#vin

The elevator doors opened on the first floor and Van Holtz was waiting there with several bags of groceries in his hands. “Oh. You,” he said. He started to walk in and, without thinking, simply reacting, Bo shoved him back out of the elevator by his head and hit the elevator button again. “You asshole!” Bo heard as the door closed. ↗

— Shelly Laurenston

#humor #shelly-laurenston #humor

Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules; only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief. Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind’s mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the “natural” (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this:—one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul. For the human species, selfishness is extinction. Is this the doom written within our nature? If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe that leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president’s pen or a vainglorious general’s sword. A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living. ↗

— David Mitchell

#humanity #life-and-living #life

Some people are used to having things done for them by her parents, I am not. I can do it myself. ↗

— Sally Pearson

#done #having #her #i #i am

Of course, tax revenues have ended up being substantially higher than they were at the time these dire projections were made, and we are very close now to having a balanced budget. All that has been very helpful. ↗

— Charles Vest

#balanced budget #been #being #budget #close

In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular. ↗

— Kathleen Norris

#humor

Leadership appears to be the art of getting others to want to do something you are convinced should be done. ↗

— Vance Packard

#art #convinced #done #getting #leadership

Some girls get swept up in the lifestyle-clubbing and partying with celebrities. You can't live your life like that, though. It's fake. ↗

— Gemma Ward

#celebrity #clubbing #fake #girls #life

After that, he tried to go upstairs through the broom cupboard, and then the yard. This seemed to puzzle him a little. But finally he discovered the stairs, all except the bottom on, and fell up them on his face. The whole castle shook. ↗

— Diana Wynne Jones

#howl #howl-s-moving-castle #humor #magic #sophie-hatter

Every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith-acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors.... Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that we have proof the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical. ↗

— Dan Brown

#dan-brown #god #religion #faith

It is the imagination that argues for the Divine Spark within human beings. It is literally a decent of the World's Soul into all of us. ↗

— Terence McKenna

#human #imagination #soul #world #imagination