Elona

“Every moment is a gift— sometimes strangely wrapped, sometimes not what we asked for, yet still a gift.”
― Kai Siedenburg, Poems of Earth and Spirit: 70 Poems and 40 Practices to Deepen Your Connection With Nature

“To love a man for his virtues is paltry and human, it tells you; to love him for his flaws is divine. To love those who are worthy of it is self-interest; to love the unworthy is sacrifice. You owe your love to those who don’t deserve it, and the less they deserve it, the more love you owe them—the more loathsome the object, the nobler your love—the more unfastidious your love, the greater the virtue”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“At the core of all societies, I will show, is the social suite: (1) The capacity to have and recognize individual identity (2) Love for partners and offspring (3) Friendship (4) Social networks (5) Cooperation (6) Preference for one’s own group (that is, “in-group bias”) (7) Mild hierarchy (that is, relative egalitarianism) (8) Social learning and teaching”
― Nicholas A. Christakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

“If everybody fought for nothing but his own convictions, there wouldn’t be any wars,”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace