You Had The Power All Along Quotes

Remember, we are our own griefs, my dear, we are our own happinesses and we are our own remedies.

[An excerpt from "My friend, Abigail"] ~ Huseyn Raza

You had the power all along, my dear. ~ L. Frank Baum

He fell into a stillness then, remembering clenched fists, and sit-ins, and pot smoke wafting on the breeze. And power to the people. And the hope, the abiding expectation, that things could be better, that you could, if you wanted it bad enough, if you worked for it hard enough, force this old world to change. Where did it all go? he wondered. When did it all change? When did we all get so small? . . . It wasn't so long ago, explained Malcolm, that you and I wouldn't have been here arguing over who was the bigger victim. It wasn't so long ago that white guys just like you were putting themselves on the line, and even dying, because they knew that unless everybody was free, nobody was. I just wonder sometimes, how we got from people like that to people like you. . . . Small-minded people. Hateful, closed-minded, self-righteous, damned ignorant, and proud of it. We were not like that. And white people were not like that, when I was your age. . . . Yeah, he said, there was drugs and there was sex, but there was also vision. We had ambition, not for making money, but for making a difference. ~ Leonard Pitts Jr.

What happened?"
"Oil." The sheikh shook his head. "The great cursed wealth from beneath the ground that the Prophet foresaw would destroy us. And statehood-what a terrible idea that was, eh? This part of the world was never meant to function that way. Too many languages, too many tribes, too motivated by ideas those high-heeled cartographers from Paris couldn't understand. Don't understand. Will never understand. Well, God save them-they're not the ones who have to live in this mess. They said a modern state needs a single leader, a secular leader, and the emir was the closest thing we had. So to the emir went all the power. And anyone who thinks that isn't a good idea is hounded down and tossed in jail, as you have so recently discovered. All so that some pantywaist royal nephew can have a seat at the UN and carry a flag in the Olympics and be thoroughly ignored. ~ G. Willow Wilson

More helicopters hovered to the south, and a large troop carrier lifted off the ground a mile ahead. These weren't the same helicopters Rick had left behind in Tennessee. These were new ones from North Carolina. They must have had a plan, but Rick wasn't in any hurry to run to his doom. He slowed down to seventy miles per hour and looked at Renee.
"I love you, too," he said.
Renee's heart lurched into her throat. The reserved look on his face was something she wasn't used to seeing. "Do you think this is it?"
"I don't know." He looked again at the fuel gauge.
She put her hand over the gauge, covering it from his view. "Do you remember what you told me once?"
Rick smiled. "That, sometimes, it's best not to know."
"Just don't quit on me. Don't make this a worthless gesture." Renee forced him to look at her.
Rick feared running out of fuel in the middle of these mountains. He feared the fury of the Firebird's losing power, rolling to a stop, becoming helpless, and giving all these patrolmen a chance to catch up to them and gun them down like Bonnie and Clyde. Surely, they would use lethal force and nothing else.
But as long as that engine ran and Rick was behind the wheel, they had a chance to live. And every second of life mattered.
"OK, just hang on," he said, meeting her gaze. He reached over and kissed her gently.
Renee relished the kiss, closing her eyes and then opening them wide to take in the mountains. Did it h ~ Rich Hoffman

It was strange to see the keenness with which men had tried to order, constrain, and systematize human passions, jealousy, rage, violent death, accusations. That was the justice system (...): the absurd pretension that human nature could be dominated by the power of the law. Reducing it all to a summary of a few pages, organizing the facts, judging it, archiving it, and forgetting it. That simple. And yet in the silence of that place you could hear the murmur of the written words, of the key players, the screams of the victims, the hatred never forgotten by either party, the pain that never went away. ~ Víctor Del Árbol

There were monsters in the night but there were monsters in the day too, and monsters inside people who smiled and showed you all their teeth like they were nice. There were monsters inside Alice, but they only had power if she gave it to them, and other things had power too, like the laughter of children enjoying a picnic together and like the love she had for this terrible, wonderful, imperfect man, this man who hid inside the body of a wolf because he thought that was where he belonged. ~ Christina Henry

There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen]."

"Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations… like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images…"

"What is this one obsession?"

"I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it."

"There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'"

"Inside the rain?"

"When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain… as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well."

