“After hundreds of years, if there were so many sinners left, what had the Inquisition accomplished? They might root out Jews and Muslims and Erasmists and alumbrados, but then what was left? The machine had been built to consume heresy and impiety, so would it simply keep finding heresy and impiety to feed on? Valentina's soul certainly hadn't been saved. The vicar's threats hadn't made her good, only scared--and not of purgatory. All this spectacle, all this misery, and she didn't fear hell more than being shut up in a house with her lawful husband.”
Source: The Familiar
“There are many layers of fear associated with this abandonment: fear of what would happen if the system no longer managed our lives, fear of being devoured by the system ourselves, fear that we cannot win, and perhaps most dauntingly, the fear that we cannot do any better than this, that our hopes to the contrary are the utopian dreams of childish idealists.”
Source: Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
“Any move you make
Moves you.
Whether craved or feared.
Any change changes you.”
“ليس هناك آهة إلا ويسمعها، ولا ألم إلا ويعلم موضعه، ولا زفرة إلا ويرى نيرانها في الفؤاد”
Source: لأنك الله: رحلة إلى السماء السابعة
“It's useless being hung up over something that you can't prove.”
Source: Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism
“The self- image model of happiness … is an approach to happiness that consists of three actions: (1) cultivating a self- image or story that gives us feelings of love and belonging and meaning and purpose, (2) getting the important people in our lives to tell that story about us, and (3) trying to embody that story more fully. When we’re able to manage these three tasks, we’re happy. When we’re struggling to manage them, we’re anxious. When we fail to manage them, we fall into depression or addiction or illness.”
Source: Chasing Peace: A Story of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and the Spiritual Power of Neuroscience
“A cold terror gripped the men then, a fear that burrowed deep into their guts. The land itself felt malevolent, alive with a dark force that sought to consume them.”
Source: The Bjornlinga Saga #1
“Kader", people called it --'destiny -- and said not more because people always gave simple names to the complex things that frightened them”
Source: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
“. . . finding the familiarity of captivity more reassuring than the strange call of freedom.”
Source: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
“Maybe the unknown is half the horror”