To use the term 'clerk' as an insult is simply a banal vulgarity; Pessoa and Svevo, however would have welcomed it as a just attribute of the poet. The latter does not resemble Achilles or Diomedes, ranting on their war-chariots, but is more like Uly...
Get some perspective. A lot of things that may aggravate you only do so because you have the luxury of not wrestling with bigger issues. Today, be thankful for everything you have: being alive, your friends and family, your health, a roof over your h...
Like all of us sinners, General Betrishchev was endowed with many virtues and many defects. Both the one and the other were scattered through him in a sort of picturesque disorder. Self-sacrifice, magnanimity in decisive moments, courage, intelligenc...
For a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw s...
I have realized that part of being Dauntless is being willing to make things more difficult for yourself in order to be self-sufficient. There's nothing especially brave about wandering dark streets with no flashlight, but we are not supposed to need...
Beautiful building,” Phoebe said. Sam nodded. “Classical Revival,” he said. It was yet another display of his seemingly unending knowledge that both made her proud and made her feel very small. Maybe if she had gone to college she would have le...
But Amy Pond. Oh! The Sea had briefly been able to touch her mind — it knew that the Doctor was the most important thing in the world to her, and it had given a copy of him to her. If they spent enough time together, the copy would become every bit...
Ah, Evie,” she heard him say softly, “I must have a heart, after all…because right now it aches like the devil.” “Only your heart?” she asked ingenuously, making him laugh. He lowered her to the bed, his eyes sparkling wickedly. “Also a...
In order for our minds to comprehend something, there must be an appropriately structured neural structure called a 'frame' that makes it possible to contextualize, make proper sense of, and mentally 'see' the thing. Our understanding of the world is...
He can learn things about me through your blood. Can learn about my sister!" She briefly covered her mouth. "He can see everything we've done! I don't want that leech to know what we do in private." Lothaire strolled up, making a scoffing sound. "As ...
Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The t...
There were some things it was better not to know. They caused "metaphysical" anguish, for which there was as yet no remedy. When it was worried, the Tribe was inhibited and unable to act. It was very bad for everyone. The Tribe started to produce tox...
Now here's the thing about being a little off-center; you're never sure if you're a bona fide loon or if you have insight that other people don't have.You have to navigate through life using a kind of psychic gyroscope to keep from falling too far on...
Why do you doubt your senses and your soul?’ ‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects either of them. A slight disorder of the stomach or the mind makes them cheats. You could be an undigested bit of Baloney paired with my lecture not...
I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our liv...
There were no milestones in the Copper Country. Often a traveler could only measure the progress of a journey by the time it took to get from each spoiled or broken thing to the next: a half-day’s walk from a dry well to the muzzle of a cannon poki...
One of Mom's favorite passages from Gilead was: "This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it i...
What is vital and healthy does not necessarily survive... An art, a whole civilization, may at any time slip through men's fingers in a very few years and be gone beyond recovery. If we are alive when such a thing is happening we shall hardly notice ...
You made them hate me." Said Ender "So? What will you do about it? Crawl in a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they'll love you again? There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do ...
But if one doesn't really exist, one wonders why..." she hesitated. "Why one makes such a fuss about things," Anthony suggested. "All that howling and hurrahing and gnashing of teeth. About the adventures of a self that isn't really a self—just the...
Because I’m emotionally immature, I’d prefer letting go of you early and always remembering you as you were, rather than hanging on and letting things develop and blossom and then eventually decay.
