He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that ...
You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasn’t it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had been used and used again. It was the stuff of amateur poetry. And she, having so little experience crafting a story, would be th...
Ever since 1945 the federal government has held and indeed increased its importance as the first customer of the American economy. Government spending had been the primary economic stimulant and to increase it had been the goal of hundreds of interes...
My house completed, and tried and not found wanting by a first Cape Cod year, I went there to spend a fortnight in September. The fortnight ending, I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer ...
There are no known non-biblical references to a historical Jesus by any historian or other writer of the time during and shortly after Jesus's purported advent. As Barbara G. Walker says, 'No literate person of his own time mentioned him in any known...
It would be both foolish and cumbersome to continue our everyday existences in bliss without first denying to ourselves, for the sake of excusing our own repugnance, the inherent cruelty from which modern civilization was conceived...And there can be...
If it happens that the human race doesn't make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things who liv...
He told them therefore that He was not a Teacher asking for a disciple who would parrot His sayings; He was a Saviour Who first disturbed a conscience and then purified it. But many would never get beyond hating the disturber. The Light is no boon, e...
...it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool. You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait -- a portrait that, probably, when y...
I still wake longing for your touch Skin open wound raw because I was told that's the only way to heal. I couldn't tame you you weren't meant for domestication meant to roam free but I still remember the first time you said "I love you" a whisper bar...
Sure I’m alone but I don’t feel lonely. Some people regard loneliness as a disease and to be honest, this is the first time in years I have been totally alone. No girl around to put my hand under her chin in the dead of night or feel her warm bre...
There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake. It is the Human desire for Lov...
A king should first gain the confidence of the foe and when he has gained it should spring on him like a wolf. The foe should be struck down so effectively that he may never agin raise his head. The foe should be slain by the arts of conciliation, ex...
Because you are not scared to admit out loud that you're afraid. Or to ask questions... and because you know that your husband is in pain, you will go to him and not threaten his ability to provide with words that cut and burn in another's mind forev...
It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them - and then they leap. I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnosti...
I step outside, easy at first... there is noise; I don't hear it. There are people; I don't see them... I see the water; I am alongside it. There is a big hill; I conquer it. A mile of grass; I fly across it. With each step I am stronger, and then fa...
I am not a believer in love at first sight. For love, in its truest form, is not the thing of starry-eyed or star-crossed lovers, it is far more organic, requiring nurturing and time to fully bloom, and, as such, seen best not in its callow youth but...
First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to re...
Inspirations sleet through the universe continuously. Their destination, as if they cared, is the right mind in the right place at the right time. They hit the right neuron, there's a chain reaction, and a little while later someone is blinking furio...
I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add...
You'll need to do a better job, Annabelle. No more dates like the first one tonight." "Agreed. And no more making me sit through your Power Matches introductions, either. As you so wisely pointed out, helping Portia Powers isn't in my best interests....