They loved him, or loved the thought of him, what they thought he was: a man who could easily have had a good life who chose instead their life: spite and bitterness and age-fogged glasses of watery whiskey in dark, cobwebbed country bars, shit-smear...
For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? --some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, ...
A man may beat down the bitter fruit from an evil tree until he is weary; while the root abides in strength and vigour, the beating down of the present fruit will not hinder it from bringing forth more. This is the folly of some men; they set themsel...
e have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each othe...
Then I felt something inside me break and music began to pour out into the quiet. My fingers danced; intricate and quick they spun something gossamer and tremulous into the circle of light our fire had made. The music moved like a spiderweb stirred b...
I tell of hearts and souls and dances... Butterflies and second chances; Desperate ones and dreamers bound, Seeking life from barren ground, Who suffer on in earthly fate The bitter pain of agony hate, Might but they stop and here forgive Would break...
If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side’s battle, all the bitterness whi...
When God issues a call to us, it is always a holy call. The vocation of dying is a sacred vocation. To understand that is one of the most important lessons a Christian can ever learn. When the summons comes, we can respond in many ways. We can become...
Life is a test. It was designed to be so. It is where we taste the bitter and the sweet; where we feel pain and pleasure; where we learn right from wrong; where we pass through both darkness and light. It is a time to make choices. And throug...
They were contemplating moving into another house or, more exactly, loudly saying to each other, so as to be overheard by anyone who might be listening, that they were contemplating moving, when all at once the fiend was gone, as happens with the , t...
All of the emotions that hit people at times like these, all of them, were coursing through us both like a secret we couldn’t tell. Because if we said everything we were thinking and feeling right then…if we laid it all out for one another…we m...
Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and he...
In her mind's eye she saw it, saw it all at last: the rolling armies and the flames of battle; the graves and pits and dying cries of a hundred million souls; the spreading darkness, like a black wing stretching over the earth; the last, bitter hours...
To truly try means to accept God's love, his healing, to accept the world can be ugly, but your heart doesn't have to be. It takes courage, Finley the warrior. You haven't held on to your anger and bitterness in search of healing, but as a banner of ...
I really wished he hadn't made me hate to read the Bible. Having it shoved down my throat all my life had made me bitter toward reading it. I believed it, but my dad had used it to his benefit too many times and ignored the parts in there that would ...
The year showed me beyond a doubt that everyone practices cafeteria religion... But the important lesson was this: there's nothing wrong with choosing. Cafeterias aren't bad per se... the key is in choosing the right dishes. You need to pick the nurt...
I stole a bit of a chopped vegetable and was about to put it in my mouth when Jae’s long fingers closed over my wrist. “What? You can’t eat this raw?” “It’s bitter melon. You won’t like it.” He went into the fridge and came out with s...
The way ran zigzag through a forest of pine which the bitter wind, still that morning, had turned to ice; every bough was adorned with lines of stalactite which shivered and glittered in the morning sun; every needle had a brilliant, vitreous case an...
Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, "God, you don't know what it's like! You don't understand! You have no idea what I'm going through. You don't have a clue how muc...
..."Fun?" you ask. "Weren't feminists these grim-faced, humorless, antifamily, karate-chopping ninjas who were bitter because they couldn't get a man?" Well, in fact the problem was that all too many of them HAD gotten a man, married him, had his kid...
Raise from your bed of languor Raise from your bed of dismay Your friends will not come tomorrow As they did not come today You must rely on yourself, they said, You must rely on yourself, Oh but I find this pill so bitter said the poor man As he too...
