In England, coffeehouses were dubbed penny-universities, because for the admission price of one cent, a person could sit and be edified all day long by scholars, merchants, travelers, community leaders, gossips, and poets.
The first question we usually ask new parents is : “Is it a boy or a girl ?”. There is a great answer to that one going around : “We don’t know ; it hasn’t told us yet.” Personally, I think no question containing “either/or” deserves ...
The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even...
The journey of motherhood centers on being the person God has chosen out of all humanity and space and time to care for these souls, these beings who will exist for all eternity.
Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an ...
Resentment is the act of stabbing yourself repeatedly in the heart with a knife, hoping the other person dies.
And what would happen if we never read the classics? There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you have to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that the book lovers have more f...
When faced with a challenging or difficult situation, the best leaders most often respond with courage; less mature leaders, or nonleaders often choose another path-a path with less risk, less conflict, and less personal discomfort.
He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had left for a long time with foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had done something th...
It's important to understand that while honor is an entitlement to respect--and shame comes when you lose that title--a person of honor cares first of all not about being respected but about being worthy of respect.
The women I know with strong personalities, the ones who might have become generals or the heads of companies if they were men, become teachers. Teaching is a calling, too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy--angles leading t...
She was not willing to let others narrate her life and her death. While there is one person like her in this world, I will find myself defending both her right to struggle and our obligation to remember.
By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across--each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip--is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of sal...
One way to tell if you're really comfortable with a person is if you can be quiet together sometimes and not feel awkward. If you don't feel obligated to say something brilliant or funny or surprising or cool. You can just be together. You can just .
Our pasts shape us,Sam.None of us the person he or she used to be,it's true, but what we are still contains a great proportion of what we once were.Nothing,not even suffering the worst kind of tragedy,alters us completely.At core,we are set in stone.
One can’t prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person.
No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame. For one person, in the dark where no one will ever know or see.
Many ritually abusive cults deliberately divide the personality system down the middle of the head, making sure that there is no communication between the two sides. “Left side" parts might be instructed to speak to no one other than the perpetrato...
Personally, I'd rather grow old alone than in the company of anyone I've met so far. I don't experience myself as lonely, incomplete, or unfulfilled, but I don't talk about that much. It seems to piss people off--especially men. (Kinsey Millhone)
How do you control another person? Two ways. Trust, or fear. People and animals will follow you if they trust you. But trust must be earned. And it is earned by people who are good and great. So if you’re neither good nor great, you can only use fe...
Your relationship may be "Breaking Up," but you won't be "Breaking Down." If anything your correcting a mistake that was hurting four people, you and the person your with, not to mention the two people who you were destined to meet.