"It's strange y ~ Jonathan Cott

It would scarcely be destruction," he replied gently. "Let us call it iconoclasm, the swallowing of formulas, which has always had its full retinue of idealists. And you do not want a Napoleon . All that is needed is direction, which could be given by men of far lower gifts than a Bonaparte. In a word, you want a Power-House, and then the age of miracles will begin. ~ John Buchan

If I were you? I would go west instead of east. Land in Dorne and raise my banners. The Seven Kingdoms will never be more ripe for conquest than they are right now. A boy king sits the Iron Throne. The north is in chaos, the riverlands a devastation, a rebel holds Storm's End and Dragonstone. When winter comes, the realm will starve. And who remains to deal with all of this, who rules the little king who rules the Seven Kingdoms? Why, my own sweet sister. There is no one else. My brother, Jaime, thirsts for battle, not for power. He's run from every chance he's had to rule. My uncle Kevan would make a passably good regent if someone pressed the duty on him, but he will never reach for it. The gods shaped him to be a follower, not a leader." Well, the gods and my lord father. "Mace Tyrell would grasp the sceptre gladly, but mine own kin are not like to step aside and give it to him. And everyone hates Stannis. Who does that leave? Why, only Cersei. ~ George R R Martin

I wish I could hold time in my hands. I wish I could talk to it. Oh, how I would ask it to give me just a few more increments of its elusive power. How can something we can't touch or see have so much control over our lives.

It was time that took you too soon, too young, before I got to say all of the things I wanted to, needed to. Things you will never know. And I carry them like a weight, these words, these sentences, right in the middle of my chest, because they have nowhere else to go.

If only time had allowed me to understand the things I would want to say after you were gone. That's the thing. They told me "don't leave anything unsaid." But I didn't know what I wanted to say until it was too late, until you were gone. It was the time afterward that held all the wisdom. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Say that you don't love him!" Amarantha shrieked, and the blood on my hands became the blood of that rabbit - became the blood of what I had lost.
But I wouldn't say it. Because loving Tamlin was the only thing I had left, the only thing I couldn't sacrifice.
A path cleared through my red-and-black vision. I found Tamlin's eyes - wide as he crawled toward Amarantha, watching me die, and unable to save me while his wound slowly healed, while she still gripped his power.
Amarantha had never intended for me to live, never intended to let him go.
"Amarantha, stop this," Tamlin begged at her feet as he clutched the gaping wound in his chest. "Stop. I'm sorry - I'm sorry for what I said about Clythia all those years ago. Please. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Mary sat on a bench in the park. It was the middle of the night and she was alone and she felt at peace. She leaned back and looked upward. The sky was endless and expansive and the stars stretched on forever. It made her feel very small but it also made her feel very important. Of all of the things that might have ever had the chance to exist in the history of the universe, she had the privilege of being one of them. A living, thinking, feeling being, with the ability to control her own destiny.
As wondrous and expansive as stars and the entire universe were, none of them had this power. None of them had any control. And yet she felt humbled to be a part of it at all. It felt like a trade-off. In this life you could only be one or the other: wondrous and expansive or small and in control. ~ Olivia Fuller

But… all I said was that I was scared."

After what you got to experience? That's smart, kid," I said. "I'm scared, too. Every time something like this happens, it scares me. But being strong doesn't get you through. Being smart does. I've beaten people and things who were stronger than I was, because they didn't use their heads, or because I used what I had better than they did. It isn't about muscle, kiddo, magical or otherwise. It's about your attitude. About your mind."

She nodded slowly and said, "About doing things for the right reasons."

You don't throw down like this just because you're strong enough to do it," I said. "You do it because you don't have much choice. You do it because it's unacceptable to walk away, and still live with yourself later."

She stared at me for a second, and then her eyes widened. "Otherwise, you're using power for the sake of using power."

I nodded. "And power tends to corrupt. It isn't hard to love using it, Molly. You've got to go in with the right attitude or…"

Or the power starts using you," she said. She'd heard the argument before, but this was the first time she said the words slowly, thoughtfully, as if she'd actually understood them, instead of just parroting them back to me. Then she looked up. "That's why you do it. Why you help people. You're using the power for someone other than yourself. ~ Jim Butcher

Advising the Prince

The recluse Hsu Su Kwei had come to see Prince Wu.
The Prince was glad. "I have desired," he said, "To see you for a long time. Tell me if I am doing right.
I want to love my people, and by the exercise of justice
To put an end to war.
Is this enough?

