Maybe we feel meaning only when we deal with something bigger. Perhaps we hope that someone else, especially someone important to us, will ascribe value to what we've produced? Maybe we need the illusion that our work might one day matter to many peo...
Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It *is*...
I can worship Nature, and that fulfills my need for miracles and beauty. Art gives a spiritual depth to existence -- I can find worlds bigger and deeper than my own in music, paintings, and books. And from my friends and family I receive the highest ...
She's a woman. Like a chameleon does, a woman quietly blends into all the parts of her life. Sometimes you can hardly tell she's there, she's so quiet going on about her business. Feed the baby. Muck the stables. Make soup from stones. Make a sheet i...
Miss Rasputin, what a delight to finally meet you,” said the vamp, speaking with only the faintest hint of an accent. “Let’s hope you still feel that way in a few minutes, Mr. Delacroix.” “Pierre, please. And may I call you Evangaline?” P...
You may think my jealousy would have been enormous during those days after Peter gave Tiger Lily the smallest kiss on the neck. And you would be right. But these moments were swallowed by a bigger emotion, my tenderness for Tiger Lily, which had grow...
With the evolution of Us came the evolution of Them. The original Them was anyone who wasn’t blood related — Them was pretty much everyone. Over time, as the number of people in Us got bigger, Them got smaller. Them now might mean anyone in any o...
Thankfully existing only in SMALL pockets within our discipline, is “intellectual” snobbery. It’s a hushed but ugly truth that people are made to feel not worthy to be among a certain set – didn’t attend the right school or don’t have the...
A poem was a box for your soul. That was the point. It was the place where you could save bits of yourself, and shake out your darkest feelings, without worrying that people would think you were strange. While I was writing, I would forget myself and...
Henry Kissinger How I'm missing yer You're the Doctor of my dreams With your crinkly hair and your glassy stare And your Machiavellian schemes I know they say that you are very vain And short and fat and pushy But at least you're not insane Henry Kis...
It is never too early to start thinking about your own death and the deaths of those you love. I don’t mean thinking about death in obsessive loops, fretting that your husband has been crushed in a horrific car accident, or that your plane will cat...
What I admire about the modern atheist is not at all his logic, but rather his gift of imagination. There will always be the cartoon versions of Christianity further perpetuated by the extremist atheists who do not possess the humility to ask real sc...
[last lines] Hiccup: [narrating] This is Berk. A bit trampled and busted and covered in ice, but it's home. It's our home. Those who attacked us are relentless and crazy, but those who stopped them - oh-h-h-h-h, even more so! We may be small in numbe...
Scott Smith: [reading a threatening note] 'Harvey Milk will have a dream journey and nightmare to hell. A night of horror. He will be stabbed and have your genitals, cock balls and prick cut off.' I'm calling the police. Harvey Milk: They probably wr...
You say that Caesar Borgia suffered the just punishment of his crimes. He was destroyed not by his misdeeds, but by circumstances over which he had no control. His wickedness was an irrelevant accident. In this world of sin and sorrow if virtue trium...
I generally find,' Clent murmured after a pause, 'that it is best to treat borrowed time the same way as borrowed money. Spend it with panache, and try to be somewhere else when it runs out.' 'And when we get found, Mr. Clent, when the creditors and ...
A scattering of pinpoint lights shows up in the blackness ahead. A town or village straddling the highway. The indicator on the speedometer begins to lose ground. The man glances in his mirror at the girl, a little anxiously as if this oncoming town ...
Right there in that room, listening to the tape Laura gave me, I decided that I wanted something more than what I’d allowed myself to become. Listening to the voices and piano notes fade in and out, I decided that I wanted to be happy. If I had to ...
Anita Johnston, Ph.D., author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, taught me to look in the mirror with curiosity rather than fear. So I may look at my reflection and think, ‘That’s interesting. I wonder why my body seems bigger today than it did ...
I had a dream about you. You were wearing an ice cream cone for a hat, and I was wearing a dunce cap. You were jealous of me because my hat was a bigger cone than yours, and I was jealous of you because your hat was edible. In the end we decided to t...
We all have our patchwork ideas of India, our notions and opinions and prejudices–often fallacious and absurd–of this enormous, disparate country, which, as I take pleasure in reminding newcomers, bigger in population than all but its own contine...
