“I saw Byzantium in a dream, and knew that I would die there. That vast city seemed to me a living thing: a great golden lion... I felt the dread jaws close on me as I stood screaming.
Then I awoke; but my waking brought neither joy nor relief. For I rose not to life, but to the terrible certainty of death. I was to die, and the golden towers of Byzantium would be my tomb. ~ Aidan”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, quote from Byzantium
“The Lord came, not to remove our suffering, but to show us the way through it to the glory beyond.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, quote from Byzantium
“Truth, they say, is a cold and bitter draught; few drink it undiluted.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, quote from Byzantium
“Well, I was thinking this very thing. I was thinking: I am going to die today, but Jesu also died, so he knows how it is with me. And I was thinking, would he know me when I came to him? Yes! Sitting in his hall, he will see me sail into the bay, and he will run down to meet me on the shore; he will wade into the sea and pull my boat onto the sand and welcome me as his wayfaring brother. Why will he do this? Because he too has suffered, and he knows, Aeddan, he knows.” Beaming, Gunnar concluded, “Is that not good news?”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, quote from Byzantium
“Life is a school of the spirit, Aidan,” Ruadh intoned with gentle insistence. “Learning is our soul’s requirement, and”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, quote from Byzantium
“Life is a school of the spirit, Aidan,” Ruadh intoned with gentle insistence. “Learning is our soul’s requirement, and suffering our most persuasive teacher.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, quote from Byzantium
“Fear arises from uncertainty. Where there is perfect certainty, there is no fear.”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, quote from Byzantium
“Are these the friends and life i want to have?”
― Siobhan Vivian, quote from Not That Kind of Girl
“According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha Gotama is not merely one unique individual who puts in an unprecedented appearance on the stage of human history and then bows out forever. He is, rather, the fulfillment of a primordial archetype, the most recent member of a cosmic “dynasty” of Buddhas constituted by numberless Perfectly Enlightened Ones of the past and sustained by Perfectly Enlightened Ones continuing indefinitely onward into the future. Early Buddhism, even in the archaic root texts of the Nikāyas, already recognizes a plurality of Buddhas who all conform to certain fixed patterns of behavior, the broad outlines of which are described in the opening sections of the Mahāpadāna Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya 14, not represented in the present anthology). The word “Tathāgata,” which the texts use as an epithet for a Buddha, points to this fulfillment of a primordial archetype. The word means both “the one who has come thus” (tath̄ ̄gata), that is, who has come into our midst in the same way that the Buddhas of the past have come; and “the one who has gone thus” (tath̄ gata), that is, who has gone to the ultimate peace, Nibbāna, in the same way that the Buddhas of the past have gone.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, quote from In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon
“per hour. Handbrake knew that he could keep up with the best of them. Ambassadors might look old-fashioned and slow, but the latest models had Japanese engines. But he soon learned to keep it under seventy. Time and again, as his competitors raced up behind him and made their impatience known by the use of their horns and flashing high beams, he grudgingly gave way, pulling into the slow lane among the trucks, tractors and bullock carts. Soon, the lush mustard and sugarcane fields of Haryana gave way to the scrub and desert of Rajasthan. Four hours later, they reached the rocky hills surrounding the Pink City, passing in the shadow of the Amber Fort with its soaring ramparts and towering gatehouse. The road led past the Jal Mahal palace, beached on a sandy lake bed, into Jaipur’s ancient quarter. It was almost noon and the bazaars along the city’s crenellated walls were stirring into life. Beneath faded, dusty awnings, cobblers crouched, sewing sequins and gold thread onto leather slippers with curled-up toes. Spice merchants sat surrounded by heaps of lal mirch, haldi and ground jeera, their colours as clean and sharp as new watercolor paints. Sweets sellers lit the gas under blackened woks of oil and prepared sticky jalebis. Lassi vendors chipped away at great blocks of ice delivered by camel cart. In front of a few of the shops, small boys, who by law should have been at school, swept the pavements, sprinkling them with water to keep down the dust. One dragged a doormat into the road where the wheels of passing vehicles ran over it, doing the job of carpet beaters. Handbrake honked his way through the light traffic as they neared the Ajmeri Gate, watching the faces that passed by his window: skinny bicycle rickshaw drivers, straining against the weight of fat aunties; wild-eyed Rajasthani men with long handlebar moustaches and sun-baked faces almost as bright as their turbans; sinewy peasant women wearing gold nose rings and red glass bangles on their arms; a couple of pink-faced goras straining under their backpacks; a naked sadhu, his body half covered in ash like a caveman. Handbrake turned into the old British Civil Lines, where the roads were wide and straight and the houses and gardens were set well apart. Ajay Kasliwal’s residence was number”
― Tarquin Hall, quote from The Case of the Missing Servant
“During these years of loss and sorrow, I have had to reconcile myself to the truth about my father, Osama bin Laden. I know now that since the first day of the first battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan, my father has been killing other humans. He admitted as much to me, back in those days when I was his tea boy in Afghanistan. I often wonder if my father has killed so many times that the act of killing no longer brings him pleasure or pain. I am nothing like my father. While he prays for war, I pray for peace. And now we go our separate ways, each believing that we are right.”
― Jean Sasson, quote from Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World
“To be sure, they have had the occasional success, but there is little chance that North America will develop a functional land ethic until it finds a way to overcome its irrational addiction to profit.”
― Thomas King, quote from The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
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