"By no means," said the recluse.
"Your 'love' for your people
Puts them in mortal danger.
Your exercise of justice is the root
Of war after war!
Your grand intentions
Will end in disaster!

"If you set out to 'accomplish something great'
You only deceive yourself.
Your love and justice
Are fraudulent.
They are mere pretexts
For self-assertion, for aggression.
One action will bring on another
And in the chain of events
Your hidden intentions
Will be made plain.

You claim to practice justice. Should you seem to succeed
Success itself will bring more conflict.
Why all these guards
Standing at attention
At the palace gate around the temple altar
Everywhere.

You are at war with yourself!
You do not believe in justice,
Only in power and success.
If you overcome
An enemy and annex his country
You will be even less at peace
With yourself than you are now.
Nor will your passions let you
Sit still. You will fight again
And again for the sake of
A more perfect exercise of justice!< ~ Thomas Merton

I was still hoping that it might be a phase, that I'd wake up the next day and be normal. In the best of times, it seemed like such a short leap. I did fantasize about having a girlfriend - never the sex part, but the rest of it I had down. I knew what she'd look like and how she'd hold her long hair back from the flame when bending over a lit candle. I imagined us getting married the summer after I graduated from college, and then I imagined her drowning off the coast of North Carolina during one of my family's vacations. Everyone needed to be there so they could see just how devastated I was. I could actually make myself cry by picturing it: How I'd carry her out of the water, how my feet would sink into the sand owing to the extra weight. I'd try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and keep trying until someone, my father most often, would pull me back, saying, "It's too late, son. Can't you see she's gone?"

It seemed I wanted to marry just so I could be a widower. So profound would be my grief that I'd never look at another woman again. It was perfect, really. Oh, there were variations. Sometimes she'd die of leukemia, as in the movie Love Story. Occasionally a madman's bullet would fell her during a hostage situation, but always I'd be at her side, trying everything in my power to bring her back.

The fantasy remained active until I was twenty. Funny how unimportant being gay became once I told somebody. All I had to do was open up to my best friend, and w ~ David Sedaris

The glance of women resembles certain combinations of wheels, which are tranquil in appearance yet formidable. You pass close to them every day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion of anything. A moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. You go and come, dream, speak, laugh. All at once you feel yourself clutched; all is over. The wheels hold you fast, the glance has ensnared you. It has caught you, no matter where or how, by some portion of your thought which is fluttering loose, by some distraction which had attacked you. You are lost. The whole of you passes into it. A chain of mysterious forces takes possession of you. You struggle in vain; no more human succor is possible. You go on falling from gearing to gearing, from agony to agony, from torture to torture, you, your mind, your fortune, your future, your soul; and, according to whether you are in the power of a wicked creature, or of a noble heart, you will not escape from this terrifying machine otherwise than disfigured with shame, or transfigured by passion. ~ Victor Hugo

Back in 1995, Munger had given a talk at Harvard Business School called "The Psychology of Human Misjudgment." If you wanted to predict how people would behave, Munger said, you only had to look at their incentives. FedEx couldn't get its night shift to finish on time; they tried everything to speed it up but nothing worked - until they stopped paying night shift workers by the hour and started to pay them by the shift. Xerox created a new, better machine only to have it sell less well than the inferior older ones - until they figured out the salesmen got a bigger commission for selling the older one. "Well, you can say, 'Everybody knows that,'" said Munger. "I think I've been in the top five percent of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther." Munger's ~ Michael Lewis

The great teachers of your Christian religion understand this. They know that Jesus was not perturbed by the crucifixion, but expected it. He could have walked away, but he did not. He could have stopped the process at any point. He had that power. Yet he did not. He allowed himself to be crucified in order that he might stand as man's eternal salvation. Look, he said, at what I can do. Look at what is true. And know that these things, and more, shall you also do. For have I not said, ye are gods? Yet you do not believe. If you cannot, then, believe in yourself, believe in me. Such was Jesus' compassion that he begged for a way - and created it - to so impact the world that all might come to heaven (Self realization) - if in no other way, then through him. For he defeated misery and death. And so might you. The grandest teaching of Christ was not that you shall have everlasting life - ~ Neale Donald Walsch

