I like cigarettes, Miss Taggart. I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great ...
Saying thanks to the world, and acknowledging your own accomplishments, is a great way to feel good and stay positive.
....a good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable - books that provide nothing but information can produce that resu...
Real mothers don't just listen with humble embarrassment to the elderly lady who offers unsolicited advice in the checkout line when a child is throwing a tantrum. We take the child, dump him in the lady's cart, and say, "Great. Maybe you can do a be...
So, have we solved the secret of happiness? "I believe so," he said Are you going to tell me? "Yes.Ready?" Ready. "Be satisfied." That's it? "Be greatful." That's it? "For what you have.For the love you receive.And for what God has given you." That's...
How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with ...
It is, then, not simply a question of black power or white power, but of how meaningfully to reenfranchise power. This, as I think Martin Luther King understood, is the real point, the real gift to America, of the struggle of the black people. In acc...
Do not let your peace depend on the words of men. Their thinking well or badly of you does not make you different from what you are. Where are true peace and glory? Are they not in Me? He who neither cares to please men nor fears to displease them wi...
Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grote...
Samuel understood at last why this being hated men and women so much: he hated them because they were so like himself, because the worst of the was mirrored in them. He was the source of all that was bad in men and women, but he had none of the great...
You sometimes heard about the marginally talented wives of powerful men publishing children's books or designing handbags or, most commonly, becoming photographers. There might even be a show of the wife's work in a well-known but slightly off galler...
If 'dead' matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialists that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful, powers, and may...
Inrealized how valuable the art and practice of writing letters are, and how important it is to remind people of what a treasure letters--handwritten letters--can be. In our throwaway era of quick phone calls, faxes, and email, it's all to easy never...
May we do it again? She sounds remarkably bright and cheerful. 'And I didn't bleed. My mother said I would experience great agony.' 'Half an hour.' 'I beg your pardon? Your mumbling.' Eyes closed, I attempt to enunciate a little more clearly. 'In hal...
Great beauty and youth capture our attention, excite a deep pleasure; however, why shouldn't our souls gaze at a countenance over which the years have passed? Isn't there a story there, one unknown, full of pain or beauty, which pours its reflection ...
We Pashtuns love shoes but don't love the cobbler; we love our scarves and blankets but do not respect the weaver. Manual workers made a great contribution to our society but received no recognition, and this is the reason so many of them joined the ...
To some perhaps it may appear a little strained to place this last-mentioned form of attachment on a level of importance with the others, and such persons may be inclined to deny to the homogenic [...] or homosexual love that intense, that penetratin...
The more Adams thought about the future of his country, the more convinced he became that it rested on education. Before any great things are accomplished, he wrote to a correspondent, a memorable change must be made in the system of education and kn...
The image of the "presence," whatever it was, waiting there for him to go--this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more e...
He reads much; He is a great observer and he looks Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays, As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music; Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit That could be mo...
Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race - of carrying knowledge into the realm...