[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, th...
[Abusers] blame the world - circumstances, other people - for their defeats, misfortune, misconduct, and failures. The abuser firmly believes that his life is swayed by currents and persons over which he has no influence whatsoever (he has an externa...
Almost all genius up to now was one-sided—the result of a sickly constitution. One type had too much sense of the external, the other too much inner sense. Seldom could nature achieve a balance between the two—a complete constitution of genius. O...
Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences. It may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of terr...
Tragedy's language stresses that whatever is within us is obscure, many faceted, impossible to see. Performance gave this question of what is within a physical force. The spectators were far away from the performers, on that hill above the theatre. A...
As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn’t have it. It seemed to come later ...
The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature is as follows: All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. And that works all the way from the extern...
People who profess to have no faith, do not actually have no faith. They simply do not have faith as defined by the rest of the people. Many people who do not have faith as defined by the rest— do have a faith in many other good things— honesty, ...
We are all running towards a destination which doesn't exist. On our way, dogs of life keep barking at us where we respond to some and some we throw stones at. Every dog teaches a lesson we are better off without. Every knife stabs a little deeper th...
Everything depends on what is being enacted. Enactment itself, since it is almost synonymous with ceremony, is, as we have seen, part of the very fabric of our human life. We do enact things. We will enact things. No on can stop us from enacting thin...
Live that way long enough, and you will literally find yourself addicted to the acceptance of people. You will constantly need verbal affirmation. You will depend on always receiving a steady stream of invitations to events you don’t even want to a...
I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in ME--not in the external world. I a...
In neo-classical economic theory, it is claimed without evidence that people are basically self-seeking, that they want above all the satisfaction of their material desires: what economists call "maximising utility". The ultimate objective of mankind...
In the beginning, it is difficult and even painful to see the faults in yourself, the flaws in your soul, the error of your ways. But I have come to love the moments when I see my flaws and I spot my errors! It is one of the most beautiful things, re...
The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth o...
Imagine, Bishop, that you have a beloved cat, but that your cat is not with you. If you close your eyes and further imagine you are petting your cat, the same neurons in your brains are activated as if you were petting the actual cat. Our minds may k...
Hikaru Sulu: The fleet has cleared spacedock, Captain. All ships ready for warp. Christopher Pike: Set a course for Vulcan. Hikaru Sulu: Aye-Aye, Captain. Course laid in. Christopher Pike: Maximum warp. Punch it. [One by one, the rest of the star fle...
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance; commits his body To painful labor, both by sea and land; To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou li’st warm...
