Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku....
Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him....
If only customs were logical. If only the rules were as simple as "Don't do anything that will hurt others." If that were the only rule, I’d have at least a fifty percent chance of getting it right. I would, for example, ask myself whether saying t...
We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. I...
Odd, how life makes twists and turns. I never would have guessed that I’d end up where I am now, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I wouldn’t trade this path I’m on for the whole solar system, for that matter. If I’ve learned anything ...
When Victoria told me how intensely she hated me, I kept the Beretta aimed at her face, but heard myself say, "I don't hate you." She called me an effing liar and said, "Hate makes the world go around. Envy, lust and hate." "I stopped hating anyone t...
A witch who is bored might do ANYTHING. People said things like 'we had to make our own amusements in those days' as if this signified some kind of moral worth, and perhaps it did, but the last thing you wanted a witch to do was get bored and start m...
Mr. McCleod: And if there’s anything I want you guys to take with you from this class, as you’re abusing your bodies over break, is three things: the heart is the body’s strongest muscle, that the brain has more cells in it than our galaxy has ...
When I picked up the bird and felt its light weight in my hands, I realized that carelessness was a form of cruelty. See, I'd always told myself that because I meant no harm, anything that happened wasn't my fault. At that moment, though, I knew I wa...
Eby wanted to say so much to her. She wanted to say that waking up is the most important part of grieving, that so many women in their family failed to do it, and she was proud of Kate for fighting her way back. But Eby didn't say anything. She could...
Letting go of the past does not mean that we should try to forget everything that has happened to us and not learn anything from our previous thinking patterns and actions. Letting go simply means that we do not allow the past to control our current ...
But -- my dear, my heart is BROKEN! I have seen the perfect Peter Wimsey. Height, voice, charm, smile, manner, outline of features, -- and he is -- THE CHAPLAIN OF BALLIOL!! is the use of anything? ... I am absolutely by this Balliol business. Such w...
Literature had torn Tessa and me apart, or prevented us from merging in the first place. That was its role in the world, I'd started to fear: to conjure up disagreements that didn't matter and inspire people to act on them as though they mattered mor...
so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like someone who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor, who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many day...
Many in the church have turned their back on serious study, and have embraced an anti-intellectualism which refuses to learn anything from scholarship at all lest it corrupt their pure faith. It is time to end this standoff, and to reestablish a herm...
Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn't think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that t...
An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more sett...
That's how ideas and the institutions they generate come to be in the first place. It is in strings of words that we make ideas. The words, however, can say anything that the language permits, which, in our case, is quite a lot, so a string of words ...
The path of compassion does not obligate you to love people regardless of how they act or who they are. It is a path of seeing the truth of who people are, acknowledging all their parts, their humanness as well as divinity. It is the path of looking ...
Benedict’s hand clenched by his side, still tingling where it had touched her. He wished she’d let him do more. It was so romantic out here in the darkness; the cool breeze rustling through the trees and the moonlight showing faintly through clou...
Truly powerful people have great humility. They do not try to impress, they do not try to be influential. They simply are. People are magnetically drawn to them. They are most often very silent and focused, aware of their core selves. ... They never ...
