How flimsy our existence is, how many conditions must exist and must continue to exist over the course of millions of years so that a single flower or a single pencil or a single book might exist... For a moment I felt like a string being strummed by...
Plainly it isn't an exact science, despite it being a complex interaction of micro-decisions and corresponding thought; perhaps it doesn't always work and we pass by some potential soulmates like the proverbial ships in the night, never quite connect...
Kvothe continued, smiling himself “I see you laugh. Very well, for simplicity’s sake, let us assume I am the center of creation. In doing this, let us pass over innumerable boring stories: the rise and fall of empires, sagas of heroism, ballads o...
Sophia shrieked and fainted on the ground – I screamed and instantly ran mad. We remained thus mutually deprived of our senses, some minutes, and on regaining them were deprived of them again. For an Hour and a Quarter did we continue in this unfor...
I have been in my bed for five weeks, oppressed with weakness and other infirmities from which my age, seventy four years, permits me not to hope release. Added to this (proh dolor! [O misery!]) the sight of my right eye — that eye whose labors (da...
She would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, harmony, and security day after day would lead to mental lethargy, that her writing would suffer from too much happiness, that she needed a balanced life with down days and miser...
Yes, Cabbage: prison diplomacy. It’s called offering the newcomer a very warm welcome. You can tell Mares that I made lots of friends at two in the morning on the first night and continued making friends in the back of the laundry room and if I did...
You must purge yourself before finding faults in others. When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake. This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement. Do not look at others' bodies with env...
Seated on a paving-stone near Enjolras, Courfeyrac continued to jeer at the cannon, and every passage of that sinister cloud of projectiles that is called grapeshot, accompanied by its monstrous din, drew from him an ironical comment. 'You're wearing...
J.R.R. Tolkien tells a story of a man who was better at painting leaves than trees. In fact, the leaves he painted were painstaking and exquisite. He continued to feel a pull to make his talent part of something bigger, but the time he would devote t...
Friends come and go, clothing is packed and unpacked, households are continually purged of unnecessary items, and as a result, not much sticks. it's hard at times but it makes a kid strongs in ways that most people can't understand. Teaches them that...
The trip doesn’t exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears … so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land o...
In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of movi...
Vimes stared. It was true about the dogs. There didn't seem to be quite so many mooching around these days, and that was a fact. But he'd visited a few dwarf bars with Carrot, and knew that dwarfs would indeed eat dog, but only of they couldn't get r...
Through the ages, many different groups have called themselves victims. Some came through wars and massacres. Some were slaves or minorities. But the Jews, who have always been victimized throughout history, don’t see themselves as victims. We see ...
-To me women are the most unknown factors in the universe, Vieng had then continued, -that is what makes them so interesting to us. So it’s like us men have an instinctively born scientific nature to study women. As I said before it takes a long ti...
And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now o...
The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that endangered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they can aim at them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without w...
And it's a disquieting thought that not even the past is done with, even that continues to change, as if in reality there is only one time, for everything, one time for every purpose under heaven. One single second, one single landscape, in which wha...
The American craving for illegal, mind-altering, addictive chemicals provides a steady flow of American capital through the Texas border into Mexico and South America. Basically, the drug traffic is uncontainable as long as its U.S. market exists, bu...
I’m reminded of how passionate Kuan Yin is about the importance of being human on this earth,” continues Lena. “It’s the most important thing in your existence,” states Kuan Yin. “Your existence is eternal. This phase (of your soul) is so...
