The mysteries of a universe made of drops of fire and clods of mud do not concern us in the least. The fate of humanity condemned ultimately to perish from cold is not worth troubling about. If you take it to heart it becomes an unendurable tragedy. ...
She had not had the relief of amnesia. She had suffered longer, and she had suffered more. Each second was agony in the first weeks. She was like an amputee in the days before anesthesia, half crazed with pain, astounded that the human body could fee...
I'm not one of those pious types who spend their whole lives hunched on prayer rugs while their eyes and hearts remain closed to the outside world. They read the Qur'an only on the surface. But I read the Qur'an in the budding flowers and migrating b...
Reason is overrated. Many pundits have argued that a good heart and steadfast moral clarity are superior to triangulations of overeducated policy wonks, like the best and brightest and that dragged us into the quagmire of Vietnam. And wasn't it reaso...
Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate: only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers, don’t fight f...
But the death of spirit goes by another name. It is usually called the birth of reason. The dreams of reason are, at this late date, everywhere to be seen, much like headstones in a cemetery. The inertia of a standard which prunes every tree to the d...
I looked briefly up from my notes. I was surrounded by hearts, sectioned and preserved. Hearts with holes. Hearts with leaking valves or thickened walls. Hearts with narrow or transposed aortas. I closed my eyes.
To be human is, primarily, to embrace that we are human with strengths and weaknesses, and that our humanity is preordained to seek the Truth, Good and Beauty as part of our humanity. To be human is to be an agent of peace, justice, and reconciliatio...
Hypocrisy is wretched because the hypocrite says with his tongue what is not in his heart. He wrongs his tongue and oppresses his heart. But if the heart is sound, the condition of the tongue follows suit. We are commanded to be upright in speech, wh...
With the rise of classical Greece, the soul debate evolved into the more familiar heart-versus-brain, the liver having been demoted to an accessory role. We are fortunate that this is so, for we would otherwise have been faced with Celine Dion singin...
These tears are proof that there is love in the world. Tears are only bitter when we cry selfishly for ourselves. When we deny and forget the sweet love that tears are made of. When we let sorrow turn to anger. When people cry for each other, it is a...
An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one’s mind. Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts of most . . . No, in the plant world, and especially among the flowering plants, fecundity is not an assault on human values. Plants ...
The quest for this unwearied inner peace is constant and universal. Probe deeply into the teachings of Buddha, Maimonides, or a Kempis, and you will discover that they base their diverse doctrines on the foundations of a large spiritual serenity. Ana...
The proletariat could plan to massacre the whole ruling class; a fanatic Jew or black could dream of seizing the secret of the atomic bomb and turning all of humanity entirely Jewish or entirely black: but a woman could not even dream of exterminatin...
To err is human.
Humanity is the word we use when we kill in the name of society. Humanity is the word we use to make them believe we can feel. Humanity is the word we use to cover up our dreadful crimes. humanity is the word we use to pretend we are not monsters. Hu...
The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus' heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, h...
I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being--neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human...
A mirror does not reflect a broken heart.
To know oneself and one’s end or goal in life is true wisdom—knowledge of the heart more than the head.
Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.
