21
" I glanced over to where Seth looked like he wanted to bang his head against the wall. “Hey.”
The blond continued to smile, while his friend continued to stare at me.
Seth sighed again. “The one grinning like he’s crazy is Deacon, and the other one is Luke.”
“We’re friends of his—of Seth’s,” Deacon threw in, and Seth did not look like they were friends.
“This is Josie,” Seth continued. “Please don’t be weird and scare her.”
“Be weird?” Deacon rolled those gray eyes. “Ha. Whatever, dude. All you need to know about me is that I’m like a dolphin in a sea of less-smart fish,” he announced, spreading his arms with a flourish.
Luke turned to him slowly as his eyebrows inched up his forehead. “What?”
He shrugged. “Just saying I have a lot in common with dolphins. They’re smart. I’m smart.”
Seth rubbed his hand down his face. "
― Jennifer L. Armentrout , The Return (Titan, #1)
22
" The magic beauty of simultaneity, to see the loved one rushing toward you at the same moment you are rushing toward him, the magic power of meeting, exactly at midnight to achieve union, the illusion of one common rhythm achieved by overcoming obstacles, deserting friends, breaking other bonds - all this was soon dissolved by his laziness, by his habit of missing every moment, of never keeping his word, of living perversely in a state of chaos, of swimming more naturally in a sea of failed intentions, broken promises, and aborted wishes "
― Anaïs Nin , The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel
24
" When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like. "
― Jenny Lawson , Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
25
" The hoopoe said: 'Your heart's congealed like ice;
When will you free yourself from cowardice?
Since you have such a short time to live here,
What difference does it make? What should you fear?
The world is filth and sin, and homeless men
Must enter it and homeless leave again.
They die, as worms, in squalid pain; if we
Must perish in this quest, that, certainly,
Is better than a life of filth and grief.
If this great search is vain, if my belief
Is groundless, it is right that I should die.
So many errors throng the world - then why
Should we not risk this quest? To suffer blame
For love is better than a life of shame.
No one has reached this goal, so why appeal
To those whose blindness claims it is unreal?
I'd rather die deceived by dreams than give
My heart to home and trade and never live.
We've been and heard so much - what have we learned?
Not for one moment has the self been spurned;
Fools gather round and hinder our release.
When will their stale, insistent whining cease?
We have no freedom to achieve our goal
Until from Self and fools we free the soul.
To be admitted past the veil you must
Be dead to all the crowd considers just.
Once past the veil you understand the Way
From which the crowd's glib courtiers blindly stray.
If you have any will, leave women's stories,
And even if this search for hidden glories
Proves blasphemy at last, be sure our quest
Is not mere talk but an exacting test.
The fruit of love's great tree is poverty;
Whoever knows this knows humility.
When love has pitched his tent in someone's breast,
That man despairs of life and knows no rest.
Love's pain will murder him and blandly ask
A surgeon's fee for managing the task -
The water that he drinks brings pain, his bread
Is turned to blood immediately shed;
Though he is weak, faint, feebler than an ant,
Love forces him to be her combatant;
He cannot take one mouthful unaware
That he is floundering in a sea of care. "
― Attar of Nishapur
30
" FORKED BRANCHES
We grew up on the same street,
You and me.
We went to the same schools,
Rode the same bus,
Had the same friends,
And even shared spaghetti
With each other's families.
And though our roots belong to
The same tree,
Our branches have grown
In different directions.
Our tree,
Now resembles a thousand
Other trees
In a sea of a trillion
Other trees
With parallel destinies
And similar dreams.
You cannot envy the branch
That grows bigger
From the same seed,
And you cannot
Blame it on the sun's direction.
But you still compare us,
As if we're still those two
Kids at the park
Slurping down slushies and
Eating ice cream.
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010) "
― , Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
31
" We grew up on the same street,
You and me.
We went to the same schools,
Rode the same bus,
Had the same friends,
And even shared spaghetti
With each other's families.
And though our roots belong to
The same tree,
Our branches have grown
In different directions.
Our tree,
Now resembles a thousand
Other trees
In a sea of a trillion
Other trees
With parallel destinies
And similar dreams.
You cannot envy the branch
That grows bigger
From the same seed,
And you cannot
Blame it on the sun's direction.
But you still compare us,
As if we're still those two
Kids at the park
Slurping down slushies and
Eating ice cream.
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010) "
― , Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
34
" She had not understood what it had been like for him to live his entire life underground, chained and beaten and crippled—until then. Until she heard that noise of undiluted, unyielding joy.
Until she echoed it, tipping her head back to the clouds around them.
They sailed over a sea of clouds, and Abraxos dipped his claws in them before tilting to race up a wind-carved column of cloud. Higher and higher, until they reached its peak and he flung out his wings in the freezing, thin sky, stopping the world entirely for a heartbeat.
And Manon, because no one was watching, because she did not care, flung out her arms as well and savored the freefall, the wind now a song in her ears, in her shriveled heart. "
― Sarah J. Maas , Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)
35
" All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything else were going down like a sea turned into a slow cataract. Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest; it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly.
In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon fallen Troy and triumphant over fallen Carthage, had stood for a heroism which was the nearest that any pagan ever came to chivalry. Rome had defended the household gods and the human decencies against the ogres of Africa and the hermaphrodite monstrosities of Greece. But in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucretian doom. Scepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is justice can only ask:
‘What is truth?’ So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true role. Rome was almost another name for responsibility. Yet he stands for ever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgement-seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world. "
― G.K. Chesterton , The Everlasting Man
39
" Those who cannot conquer must bend the knee. They must find strength, or serve those of us who have. You are my generals. I will send you out: my hunting dogs, my wolves with iron teeth. When a city closes its gates in fear, you will destroy it. When they make roads and walls, you will cut them, pull down the stones. When a man raises a sword or bow against your men, you will hang him from a tree. Keep Karakorum in your minds as you go. This white city is the heart of the nation, but you are the right arm, the burning brand. Find me new lands, gentlemen. Cut a new path. Let their women weep a sea of tears and I will drink it all. "
― Conn Iggulden , Khan: Empire of Silver (Conqueror, #4)
