• Lady Susan's intentions are of course those of absolute coquetry, or a desire of universal admiration; I cannot for a moment imagine that she has anything more serious in view; but it mortifies me to see a young man of Reginald's sense duped by her at all.
  • Their love was almost palpable in the small room, warm as the fire, strong and soothing as sweet tea.
  • The Priory's tradition of perpetuating goddess worship is based on a belief that powerful men in the early Christian Church "conned" the world by propagating lies that devalued the female and tipped the scales in favour of the masculine.
  • The Priory believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converteed the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever.
  • The longer I lay there in the clear hot water the purer I felt, and when I stepped out at last and wrapped myself in one of the big, soft, white hotel bath-towels I felt pure and sweet as a new baby.
  • Despite new roots, new careers, and the families they've built, all will say: my birthplace. This is where life comes full circle; this is where life makes sense.
  • Smokestacks stand like sentries outside the capital, a mega-metropolis where some 20 million people live. The soft pink light of the Mediterranean has given way to the brown haze of dust and smog that hangs over the urban sprawl.
  • Charity 1) "caritas" in Greek meaning noble love 2) To put others before oneself
  • Cities in Europe: Athens Amsterdam Berlin Baku Brussels Batumi Basel Budapest Bologna Birmingham Barcelona Belgrade Bucharest Cyprus Cologne Cohenpagen Chisinau Dusseldorf Dnepropetrovsk Dublin Donetsk Ekaterinburg Frankfurt Geneva Gothenburg Hamburg Hanover Helsinki Kazan Kiev Kosovo Lviv Lyon London Lisbon Ljubljana Manchester Minsk Munich Moscow Milan Montenegro Nice Nicosia Nakhchivan Nuremburg Oslo Odessa Paris Prague Pristina Podgorica Rostov Riga Rome Skopje Stuttgart Sarajevo Sofia St Petersburg Sochi Simferopol Stockholm Tbilisi Ufa Venice Warsaw Zagreb Zurich
  • A look at their daring deeds, their deadly skills - And their scandalous past. With two years of extreme mental and physical training and an 80 percent dropout rate, only the very best become one of the select 2,500 Navy SEALs.
  • Until their defeat in 1945, the Nazis killed 11 million people in more than a dozen countries. Six million were Jews - two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe. More than a million Jewish children were killed.
  • The recent escalation of threats to exercise of the right to abortion, the continuing political power of abortion opponents, and the appearance of the new encyclical, call for a response.
  • Education is the best provision for the journey to old age. -Aristotle
  • Usefulness of literature: 1) A familiarity with the literature of any language tends to improve one's command of that language 2) Literature can teach us to be more sensitive in our judgement of others 3) Reading literature, being necessarily a multidisciplinary activity, tends to broaden intellectual and imaginative horizons.
  • It is immeasurable in that the process of engagement calls upon one to enter into the imagination of another human being, to see the world in a different fashion, and this may open up new vistas, stimulate innovative thought, introduce a totally new mindset.
  • One of my concerns for Singapore in the 21st century is the strong push towards technology, computers and the importance of money. No doubt these things are important, but the joy of living does not come from purely material things. It also stems from the appreciation of nature, the way a tree grows, the beauty of a good poem and a wonderful book.
  • There is a basic social divide between those for whom life is an accrual of fresh experience and knowledge, and for those whom maturity is a process of mental atrophy. The shift towards the latter category is frightening.
  • Subliminally, we imbibe the message that intellectual achievement is not only a mark of mental acuity, but it is also a reflection of character, strength of purpose, dedication, of moral virtue.
  • When she took it out and ran her fingers over the scraps of fabric, little cornfields, meadows of blue, she couldn't help returning in her mind to those long-ago summer mornings, bright and hot, dreamlike, almost, when she'd clung to her mother and begged her to stay home, and her mother had given her a weary, abstracted glance and pulled on the little chamois-soft gloves she wore for driving.
  • Here they were, teetering on the absolute edge of disaster, and yet the world was as beautiful as ever, the trees like spires, a few white clouds like silk sails racing across the sky.
  • For her he loves and spoils her with felt skies.
  • I felt eager to get started on the life I thought I was owed - a life of colour and movement, a life of the heart and mind and spirit, of the mind, the sun
  • but in both cases, he now saw, these visions came out of a desperate yearning for an unknown landscape, a place where it was possible to begin over and just maybe, with luck, get it right this time and thus avoid being irredeemably damaged by the simple process of living and making choices
  • The system of total corruption and theft of state money that I have been trying to crush all my political life is as solid as iron and concrete - Yulia Tymoshenko
  • Later, when Forbes magazine thrice ranked Tymoshenko one of the world's most powerful women, she befriended other resilient female leaders: Angela Merkel, Condoleezza Rice, Hilary Clinton. She consciously modeled herself after the adamantine Margaret Thatcher and the populist Eva Perón.
  • The fiscal costs of our actions are one reason we find ourselves today in a lost, jobless, debt-driven decade. About $2.6 trillion was spent in a decade of war - approaching some of the most ambitious spending cuts now being proposed. The human cost - in lives, limbs and loves - is incalculable. Millions of Iraqis lived through the closest human equivalent to hell for years as the incompetent occupation tore Iraq apart.
  • There's a place in the universe where memories are written down, where nothing is forgotten
  • Reward came in subtle unexpected ways and one must have the patience and the wisdom not to question life's complexity. This was the only way to a peaceful heart.
  • Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
  • More than a thousand people died last year in ethnic turf wars fuelled by heavily armed supporters of Karachi's main political parties, perishing in street battles fought with assault rifles, machine guns and grenades.
  • a peculiar kind of calm was settling over me, almost like the feeling of security. Whenever I was with her, the same kind of placidness would come upon me, whereas with Meimei I couldn't help but get excited and restless.
  • The nightsoil men will be followed by the morning food vendors with their porridges made from the seeds of Job's tears, apricot kernals, and lotus seeds, their steamed rice cakes made with rugosa rose and white sugar, and their eggs stewed in tea leaves and five spice.
  • To be his; To serve him; To lie in his arms at night; To fold his garments; To bring him his food; To pour his tea; To heal his headaches; To obey his command; To obey the commands of this mother; To test the flavor of a dish or the heat of the wine; To care for him in his old age; These will be your joys in life.
  • You are not here, but you will never be gone. For I shall always think of you. I shall think of you when the spring leaves sprout, holding morning dew, luminous like your soft skin. I shall think of you when the birds glide in the wind, their wings sweeping in the sky, and their trills, loud and clear, echo in the distant night.
mar 25 2012 ∞
may 11 2017 +