It was a sordid scene. Philip leaned over the rail, staring down, and he ceased to hear the music. They danced furiously. They danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with all their attention given to the dance. The room was hot, and their faces shone with sweat. It seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he saw them now as they really were. In that moment of abandon they were strangely animal: some were foxy and some were wolflike; and others had the long, foolish face of sheep. Their skins were sallow from the unhealthy life the led and the poor food they ate. Their features were blunted by mean interests, and their little eyes were shifty and cunning. There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt that for all of them life was a long succession of petty concerns and sordid thoughts. The air was heavy with the musty smell of humanity. But they danced furiously as though impelled by some strange power within them, and it seemed to Philip that they were driven forward by a rage for enjoyment. They were seeking desperately to escape from a world of horror. The desire for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the only motive of human action urged them blindly on, and the very vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure. The were hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not why and they knew not whither. Fate seemed to tower above them, and they danced as t ~ W. Somerset Maugham

I had come to see, too, that all my characters and I were motivated by the same inspiration. Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love - well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it. As ~ Jodi Picoult

What else did he say?"
"Just that. He's going to The Eye, and he's sorry." She screwed up her face. "Oh, and some weird thing about telling you that he still feels the same way about that tent, and he promises to say it to you in person next time he sees you."
I gave a bark of laughter that was more of a sob, "That asshat," I blubbered.
Elodie nodded in sympathy. "Such an asshat."
When I'd left Thorne Abbey, I'd held Archer's sword and had a sense that somehow things would turn out all right. Please, I thought. The rest of my magic is back, so let me have that power, too.
But there was no reply except the whistling of the wind. ~ Rachel Hawkins

In October of 1973, when the Arab sneak attack almost drove us into the Mediterranean, we had all the intelligence in front of us, all the warning signs, and we had simply "dropped the ball." We never considered the possibility of an all-out, coordinated, conventional assault from several nations, certainly not on our holiest of holidays. Call it stagnation, call it rigidity, call it an unforgivable herd mentality. Imagine a group of people all staring at writing on a wall, everyone congratulating one another on reading the words correctly. But behind that group is a mirror whose image shows the writing's true message. No one looks at the mirror. No one thinks it's necessary. Well, after almost allowing the Arabs to finish what Hitler started, we realized that not only was that mirror image necessary, but it must forever be our national policy. From 1973 onward, if nine intelligence analysts came to the same conclusion, it was the duty of the tenth to disagree. No matter how unlikely or far-fetched a possibility might be, one must always dig deeper. If a neighbor's nuclear power plant might be used to make weapons-grade plutonium, you dig; if a dictator was rumored to be building a cannon so big it could fire anthrax shells across whole countries, you dig; and if there was even the slightest chance that dead bodies were being reanimated as ravenous killing machines, you dig and dig until you stike the absolute truth. ~ Max Brooks

Hunter's dead," Taylor said without preamble. "It was these . . . these things. They came crawling up out of him and were eating him, oh God, I mean, it was like . . . I mean he was crying and Dekka prayed with him and he tried to fry his own brain just like he did with Harry only I guess it didn't work, I guess he couldn't do it, so Sam . . ." She swallowed. "Anyone have some water?"
"What about Sam?" Astrid demanded.
"He did it for him. Sam. I mean, he . . . Hunter was, you know . . . so Sam." She pantomimed raising her hands, like Sam, like he would do when using his power.
Astrid closed her eyes and crossed herself.
"Rest in peace," Edilio said and crossed himself as well.
"Sam burned the boy?" Howard asked. Then, bitterly sarcastic said, "Yeah, you all pray to Jesus. Because Jesus is really providing a lot of help here. Sounds to me like Sam was the one doing what had to be done. ~ Michael Grant

So I looked with fascination at those people in their mobes, and tried to fathom what it would be like. Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn't live without story had been driven into the concents or into jobs like Yul's. All others had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Saeculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure? Something with a beginning, middle, and end in which you played a significant part? We avout had it ready-made because we were a part of this project of learning new things. Even if it didn't always move fast enough for people like Jesry, it did move. You could tell where you we ~ Neal Stephenson

People were funny about things they couldn't see. If they couldn't see it, it wasn't there. Or at the least, it didn't affect them. But the world didn't work that way, did it? There were things all around that you couldn't see, and these things had power. ~ Martha Brockenbrough

