A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, s...
The claim to a national culture in the past does not only rehabilitate that nation and serve as a justification for the hope of a future national culture. In the sphere of psycho-affective equilibrium it is responsible for an important change in the ...
I published that theory [of speciational evolution] in a 1954 paper…and I clearly related it to paleontology. argued that the fossil record is very incomplete because some species fossilize better than others... I noted that you are never going to ...
In the Ottoman times, there were itinerant storytellers called "meddah. " They would go to coffee houses, where they would tell a story in front of an audience, often improvising. With each new person in the story, the meddah would change his voice, ...
If I could have made the change sooner I daresay I should never have given a thought to the literary delights of Paris or London; for life in the country is the only state which has always completely satisfied me, and I had never been allowed to grat...
Someone once said that integrity comes from caring about what other people think of you; but I don't think that integrity comes from caring what other people think about you. I think that integrity comes from you caring about how you affect other peo...
Can’t you imagine? Haven’t you told her about the place enough?” He tried the handle again, as if that could change anything. Meggie had covered the whole door with quotations. They looked to him now like magic spells written on the white paint...
The foundation of morality on the human sentiments of what is acceptable behavior versus repulsive behavior has always made morals susceptible to change. Much of what was repulsive 100 years ago is normal today, and - although it may be a slippery sl...
Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a...
I have a phonetic fetish. All I want is to find a man whose last name ends in 'Vrski' and marry him. Try saying VRSKI. Oh, don't be a tight-ass. SAY IT. Don't you love the purring sound it makes in your mouth? It's the kind of name I love waking up t...
Sorry is the day, and full of lament, when the young have to guard themselves from being food for the old. I am moved to bewilderment, when I glance my eyes upon a society that kills its young, and then pretends to mourn their modus operandi. Worse s...
Cultivate the understanding that the self is not really an independently existing entity, and begin to view self instead in terms of it's dependent relation to others. Although it is difficult to say that merely reflecting on this will produce a prof...
Whether we want to admit it or not, we are dependent on other pray-ers. In Matthew 9:38 Jesus said, "Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest." Am I a laborer because someone, some time, some plac...
It is believed that knowledge can automatically change personality, that is, the more you know, the more different person you will be. But it is false belief. If particular knowledge is not mentally "absorbed", if not use the language of science, but...
There are two kinds of people. One kind, you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more suprises from it. Whereas, the other kind keep movin...
Taking part in your own creation is as simple as changing your mind. The way you think literally creates your everyday reality. Obsessive and negative thinking fosters a negative or even hostile lifestyle. Positive and constructive thoughts create ha...
The only consolation, even for someone like him who had been a good man in bed, was sexual peace: the slow, merciful extinction of his venereal appetite. At eighty-one years of age he had enough lucidity to realize that he was attached to this world ...
It cannot be described, this awesome chain of events that depopulated the whole Earth; the range is too tremendous for any to picture of encompass. Of the people of Earth's unfortunate ages, billions of years before, only a few prophets and madman co...
Where there is darkness, there is light and light from the darkness shall shine once again. At every moment in our lives we walk into a dark tunnel but at the end of that dark tunnel there is a path of light, we just have to tell ourselves to keep on...
A molecule of hydrogen....whether in Sirius or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time. Each molecule therefore throughout the universe bears impressed upon it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the metre of th...
This place is a mystery. A sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it & the soul of those who read it & lived it & dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes do...