Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other...
The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standard of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of mind. As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which th...
It was not man who implanted in himself what is infinite and the love of what is immortal: those lofty instincts are not the offspring of his capricious will; their steadfast foundation is fixed in human nature, and they exist in spite of his efforts...
Ready?" Jaime echoed. "Yes, yes, I am ready. I am ready to drink a lot of liquids and lie on the sofa moaning faintly all day long. That is what I am ready for. I cannot engage in physical activity of any sort or my head will fall right off. Is that ...
I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt; I am lean with seeing others eat - O that there would come a famine through all the world, that all might die, and I live alone; then...
What does the novel know? It has no practical or educational aim; yet it knows what ordinary knowledge cannot seize. The novel's intricate tangle of character-and-incident alights on the senses with a hundred cobwebby knowings fanning their tiny thre...
No foreign architect of stature, such as I. M. Pei, resides in Japan. Foreign architects come to Japan on short-term contracts, erect a skyscraper or a museum, and then leave. But subtle and sophisticated approaches to services and design—the core ...
The tears I feel today I'll wait to shed tomorrow. Though I'll not sleep this night Nor find surcease from sorrow. My eyes must keep their sight: I dare not be tear-blinded. I must be free to talk Not choked with grief, clear-minded. My mouth cannot ...
Like all of us sinners, General Betrishchev was endowed with many virtues and many defects. Both the one and the other were scattered through him in a sort of picturesque disorder. Self-sacrifice, magnanimity in decisive moments, courage, intelligenc...
To deprive a gregarious creature of companionship is to maim it, to outrage its nature. The prisoner and the cenobite are aware that the herd exists beyond their exile; they are an aspect of it. But when the herd no longer exists, there is, for the h...
For a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw s...
Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must...
As a rule, however fine and deep a phrase may be, it only affects the indifferent, and cannot fully satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why dumbness is most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each ...
When our will is strong and aligned with Divine intent, there is nothing we cannot do or be. With power and guidance flowing through us, Life becomes an effortless dance as we relinquish control and limitation and allow our Spirit Within to express i...
The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it d...
There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact wi...
You can capture this body of mine, take away my freedom and enslave me. You may even have the power to capture my soul and sentence me to the realm of eternal darkness. But my dreams you cannot touch. They are my will―the very essence of who I am. ...
I cannot go any further without mentioning my favourite biscuit of all time, now sadly, tragically, extinct. The oaty, crumbly, demerara notes of the long-forgotten Abbey Crunch will remain forever on my lips. I loved the biscuit as much as anything ...
We can act only in our time, among the people who surround us. We shall be capable of nothing until we know whether we have the right to kill our fellow men, or the right to let them be killed. Since all contemporary action leads to murder, direct or...
Woman cannot be content with health and agility: she must make exorbitant efforts to appea something that never could exist without a diligent perversion of nature. Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty i...
As Henry Dan Piper, one of Fitzgerald's most perceptive critics, has commented, his fiction heroes "are destroyed because they attempt to fulfill themselves through their social relationships. They cannot distinguish between social values like popula...
