Stan Rogers On Hatred

All rights and all wrongs have long since blown away,
For causes are ashes where children lie slain.
Yet the damned U.D.L. and the cruel I.R.A.
Will tomorrow go murdering again.
But no penny of mine will I add to the fray.
"Remember the Boyne!" they will cry out in vain,
For I've given my heart to the place I was born
And forgiven the whole House of Orange
King Billy and the whole House of Orange.

Stan Rogers, "The House Of Orange"
Sample: Amazon

Stan Rogers On Struggle

And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.


Stan Rogers, "The Mary Ellen Carter"
Sample: Amazon

Tom Clancy On Certainty

Admiral Greer: Excuse me, Jack, tell me one thing in life that is absolutely for certain.
Jack Ryan: My daughter's love.

Cyrano de Bergerac On Challenge

I am going to be a storm -a flame-
I need to fight whole armies alone;
I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms;
I feel too strong to war with mortals-
Bring me giants!

Robert Jordon On Longing

I would burn the world and use my soul for tinder to hear her laugh again.

Robert Jordon, The Fires of Heaven, Chapter 44

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds On Flying

You know what the first rule of flyin' is?

[...] Love. You can know all the math in the 'Verse, but take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds.

Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her home.

Dog Trainer On Guilt-Fear

Set boundaries, I tell them, but Chihuahua owners, more than all other dog owners, find boundary-setting impossible. They come back to me week after week with confessions of failure. You don't know the faces she gives me. She's depressed. She won't eat. Well of course your dog is sulking, I tell them. She's been demoted and her ego will now have to match her body size.

The truth is, I love (and sometimes hate) Chihuahua owners for this reason: they are honest about the paralyzing power of guilt. Guilt is short-hand for veiled fear, for the conflicted feeling we get when our needs compete with someone else's. What we want most in the world is to be approved of and loved, and to get that we will very quickly put our needs second. Put simply, we're afraid other people (or our dogs) won't like us if we stand up for ourselves. We're afraid they'll find out we're horrible inside, that we don't deserve anyone's love, except maybe the runt of the metaphoric dog litter, and no, not really, we don't deserve even that. [Ed.: Ephasis Added]

-Leslie Blanco, The Huffington Post