When he got to the afterlife, after that particular Polish life, Milo found that Suzie had a perfect copy of the entire pornography collection.
"You risked your life for this?" she asked.
The expressions on her face were dramatic and varied widely. Some of the drawings and photographs were quite surprising. Some of them involved ponies.
"When people try to destroy art or thought," Milo explained, "it makes all forms of art and thought valuable. It's a slippery slope once we start saying what people should or shouldn't use. It's a real evil, a thing with substance and power. I was helping to preserve people's chance to see and to choose."
"I see," she whispered. "I understand."
For a solid month, every time he turned around she had one of those books open.
"I'm fighting evil." she'd say.
"Rozumiem," he'd answer, in Polish. "I understand. ~ Michael Poore

When they had dismounted, he indulged himself in a shudder of his whole body. "That is more than I undertake to do again!' --this to the admiral, in reproachful tones. "Those two monstrously large beasts! Going right up to them like that and dangling their captains in front of them just as if to say, look what I have got, ha ha! I am all astonishment they did not leap upon me at once. I hope they did not get a clear look at me. If they ever saw me again I am sure they would not let it pass."

"I beg you not to repine upon it," Laurence said. "Temeraire understands well that orders must be obeyed, and will not hold it against you; he knows it was not in your power to deliver us to him."

"Well, but it was," Souci said, not conciliated, and Granby said nothing reassuring at all. Iskierka allow of assurances of her behavior, good, evil, or otherwise. ~ Naomi Novik

Of course I need you. I go insane when I see you. You can do almost anything you wish with me. Is that what you want to hear? Almost, Dominique. And the things you couldn't make me do - you could put me through hell if you demanded them and I had to refuse you, as I would. Through utter hell, Dominique. Does that please you? Why do you want to know whether you own me? It's so simple. Of course you do. All of me that can be owned. You'll never demand anything else. But you want to know whether you could make me suffer. You could. What of it? The words did not sound like surrender, because they were not torn out of him, but admitted simply and willingly. She felt no thrill of conquest; she felt herself owned more than ever, by a man who could say these things, know them to be true, and still remain controlled and controlling - as she wanted him to remain. ~ Ayn Rand

But where was God now, with heaven full of astronauts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup.

As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I ha ~ Jeanette Winterson

Adversity has its compensations, that in falling, and in failing, we rise. It is as if there is a hand behind us that sets to right all imbalances. Why do you think the saints seldom had the temporal power that we mistakenly identify with the fruits of justice? Do you think they needed it, or cared? ~ Mark Helprin

Tell me, now, fairy as you are, - can't you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?"
It would be past the power of magic, sir;" and, in thought, I added,"a loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty." Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the presnt instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think too good for common purpose: it was the real sunshine of feeling-he shed it over me now. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I did not think of myself as a violent man. But the more times we were attacked, the more lives we lost, the harder it was to keep those demons at bay. It was another moment I found myself thankful to have Jerry. He was the rational, intelligent one. He kept me from letting the anger completely consume me and from doing anything really stupid. He prevented me from running wild through the streets of Yusafiah.
But it was clear I was losing my grip on reality. One evening I was on the roof of a building at an intersection in some little town. I wasn't wearing my helmet or my vest. I was just in a T-shirt. The roofs were flat and there was about a two-foot-high wall at the ledge. I stood there with my right foot propped up on the wall and looked out at the little town. I felt fueled with power. Like I was having the ultimate manly man moment. I could see then why people say power is addictive. I felt high on it in that moment. All my life I had strived to be "manly." Everything I did was about being "the man." And in that moment that is how I felt: completely dominant. As I stood on that roof unprotected and not giving a shit, I looked out over the town and said to myself, but as if I were talking to all of them, "Work with me or against me. I can either destroy you or I can help you." I believed every word of that. Nothing could touch me. No one could hurt me. I was completely invincible. ~ Noah Galloway

There's so much you thought you could never face. The decision not to try to control your power, to let it be your demon. Too shameful to remember, so you let it eat your life up instead. But you're past it now, Scott. And all you had to defeat, all you had to let go of ... was you. You're free, my love. You're free. ~ Joss Whedon

Man, rather the Superman, by participating with his Self, not with his 'I', in the immense process of Energy, which Nietzsche calls Will of Power, He does it without changing anything, accepting the fatality of chance of the Eternal Return, because you can not modify it, you can not change a single blade, or a detail, or a star.

However, by accepting the Eternal Return, having had the 'vision' (which includes nostalgia) has passed, in an instant (at the Gateway of the Moment) to modify everything irremediably and forever. How? Giving The Sense your acceptance.

That is, he has created, he has invented an Inexistent Flower, but it is more real than all the flowers of the gardens of the earth.

