Remain tranquil and prepare to bear still greater trials. All is not lost even though you be troubled oftener or tempted more grievously. You are a man, not God. You are flesh, not an angel. How can you possibly expect to remain always in the same st...
Before he had come to the town he had known about nothing but death: here he had learnt to live, to decide things for himself; he had learnt what it felt like to wash in clean water in the sunshine until he was clean himself, and what it felt like to...
JACK. I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left. ALGERNON. We have. JACK. I shou...
Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by the raindrops. Yet knowledge of its causation could not spoil...
Images flicker, each one bringing its own sorrow or its own smile. Sometimes both. At the very worst, an impenetrable and sightless black and at best, a happiness so bright that it hurts the eyes to see, coming and going on some unseen projector perp...
I want to mail my mailman something. He always brings me mail, yet I never give him any mail. Maybe he will appreciate the thought, or maybe he will feel I am making more work for him.
Clearing his throat “It is very improper for a lady to open the door, to a person of the opposite sex in her… sleeping attire.” “Improper? I look like I am wearing a rug,” I exclaimed, as I motioned at the calf-length thick red fabric; that...
It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books were still being checked out. He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his ...
Critical thinking does seem a superior sort of thinking because it seems as though the critic is actually going beyond the scope of what is being criticized in order to criticize it. That is only rarely a true assumption because, most often, the crit...
Few people know this, but I am a trained assassin, skilled in jujitsu and krav maga. I can also, with a few folds, turn an ordinary piece of notebook paper into a lethal weapon. Or I can turn it into a butterfly, which is a great trick when I'm babys...
It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make ...
Already, I know that all of this will stay with me forever. It'll haunt me, but I also fear it will make me feel grateful. I say because at times I really don't want this to be a fond memory until it's over. I also fear that nothing really ends at th...
Are you threatening me?” He looked completely outraged at such a thing. “You bet your incredibly attractive and probably hard enough to bounce a quarter off ass I am!” she snapped back. An indescribable look flitted across his face. “You are ...
For a good ten minutes or so we stand there with the flashlight burning the grave with light. The whole time, I'm trying to guess where and exactly how he died and, more to the point, realizing that poor old Milla's been without him for sixty-years. ...
He bent over Farid and wiped some soot from his cold forehead. "Roxanne knows it," he said. "She'll tell it to you. Just go to her and... and tell her I've had to go away. Tell her I'm going to find out if the story is true." He spoke with a strange ...
Boys are idiots. Girls are idiots, too, of course, but boys are a special kind of idiot. A girl, for instance, will vote for a boy in an election, or go to a movie that's about a boy, or buy a book that features a boy hero (or villain). Boys are much...
It is the iron." Grimalkin picked his way over a puddle, then leaped atop a fallen tree, shaking out his paws."This close to the false king's realm, his influence is stronger that ever. It will be worse once you are actually within its borders." Puck...
One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but ...
Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. ...
I know at least what I am,' he simply went on; 'the other side of the medal's clear enough. I've not been edifying--I believe I'm thought in a hundred quarters to have been barely decent. I've followed strange paths and worshipped strange gods; it mu...
-But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know? -I believe; I have faith: I am going to God. -Where is God? What is God? -My maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in ...
