1
" The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care.
I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.'
I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research.
Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.
To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be.
Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit.
So, I believed. "
― Lance Armstrong , It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
2
" The organist was almost at the end of the anthem’s long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.
The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed. "
― Susan Howatch
5
" Space opera, as every reader doubtless knows, is a pejorative term often applied to a story that has an element of adventure. Over the decades, brilliant and talented new writers appear, receiving great acclaim, and each and every one of them can be expected to write at least one article stating flatly that the day of space opera is over and done, thank goodness, and that henceforth these crude tales of interplanetary nonsense will be replaced by whatever type of story that writer happens to favor — closet dramas, psychological dramas, sex dramas, etc., but by God important dramas, containing nothing but Big Thinks. Ten years late, the writer in question may or may not still be around, but the space opera can be found right where it always was, sturdily driving its dark trade in heroes. "
― Leigh Brackett , The Best of Planet Stories 1
8
" We are constantly taught in both in what we read, and what we see on the TV be it consciously and subconsciously, that being unhappy is not normal. Every time we read or hear about how we should be feeling happy, and how we need to go about it, and for whatever reason we aren’t at that moment in time, well, you feel that’s something must be wrong with you. “What’s wrong with me, I should be feeling happy in my life, but I’m not. Every article I have read says all those steps on how to be happy, but they don’t seem to work for me, I am still unhappy.”
You come to see unhappiness as some kind of problem with you, with your personality. Something not normal at all. But it is. It is very normal. It is part of every human being, it is a part of you, it is part of who you are. You’ve got to first of all understand and acknowledge that feeling unhappy is nothing but normal and it isn’t something you should be afraid of. It only means that your emotions are functioning well and are taking care of you by keeping you up to date with the truth. "
― Jellis Vaes
17
" Clothing was magic. Casey believed this. She would never admit this to her classmates in any of her women's studies courses, but she felt that an article of clothing could change a person... Each skirt, blouse, necklace, or humble shoe said something - certain pieces screamed, and others whispered seductively, but no matter, she experienced each item's expression keenly, and she loved this world. every article suggested an image, a life, a kind of woman, and Casey felt drawn to them." (Free Food For Millionaires, p.41). "
20
" You can't stop the thought about hell, probably you know that it doesn't exist as far as I can tell you and some other type of sources. But what happen with the serial killers?? THe brutal killers, they go to heaven??? - Really??So there isn't communication between hell and heaven so they put all in one place?? - WTF, how big this soul planet is it?200000000000000000000000000 People even and more are there and everyday you see new born child or children and old people or young people die.... Okay some die because of start of smoke at early age, other people start to smoke and drink alcohol because other have said them it's incrediable to drink, you aren't a human without a drink, you can't be in our group if you don't drink and many other stuff (as Alan Macmillan Orr said in his book The Little book of life)... - Did you knew that there are stuff which believers don't know or know and still believe??You should check out the holy book what's said think little and then do whatever you are on the way to do.- As first I just read a an article called " Souls do not Exist Evidence from Science & Philosophy Against Mind-Body Dualism" what I read it will blow your mind. I'm sure if you believe in god the % will go low or probably you will change you direction...As far as I'm on the road I can tell that there are people which read this and this and this and continue to believe, but it's WRITTEN BLACK ON WHITE THE TRUTH AND THEY PREFER TO STAY IN THE COMFORT ZONE, BECAUSE THERE IS COMFORT IF THEY COME HERE THERE WON'T BE COMFORT FOR THE FEW WEEKS, MONTHS OR EVEN YEARS, THEY NEED TO BUILD EVERYTHING LIKE AGAIN, LIKE YOU HAVE RESET YOUR SCORE AT GAME AND YOU START AGAIN AND AGAIN... "