We will not try to explain this mostly, because you can not. the same Superman is a creation of this kind, non-existent, an illusion. Pure magic.

It is not real and it is more real than everything real. Without us everything will return, without doubt, but when we enter to intervene, wishing it with the Self and from the Self, everything will return in a different way, everything will be different, even when nothing has changed apparently. However, the alteration is essential, definitive: chance has been transformed into destination. Amor fati takes ownership of the process. This is why Nietzsche is a magician, a poet-magician.

We will return to this key point and center of the Drama, which is thus transmuted into game, in the Great Ga ~ Miguel Serrano

No one in hundreds of years has had that kind of power -- the power to control the elements. Not since the slaughter of the 1600's ... She has saved her greatest warrior for the moment when you are most needed. It is you, Isi, not us; you are the one destined to save the planet. We boys are just window dressing while you are the last knight of the Earth, pulled from her core and given from her heart to save us all. Haven't you noticed it? The flowers turn their faces to you, as if you were the sun. The most timid and previously abused bird curls up in your arms, as if it were her most natural place. When you are sad, the sky shares your sorrow and darkens in empathy. When you are happy, the moon throws herself into eclipse and the stars themselves wink at you to celebrate your joy. You are her daughter, the daughter of Earth, and she smiles when she sees you. ~ Sarah Warden

When feminist impulses are recorded, they are, almost always, the writings of privileged women who had some status from which to speak freely, more opportunity to write and have their writings recorded. Abigail Adams, even before the Declaration of Independence, in March of 1776, wrote to her husband: ... in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound to obey the laws in which we have no ~ Howard Zinn

The highway looked different to him now, as they drove on. In theory it was the same stretch of tarmac, bounded by the same traffic paraphernalia and flimsy metal fences, but it had been transformed by their own intent. It was no longer a straight line to an airport, it was a mysterious hinterland of shadowy detours and hidey-holes. Proof, once again, that reality was not objective, but always waiting to be reshaped and redefined by one's attitude. Of course, everybody on earth had the power to reshape reality. It was one of the things Peter and Beatrice talked about a lot. The challenge of getting people to grasp that life was only as grim and confining as you perceived it to be. The challenge of getting people to see that the immutable facts of existence were not so immutable after all. The challenge of finding a simpler word for immutable than immutable. ~ Michel Faber

A strange illusion," I murmured shakily.
"Not an illusion," said Amar. His voice was brittle. "Didn't I promise you the power of a thousand kings?" He crossed the marble floor that had once been an ocean. Water glistened on his feet and a gray fish flopped helplessly in a corner.
He stood in front of me, his eyes hectic and alive. Even through my fury, I couldn't look away from him.
"You and I are the ground and ceiling of our empire," he said, his voice harsh and desperate, pleading and ruthless at once. "You and I can carve lines into the universe and claim all that we want. We need only share between ourselves. Don't you see?"
"All I see is your power," I said. "None of my own. All I see are my words and expectations thrown up against whatever it is that you choose to tell me--"
"--whatever I can tell you," finished Amar. "And as for your power, I was hoping you would ask that. It's time to practice."
"Leave me alone," I hissed.
"Your duties in Akaran will pay no heed to the whims of its empress."
I bared my teeth at Amar and he returned it with a half-grin.
"From now on, whatever concentration you use is yours alone. It is your power. Not mine."
"How would I know?"
"You'll feel it in your bones. Like blood singing to marrow."
I slid off the bed and when my feet hit the floor, something silvery trilled through my body, like light had seeped in and was rediscovering me. It was like being full for the first time. Li ~ Roshani Chokshi

I met evil and discovered God. I call it my discovery, but of course, it's nothing new, and it's not mine. Everyone has to make it for himself. People use different language to describe it. I suppose all the great world religions began with individuals making inspired contact with a spiritual reality and then trying to keep that knowledge alive. Most of it gets lost in rules and practices and addiction to power. That's how religions are. In the end though it hardly matters how you describe it once the essential truth has been grasped – that we have within us an infinite resource, a potential for a higher state of being, a goodness . . .' I had heard this before, in one form or another, from a spiritually inclined headmaster, a dissident vicar, an old girlfriend returning from India, from Californian professionals, and dazed hippies. ~ Ian McEwan

And that's why you are a brilliant choice for pilot. Octogenarian Grandmother Paves Way for Humanity."

