Nevertheless, (Jefferson) believed that the habit of skepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving government to the wolves. He taugh...
There is much that science doesn't understand, many mysteries still to be resolved. In a Universe tens of billions of light-years across and some ten or fifteen billion years old, this may be the case forever. We are constantly stumbling on new surpr...
But I try not to think with my gut. If I’m serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is...
Good and evil keep happening in this world. It just takes a little longer for us to take the bad in our stride. And just when we think we've come to terms with bad, we're shocked to be haunted by that one query whose answer is ever as elusive - why o...
A sharp and familiar pang pierced his heart, rattled around his ribs, and then settled in his stomach like a rotting, dead weight. He took a swig of his Jack on the rocks, the burn not quite dulling the ache that had haunted him for two decades. God,...
I’m haunted. We all are, I guess. We’re parentless, friendless, unloved, abandoned. The spirits of our deceased emotional anchors and proofs of existence will follow and demean us until we too roam a quiet lifeless world alongside them — unable...
If only certain things had been preventable, his life would have unfurled in front of him as intended, like a lush Oriental carpet. No surprises, no detours. Just a thick tapestry of days and nights that at the end of his time on earth, he could roll...
I began to doubt that I would ever know the truth of what transpired, or who those people really were. But all that changed one rainy August afternoon, when I was surprised by a dead man who had answers.
You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people wh...
If people fainted from too much thinking I’d scarcely ever be conscious,” Tabitha began at once. “I think and think all the time, and I’ve never fainted – not once.” She looked over at Barney enviously. “Why do the best things always ha...
Since you can't touch me, you made something that could, didn't you?" I said. "Yes." My world slowed and I closed my eyes. "I am going yo give you my heart noe," I whispered. "Please don't break it again.
In El-harím, there lived a man, a man with yellow eyes. To me, he said, "Beware the whispers, for they whisper lies. Do not wrestle with the demons of the dark, Else upon your mind they'll place a mark; Do not listen to the shadows of the deep, Else...
Memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand--evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil shall I do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes.
If there was a spectre haunting France in the 1780's, it was not that of revolution but that of state bankruptcy. The whole social and political structure of France stood in the way of tapping the wealth of the better-off, the only sure way of emergi...
Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people...but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helpe...
There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.
No woman will ever take care of my children but me, she said. I will not allow it, do you understand? And after I am gone Madge Toxley, if you try to make them yours, then you will live to regret it.
I visited my old haunt, but somehow without all my old friends there with me, the cemetery just wasn’t the same.
Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every t...
There was this constant urge in me to tear my insides apart, I didn't know why. By the time I made my mind that it was impossible for me to do, there alighted the fear, haunting me with the words that rang constantly in my head, "You're not brave eno...
My theory is that Kurt had a lot of residual pain from his childhood. And when you pile that on top of his experience in World War II - he was in Dresden when it was bombed and saw a city annihilated. When you combine those two things, my impression ...
