ATHENA: There are two sides to this dispute. I've heard only one half the argument. (...) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once I've picked the finest men in Athens, I'll return...
And now that they have us here, under their control, they've dropped whatever act they had on earth. We're seeing them as they really are.' He dipped his glove into the water and watched as the water turned golden. The air suddenly smelled of citrus....
Saphira: The worth is in the act. Your worth halts when you surrender the will to change and experience life. But options are before you; choose one and dedicate yourself to it. The deeds will give you new hope and purpose. Eragon: But what can I do?...
Devotion is a spiritual act of egoless surrender. When the Self blinds the spirit too tightly, then devotion expands the blinding by lifting us beyond ourselves. We get the powerful lesson that the Self survives even without constant attention.
a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed...
Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness. I take it for granted that to create a tree I condemn a seed to rot. If the first act of resistance comes too late it is...
Intentions are the only thing they care about. They try to make you think they care about what you do, but they don't. They don't want you to act a certain way, they want you to think a certain way. So you're easy to understand. So you wont pose a th...
Strange how it is that men never act crueler than when they're fighting for the sake of an idea. We've been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take...
Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Be...
So, Mr. Mandrake, what is it you plan to do with me this evening?” I asked haughtily. “I presume,” he said, playing along, “that I will start with feeding you proper and then proceed with more…pestiferous acts.” I smiled through the confu...
Wisdom you speak, Obi Tina.' 'None of that - I'm the one who gets to speak backwards - no, we're both wrong - that's the little green guy, Yoda.' 'You're right. So I just get to pout and act badly when you try and teach me anything.' 'Try channelling...
It's strange how deliberate people are after a death. All the indecision suddenly vanishes into clear, defined moments - changing the linens, choosing a dress or a hymn, the washing up, the muttering of prayers. All the small, simple, conscious acts ...
Among my greatest loves is the act of being pinned and invaded – not by one, or two or three, but by many, one after the other. What it is to lose yourself among many, so that your identity exists only as ‘woman’: a goddess of flesh and desire....
There is something about the act of studying an unclothed body, as an artist does, that allows a person to appreciate it as pure form, regardless of the kinds of traits traditionally regarded as imperfections. In a figure drawing class, an obese woma...
Great feuds often need very few words to resolve them. Disputes, even between nations, between peoples, can be set to rest with simple acts of contrition and corresponding forgiveness, can so often be shown to be based on nothing much other than prid...
I meant that the hatred of that July day in Nashville was alive and well on that horrible day in Pittsburgh. People hate others so they strike like snakes. It’s all connected—we’re all connected, bumping around into each other, some of us good,...
Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had...
Do we behave out of fear of punishment, or out of the demands of our heart? For me, it is the latter, as I would hope is true for all adults, thought I know from bitter experience that such is not often the case. To act in a manner designed to catapu...
Confession is the act of inviting God to walk the acreage of our hearts. “There is a rock of greed over here, Father. I can’t budge it. And that tree of guilt near the fence? Its roots are long and deep. And may I show you some dry soil, too crus...
You come before the judgment seat of God full of rebellion and mistakes. Because of his justice he cannot dismiss your sin, but because of his love he cannot dismiss you. So, in an act which stunned the heavens, he punished himself on the cross for y...
Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and ...
