The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.
You know what I am." The words breathed out in an auguished whisper. "I'm part demon, Clary. Part demon. You understood that much, didn't you?" His eyes bored into her like drills. "You saw what Valentine was trying to do. He used demon blood-used it...
Could God have justified Himself before human history, so full of suffering, without placing Christ's Cross at the center of that history? . . . But God, who besides being Omnipotence is Wisdom and--to repeat once again--Love, desires to justify Hims...
We could endlessly reminisce, live in the past to an unhealthy degree, then politely kill each other some winter night before bedtime, stirring poison into our cups of whiskey-spiked chamomile tea, wearing party hats. Then, nervous about our double h...
Lady Maccon stopped suddenly. Her husband got four long strides ahead before he realized she had paused. She was starring thoughtfully up into the aether, twirling the deadly parasol about her head. "I have just remembered something," Alexia said whe...
My Mom and Dad and brother have grown through the years into my closest friends, the people who tell me the most searing truth, who give me soft places to rest and present to me a bright future when the only one I can see from my vantage point is dim...
My mind argued with itself about whether to adhere to proper etiquette or whether to fling aside all modesty and throw my arms around him. My feet chose the latter before my mind had a chance to settle it. I flew off the stool and landed in his embra...
Everyone goes through a period of - when we take, say, a different turn in life, the other . Dante himself did. Some recover, some pretend to recover, some never come back, some chicken out before even starting, and some, for fear of taking any turns...
O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more -- Oh, never more! Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight; Fresh spring, and summer, and wint...
Miss Cecily," she gasped, and then her eyes went to Will. She clapped a hand over her mouth, turned, and bolted back into the house. "Oh, dear," said Tessa. "I have that effect on women," Will said. " I probably should have warned you before you agre...
A bride, before a "Good-night" could be said, Should vanish from her clothes into her bed, As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied. But now she's laid; what though she be? Yet there are more delays, for where is he? He comes and passeth through...
It was Will, filling the doorway with his lanky, broad-shouldred frame. His blue eyes where thunderous. "What are you doing here?" he demanded. So much for the brief peace they had achieved the night before. "I am practicing," Cecily said. "You told ...
I told you before, Jem, that you would not leave me," Will said, his bloody hand on the hilt of the dagger. "And you are still with me. When I breathe, I will think of you, for without you I would have been dead years ago. When I wake up and when I s...
Before I could respond, I looked out the window again and as if in response to my thoughts, I saw Cooper walking up my driveway. My jaw dropped. I peeked around the kitchen doorframe. Mom was still lost to the television. I turned and looked out the ...
Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for exampl...
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obs...
She [Catherine of Siena] found a place of refuge in a lonely wood, where some hermits lived. It is generally thought that this brotherhood was the community of hermits in Vallombrosa, founded by St. John Gualbert, the man who had spared the life of h...
Anyway, I think Florence and I noticed each other before the local train screeched to a halt at the 110th Street station, because as I boarded it felt as though we were supposed to step into the same car, and hold onto the same moist metal bar. My wi...
I dodged behind Mac for cover and refused to take the bait. I glanced at my nonexistent watch. 'Oops, look at the time. Guess I have to be going now. Let's not do this again sometime, okay?' Before I could move, Pritkin was there, jamming the medalli...
I considered him and felt the now familiar crush of emotions weighing on me, begging me to cave in and fall into his strong arms. I pushed back with every ounce of energy I had left. Every time I trusted someone, I got hurt. Every time I let go, I wa...
Ignorance is the mother of all the evil and all the misery we see. Let men have light, let them be pure and spiritually strong and educated, then alone will misery cease in the world, not before. We may convert every house in the country into a chari...
