Forged By Greed Quotes

She heard a low murmur of the far-away voices: a chant repeated over and over. ~ A.O. Peart

Blue fire ran along the blade. With the Goddess's commanding pose and a flaming sword in hand, she resembled angel Uriel. ~ A.O. Peart

Broken glass showered from the windows. Chunks of the walls bounced off the pavement and the cars parked along the curb, crushing into smaller pieces. The asphalt on the street split in places into long ribbon-like slashes. The ground continued rolling like the deck of a ship. The noise of the destruction, screams of terrified people, and the car alarms mixed into a concerto of horror. ~ A.O. Peart

You can be a bit of a fool around a pretty girl. ~ A.O. Peart

Her hair came undone and rose off her shoulders, quivering as if from a breeze. Static kept snapping through the strands, and Jasmira's eyes turned completely white. Her arms were covered in spiraled script. It crawled and twisted on her skin. The text shone burgundy. Single letters kept separating and slowly flaking off. They resembled tiny red fire sparks, burning brightly, and then disappearing all together. ~ A.O. Peart

The air smelled of blood, sweat, and anger. ~ A.O. Peart

Georgeta cleared her throat, and pushed herself deeper into the sofa cushion.
"You know Penelope Stephanopoulos, Jasmira's best friend?" she asked.
"That Greek redhead with an attitude bigger than the Parthenon?" Erik snorted. ~ A.O. Peart

A few moments passed before he shrugged and said, "We can always start all over. ~ A.O. Peart

The Goddess kneeled and slowly moved her hand over Jasmira's heart and the Amulet. "She's coming back. She carried a big burden. The Summer Race has a brave Queen, ~ A.O. Peart

They all felt it at once - the ground under their feet rolled. The lamps hanging from the ceiling swayed and flickered. A tower of plastic cups fell from the counter and landed on the floor. The cups rolled in all directions. Everyone rushed outside, the chairs scraping the floor, food abandoned on the tables. ~ A.O. Peart

Careful, wolf. We don't want the human to realize how much we can eat," she chuckled, talking to him with her mind. ~ A.O. Peart

Her dark hair glistened in the sun. Small, almost heart-shaped lips stayed motionless. The Amulet around her neck reflected sun rays, sending hundreds of tiny blue specks to dance on her half-covered breasts, bare shoulders, and neck. ~ A.O. Peart

He swore quietly and shook his head. He tried to see some logic in the situation. His deep, angry growl echoed in the room, multiplied by the walls and ceilings. "Damn!" Jatred pounded his fist on his thigh. "She fooled me again. ~ A.O. Peart

The beasts' gruesome growls and roars unmistakably sounded like a dare. ~ A.O. Peart

A low, angry growl hit Jatred's ears like a hammer. He turned and saw a massive figure crashing its way through the snow. Although he'd only seen the drawings of the Winter monsters, he knew it was a Garhanan. There was nothing pleasing in the way the creature looked, smelled, or sounded. Even its movements were horrid. A flat nose sat in the middle of the meaty face. The Garhanan's bushy white brows stuck out, shading small beady eyes. Its arms were muscular and swung down past its strong knees. The back, chest, and thighs were colossal too. The beast's whole body was covered in white, sparse, long fur.
"Great," Jatred snarled, his jaws clenching. He tried not to show how much Garhanan scared him. ~ A.O. Peart

The rest of them moved toward the fence, in complete silence. Each of the teenagers jumped swiftly onto the iron spikes. With a blurry speed, they climbed up onto the sharp finials, and leaped down to the other side ~ A.O. Peart

Your Spirits will choose the best weapons and tactics for the battle. Rely on the Spirits, trust, and embrace them. They will lead and protect you. Their ancient knowledge and skills are unparalleled to anything you know. They will give you courage and power. Now look inside you, let the Spirits guide you. ~ A.O. Peart

When she brought her lips back closer to his face, his eyelids flickered and shut for a moment. In a swift motion he rolled on top of her, and his mouth was on hers before she could make a sound. His hand pressed on her lower back, tracing the curve of her waist. She felt the heat building inside her and the goosebumps rising on her arm. His other hand slowly moved upward, until his fingers flexed back and forth in her hair. ~ A.O. Peart

The ground under their feet rolled violently as if a giant snake was pushing through. ~ A.O. Peart

