Many parents have experienced the fact that kids don’t seem to honor their parents the way that previous generations of children did. The question we need to ask is, how did we get to this position? How did this lack of respect infiltrate even the ...
One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manner...
Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere. In effect natural selection operates upon the prod...
Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR's thinking, "he is our bloody tyrant." In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervene...
Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for exampl...
She [Catherine of Siena] found a place of refuge in a lonely wood, where some hermits lived. It is generally thought that this brotherhood was the community of hermits in Vallombrosa, founded by St. John Gualbert, the man who had spared the life of h...
She was of traditional build herself, but her figure was largely concealed by the folds of a generously cut shift dress made out of a flecked green fabric. It was like a tent, thought Mma Ramotswe--a camouflage tent of the sort that the Botswana Defe...
Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self--to the mediating intellect--as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not ex...
it has to be emphasized that if the pain were readily describable most of the countless sufferers from this ancient affliction would have been able to confidently depict for their friends and loved ones (even their physicians) some of the actual dime...
It turns out that the men who ultimately, who unpretentiously value peace are willing to sacrifice their own peace of mind in order to render it. The question is, 'Who, between opposing forces, would do such a thing?' It seems only theoretical albeit...
Normally, to decide whether we are alive we do not look outside of ourselves to find out if we are nourishing and generating life. We look into ourselves to find out how strong and healthy and vital we are. But the notion of the seed that dies demand...
Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, wh...
And if you don’t think I can hold my own against all those eighteenth-century mortals you were out tagging, then you’re a fool, Casanova.” ... “Oh, yes, I know all about you.” He went still. “What are you talking about?” “I was alive ...
Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these occasions that I realize how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about babies, past, present, and to come), ...
First, it is a commitment to particularism, to giving priority to the specificity of particulars, not to abstractions and generalities that divert our attention away from concrete realities. Idealizations tend to be partial and distorting, obscuring ...
When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Inst...
It takes two to tango” isn’t even true on the dance floor. One person can do a lot of evil all on his or her own. But the Theory of Mutual Blame arose sometime before Doc was even born. Perhaps it was a takeoff on Freud’s seduction theory or th...
Author says that, while Eisenhower had other intellectual mentors, he learned how to lead men from Gen. Walter Krueger. Krueger was the first American enlisted man to rise to four-star general, and he so identified with those he led that he once invi...
High School students in America debate why President Roosevelt didn't bomb the rail lines to Hitler's camps. Their children may ask, a generation from now, why the West stared at far clearer satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps, and did nothing.
Remember I told you I’ve taken a vow of chastity. You understand what that means, right? Yeah,” he said. “You’re very generous. I think that’s cool.” I didn’t quite get his answer, but I didn’t want to prolong the conversation. [...] ...
Today the word "hero" has been diminished. confused with "celebrity." But in my father's generation the word meant something. celebrities seek fame. They take actions to get attention. Most often, the actions they take have no particular moral conten...
