How, then,' I hear you ask, 'shall I attain my end, whether it be Christian love, socialism, or American democracy?' Your Christian love and your socialism and your American democracy are what you do each day, your manner of thinking each hour, of em...
Hermes's shoulders sagged. "They'll try, Percy. Oh, we'll all try to keep our promise. And maybe for a while things will get better. But we gods have never been good at keeping oaths. You were born because of a broken promise, eh? Eventually we'll be...
If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those anci...
If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some nee...
No one else can want for me. No one can substitute his act of will for mine. It does sometimes happen that someone very much wants me to want what he wants. This is the moment when the impassable frontier between him and me, which is drawn by free wi...
I was always amazed at Cambridge how quickly people appeared to take offence at everything I said, but now I see plainly that it was not my words they hated - it was this fairy face. The dark alchemy of this face turns all my gentle human emotions in...
Words never fail. We hear them, we read them; they enter into the mind and become part of us for as long as we shall live. Who speaks reason to his fellowmen bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen. There must be...
There are those from religious backgrounds who resist and oppose LGBT equality; some very obsessively and publicly. They make bold accusations and negative statements about gay and lesbian people, their supposed "lifestyle" and relationships. But whe...
But somehow things took a sinister turn, and the division of labor came to be understood as the demarcation of a social hierarchy. Women kept busy with numerous domestic responsibilities while their male counterparts' sole duty was tending to the flo...
Beauty is present in all creation, but the danger lies in the fact that we allow ourselves to be influenced by what people think. We deny our own beauty because others can't or won't recognize it. We try to imitate what we see around us. We try to be...
But that’s what family is, isn't it? It’s traditions and trinkets that only matter when we hold them up against the mirrors of our lives, lending them meaning, lending them weight, until they become heavy enough to endure without us. We create th...
There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attra...
Lying in bed, half-covered by the blankets, I would drowsily ask why he had come to my door that night long ago. It had become a ritual for us, as it does for all lovers: where, when, why? remember...I understand even old people rehearse their privat...
See?” said Scout to Benne who tried to melt into the ground by becoming very flat. “See what happens when you don’t listen? When you go off and do whatever and you have no idea what you’re doing?” “Yes,” agreed Chisolm sternly, frowning...
Logical reasoning may be a most convenient means of mental communication for covering short distances, but the curvature of the earth, alas, is reflected even in logic: an ideally rational progression of thought will finally bring you back to the poi...
The silhouettes of Lovat now dominated the skyline. Nine levels stretching skyward. Five hundred meters high at its apex. Each level housing buildings of various sizes sagged on the backs of buildings below. Thousands of sodium lamps twinkled in thei...
Your children will be like olive shoots around your table." -Psalm 128:3 Children are likened to olive plants. Olive plants, if not pruned and controlled, become a wild nuisance. On the other hand, small olive plants that are nurtured and trained in ...
There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certai...
Becoming drunk is a journey that generally elates him in the early stages—he's good company, expansive, mischievous and fun, the famous old poet, almost as happy listening as talking. But once the destination is met, once established up there on th...
After the sorts of winters we have had to endure recently, the spring does seem miraculous, because it has become gradually harder and harder to believe that it is actually going to happen. Every February since 1940 I have found myself thinking that ...
People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my m...
