Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the d...
Could your god and this infernal be called enemies, then?" "It is more complicated than that. God knew what was going to happen, of course. The divine has a plan for the infernal. Because all is of God and nothing of God can truly be destroyed, the i...
Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his...
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remind us that there is always more of God than we know, always more of God than we can explain, always more of God than we can show. The Trinity says God is not in a box but is bigger, much bigger than we imagine. God is...
Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there ...
The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of s...
But Shakespeare never drank coffee. Nor did Julius Caesar, or Socrates. Alexander the Great conquered half the world without even a café latte to perk him up. The pyramids were designed and constructed without a whiff of a sniff of caffeine. Coffee ...
Blindly reaching out for his bottle of Madame Beffy’s Headache Tonic, he knocked over a vase filled with glass marbles. They fell to the floor with a great clatter. As he watched them bouncing and skittering across the floor, he had an unexpected t...
Do you know why Satan is so angry all the time? Because whenever he works a particularly clever bit of mischief God uses it to serve his own Rigteous purposes." "So God uses wicked people as his tools?" "God gives us the freedom to to do great evil, ...
But you will die, Amora.” “I know.” She couldn’t help but smile at his bemusement. “It’s a fact I’ve always known, just like my ancestors before me. Don’t you see? That’s what makes us who we are. That’s what makes life valuable, ...
Work is so foundational to our makeup that it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm. Indeed, the Bible does not say we should work one day and rest six or that work and rest should be balanced evenly but directs us to...
And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves c...
God’s side is determined not by geography, but by those who do His will. If Germans, English, Japanese, and Americans prayed right, they would all be praying for the same intention: Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And what is that Wil...
This withdrawal of theology from the world of secular affairs is made more complete by the work of biblical scholars whose endlessly fascinating exercises have made it appear to the lay Christian that no one untrained in their methods can really unde...
The Poison Maiden has conceived by him, and is plumb ready to enter the divine category of mother, only one last fiend clubs her to death. The final clinch of male romanticism is that each man kills the thing he loves; whether she be Catharine in A F...
So you’ll get your kicks by exerting your will over me.” “It’s about gaining your trust and your respect, so you’ll let me exert my will over you. I will gain a great deal of pleasure, joy, even in your submission. The more you submit, the ...
Alas, God's poor ministers are just as much in the dark as we are. You must believe like old women believe, the ones that look like witches, who mumble to themselves in churches under the nose of cheap, plaster saints. As soon as you start to use you...
Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because I’m not the Gail Wynand you’d heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If you were in love you’d want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because that’s...
It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessar...
The huge round lunar clock was a gristmill. Shake down all the grains of Time—the big grains of centuries, and the small grains of years, and the tiny grains of hours and minutes—and the clock pulverized them, slid Time silently out in all direct...
I was blind and heart broken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, "I have wonderful news!" And I was like, "I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now," and Gus said, "This is wonderful news you want to hea...
