Science has carried us to the gateway to the universe. And yet our conception of our surroundings remains the disproportionate view of the still-small child. We are spiritually and culturally paralyzed, unable to face the vastness, to embrace our lac...
Is it your implication that no good will come of this expedition?’ ‘Oh it will, sir; there’s no denying that.’ Captain Chillingworth’s words emerged very slowly, as if they had been pulled up from a deep well of bitterness. ‘I am sure it ...
What is a valley of tears? He was scourged, covered with spittle, crowned with thorns, nailed to the cross. From this valley of tears you must ascend. But ascend where? ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...
With me, travelling is frankly a vice. The temptation to indulge in it is one which I find almost as hard to resist as the temptation to read promiscuously, omnivorously and without purpose. From time to time, it is true, I make a desperate resolutio...
Two things put me in the spirit to give. One is that I have come to think of everyone with whom I come into contast as a patient in the emergency room. I see a lot of gaping wounds and dazed expressions. Or, as Marianne Moore put it, "The world's an ...
Daybreak has extraordinary hypnotizing influence, On us, idealistic observers. When red sun slowly reveals on the rivers surface, like in a mirror, It reminds of two lovers embracing, Just by looking into each others eyes. In such deep and serious co...
Look at this woman. This beauty. What an act of grace. What a gift she gave me. Shame makes people abandon their children and drink themselves to death. It also keeps us from true happiness. An apology is a glorious release. Anastasia gave me a huge ...
You know, you hear about these movements for women, and for children, and for people who are any race but white, and you think that it's about time that men got a movement. Think about it. Guys can't play the piano, or dance, or sing. We can't cry, o...
We must know something about malevolence, about how to recognize it, and about how not to make excuses for it. We must know that we cannot expect fair play. That is, perhaps, most crucial of all. Those of us who practice in this field must face the i...
Live with a steady superiority over life-don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't fre...
Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence. Moreover, they and their organs of hearing were much...
We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no pre...
Genuinely support people in ways you can. If you build great relationships and people get to like you for you, they will eventually promote what you do and would want to do business with you. The bottom line is that people love to do business with th...
It could be a thousand things, distractions, worries; but very often I think what keeps a writer from finding the words is that she grasps at them too soon, hurries, grabs. She doesn’t wait for the wave to come in and break. She wants to write beca...
The ruinous abdication by philosophy of its rightful domain is the consequence of the oblivion of philosophers to a great insight first beheld clearly by Socrates and re-affirmed by Kant as by no other philosopher. Science, concerned solely and exclu...
People ask: Why should I care about the ocean? Because the ocean is the cornerstone of earth's life support system, it shapes climate and weather. It holds most of life on earth. 97% of earth's water is there. It's the blue heart of the planet — we...
A Book I Can Put Down I’m halfway through and I’ve gotten used to the way it wants to be read. This writer wants to spoon it up, wants to watch me swallow it. This writer makes a point of good deeds, clean living, god and country, when what I wan...
At least if you don’t ask, I don’t have to lie. I’ve spent most of the past few months asleep on the bathroom floor; sick of keeping everything in, too tired to let it out. “Home” is such an empty word. I’m not sure why it felt whole comi...
Finally, another large-scale study [of false rape allegations] was conducted in Australia, with the 850 rapes reported to the Victoria police between 2000 and 2003 (Heenan & Murray, 2006). Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, the research...
We live in an era where opinion is currency. The pressure is on us to say 'I like this' or 'I don't like that', to make snap decisions and stick them on our credit cards. But when faced with something we cannot comprehend at once, which was never int...
Recovery does not refer to an absence of pain or struggle. Rather, recovery is marked by the transition from anguish to suffering. In anguish the paralyzed man and I lived without hope. We experienced anguish as futile pain, pain that revolved in cir...
