My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of...
By approaching my problems with "What might make things a little better?" rather than "What is the solution?" I avoid setting myself up for certain frustration. My experience has shown me that I am not going to solve anything in one stroke; at best I...
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish with the right line, the right bait, at the right time of day, at the right sort of spot, and if he has the right recreational or commercial licence he may, with practise and experience...
May we do it again? She sounds remarkably bright and cheerful. 'And I didn't bleed. My mother said I would experience great agony.' 'Half an hour.' 'I beg your pardon? Your mumbling.' Eyes closed, I attempt to enunciate a little more clearly. 'In hal...
If I was drunk, I wouldn’t be here at all. And really, this is pretty good for four White Russians.” “White what?” I almost sat down but was afraid the chair might dematerialize beneath me. “It’s a drink,” he said. “You’d think I wo...
The mountain has left me feeling renewed, more content and positive than I’ve been for weeks, as if something has been given back after a long absence, as if my eyes have opened once again. For this time at least, I’ve let myself be rooted in the...
We often forget our human connectedness. Throughout my life, I have felt the greatest beauty lies in this connection. It has been in the deepest connections with others that I have experienced the greatest degree of learning, healing and transformati...
Observing people taking in the work I had watched Robert create was an emotional experience. It had left our private world. It was what I had always wanted for him, but I felt a slight pang of possessiveness sharing it with others. Overriding that fe...
Our past cannot be changed, and to be preoccupied with it is inefficient in time and effort. Likewise, by fretting over the future, we only exhaust ourselves, making us less able to effectively respond when the future is actually upon us. By worrying...
...one could accept Muhammad as a genuine mystic—just as one could accept Joan of Arc's voices as having genuinely been heard by her, or the revelations of Saint John the Divine as being that troubled soul's 'real' experiences—without needing als...
As the excesses of 'molecular gastronomy' have slowly faded away, like the smell of a particularly pungent fart, a breath of fresh culinary air has swept across the country. I've been passionately interested in food and drink for more than 30 years a...
Tell me what it is like to die," I answered. He dismounted from his horse, looking at me strangely the whole while. "You experience something similar every day," he said softly. "It is as familiar to you as bread and butter." "Yes," I said. "It is li...
Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor's mask and made him human. B...
People who are diagnosed as having "generalized anxiety disorder" are afflicted by three major problems that many of us experience to a lesser extent from time to time. First and foremost, says Rapgay, the natural human inclination to focus on threat...
It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of under...
Why couldn't Rachel be a little more specific about the type of person she was? Goodness knew; if she were a hippie I'd talk to her about her drug experiences, the zodiac, tarot cards. If she were left-wing I'd look miserable, hate Greece, and eat ba...
I would be happy to take credit for all of the wonderful experiences I describe in my novels, but my life isn’t quite that rich. Unfortunately we authors are sometimes forced to use other people’s lives, too.” “Sounds rather beastly,” the j...
Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment help us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments — but all o...
Somewhere between poetry and science, somewhere between heaven and earth, clairaudience is born. Clairaudience is the sweetest mystery any human being could ever experience. Fortunately, it is the most contagious, too. Most, if not all, of my student...
This is the law of nature that every person who is born has to go through certain kind of painful experiences. The painful issues keep coming throughout life. As you progress on the spiritual path their impact become lesser and lesser and finally a s...
I had found by experience that putting things down on paper helped to clear the mind in precisely the same way, as Mrs. Mullet had taught me, that an eggshell clarifies the consommé or the coffee, which, of course, is a simple matter of chemistry. T...