Her insanely high Christian Louboutin stilettos made a click-clacking sound on the airport floor. Amber rolled a small Louis Vuitton luggage bag behind her. She wore a baby-blue Chanel skirt suit, which made her look like an elegant celebrity. Her hair was long and blond today and pinned up into a perfectly smooth up-do. A pair of gold earrings in the shape of four-leaf clovers and a matching pendant completed the outfit. ~ A.O. Peart

Lusia's face was red and blotchy. She stared ahead, numb, absentmindedly pulling the grass from the lawn. ~ A.O. Peart

Jatred gripped Jasmira's hand. This time his fingers didn't go through like they did before, when she appeared as an illusion. Her body was solid again. She held onto the chain halfway between the jewel and the clasp. The clasp flew open. One side of the chain encircled his wrist. The other part snaked around Jasmira's wrist. It linked them in an unexpected bind. The metal felt as cold as a sheet of ice. They both yelled and tried to pull free, but it wouldn't budge. ~ A.O. Peart

The Amulet released a brilliant fan of white rays, right from Jatred's chest and through the fabric of his shirt. ~ A.O. Peart

She slammed into an invisible wall and flew back once more, landing on her back. She lay sprawled on the ground, trying to shift into her leopard form. But her enhancing Spirit held her firmly in the human body. ~ A.O. Peart

Penelope screamed incoherently in Erik's tight embrace. Kaliope sat on her heels, rocking back and forth, silent. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking. She was silent ~ A.O. Peart

Two long lines of Shifters stretched over the field, standing unmoved. They expertly held composite bows at ready, various in origin and style. ~ A.O. Peart

Her lips twitched when she quietly read.
But if you fall
I will be there
To pick the pieces of your shattered soul
"Shattered," she murmured to herself. "Shattered soul? Isn't that too serious? No, I think he will get it." She continued to write.
And put them back together
I will solder them into a whole
With the heat of my love
I will stay. I will hold the time still. ~ A.O. Peart

He himself was a beautiful weapon, forged by centuries of ruthless training and warring. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don't you experience it? Because you've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels! ~ Anthony De Mello

Our ability to touch love and kindness and be touched by them lies buried below our own fears and hurts, below our greed and our hatreds, below our desperate clinging to the illusion that we are separate and alone. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Obedient to no man, dependent only on weather and season, without a goal before them or a roof above them, owning nothing, open to every whim of fate, the homeless wanderers lead their childlike, brave, shabby existence. They are the sons of Adam, who was driven out of Paradise; the brothers of the animals, of innocence. Out of heaven's hand they accept what is given them from moment to moment: sun, rain, fog, snow, warmth, cold, comfort, and hardship; time does not exist for them and neither does history, or ambition, or that bizarre idol called progress and evolution, in which houseowners believe so desperately. A wayfarer may be delicate or crude, artful or awkward, brave or cowardly - he is always a child at heart, living in the first day of creation, before the beginning of the history of the world, his life always guided by a few simple instincts and needs. He may be intelligent or stupid; he may be deeply aware of the fleeting fragility of all living things, of how pettily and fearfully each living creature carries its bit of warm blood through the glaciers of cosmic space, or he may merely follow the commands of his poor stomach with childlike greed - he is always the opponent, the deadly enemy of the established proprietor, who hates him, despises him, or fears him, because he does not wish to be reminded that all existence is transitory, that life is constantly wilting, that merciless icy death fills the cosmos all around. ~ Hermann Hesse

The first mindfulness training: reverence for life Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing, compassion, and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, nondiscrimination, and nonattachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

But if we understand anything of the unconscious, we know that it cannot be swallowed. We also know that it is dangerous to suppress it, because the unconscious is life and this life turns against us if suppressed, as happens in neurosis. Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is suppressed and injured by the other. If they must contend, at least let it be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too - as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It is the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, an 'individual.' This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process. ~ C. G. Jung

One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children - only debased imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness, and asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten years old. ~ Isabella Bird

