Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers ar...
A loved husband is the companion of companions, the supreme sharer, and a happy wife often sounds trivial when she is really sampling and enjoying their mutual and unique confidence. But in doing it, she largely loses her power of independent decisio...
And infatuated be damned. He was near to being blinded by his attraction to her. He was in love, damn it all. He disliked her, he resented her, he disapproved of almost everything about her, yet he was head over ears in love with her, like a foolish ...
Oh, God,” Wilhelm prayed, “Let me out of my trouble. Let me out of my thoughts, and let me do something better with myself. For all the time I have wasted I am very sorry. Let me out of this clutch and into a different life. For I am all balled u...
The surveillance, he thought, essentially should be maintained. And, if possible, by me. I should always be watching, watching and figuring out, even if I never do anything about what I see; even if I just sit there and observe silently, not seen: th...
Belief is not subject to the will. Men think as they must. Children do not, and cannot, believe exactly as they were taught. They are not exactly like their parents. They differ in temperament, in experience, in capacity, in surroundings. And so ther...
Simple shifts in points of view can open doors to expansions of consciousness as easily as rigid dispositions can close hearts and minds to such elevated awareness. It generally depends on whether you allow fear and violence to rule your actions or w...
Do you want to hang out? At your place or something?" Hanging out with Jimmy Hailler will mean that I have to say hello to him every day. I'm not ready to say hello to him every day. Too much commitment. It's bad enough that I'm sharing chocolate bro...
It was the quartets of Beethoven (numbers 12,13,14, and 15) which over fifty years, created and expanded the the audience of listeners to the quartets of Beethoven, thus achieving, as all masterpieces do, progress if not in the quality of artists, at...
Besides," she says, eyes twinkling mischievously, "it'd never work out between us. I'm still holding a candle for Professor Haven." "How could I compete with a middle-aged English professor?" "Well," she says, "you could do, but it'd be useless. Some...
Under the sanctuary are the catacombs where the dead wait for resurrection. The living do not venture there. The caverns here underneath the Sanctuary are illuminated only by dim shafts of light from the sanctuary. The walls are etched with flowers o...
I’ll deal with the consequences one way or another, but I’m sick and tired of sitting back and wondering ‘what if.’ I’ve been a puppet for too long. Now that I know I have the potential to fight, I need to cut the strings and do something a...
When you move as much as I have...you know how it ends. You promise to stay in touch with people, but it doesn't work out. It never does. And you forgot about what the friendship used to be like, why you liked that person. And I hated it. And I just ...
To realise your ambitions, you must take a few minutes each day to meditate on your ultimate goal, not doing anything, just thinking about it. You must try to imagine how you will feel when you achieve your dreams, and that feeling is like a memo in ...
When a poet settled down to write a poem, could he foresee the lines he would write? Did his head constantly spin with riddles and rhymes and was his only job to put them down? What if he couldn’t get them to make sense, and no one, not even the pe...
All that I did," she said, "everything I tried to do. All for nothing." Nothing is done entirely for nothing, said the fox of dreams. Nothing is wasted. You are older, and you have made decisions, and you are not the fox you were yesterday. Take what...
Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded...
If a person is in the habit of talking bad about others while around you, that person is more than likely talking bad about you while around others. Likewise, if a person is in the habit of talking good about others while around you, that person is m...
This is the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and memoirs I read--that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him for what He is and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as when He prospers us; that there is no re...
Good docents often begin by asking the viewer, “What do you see in this work?” The idea that the expert should be allowed to constrain the interpretation of others rightly offends our sensibilities about museums and art. It ought to offend us jus...
Audacious faith is not passive. Neither is audacious prayer. Every aspiration you have in prayer needs an accompanying action. Otherwise you're not really praying. You're just pontificating. You do the natural. Trust God for the super.
