Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, t...
Never give up. It's like breathing—once you quit, your flame dies letting total darkness extinguish every last gasp of hope. You can't do that. You must continue taking in even the shallowest of breaths, continue putting forth even the smallest of ...
A little porch light from a distant farmhouse dimmed, feeling alone and unneeded until his smallest spark of illumination snuffed out entirely. The night fell as dark as it was quiet. Meanwhile, every secret eye within the vicinity―from insect to a...
I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and re...
The value of the student’s question is supreme. The best initial response to a question is not to answer it, per se, but to validate it, protect it, support it, and make a space for it. Like a blossom just emerging, a question is vulnerable and del...
Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you. And without feet I can make my way to you, without a mouth I can swear your name. Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you with my heart as with a hand. Stop my heart, a...
All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a littl...
So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away. Bearing up, then, must be this: the feeling of perfect frozen stillness, ...
[testing his rocket boots for the first time] Tony Stark: Okay, let's do this right. Start mark, half a meter and to the right. Dummy, look alive, you're on standby for fire safety. You, roll it. Activate hand controls... okay, we're gonna start off ...
People, her people at least, were always chasing shattered hopes. A father gazing down on dead soil, with a brood of hollow-cheeked children sitting around a barren table. A lonely maid cleaning grates and waiting for a lover who by now wouldn't even...
Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks obl...
Death is deceitful, pretending that peace is on the horizon. The truth is that chaos is left in its wake, claiming the souls of those stranded in life. Death is the enemy of love in its purest form. It's the one thing that can tear our souls out and ...
My husband, Andrius, says that evil will rule until good men or women choose to act. I believe him. This testimony was written to create an absolute record, to speak in a world where our voices have been extinguished. These writing may shock or horri...
A smile curled the corner of Xavier’s mouth. “You didn’t think I would let her walk out of my arms without knowing I would see her again soon, did you?” Bryant shrugged. “Well, no. I guess not. What are you going to do now?” The lid of th...
Eulogy Performer: Here - at this final hour, in this quiet place - Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes - extinguished now, and gone from us forever. For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought - his home ...
Look at the fire. See the colors there? Blending together. Beautifully dangerous. Red blending into orange, orange blending into yellow. Beautiful and dangerous. Feel the heat, feel the attraction to it. Let the beauty overcome you. Let the fire in, ...
For the first time in history, children are growing up whose earliest sexual imprinting derives not from a living human being, or fantasies of their own; since the 1960s pornographic upsurge, the sexuality of children has begun to be shaped in respon...
I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself th...
A strong, vague persuasion that it was better to go forward than backward, and that I could go forward— that a way, however narrow and difficult, would in time open— predominated over other feelings: its influence hushed them so far, that at last...
There came to him an image of man’s whole life upon the earth. It seemed to him that all man’s life was like a tiny spurt of flame that blazed out briefly in an illimitable and terrifying darkness, and that all man’s grandeur, tragic dignity, h...
Tony Stark: [recording a log as he tests his rocket boots] Day 11, Test 37, Configuration 2.0. For lack of a better option, Dummy is still on fire safety. [turns to robot] Tony Stark: If you douse me again, and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a ...