So many people are so terrified to be alone that they settle for a loveless relationship or stay trapped in a miserable one for months and even years on end. But as it turns out, alone means unique, unequaled, and unexcelled. Or in other words: Unpar...
I wanted to listen to him, but I did not want to answer now. That strange responsibility we feel towards others when they speak, to offer them the solace of any answer. Poor humans! And anyway he had not asked a question. He was merely floating there...
There are times when we suffer innocently at other people’s hands. When that occurs, we are victims of injustice. But that injustice happens on a horizontal plane. No one ever suffers injustice on the vertical plane. That is, no one ever suffers un...
Beyond the boundaries of herself, her parents and the enclosing garden walls, were open fields and other waiting places she still knew nothing of – lies of the land, perhaps. What Katie did know is that out there in the lonely nowhere was a special...
But it was a matter of great consolation to her, that what brought evil to herself would bring good to her sister; and Elinor, on the other hand, suspecting that it would not be in her power to avoid Edward entirely, comforted herself by thinking, th...
I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts. I have never, not even once, acted on the basis of any doctrine or philosophy.I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respe...
Why do people stay together? Putting aside ‘for the sake of the children’, and ‘the habit of years’ and ‘economic reasons’ as lawyers’ nonsense – it’s not much more – if one really does try to find out why it is that people don’...
Until now, you have always lived your life alone. Every decision you’ve made has been for you and you alone. Now, and for the rest of your days, your life will be tied to another’s. Every decision you make will be for both of you. What one does a...
It is as hard for our children to believe that we are not omnipotent as it is for us to know it, as parents. But that knowledge is necessary as the first step in the reassessment of power as something other than might, age, privilege, or the lack of ...
I was well aware how famously or infamously secretive these old institutions can be, no more than ourselves, a mixture of worry, lost power, perhaps even concern. That the truth may not always be desirable, that one thing leads to another thing, that...
But there were too many points at which the other self could invade the self he wanted to preserve, and there were too many forms of invasion: certain words, sounds, lights, actions his hands or feet performed, and if he did nothing at all, heard and...
He(Samuel, known as 'the Pea') was as apprehensive, weak and nervous about things as Swaminathan was. The bond between them was laughter. They were able to see together the same absurdities and incongruities in things. The most trivial and unnoticeab...
She was satisfied with the answer God had given Moses from the burning bush when Moses had seen fit to question. Who are you? Mose asks, and God comes back from that bush just as pert as you like: I Am, Who I AM. In other words, Mose, stop beatin aro...
You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads. I've always thought--put together all those random pieces form everyone who's ever known you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and yo...
Maybe that was why another part of me--a very small part--had wanted to kiss Wallace then. Both sides of his mouth, between his brows, and every other place those stupid worry lines marred his expression. That part of me had wanted to hold him tight ...
People can attach themselves to something--an idea, another person, a desire--with an impossibly strong grip, and in the case of restless ghosts, a grip stronger than death. Will is a powerful thing. Will--it's supposed to be a good treat, a more det...
Then there was Mani, the Mighty Good-For-Nothing. He towered above all the other boys of the class. He seldom brought any books to the class, and never bothered about homework. He came to the class, monopolized the last bench, ans slept bravely. No t...
He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books...
... when she called to mind all this utter and crushing misery that had come upon my aunts' old music-master, she was moved to very real grief, and shuddered to think of that other grief, so different in its bitterness, which Mlle. Vinteuil must now ...
Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, m...
When our hearts are in a state of coherence, we more easily experience feelings such as love, care, appreciation, and kindness. On the other hand, feelings such as irritation, anger, hurt, and envy are more likely to occur when the head and heart are...
