

#cassidy-hart #chris-young #romance #state-of-chaos #summer-lane

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#chains-of-events #commonplaces-of-existence #cross-purposes #fiction #on-fiction

I intend to marry Michael, and squander all his money and run his life, and make sure he never again consorts with wicked women or gambles with licentious men. I promise I will henpeck him until he has no life beyond what I allow him, and when we die, I will lie in his arms through all eternity. ↗

— Christina Dodd

#christina-dodd #duke #governess-brides #historical-adventure #historical-fiction

He wanted to stick his finger in it and see what happened. Some story, some quest, started here, and he wanted to go on it. It felt fresh and clean and unsafe, nothing like the heavy warm lard of palace life. The protective plastic wrap had been peeled off ↗

— Lev Grossman

#life

In today's newspaper there was a story about a married clergyman with three children who is calling for all sex to be declared un-Christian. He says lifelong virginity is the ideal for Christians. I wonder, has he told his wife and children this? ↗

— Wendy Buonaventura

#wendy-buonaventura #life