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Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
– Louis de Berniéres Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (via quote-book) -
Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasized, U.S. Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada’s entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America’s elite troops now operate each year, and it’s only set to grow larger.
–How many secret wars are we fighting? - War Room - Salon.com
This entire article was disturbing to me - and, coincidentally, on the topic that I was discussing earlier tonight with a friend.
I do not understand how the US can manage to spend billions and billions of dollars on secret military missions (disregarding the billions spent on the “war on terror” each year) yet cannot be bothered to find money to spend on its own citizens. Cutting benefits such: as Medicare/Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment, funding to services like Planned Parenthood, various governmental agencies that protect the citizens of the country (EPA, USDA, etc), educational loans and grants, AND ON AND ON - none of this seems problematic.
I really wish someone could answer this for me: if the US is unwilling to invest in ITS OWN CITIZENS, what exactly is all of this military effort protecting and serving? If the United States is not its citizens, what is it? How is carrying out military action in other countries more important than ensuring there is actually a country to protect?
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Here’s the alternative: Admit that adult life is scary because there is no clear path to success. Grad school is not a quick fix for the fears of adulthood. Instead, be grateful for the chance to be lost – it means you’re living your own life, because no one can make choices in the exact same way you can, whether they are right or wrong.
– Best alternative to grad school | Penelope Trunk Blog -
Dartmoor, England
ORGANIC CATHEDRAL (by snaps11)
Love the name of this.
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always remember the most important rule of beauty, which is: who cares?
– tina fey (via carlovely)(via cumber-snatched)
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William Elliott Whitmore - Hell Or High Water (Live on KEXP)
This man’s voice gives me the shivers. In the best of ways.
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I suppose people can go through an entire lifetime without questioning God and a religion that they were born into (out of no choice of their own), especially if it doesn’t have much of a say in their lives. If you live in France or Britain, there may never be a need to renounce God actively or come out as an atheist. But when the state sends a “Hezbollah” (the generic term for Islamist) to your school to ensure that you don’t mix with your friends who are boys, stops you from swimming, forces you to be veiled, deems males and females separate and unequal, prescribes different books for you and your girlfriends from those read by boys, denies certain fields of study to you because you are female, and starts killing indiscriminately, then you have no choice but to question, discredit and confront it - all of it. And that is what I did.
– “Why I Don’t Believe”, Maryam Namazie (Iran), human rights activist (via kateoplis) -
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
– Jim Morrison (via kari-shma) -
Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.
– Pablo Neruda (via bruisedlimbs)(via cumber-snatched)
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When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.
– Laurie Halse Anderson (via kari-shma) -
The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.
– Maya Angelou (via creatingaquietmind)(via quote-book)
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APRICOT — A Short Film by Ben Briand
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I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
– Jonathan Safran Foer(via shetakesflight)(via cumber-snatched)
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I found that every single successful person I’ve ever spoken to had a turning point and the turning point was where they made a clear, specific, unequivocal decision that they were not going to live like this anymore. Some people make that decision at 15 and some people make it at 50 and most never make it at all.
– Brian Tracy (via inspiri)(via thresca)
