Modern history, both early and late, was made by Europeans, who "built a world around Europe", as historians "know", according to Braudel. That is indeed the "knowledge" of the European historians who themselves "invented" history and then put it to ...
That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Tim...
Culture has lead us to betray our own aboriginal spirit and wholeness, into an ever-worsening realm of synthetic, isolating, impoverishing estrangement. Which is not to say that there are no more everyday pleasures, without which we would loose our h...
Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with their world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and ...
Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong Hark! now I h...
I'd left them because I'd loved them. Beth and my parents and my friends and my life-my free, American life. I loved them, and if I had a chance to protect them from the people who wanted to destroy them then I had to take that chance even if it mean...
He taught me that language was rubbery, plastic. It wasn't, as I thought, something you just use, but something you can play with. Words were made up of little bits that could be shuffled, turned back to front, remixed. They could be tucked and folde...
Orsino: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, Than women's are. ... For women are as roses, whose fair flow'r Being once display'd doth fall that very hour. Viola...
It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him. Taught from earliest childhood, by all that he sees...
Love is hard. We try to love one another. But generally the quality and quantity of our love for one another is found wanting, because we find it difficult, if not impossible, to look beyond those things that are ugly and unlovable in those we try to...
This is stolen? We're in a stolen jet?" "Not stolen," said Donegan Bane from the co-pilot's seat. "Almost stolen," Gracious corrected. "Semi-stolen," said Donegan. "Quasi-stolen," said Gracious. Aurora's frown did not turn upside down. "So is it stol...
It reflects like an optical instrument and responds to changes in the weather so sensitively that it seems like a part of the sky rather than of the land. And along with all that, Baikal is distinctly Asiatic: if a camel caravan could somehow transpo...
I got words in me, Jess, fighting to find a way out. Sometimes there's so many words and they get so crowded in my skull I think my head is gonna explode. I want to write them down. I've tried, but most of the time my thoughts and my feelings are big...
I thought following a straight road would lead me right to my destination. Like the road would just take me there because I was following all the rules. And if the road curved, I couldn't be sure about where I was going. But look where it got me. May...
Apparently, before we are born, each of us experiences a vision of what our life can be, complete with reflections on our parents and our tendencies to engage in particular control dramas, even how we might work through these dramas with these parent...
But I'm here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. Your soul is a living, breathing, organic thing. No different than your heart or your legs. And just like your heart keeps your blood oxygenated and your legs keep you moving arou...
I see... the way you're always searching. How much you hate anything fake or phony. How you're older than your years, but still... playful, like a little girl. How you're always looking into people, or wondering what they see when they look back at y...
Las personas que están dispuestas a sacrificar su propio bienestar por un noble idea probablemente acabarán exigiéndoles un sacrificio parecido a otros no tan dispuestos a hacerlo. Un sistema político que no puede funcionar sin mártires es un si...
Our sainted aunts prate of living for others while our rich uncles call us mollycoddles for not fighting for what we want. Murder is a patriotic act if you commit it in a uniform; it is the blackest sin if you kill someone while wearing a gray flanne...
Fashion is merely the lowest form of ideology. To wear or not to wear blue jeans, to holiday or not to holiday in a particular place can contribute to social acceptance or bring upon us the full opprobrium of the group. Then, a few months or years la...
All this yummy muscleness first thing in the morning is almost too much for me to take,” she cooed, and gave him a playful wink as she scooted herself into the front seat. I shook my head. If “Flirt” qualified as a foreign language, my sister a...
