That love, which is the highest joy, which is divine simplicity itself, is not for you moderns, you children of reflection. It works only evil in you. As soon as you wish to be natural, you becomecommon. To you nature seems something hostile; you hav...
The last glow of sundown dims away. Stars appear in the east. Night encloses us. The ocean seems to enlarge. When you’re adrift at night, imagination and perception merge. They have to. You can’t see as well, as far, as deep. You tie knots by mus...
I took ten days off and by 11 o’clock on the first morning I had drunk fourteen cups of coffee, read all the newspapers and the Guardian and then… and then what? By lunchtime I was so bored that I decided to hang a few pictures. So I found a hamm...
Now I have very little respect for the electoral system in the United States. I could have respected it in the early days, when the country was small and we had small population. The system that we have in the United States was set up at a time when ...
In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren't enough euros to go around. "The entire EU is short on coins." And I say, ...
Neither black/red/yellow nor woman but poet or writer. For many of us, the question of priorities remains a crucial issue. Being merely "a writer" without a doubt ensures one a status of far greater weight than being "a woman of color who writes" eve...
I know that whatever the complex origins of my own homosexuality are, there have been conscious choices I've made to indulge - and therefore to intensify, probably - my homoerotic inclinations. As I look back over the course of my life, I regret the ...
Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to...
Tiffany got up early and lit the fires. When her mother came down, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, very hard. “Er…aren’t you supposed to do that sort of thing by magic, dear?” said her mother, who’d never really got the hang of what wi...
This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking...
Relationships, like all human experiences, are transient; they change every day and are meant to be enjoyed in the present. When I hear people say you need to "work" at a relationship, what that often really means is just seeing through the day-to-da...
Each cherry took about three seconds to eat. Three seconds to eat, but at least five years in the making. It seemed unfair to the hard-working cherry tree. The least I could do was to devote my attention to the cherry in those three seconds, really a...
Aging offers certain rewards that youth cannot. It represents the culmination of our efforts in building self-knowledge, families, friendships, careers, and the sense of self that comes from facing whatever adversity we may have encountered. Aging is...
Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way. In an exact sense, the only thing we actually can study in our life is that on whi...
Nice work in their, Herondale, setting the place on fire," Gabriel observed. "Good thing we were there to clean up after you, or the whole plan would have gone down in flames, along with the shreds of your reputation." "Are you implying that shreds o...
The elk that you glimpse in the summer, those at the forest edge, are survivors of winter, only the strongest. You see one just before dusk that summer, standing at the perimeter of the meadow so it can step back to the forest and vanish. You can't h...
The UK office for National Statistics has identified the things that matter most for happiness as "health, relationships, work, and the environment" - a list that tallies closely with our basic goods. Given that our lives have not noticeably improved...
I... There was a time when I stopped talking. Just like you. My reasons were a little bit different, but I think the feelings of being ashamed of myself and hating myself are the same. Here, it says to "like yourself." What does that mean? Good thing...
I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eye...
When it shall be desired to enlighten man, let him always have truth laid before him. Instead of kindling his imagination by the idea of those pretended goods that a future state has in reserve for him, let him be solaced, let him be succoured; or, a...
Congratulation to Trevor Noah on his daily show, We dont need more Trevor's out there, but we need more people who like Trevor Noah, will unveil the possibilities out there. Who would do things we didn't think of doing. Who will wow us. Who would do ...
