Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea th...
The modern habit of saying "This is my opinion, but I may be wrong" is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong, I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it su...
I am afraid of those who are too simple on the outside; for their vanities they wear upon their hearts. Better to meet a person who wears their vanities out in the open where you can see them! Than one who hides them in their hearts! For it is the st...
There are people who want to change the world, make it a better place... but what they don’t know, is that to make a difference in the life of one person and to make a single person’s life a better thing to live, is just as valuable as changing t...
God gave a choice to Adam and Eve to eat the fruit which caused death and pain to all mankind. How is that different than allowing a choice regarding abortion? A person may make the choice to end one life but god allowed a choice that impacts every m...
What is this peace, different from that which the world gives? This peace is the one your love gives... a peace greater than suffering, not a peace without war, but a peace in spite of war, during war, above war, the peace of the soul, having, throug...
To say that men and women are equally eligible for a certain profession is to say that for the purposes of that profession their sex is irrelevant. We are, in that context, treating both as neuters. As the State grows more like a hive or an ant-hill ...
A mosaic of memories takes me back to my own childhood, and then to my children. My earliest memory of St. Augustine was a day trip from Jacksonville; a day with some neighbors who were nice enough to purchase me a plastic toy-tugboat with a blue sup...
If I formed the questions correctly, then perhaps the immediate answer might be in the vein of earlier responses to questions of what is right or wrong; that is, that there is not a clear-cut answer. What is certain is that avowed Christians were amo...
The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. This project is ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and ethically mandatory. The metabolic p...
There is a wave of gratefulness because people are becoming aware how important this is and how this can change our world. It can change our world in immensely important ways, because if you're grateful, you're not fearful, and if you're not fearful,...
Agrarians are committed to preserving both communities and the material means of life, to cultivating practices that ensure that the essential means of life suffice for all members of the present generation and are not diminished for those who come a...
We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we ...
Man has no individual i. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "i"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Ea...
You know something, it’s not easy to break out of your comfort zone. People will tear you down, tell you you shouldn’t have bothered in the first place. But let me tell you something, there’s not much of a difference between a stadium full with...
He walked out into a different city, one that was perfumed by the last dahlias of June, and onto a street out of his youth, where the shadowy widows from five o'clock Mass were filing by. But now it was he, not they, who crossed the street, so they w...
It surely can be no offence to state, that the progress of science has led to new views, and that the consequences that can be deduced from the knowledge of a hundred facts may be very different from those deducible from five. It is also possible tha...
Narcissus knew only too well what a charming golden bird had flown to him. This hermit soon sensed a kindred soul in Goldmund, in spite of their apparent contrasts. Narcissus was dark and spare; Goldmund, a radiant youth. Narcissus was analytical, a ...
From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I was different I was not raised; as others were My passions from a common sense of ideas. From the same source I have taken Thus, this is art that connects mankind My pains; I could not awaken Re...
He had read much of things as they are, and talked with too many people. Well-meaning philosophers had taught him to look into the logical relations of things, and analyse the processes which shaped his thoughts and fancies. Wonder had gone away, and...
There is an open circle.” This mantra is what my high school coaches would say to me during wrestling practice when they knew that I was physically exhausted and was about to rest for a moment. There was an open circle on the wrestling mat, and if ...