The weather appeared to have somewhat cleared up; the rain no longer fell, a fresh wind swept the streets, and the moon, now and then surrounded by dark clouds, now and then shining in full brilliancy, shed its rays, smooth and cold as blades of stee...
One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses...
Keep in mind, we are past the age of enlightenment. This is past reason. We are pretty deep into modern history and the decline of religion. This is when nature itself has been stripped bare of its cozy personality and we all feel homeless in our nat...
Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images… It is not a conscious recording of the day’s experiences ‘freshly and with the appearance of reality’… The writer of imagination would ...
Bloody men are like bloody buses — You wait for about a year And as soon as one approaches your stop Two or three others appear. You look at them flashing their indicators, Offering you a ride. You’re trying to read the destinations, You haven’...
Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a...
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy no...
Our words had to be circumspect. We could not write anything too negative about our circumstances. This was tricky, since the very form of a married woman's letter needed to include the usual complaints -- that we were pathetic, powerless, worked to ...
Over and over again in the study of the history of life it appears that what can happen does happen. There is little suggestion that what occurs must occur, that it was fated or that it follows some fixed plan, except simply as the expansion of life ...
I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Homes, in one of his queer humours, would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges and proceed to adorn the opposite wall ...
Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once. Some reappear. Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear. She struggles with the forces that would tell her story for her, or write her out of the story,...
The essence of all human rights is the equality of the entire human race, which the Qur’ān assumed, affirmed, and confirmed. It obliterated all distinctions among men except goodness and virtue (taqwā): The reason the Qur’ān emphasizes essenti...
Scripture is wrought with a clear message of Jesus’ utter disregard for appearance and social rank. In Judean society, it was a major taboo for a man to even speak to a woman who was not his own wife or daughter; yet Jesus interacted regularly with...
A man may beat down the bitter fruit from an evil tree until he is weary; while the root abides in strength and vigour, the beating down of the present fruit will not hinder it from bringing forth more. This is the folly of some men; they set themsel...
This was 1990 the year that communism died in Europe and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the iron curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism nev...
When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is pai...
The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared t...
If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. ... How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard...
Running along the bank was a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and looking worriedly at a clock. Appearing and disappearing at various points on both banks was a dark blue British police telephone booth, out of which a perplexed-looking man holding a ...
Make sure your LinkedIn profile has a targeted headline. Not only should the headline clearly state your career focus, it’s also the most important place to add a keyword or two, because this influences how you appear in search results
Another tear appeared and then another, trailing silently down her cheeks. This was so much harder than she’d thought it would be. She was usually so articulate, yet at the moment her brain seemed to have turned to mush. He turned his head to kiss ...