College had once been my greatest aspiration; it stood for everything my mother did not—intellectualism, feminism, freedom. But being kidnapped had given me plenty of time to think, and somewhere between all that fear and dread, I'd realized that w...
If you want to make progress, put up with being perceived as ignorant or naive in worldly matters, don't aspire to a reputation for sagacity. If you do impress others as somebody, don't altogether believe it. You have to realize, it isn't easy to kee...
The academic and writer Sara Ahmed has written brilliantly about the idea of the feminist killjoy, and why it should be embraced – because feminism isn’t about making everyone around the table feel comfortable. It’s about being disruptive, chal...
Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all ev...
Oh, it makes SUCH a difference. It LOOKS so much nicer. When you hear a name pronounced can't you always see it in your mind, just as if it was printed out? I can; and A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e looks so much more distinguished. If you'll only...
If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they'll still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another's fur. Anna had walked on a moon of Jupiter. She'd look up through a dome-covered sky at the great red spot, close enough to see the...
Primary causes are unknown to us; but are subject to simple and constant laws, which may be discovered by observation, the study of them being the object of natural philosophy. Heat, like gravity, penetrates every substance of the universe, its rays ...
Ever wonder why your cat jumps on the lap of the guest that doesn't like cats? It is because people who don't like cats will do things cats like during greetings. They squint their eyes, turn their heads and avoid direct contact with the cat. The cat...
Not only are animals unable to avail themselves of language to assert their own rights, but many fewer humans have a clear sense of kinship with animals than have a clear sense of kinship with other humans. Among beings with subjective states of awar...
The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality...
With a little persuasion, any familiar thing can turn abnormal in the mind. Here's a thought experiment. Consider this brutal bit of magic. A human grows a second human in a space inside her belly; she grows a second heart and a second brain, second ...
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be ret...
The outer garments of to-day will become the under-clothes of some destined to-morrow, and centuries hence a man found walking on the public highways dressed as you are will be arrested by the police for shocking the sense of propriety of the communi...
Do you believe that the God of Jesus loves you beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity—that he loves you in the morning sun and in the evening rain—that he loves you when your intellect denies it, your emotions refuse i...
All the practical principles behind the Innovator's case for posterity, or society, or the species, are there from time immemorial in the . But they are nowhere else. Unless you accept these without question as being to the world of action what axiom...
Sometimes the bridges you burn, end up lighting your way! You don’t need to please everyone all the time. Don’t be afraid to say no or speak up when necessary. Strive to be compassionate and fair, but be willing to handle other people being disap...
It is often thought that spirits in the after-world do not breathe as we might do - and that in being dead, one does not require inhaling and exhaling anything. Well, they do exchange ethers, and the body of a soul does in fact breathe, and talk and ...
He seems, in manner and rank, above the class of young men who take that turn; but I remember hearing them say, that the little theatre at Fairport was to open with the performance of a young gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage.—If t...
It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, ...
She hops expectantly into the sink. I turn on the tap for her; she laps without a glance in my direction, like a duchess so used to being ministered to that she no longer notices the servants and sees only a world where objects dumbly bend to her wis...
Memories particularly of when they weren’t being what parents are nine-tenths of the time, the taskmasters, the examples, the moral authorities, the nags of pick-that-up and you’re-going-to-be-late, keepers of the diary of her duties and routines...
