Magrat liked to think she was good with children, and worried that she wasn’t. She didn’t like them very much, and worried about this too. Nanny Ogg seemed to be effortlessly good with children by alternately and randomly giving them either a swe...
So that’s your sister?” asks Dee in a quiet voice. “Yeah.” “The one you risked your life for?” “Yeah.” The twins nod politely in that automatic way that people do when they don’t want to say something insulting. “Your family any b...
You don't realize - the great thing about change is how quickly we get used to it. So I'm not complaining. the more things change,the more they don't stay the same. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. They might not change everywhere all at once - b...
Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different. It can give you the feeling that you belong to the past as well as the present, and it can help you realize that your present will someday be someone else’s p...
The slight, the facile and the merely self-glorifying tend to drop away over the centuries, and what we are left with is the bedrock: Homer and Milton, the Greek tragedian and Shakespeare, Chaucer and Cervantes and Swift, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and ...
If your church is not going to support the committed same-sex relationships of LGBT congregants, be honest about that. Bait-and-switch is deceptively un-Christ-like and serves to push gay and transgender believers farther away each time the deception...
Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Gust have to go for the long haul. Curiosity's like a fun friend you can't really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it o...
There were times . . . when it occurred to me that I was repeating my mother's life. Usually this thought struck me as funny. But if I happened to be tired, or if there were extra bills to pay and no money to pay them with, it seemed awful. I'd think...
It’s just that you go so crazy being alone like that. Sometimes he’d forget my water or food and I’d cry and cry and cry.” She stops talking and looks out the window. “I would try to tell myself stories to pass the time. Fairy tales. Parts ...
Your soul has a special mission. Your soul is supremely conscious of it. Maya, illusion or forgetfulness, makes you feel that you are finite, weak and helpless. This is not true. You are not the body. You are not the senses. You are not the mind. The...
Like the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes some while to be felt. When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may well fail to comprehend it and ...
God in His sovereign goodness often uses the painful and at times debilitating injury of a spear thrower to make us readier for His service. ... One thing you discover about spear throwers is that though it’s not necessary for them to be good, it�...
By 1870, Britain’s steam engines generated 4 million horsepower, equivalent to the work of 40 million men, who—if industry had still depended on muscles—would have eaten more than three times Britain’s entire wheat output.
She started life with a number, not a name. Class: S, No. 13295. She has them memorized by rote, though nobody ever calls her that. The Scientists feel foolish addressing her in long, bewildering strings of alphanumerics. They have told her so themse...
Wealth isn't always measured in dollar signs. We each have time, talent and creativity, all of which can be powerful forces for positive change. Share your blessings in whatever form they come and to whatever level you have been blessed.
Perhaps there’s no better act of simplification than climbing a mountain. For an afternoon, a day, or a week, it’s a way of reducing a complicated life into a simple goal. All you have to do is take one step at a time, place one foot in front of ...
Do you want to be with Dave for the rest of your life?” Then he rips off a piece of paper and picks up the smallest charcoal stick from my set. He writes something. He passes it over to me. It says: Time will tell. “And while you’re waiting,”...
Nice work," I commented drily. "How old was that littlest one? Five? Did she put up a terrible fight?" "I feared for my life," Zach said with a perfectly straight face. "You must be bored, Julia. You usually have a sharper sense of humor than that." ...
Friendship, true friendship is a curious dance. Why does one recognize and embrace one soul and yet not another. What is that? That something unspoken. Perhaps it is a long ago remembrance of another time, another place, those same familiar eyes shin...
We did sometimes play jokes on each other. It was fun, until about a month ago when he attacked me with nerf guns when I walked in the door. I slipped while running away and fell on the coffee table. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be winning the most ...
I explained to him - as I withdrew the cup, ripped open the sachet and dunked the tea bag - that tea was an infusion, which meant that it was vital for the water to be actually boiling when it came into contact with the leaves. He looked at me furiou...
