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1 " Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen. "
― Toni Morrison , Paradise (Beloved Trilogy, #3)
2 " It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little. "
― Ryan Holiday , The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
3 " Once, I remember, Father Abbot said that our purpose is justice, and with God lies the privilege of mercy. But even God, when he intends mercy, needs tools to his hand. "
― Ellis Peters , Dead Man's Ransom (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, #9)
4 " Those who are truly grateful are deeply moved by the privilege of living. "
5 " Oh!" cried Anne eagerly, " I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you,and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervaluethe warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachmentand constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capableof everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equalto every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance,so long as--if I may be allowed the expression--so long as you havean object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one;you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existenceor when hope is gone. "
6 " Law looked dumbstruck, almost angry. He breathed, " Son of a bitch." And to Tom's surprise, Law got down on one knee and took his hand. " Tom, you beloved bastard, I love you. I need you in my life forever. I cannot imagine existence without you. Will you-God please say yes-grant me the honor and the privilege and save my life and marry me? "
7 " It is the privilege of the richTo waste the time of the poorTo water with tears in secretA tree that grows in secretThat bears fruit in secretThat ripened falls to the ground in secretAnd manures the parent treeOh the wicked tree of hatred and the secretThe sap rising and the tears falling. "
― Stevie Smith , Selected Poems
8 " The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking "
― Marvin Bell , Mars Being Red
9 " I want to define success by redefining it. For me it isn't that solely mythical definition - glamour, allure, power of wealth, and the privilege from care. Any definition of success should be personal because it's so transitory. It's about shaping my own destiny. "
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10 " We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. "
― Woodrow Wilson
11 " In spite of this, there is no doubt that the modern European and American system of universal education suffered from serious defects. In the first place, the achievement of universality was purchased by the substitution of quantitative for qualitative standards. Education was accepted as a good in itself and the main question was how to increase the total output: how to teach more and more people more and more subjects for longer and longer periods. But in proportion as education became universal, it became cheapened. Instead of being regarded as the privilege of a few it became a compulsory routine for everybody. "
― Christopher Henry Dawson , Understanding Europe
12 " Success is more than just power or not violating the rights of others it is the privilege of contributing to the betterment of others. "
13 " My life is too often driven by the fear of the next moment verses focusing on the privilege that I have the next moment. "
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
14 " I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere between Mrs.Wheeler's class and Mondawmin Mall, somewhere between the schools and the streets. Now I had the privilege of welcoming it back like a long-lost friend, though our reunion was laced with grief; I mourned over all the years that were lost. The mourning continues. Even today, from time to time, I find myself on beaches watching six-year-olds learn to surf, or at colleges listening to sophomores slip from English to Italian, or at cafés seeing young poets flip though 'The Waste Land,' or listening to the radio where economists explain economic things that I could've explored in my lost years, mourning, hoping that I and all my wonder, my long-lost friend, had not yet run out of time, though I know that we all run out of time, and some of us run out of it faster. "
15 " A lucky guy, is anyone who would have the privilege of being around you , talking to you , holding your hand , making sure that you are safe and happy . "
16 " We learn to love by basking in the love of other people. We learn how to express our love and our warmest feelings whenever other people grace us with the privilege of besetting upon them many acts of kindness. We unleash a germinal of internal tenderness by affectionately doting upon pets and by generously spending time admiring the natural world. "
17 " Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected. "
― Charles Lamb , The Life, Letters and Writings of Charles Lamb Volume 3
18 " Phaedra looked across the water and her eyes met Lucian’s. Their needs came second. It came from the privilege of being tr "
19 " Insightful, creative mind, dedicated, and wonderful friend and co-worker whom I had the privilege to work with in Mosul, Iraq ‘07. His understanding of life’s experiences and relationships is truly an art. His willingness to help a friend in need and go the “extra-mile” to get to know someone is amazing. Carl has truly been blessed with the gift of writing as a way of reaching out to others. It is a blessing to call him my dear friend. "
― Carl Busby Sr , Poems from the Sand II
20 " [Friendship] It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another's slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person's most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return. "
― Hanya Yanagihara , A Little Life