{"quotes":[{"text":"Destiny to some people is a preconceived notion as a design of blind faith, while in fact destiny is a constitution of endowed efforts in an attempt to steer toward a desired outcome. Create your destiny and reach for your dreams, you only live once.","author":"Husam Wafaei","tags":["aleppo","destiny-and-attitude","faith","future","human","life","love","syria"],"id":8103,"author_id":"Husam+Wafaei"},{"text":"First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain.","author":"Daniel Kofman","tags":["afghanistan","antiwar-movement","axis-of-evil","despotism","foreign-policy","foreign-policy-of-the-us","interventionism","iran","iraq","iraq-war","north-korea","repression","syria","war","war-in-afghanistan-2001-present"],"id":25821,"author_id":"Daniel+Kofman"},{"text":"You have to take this with you too,” she said, opening a box and holding up a silver necklace with the Syriac cross (a crucifix with a budding flower shape on each tip) dangling from it. “My mother gave it to me mother, who passed it to me. Now is the right time to give it to you. Not just because you’re leaving and will need something that always connects you to your roots, but also because tonight we remember her.","author":"Zack Love","tags":["belief","christianity","faith","life","memories","syria","tradition","wisdom","women"],"id":38094,"author_id":"Zack+Love"},{"text":"Adding to my emotional dizziness on Sunday, I spoke with my sister, who kept noting how amazing Michael is, and what a brave and selfless man he is for having helped as he did.","author":"Zack Love","tags":["anissa-s-redemption","book","college-romance","despair","dreams","fear","feelings","life","life-lessons","love","lovers","michael","new-adult-contemporary-romance","new-york-city","night-terrors","nightmares","philosophy","relationships","romance","syria","tags-anissa-julien","the-syrian-virgin","truth","war-romance","wisdom","zack-love"],"id":47735,"author_id":"Zack+Love"},{"text":"With the music of our singing in the background, I looked at the church candles and thought about the surreal connection between images and memory. The peaceful and joyous candles flickering there during the Christmas ceremony projected warmth, comfort, and familiarity – even though thy emitted the same kind of fiery energy as the flames caused by the war.","author":"Zack Love","tags":["civil-war","contemporary","double-meanings","faith","hope","imagery","life","new-adult","romance","syria"],"id":70404,"author_id":"Zack+Love"},{"text":"I’ve been told that I cannot change shit, so I might as well stop torturing myself. My emotions are ridiculed and branded as childish. I have been told that the world has given up on my people. I have been told, and realise that on many occasions, I myself am viewed as an outcast by some of those suffering. I’ve been confronted and my answer is always the same: I care even in my most fucked-up moments. I care even when gates of shit pour open to drown me; I care because I am a citizen of the world.","author":"Asaad Almohammad","tags":["fiction","global-citizen","historical-fiction","literary-fiction","non-linear","non-linear-books","non-linear-narrative","psychological-novel","read","syria","terrorism"],"id":79874,"author_id":"Asaad+Almohammad"},{"text":"As a citizen of the world, it’s my instinct to keep the fallen and the suffering in my thoughts. The human brain fascinates me; its limitless bounds of empathy. You see, in my mind there is logic to it: do no harm, prevent harm, help, support, care for the harmed, face the harmer. My stupid idealist conscience considers sympathy, not pity, at its worst, the most basic and the least negotiable civil duty. Of course as a citizen of the world, I should strive to do more. That said, I am only a man and so I often do the least.","author":"Asaad Almohammad","tags":["fiction","global-citizen","historical-fiction","literary-fiction","non-linear","non-linear-books","non-linear-narrative","psychological-novel","read","syria","terrorism"],"id":98550,"author_id":"Asaad+Almohammad"},{"text":"In addition to my new outlook on life, in some absurdly simple way, Anissa gave me several new reasons to live. Above all, I had to see her again and find out what, if anything, would happen between her and me.","author":"Zack Love","tags":["anissa-julien","anissa-s-redemption","book","college-romance","despair","fear","feelings","life","life-lessons","love","lovers","michael","new-adult-contemporary-romance","new-york-city","philosophy","relationships","romance","syria","the-syrian-virgin","truth","war-romance","wisdom","zack-love"],"id":98682,"author_id":"Zack+Love"},{"text":"When Husni Zaim seized power from Shukri al-Quwatli on 30 March 1949, Syria's economy was a parlous state and its army had been beaten the previous November by the Israelis. Zaim knew that he needed to take action on both fronts fast. After overthrowing al-Quwatli bloodlessly, he set out to open peace talks with the Israelis and mend relations with the French via a currency agreement and an arms deal that would pave the way for renewed French influence in the former mandate. But Zaim's reign did not last long. One hundred and thirty-seven days after he had taken power, on 14 August he too was overthrown and executed.","author":"James Barr","tags":["history","middle-east","military-coups","syria"],"id":106501,"author_id":"James+Barr"},{"text":"Moreover, it is not just that the early documents are silent about so much of Jesus that came to be recorded in the gospels, but that they view him in a substantially different way -- as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past, 'emptied' then of all his supernatural attributes (Phil.2:7), and certainly not a worker of prodigious miracles which made him famous throughout 'all Syria' (Mt.4:24). I have argued that there is good reason to believe that the Jesus of Paul was constructed largely from musing and reflecting on a supernatural 'Wisdom' figure, amply documented in the earlier Jewish literature, who sought an abode on Earth, but was there rejected, rather than from information concerning a recently deceased historical individual. The influence of the Wisdom literature is undeniable; only assessment of what it amounted to still divides opinion.","author":"George Albert Wells","tags":["biblical-criticism","christ-myth","christ-myth-theory","epistles","fiction","gospels","historical-jesus","historicity","historicity-of-jesus","history","jesus-myth","jewish","literature","miracles","paul","st-paul","supernatural","syria"],"id":113247,"author_id":"George+Albert+Wells"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":44,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}