I would sooner geld myself. Drunk. With a dull knife." Sin spoke with a slow, deadly emphasis on each word. King Henry II stood a few feet away from him without the protection of a bodyguard or other courtier. They were alone in the throne room, and no doubt any other man would be cowering before his monarch. But Sin had never cowed in his life, and Henry knew better than to expect such behavior from him now.
Henry's face hardened. "I could command it of you."
Sin cocked one arrogant brow and asked, "Then why don't you?"
Henry smiled at that, and the tension left his body as he closed the distance between them. Their friendship had been forged years ago, in the dark of night, and at the end of a blade pressed deep against Henry's throat. Sin had spared the king's life and since that day, Henry had treasured the only man who had never been awed by his power or authority. Sin answered to no man, be he king, pope, sultan or begger.
But then, there was nothing in life that awed Sin. Nothing in life that commanded him, or touched him. He was completely alone. And he preferred it that way.
"I didn't get this throne by being a fool, Sin. Should I command you to it, I know precisely what you'd do. You'd turn your back on me and head straight for yon door." Henry looked sincere. "God's truth, you are the only man alive I never wish to make my enemy. 'Tis why I ask this as a friend."
"Damn you."

-Sin & Henry ~ Kinley MacGregor

Greed is supported by an endless cast of what-ifs. Greedy people can never have enough to satisfy the need they feel in light of every conceivable eventuality. ~ Andy Stanley

How to forgive a murderer? First, by differentiating his sufferings from his exploitation of death to ease them. For his sufferings - greed, jealousy, frustration - he will need reeducation, support and, compassion. For our outrage about murder, we need to examine deeply our faith in death. As long as we collectively believe that death has power over life, we will spawn deluded, self-appointed little gods who want that power. ~ D. Patrick Miller

When I was no longer of the world, I would miss its extravagant beauty. I would miss the complex and charming layers of subterfuge by which the truth of the world's mysteries were withheld from us even as we were tantalized and enchanted by them. I would miss the kindness of good people who were compassionate when so many were pitiless, who made their way through so much corruption without being corrupted themselves, who eschewed envy in a world of envy, who eschewed greed in a world of greed, who valued truth and could not be drowned in a sea of lies, for they shone and, by the light they cast, they had warmed me all my life. ~ Dean Koontz

The more these artificial renaissances strive to keep intact the letter of the original doctrines, the more they distort the original meaning, for truth is forged in an evolution of changing and conflicting ideas. Thought is faithful to itself largely through being ready to contradict itself, while preserving, as inherent elements of truth, the memory of the processes by which it was reached. The task of critical reflection is not merely to understand the various facts in their historical development but also to see through the notion of fact itself, in its development and therefore in its relativity. ~ Max Horkheimer

We are assailed by the temptation of the love of money. If you wish to acquire riches ? they are the bait of the fishers hook ? by greed, by trafficking, by violence, by ruse or by excessive manual work that deprives you of leisure for the service of God ? in a word by any other means ? if you have desired to pile up gold or silver, remember what the Gospel says, 'Fool! They will snatch your soul away during the night! Who will get your hoard' (cf. Lk. 12:20)? Again, 'He piles up money without knowing to whom it will go' (Ps. 39:6). ~ Pachomius The Great

…For many years now, that way of living has been scorned, and over the last 40 or 50 years it has nearly disappeared. Even so, there was nothing wrong with it. It was an economy directly founded on the land, on the power of the sun, on thrift and skill and on the people's competence to take care of themselves. They had become dependent to some extent on manufactured goods, but as long as they stayed on their farms and made use of the great knowledge that they possessed, they could have survived foreseeable calamities that their less resourceful descendants could not survive. Now that we have come to the end of the era of cheap petroleum which fostered so great a forgetfulness, I see that we could have continued that thrifty old life fairly comfortably – could even have improved it. Now, we will have to return to it, or to a life necessarily as careful, and we will do so only uncomfortably and with much distress. Increasingly over the last maybe forty years, the thought has come to me that the old world, in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world. And that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater. This new world seems a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable. An economy of fantasies and moods, in which it is hard to remember either the timely world of nature, or the eternal world of the prophets an ~ Wendell Berry

The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself, because the self is the product and a part of the total process of human existence. To transform oneself, self-knowledge is essential; without knowing what you are, there is no basis for right thought, and without knowing yourself there cannot be transformation. One must know oneself as on is, not as on wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and there for fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. To know oneself as one is requires and extraordinary alertness of mind, because what is, is constantly undergoing transformation, change; and to follow it swiftly the mind must not be tethered to any particular dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action. If you would follow anything, it is no good being tethered. To know yourself, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization, because beliefs and ideals only give you a color, perverting true perception. If you want to know what you are, you cannot imagine or have belief in something which you are not. If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value. The understanding of what you are, whatever it be – ugly or beautiful, wicked or mischievous – the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential, for it gives ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

It was his [Gen. Douglas MacArthur's] relationship with the administration In Washington which became poisoned by his egomania. Link upon link the bond between events on the battlefield and his own ruin was forged, and, as is essential in genuine tragedy, the gods used the victim himself to forge the links. ~ William Manchester

For anyone who thinks "profit" is evil, I have a challenge for you: try NOT to get any profit in the next week. Profit simply means increasing how much valuable stuff you have, and if you don't profit, you die. Literally. For example, don't buy any food for a week, because when you buy food (or anything), it's because you value the food MORE than you value the money you trade for it. If you didn't, you wouldn't make the trade. So you PROFIT (and so does the seller) every time you buy something. And every time you sell something, or work for money, etc. So before condemning "profit" (or "greed" or "selfishness," for that matter), see if you can survive without it. Then stop repeating vague collectivist BS, and learn to distinguish between "win/win" events (voluntary exchange) where BOTH sides profit, and "win/lose" events, where one side benefits by harming the other side. By the way, "government" is ALWAYS the latter. ~ - Larken Rose

For within your flesh, deep within the center of your being, is the undaunted, waiting, longing, all-knowing. Is the ready, able, perfect. Within you, waiting its turn to emerge, piece by piece, with the dawn of every former test of trial and blackness, is the next unfolding, the great unfurling of wings, the re-forged backbone of a true Child of Light. ~ Jennifer DeLucy

Things joined by profit, when pressed by misfortune and danger, will cast each other aside. ~ Zhuangzi

We recklessly attempt to disguise our 'greed' by dressing it in the garb of other nobler ideals such as 'rights' and 'privileges.' Yet, if we dare dress 'greed' in an authentic sense of thankfulness, greed will suffocate within the folds of that very clothing. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

After all, people desire immortality and do not wish to embrace the inescapable reality of death; they long for happiness and shy away from the contemplation of pain; they want to preserve their sense of self, not desconstruction it into fleeting and impersonal components. It is counterintuitive to accept that deathlessness is experienced each moment we are released from the deathlike grip of greed and hatred; that happiness in this world is only possible for those who realized that this world is incapable of providing happiness; that one becomes a fully individuated person only by relinquishing beliefs in an essential self. ~ Stephen Batchelor

The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart
it is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal that benefits mankind. It is not the collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice
it does not so much nibble at our shoe leather as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from the bone. It does not give us answers fitted to our small-minded questions, but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask. ~ Rich Mullins

Humankind has not learned about balance, let alone practiced it. It is guided by greed and ambition, steered by fear. In this way it will eventually destroy itself. But nature will survive; at least the plants will. ~ Brian L. Weiss

My soul is in a reckless way, it's seeking culture untouched by greed, it's seeking places untouched by human spirit, it's seeking places that need love, because my soul is here for love and I feel everywhere I've already been has suffocated every inch of beauty out of me. ~ Nikki Rowe

To succeed, this movement will have to change our ideals in fundamental ways. It will have to kill off the traditional American dream, the idea of constant striving for a better future, symbolized by the middle-class goal of a rising income and the purchase of a little house with a yard - not to mention the freedom to move where you please, run your life, and govern your town with your neighbors when you get there. Greg Galluzzo, Obama's mentor and the man who created the grassroots crusade that inspired Building One America, dismisses the American dream as a sham. What really makes Americans move to the suburbs, says Galluzzo, is 'racism and greed. ~ Stanley Kurtz

That means laying out a vision of the world that competes directly with the one on harrowing display at the Heartland conference and in so many other parts of our culture, one that resonates with the majority of people on the planet because it is true: That we are not apart from nature but of it. That acting collectively for a greater good is not suspect, and that such common projects of mutual aid are responsible for our species' greatest accomplishments. That greed must be disciplined and tempered by both rule and example. That poverty amidst plenty is unconscionable. ~ Naomi Klein

We must be bound to one another then," Elric murmured despairingly. "Bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then - let it be thus so - and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of Elric of Melinbone and Stormbringer, his sword. We are two of a kind - produced by an age which has deserted us. Let us give this age cause to hate us! ~ Michael Moorcock

Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

But there is an unbounded pleasure to be had in the possession of a young, newly blossoming soul! It is like a flower, from which the best aroma evaporates when meeting the first ray of the sun; you must pluck it at that minute, breathing it in until you're satisfied, and then throw it onto the road: perhaps someone will pick it up! I feel this insatiable greed, which swallows everything it meets on its way. I look at the suffering and joy of others only in their relation to me, as though it is food that supports the strength of my soul. I myself am not capable of going mad under the influence of passion. My ambition is stifled by circumstances, but it has manifested itself in another way, for ambition is nothing other than a thirst for power, and my best pleasure is to subject everyone around me to my will, to arouse feelings of love, devotion and fear of me - is this not the first sign and the greatest triumph of power? Being someone's reason for suffering while not being in any position to claim the right - isn't this the sweetest nourishment for our pride? And what is happiness? Sated pride. If I considered myself to be better, more powerful than everyone in the world, I would be happy. If everyone loved me, I would find endless sources of love within myself. Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others. An evil idea cannot enter a person's head without his wanting to bring it into reality: ideas are organic ~ Mikhail Lermontov

The real reason for Father Braganza's laughter was the history of Amrapur. It was a quaint town, nestled amidst barren mountains. The Hindus and Muslims living there were perpetually warring with each other, reacting violently at the slightest provocation. It had started a long time ago, this squabble, and had escalated into a terrible war. Some people say it started centuries ago, but many believe it started when the country gave one final, fierce shrug to rid itself of British rule. The shrug quickly became a relentless shuddering, and countless people were uprooted and flung into the air. Many didn't survive. Perhaps the mountains of Amrapur absorbed the deracinating wave. People weren't cruelly plucked from the town. They remained there, festering, becoming irate and harbouring murderous desires. And while the country was desperately trying to heal its near-mortal wounds and move on, Amrapur's dormant volcano erupted. Momentary and overlooked, but devastating. Leaders emerged on both sides and, driven by greed, they fed off the town's ignored bloodshed. They created ravines out of cracks, fostered hatred and grew richer. The Bhoite family, the erstwhile rulers of the ancient town, adopted the legacy of their British rulers---divide and conquer. ~ Rohit Gore

A man who has caught a billion is not nearly as admirable as a boy (or even a man) who was caught by a million. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

And there can be no end to greed because man, by his very exclusive human nature, is pathologically insatiable. ~ Mariano Ngan

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral - it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. ~ Aaron Swartz

It doesn't take much intelligence to understand that obedience to greed can make us a slave to stupidity. Yet, I think that the power of greed is amply illustrated by simply taking note of how many intelligent people have chosen slavery. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Vain mistaken mortals, who, valuing themselves on names and titles, suppose that the virtues of the mind must be attached to an empty sound, when every day's experience proves that birth is disgraced, titles rendered contemptible, and riches a curse, by the vices, meanness, and dissipation of its possessors! ~ Eliza Parsons

We can be clear. We can identify the enemy. We can begin by asking ourselves what it is right rather than what is expedient. Know the difference between fever and the disease. Between racism and greed. We can be clear and we can be careful. Careful to avoid the imprisonment of the mind, the spirit, and the will of ourselves and those among whom we live. We can be careful of tolerating second-rate goals and secondhand ideas. ~ Toni Morrison

Think of Chicago as a piece of music, perhaps," he continued. "In it you can hear the thousands of years of people living here and fishing and hunting, and then bullets and axes, and the whine of machinery, and the bellowing of cattle, and the shriek of railroads, and the thud of fists and staves and crowbars, and a hundred languages, a thousand dialects. And the murmur of the lake like a basso undertone. Ships and storms, snow and fire. To the north the vast dark forests, and everywhere else around the city rolling fields of farms, and all roads leading to Chicago, which rises from the plains like Oz, glowing with light and fire at night, drawing people to it from around the world. A roaring city, gunfire and applause and thunder. Gleaming but made of bone and stone. Bitter cold and melting hot and clotheslines hung in the alleys and porches like the webbing of countless spiders. A city without illusions but with vaulting imaginations and expectations. A city of burning energies on the shore of a huge northern sea. An American city, with all the violence and humor and grace and greed of this particular powerful adolescent country. Perhaps the American city - no other city in the nation is as big and central and grown up from the very soil. Chicago was never ruled by Spain or England or France or Russia or Texas, it shares no ocean with other countries, it is no mere regional captain, like Cincinnati or Nashville; it is itself, all brawn and greed and song, brilliant and vena ~ Brian Doyle

