[Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poe...
They wonder much to hear that gold which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has value, should yet be thought of less value than this metal. That a man of lead, wh...
You are a manager nonetheless who you are. There is a business worth keeping and you are the manager of that business. Yes, the business of your life. There is a big asset worth managing. Yes, your choices. As a manager of your own life, your choices...
When I should have been producing obscure volumes of verse entitled the Triumph of Humpty Dumpty or the Nose with the Luminous Dong! Or at best, like Clare, "weaving fearful vision" ... A frustrated poet in every man. Though it is perhaps a good idea...
If you were to tell the thing down at the bottom of that pit it had napped through forty-two presidential inaugurations, eight British coronations, sixteen popes and three number ones by the Danish pop group, Aqua, it would have told you to stop talk...
It is possible for music to be labeled "Christian" and be terrible music. It could lack creativity and inspiration. The lyrics could be recycled cliches. That "Christian" band could actually be giving Jesus a bad name because they aren't a great band...
Here’s a 165-year old but still fitting comment on public officials who are so sure they’re right that they’ll drive over a cliff rather than compromise: “Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt – are not these the...
Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it'll look on your next resume." On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You going to cover my funeral expenses, son?" Splendidly. Ba...
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sand of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solenm main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take h...
When we see the greatness of God in even our very darkest moments, then we can be free. “Even the crappiest crap we go through glorifies God,” Amber likes to say, in her Amber way. “God makes beauty from ashes, and the devil hates when He does ...
he saw in Populism the first glimmerings of some of the great intellectual upheavals of the twentieth century—naturalism, muckraking, and hard-hitting social satire—which would eventually topple the genteel tradition of the nineteenth century. In...
The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. ... Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other wor...
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thoug...
Her heart felt as if it were breaking in her breast, bleeding and bleeding, young and fierce. From grief over the warm and ardent love which she had lost and still secretly mourned; from anguished joy over the pale, luminous love which drew her to th...
This tree, though, had not been fed on, so it was apparent that the culprit was a bull (elephant) who was filled with testosterone but no outlet for it, so he pushed over trees. It's a great release for a bull and a way of showing his strength after ...
Why has the medical profession not taken advantage of the help available from evolutionary biology, a well-developed branch of science with great potential for providing medical insights? One reason is surely the pervasive neglect of this branch of s...
When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy-girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on a minor key. It is then that you come of age and life means nothing to you. To liv...
When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on a minor key. It is then that you come of age and life means nothing to you. To liv...
I love trash. I have never believed that kitsch kills. I tell you this, so you will understand that my antipathy toward 'Love Story' is not because I am immune to either sentimentality or garbage, two qualities the book possesses in abundance. When I...
Genuine anger was one of the world’s great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn’t mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind...
Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there's a big disappointment, we don't know if that's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We don't know anything. W...
