Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do somethin...
When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then...
I love the way she feels in the curve of my arm. I love her unpretentious beauty, her intelligence, her nerve. But could I ever love her? The concept of falling in love is completely foreign, something I can’t bring myself to accept. Her hair pillo...
A statement about luck is a statement about the mind, not about the world... We find what seems to have been the lucky break or the big mistake, and so we thank our lucky stars that we took the road less traveled or curse the fates that sent that lit...
Please," Kendra said. "Think of all the lives that will be destroyed." "I have," Mark said. "Believe me, darling, I grasp all aspects of this, I really do. But how much has the public I'm protecting worried about me? My sanity, my happiness, my right...
This is not written for the young or the light of heart, not for the tranquil species of men whose souls are content with the simple pleasures of family, church, or profession. Rather, I write to those beings like myself whose existence is compounded...
Secularism drew a radical distinction between public and private life, in which religion, in any traditional sense, was relegated to the private sphere with no hold over public life. There are many charms in secularism, in particular the freedom to b...
The only consolation, even for someone like him who had been a good man in bed, was sexual peace: the slow, merciful extinction of his venereal appetite. At eighty-one years of age he had enough lucidity to realize that he was attached to this world ...
I will say that my philosophy as a writer, since the very start of my career, has been one of “show, don’t tell.” Whatever might be happening in my books, I try to put the reader into the middle of it, rather than summarizing the action. That r...
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though u...
There are few ways in which good people do more harm to those who take them seriously than to defend the gospel with arguments that won't hold water. Many of the difficulties encountered by young people going to college would be avoided if parents an...
Among the greatest tragedies is a person who believes that they aren't meant to win--by winning I mean find their purpose, passion and joy in life. They believe that other people have better DNA or happiness genes or something, but that they themselv...
God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation t...
And he began, "What chance or destiny has brought you here before your final day? And who is he who leads your pilgrimage?" "Up there in life beneath the quiet stars I lost my way," I answered, "in a valley, before I'd reached the fullness of my age....
In my quest to find Green Cottenham, I also discovered an unsettling truth that when white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connec...
Something went klunk. Like a nickel dropping in a soda machine. One of those small insights that explains everything. This was puberty for these boys. Adolescence. The first date, the first kiss, the first chance to hold hands with someone special. D...
There were still few rules at Down House, and Charles was not very good at enforcing the ones he and Emma did make. This was well known among his children. In 1855, when Lenny was about five, Charles walked in to find his son jumping up and down and ...
If you wanted to bestow the grandiose title of "most successful organization in modern history," you would struggle to find a more obviously worthy nominee than the federal government of the United States. In its earliest stirrings, it established a ...
Which do you think is more valuable to humanity? a. Finding ways to tell humans that they have free will despite the incontrovertible fact that their actions are completely dictated by the laws of physics as instantiated in our bodies, brains and env...
I am not here to serve myself. I am not here to be lauded, petted, admired or ‘affirmed.’ I am here to build men, cultures and kingdoms. When I find myself in the midst of difficulties and pain, will I persevere, or will I become a coward and pit...
Constantly seeking approval means you’re perpetually worried that others are forming negative judgments of you. This steals the fun, ingenuity, and spontaneity from your life. Flip the switch on this habit. If you’re lucky enough to have somethin...
