What are works of art for? to educate, to be standards. To produce is of little use unless what we produce is known, is widely known, the wider known the better, for it is by being known that it works, it influences, it does its duty, it does good. W...
If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even ...
Somewhere in the notes Estraven wrote during our trek across the Gobrin Ice he wonders why his companion is ashamed to cry. I could have told him even then that it was not shame so much as fear. Now I went on through the Sinoth Valley, through the ev...
How does one hate a country, or love one?... I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to al...
Prayer is such an intimate act, a place of vulnerability. It is, hopefully, when we are our least guarded, our most honest selves. And this is good, of course; this is as it ought to be. When we come to God, we certainly want to come as honestly and ...
You hear stories like that all your life and think: cool, a ghost bus. But now we have to look at this stuff analytically... a The “ghost” of a A public conveyance, presumably, which didn't head towards the light, move on to join the choir invisi...
She told her therapist it reminded her of coming home the summer after her freshman year at Rutgers, stepping back into the warm bath of family and friends, loving it for a week or two, and then feeling trapped, dying to return to school, missing her...
The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us ...
Every one of her foxey ways was now so absolutely precious to him that I believe that if he had known for certain she was dead, and had thoughts of marrying a second time, he would never have been happy with a woman. No, indeed, he would have been mo...
What does it say?" asked my lord. "It says, `Good-night, God keep you all the night!'--just what she used to say when we were together. Every night she used to say that to me, and every morning she said, `God bless you all the day!' So you see I am q...
While all the universe and my family are still sleeping, I will walk among the red and blue twinkle-lights of the living room, to sit and gaze upon the pretty white angel atop the tree and say silent prayers, remembering what was good in the world an...
The great heroes of other ancient cultures were strong and clever and virtuous, but the great Jewish heroes copulated with slaves (Abraham), showed they were willing to allow others to have sex with their wives (also Abraham), cheated their brothers,...
There wasn't any place on my body I could hide a gun not with that sleazy dress I had to wear. And that shoe had a spike on it. What the hell else is it good for?'' '' Jesus, Redding.'' Harrison laughed. ''Haven't you seen a movie, a magazine ad… a...
The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, 'You're very good at lying.' 'Do I look like a liar?' 'You look like you enjoy lying to women,' said the girl, and into...
Of all the things I've ever done, perhaps none was more difficult than turning away from my beautiful girl and walking away, leaving her there, never to look back. But my friend Tom, my ever-faithful good friend Tom said, pointing down the hall away ...
It's always been the love of the music for me, the rawness of the notes vibrating through my body, the honesty of the sound I create that blocks out all the other shit. If you don't let all that, the music, its impact, become a part of you, then it d...
A certain amount of reverie is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It soothes the fever, occasionally high, of the brain at work, and produces in the mind a soft, fresh vapor that corrects the all too angular contours of pure thought, fills up t...
The French Revolution, which is nothing more nor less than the ideal armed with the sword, rose abruptly, and by that very movement, closed the door of evil and opened the door of good. It released the question, promulgated truth, drove away miasma, ...
Friends come and go, clothing is packed and unpacked, households are continually purged of unnecessary items, and as a result, not much sticks. it's hard at times but it makes a kid strongs in ways that most people can't understand. Teaches them that...
Percy," Apollo said, "I wouldn't worry too much. The last Great Prophecy about took almost seventy years to complete. This one may not even happen in your lifetime." I thought about the lines Rachel had spoken in that creepy voice: about storm and fi...
The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were worki...