"You can't pave the stars. I'm not a grandmother. And I'm sixty-three not eighty."

"It's a figure of speech. The point is that you're a PR goldmine."

I had known that they asked me to helm this mission because of my age - it would be a lot to ask of someone who had a full life ahead of them. Maybe I was naive to think that my experience in establishing the Mars colony was considered valuable.

How can I explain the degree to which I resented being used for publicity? This wasn't a new thing by a long shot. My entire career has been about exploitation for publicity. I had known it, and exploited it too, once I'd realized the power of having my uniform tailored to show my shape a little more clearly. You think they would have sent me to Mars if it weren't intended to be a colony? I was there to show all the lady housewives that they could go to space too. Posing in my flight suit, with my lips painted red, I had smiled at more cameras than my colleagues.

I stared Garrett Biggs and his fork. "For someone in PR, you are awfully blunt. ~ Mary Robinette Kowal

[8] Yet if we place the good in right choice, the preservation of our relationships itself becomes a good. And besides, he who gives up certain external things achieves the good through that. [9] 'My father's depriving me of money.' But he isn't causing you any harm. 'My brother is going to get the greater share of the land.' Let him have as much as he wishes. He won't be getting any of your decency, will he, or of your loyalty, or of your brotherly love? [10] For who can disinherit you of possessions such as those? Not even Zeus; nor would he wish to, but rather he has placed all of that in my own power, even as he had it himself, free from hindrance, compulsion, and restraint. ~ Epictetus

But now you know what I've done," she said, staring at her hand, at his chest, anywhere but his face. "Before, you had only seen me do it to other people, but now you know the kind of pain I have caused people, so many people, just because I was too much of a coward to stand up to him." She scowled, and lifted her hand. "Getting you out was the one good thing I've ever done, and now it's not even worth anything, because here you are again, you…you idiot!"
She clutched at her side, wincing. She was crying again.
Akos touched her face. When he first met her, he thought she was this fearsome thing, this monster he needed to escape. But she had unfurled bit by bit, showing him her wicked humor by waking him with a knife to his throat, talking about herself with unflinching honesty, for better or for worse, and loving--so deeply--every little bit of this galaxy, even the parts she was supposed to hate.
She was not a rusty nail, as she had once told him, or a hot poker, or a blade in Ryzek's hand. She was a hushflower, all power and possibility. Capable of doing good and harm in equal measure.
"It is not the only good thing you've ever done," Akos said, in plain Thuvhesit. It felt like the right language for this moment, the language of his home, which Cyra understood but didn't really speak when he was around, like she was afraid it would hurt his feelings.
"It's worth everything to me, what you did," he said, still in Thuvhesit. "It changes everything. ~ Veronica Roth

If the wickedness of people arouses indignation and insurmountable grief in you, to the point that you desire to revenge yourself upon the wicked, fear that feeling most of all; go at once and seek torments for yourself, as if you yourself were guilty of their wickedness. Take these torments upon yourself and suffer them, and your heart will be eased, and you will understand that you, too, are guilty, for you might have shone to the wicked, even like the only sinless One, but you did not. If you had shone, your light would have lighted the way for others, and the one who did wickedness would perhaps not have done so in your light. And even if you do shine, but see that people are not saved even with your light, remain steadfast, and do not doubt the power of the heavenly light; believe that if they are not saved now, they will be saved later. And if they are not saved, their sons will be saved, for your light will not die, even when you are dead. The righteous man departs, but his light remains. People are always saved after the death of him who saved them. The generation of men does not welcome its prophets and kills them, but men love their martyrs and venerate those they have tortured to death. Your work is for the whole, your deed is for the future. Never seek a reward, for great is your reward on earth without that: your spiritual joy, which only the righteous obtain. Nor should you fear the noble and powerful, but be wise and ever gracious. Know measure, know the time, ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We never really went to church so AA is the closet thing I had to religion. And secretly, I do like it. All you have to do at AA is: Come to believe that a power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity. That's it.
You don't have to believe that someone died and came back to life. You don't have to believe that you're God's chosen people, or that women should hide their hair, or that some guy found a golden book that told him to go west and polygamize.
You don't have to eat God's body or drink his blood. You don't even have to call him God. And you don't have to call it him. You call it a higher power. And you can imagine it any way you want. ~ Wendy Wunder

HAPPY: All right, boy. I'm gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have
to come out number-one man. ~ Arthur Miller