There Comes the Strangest Moment There comes the strangest moment in your life, when everything you thought before breaks free-- what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite looks upside down from how it used to be. Skin's gone pale, your brain i...
When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid's movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by then, having already signed on to the contract to forget, he no longer remembered what he had said t...
We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one else can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world....
I cannot have a man who is afraid of everything, I don't have the time to soothe insecurities and fears, I cannot have a man who is standing on a stone by a creek, watching for the fish to swim by and every time he sees a fish he says "Oh look, this ...
The old adage that people only want what they can’t have or what they can’t tame— is totally primitive. A being of higher origins will know instinctively that life on earth is a series of chances, moments and concepts. That’s really all that ...
Do you have a leather jacket? One for a ten-year-old boy?" I asked the man selling leather jackets and gloves in Covent Garden, London. "Yes, I have one right here!" And the man dug out a fine leather jacket that looked styled and tailored for a youn...
If you have ever belonged to such a community, however, you may have discovered that the trouble starts when darkness falls on your life, which can happen in any number of unsurprising ways: you lose your job, your marriage falls apart, your child ac...
Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow ful...
Frank: Listen, what am I paying my fucking dues for? This is my golf course! If I wanna play here, I will play here. If he gets hit with my titleist, that's his fucking problem. Fore! Fore! [Hits ball] Bill Foster: [the ball barely misses his head; w...
Ken: Up there, the top altar, is a vial brought back by a Flemish knight from the Crusades in the Holy Land. And that vial, do you know what it's said to contain? Ray: No, what's it said to contain? Ken: It's said to contain some drops of Jesus Chris...
At fifteen, I have taken up the burdens of a woman, and have come to feel I am one. Furthermore, I am glad of it. For I now no longer have the time to fall into such sins as I committed as a girl, when hours that were my own to spend spread before me...
i'm only human, & inadequacy is what makes us human, & if we was perfect we wdnt have nothin to strive for, so you might as well go on & forgive me pretty baby, cause i'm sorry
Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these day...
Talking about one's feelings defeats the purpose of having those feelings. Once you try to put the human experience into words, it becomes little more than a spectator sport. Everything must have a cause, and a name. Every random thought must have a ...
In my life long study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to...
I doubt that Fleming could have obtained a grant for the discovery of penicillin on that basis [a requirement for highly detailed research plans] because he could not have said, 'I propose to have an accident in a culture so that it will be spoiled b...
Self-belief, also called self-efficacy, is the kind of feeling you have when you have, like a Jedi, mastered a particular kind of skill and with its help have been able to achieve your set goals.
I have discovered fallen trees across my path and have possessed neither the strength to move them nor the patience or tenacity to find an alternative way round. I have simply returned to where I came from, and told myself there had been no other cho...
Because the plan God has for each of our lives isn't always the same plan we have for ourselves, Grace. Sometimes, our deaths have more of an impact than our births. It can inspire people to do great things, even greater than they would have had the ...
If I should die," said I to myself, "I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory - but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd.
How merciful a thing is man's ignorance of his immediate future! What a ghastly, paralysing thing it would have been if all those present could have known what was about to happen within a matter of seconds! For nothing short of pre-knowledge could h...
