Childhood is a short season.
And what after all, is death?? 'Tis but a cessation from mortal life; 'tis but the finishing of an appointed course; the refreshing inn after a fatiguing journey; the end of a life of cares and troubles; and, if happy, the beginning of a life of immo...
I was falling. Falling through time and space and stars and sky and everything in between. I feel for days and weeks and what felt like lifetime across lifetimes. I fell until I forgot I was falling.
You can obsess and obsess over how things ended—what you did wrong or could have done differently—but there's not much of a point. It's not like it'll change anything. So really, why worry?
We [Americans] became a nation of java junkies, wired from dawn to dusk intent on running faster, getting richer, dancing harder, playing longer and getting higher than anybody else.
Lucian [of Samosata; 120-190 CE] was trying to make his audience laugh, rather than start a revolution
In short, this or that behavior wasn't good because scripture said so. Scripture mandated this or that behavior because it was good, and if it was already good before scripture said so, then it was good for some reason inherent to itself, some reason...
In the decades following the Revolution, America changed so much and so rapidly that Americans not only became used to change, but came to expected and prize it.
Americans became so thoroughly democratic that much of the period's political activity, beginning with the Constitution, was diverted to finding means and devices to tame that democracy.
Virtue became less the harsh and martial self-sacrifice of antiquity and more the modern willingness to get along with others for the sake of peace and prosperity.
Why slum it where people were burdened by yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that? By history? Here, on the Island, they had learnt how to deal with history, how to sling it carelessly on your back and stride out across the download wi...
Irony is a treacherous servant; unless it's very carefully watched over, it has a tendency to expose the foolishness of its apparent master.
The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years.
A book is like a key that fits into the tumbler of the soul. The two parts have to match in order for each to unlock. Then— —a world opens.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
[...] for the philosophy of Square rendered him superior to all emotions, and he very calmly smoaked his pipe, as was his custom in all broils, unless when he apprehended some danger of having it broke in his mouth.
By increasing the amount of Torah (obligatory religious laws) in the world, they were extending His presence in the world and making it more effective.
History is above all else an argument. It is an argument between different historians; and, perhaps, an argument between the past and the present, an argument between what actually happened, and what is going to happen next. Arguments are important; ...
We demand that sex speak the truth [...] and we demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves wich we think we possess in our immediate consciousness.
The game had to be played the same way every day or the pieces would fall to the floor, the board would collapse, and the illusion that you were shaping your own life, that you were in control, would break.
Thin people, God bless them, God curse them, don't get it: If you're not thin, you need to be careful and conscious about when and how you suitors initially see you.