No physicist started out impatient with common-sense notions, eager to replace them with some mathematical abstraction that could be understood only by rarified theoretical physics. Instead, they began, as we all do, with comfortable, standard, common-sense notions. The trouble is that Nature does not comply. If we no longer insist on our notions of how Nature ought to behave, but instead stand before Nature with an open and receptive mind, we find that common sense often doesn't work. Why not? Because our notions, both hereditary and learned, of how Nature works were forged in the millions of years our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. In this case common sense is a faithless guide because no hunter-gatherer's life ever depended on understanding time-variable electric and magnetic fields. There were no evolutionary penalties for ignorance of Maxwell's equations. In our time it's different. ~ Carl Sagan

Society nowadays tells people that their happiness is all that matters but happiness is never found if it costs someone else's theirs. That is not what happiness is, nor would such a person deserve it, because happiness is forged by the setting aside of self and in doing for others to make them happy first and foremost, so if you have to hurt another human being to "find your happiness," then you have no clue what the word actually means or what it's willing to do, and in being so self-centered and entitled, it's veritably tragic that the only care and concern you have is for yourself. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

The world is shaped by mankind's desires and fears. A war of hope against dread, waged upon a substrate that man himself made malleable though he has long forgotten how. All men and all men's works stand on feet of clay, waiting to be formed and reformed, forged by fear into monsters from the dark core of each soul, waiting to rend the world asunder. ~ Mark Lawrence

Ah, Caderousse,' said Andrea, 'how covetous you are! Two months ago you were dying with hunger.'

'The appetite grows by what it feeds on,' said Caderousse. ~ Alexandre Dumas

They say that life is an accident, driven by sexual desire, that the universe has no moral order, no truth, no God.

Driven by insatiable lusts, drunk on the arrogance of power, hypocritical, deluded, their actions foul with self-seeking, tormented by a vast anxiety that continues until their death, convinced that the gratification of desire is life's sole aim, bound by a hundred shackles of hope, enslaved by their greed, they squander their time dishonestly piling up mountains of wealth.

"Today I got this desire, and tomorrow I will get that one; all these riches are mine, and soon I will have even more. Already I have killed these enemies, and soon I will kill the rest. I am the lord, the enjoyer, successful, happy, and strong, noble, and rich, and famous. Who on earth is my equal? ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

The ghost was not a ghost at all, or so it claimed - it claimed to be a psychic energy baby, birthed in some ethereal dimension, and pulled into the phone by the powerful magnetism of phone signals. It remembered with perfect clarity how it came to be - remembered coalescing from the membranous surface of the world, streaked with reflected light, humming with surface tension under the pressure of emptiness underneath. The Psychic Energy Baby found form among the emanations of people's minds and the susurrus of their voices, it found flesh in the shapes of their lips and eyes made, the surprise of 'o's and the sibilations of 's's; its skin stretched taut like a soap bubble, forged from the wet sound of lips touching; its thoughts were the musky smells and the nerves twined around the transparent water balloons of the muscles like stems of toadflax, searching restlessly for every available crevice, stretching along cold rough surfaces. Its veins, tiny rivers, pumped heartbeats striking in unison, the dry dallying of billions of ventricular contractions. And it spoke, spoke endlessly, it spokes words that tasted of dark air and formic acid. It could speak long before it took it's final shape.

And when it happened, when all the sounds and smells and words in the world, when all the thoughts had aligned so that it could become - then it found itself pulled into the wires, surrounded by taut copper and green and red and yellow insulation; twined and quartered among the c ~ Ekaterina Sedia

My prayer is that the Holy Spirit would sweep into our lives with holy disruption, upending our assumptions and privileges, our greed and selfishness, our pride and our stupor. To empower our work and our witness. Like Zechariah 4:6 tells us, not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord. ~ Sarah Bessey

All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

She's a mystery, a cipher, something nearly extinct these days: a person not controlled by ambition or greed or a crass need for attention, but by a desire to experience life completely and to make life a little easier for the people around her ~ Rebecca Miller