Buddhism has become for me a philosophy of action and responsibility. It provides a framework of values, ideas, and practices that nurture my ability to create a path in life, to define myself as a person, to act, to take risks, to image things diffe...
Times moves differently down here in the dark. With no sunlight or shadows. No weather at all. There's no future, no right now. Nothing but your memory to keep you company. But they keep me so angry and weak. I can barely think straight. How long hav...
Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories...legends and history of man's quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pa...
I thought you could build a story that would function as a machine or else a complex of machines, each one moving separately, yet part of a process that ultimately would produce an emotion or a sequence of emotions. You could swap out parts, replace ...
When I was a boy, I would read those postcards and know exactly why my father was doing what he was doing: he was taking a stab at greatness, that is, if greatness is simply another word for doing something different from what you were already doing-...
My Parents had early given me religious Impressions, and brought me through my Childhood piously in the Dissenting Way. But I was scarce 15 when, after doubting by turns of several Points as I found them disputed in the different Books I read, . Some...
Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It me...
[...] but just as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed petty and insignificant in comparison with the darkness that overshadowed all existence, so now they seemed as petty and insignificant in comparison with the brilliant sunshine in which t...
Because you have seen something doesn't mean you can explain it. Differing interpretations will always abound, even when good minds come to bear. The kernel of indisputable information is a dot in space; interpretations grow out of the desire to make...
It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting ...
Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, auto...
Nevertheless, a distinction must be made between skepticism as a philosophical thesis and skepticism as an attitude in life. As a philosophical thesis, it is a contradictory one, since it affirms the impossibility of knowing truth, although this affi...
He has little hope that university, when he gets there next year, will be any different. Like right now, all these pupils taking notes as if their life depended on it. All for what? he wants to shout. To get into the top university, so that you can s...
If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice, those whom he calls heretics, that is, people who think, or perhaps only speak, differently upon a subject which neither party understands, he w...
(On differences between men and boys) Men know what they want. Men make concrete plans. Men own alarm clocks. Men sleep on a mattress that isn't on the floor. Men tip generously. Men buy new shampoo instead of adding water to a nearly empty bottle of...
And I like a good horror story as much as the next person so long as they kill off some men too and not just girls. But the voices Joan heard were real. There’s clear and substantiated proof they were real. She won battles that would otherwise have...
When you read my texts, you saw a curt, miserable git. And you told me so. Maybe you're right. But you know what I saw when I read yours? - Sam No. And I don't want to know. - Poppy I saw a girl who races to help others but doesn't help herself. And ...
Many of the traditional approaches to interfaith dialogue have assumed that it can be successful only if agreements are reached about amorphous concepts and themes that various traditions may have in common. These approaches have also assumed that pa...
So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but i...
If you believe the world will be a better place because you have both the desire and the means to take charge, that's the time for you to jump in. It doesn't matter if you rise up to take the lead only once or twice in your entire working life or if ...
It was as if a door had opened somewhere. Or possibly a series of doors. There was a sensation as of a breeze blowing into the house and bringing with it the half-remembered scents of childhood. There was a shift in the light which seemed to cause al...
