The human capacity for grief. It just isn't capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn't just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero. Admit it. None of us feel a damn abou...
I have a theory that as human beings get older, chemicals are released into the brain to prepare us for the end. Sort of like how the nurse lubes your ass up before the anus-cam. It makes the whole thing a lot easier to swallow. Easier, not enjoyable...
Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.
In her dance, she controlled the bright paper birds with invisible wires and threads. She played the human: heavy, tied to earth. Her dances weren't pretty or delightful, but they were magical, [...] They called her a dancer and a puppeteer and an ar...
I'll figure out how to be truer: to let people go if they need to be let go of, and to hold on tight if that's what's called for. I will pay attention, so I can cross each human heart that comes across my path, cross it as true as I can.
It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. ...It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that sha...
Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, d...
Humanity is not without answers or solutions regarding how to liberate itself from scenarios that invariably end with mass exterminations. Tools such as compassion, trust, empathy, love, and ethical discernment are already in our possession. The next...
If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it...
Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use. The mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world.
Presumably there is indeed no purpose in the ultimate fate of the cosmos, but do any of us really tie our life's hopes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos anyway? Of course we don't; not if we are sane. Our lives are ruled by all sorts of closer, warm...
I am intrigued with scriptural mythology that tells us that God created a divine feminine presence to dwell amongst humanity. This concept has had a constant influence on the work. I have imagined her as ubiquitous, watchful, and often in motion. Thi...
In grief, part of the pain comes from our feeling that we should not suffer so - that it is fundamentally alien to our being, this even though we all suffer, and frequently. Yet we reject suffering as a basic human truth, while greeting joy as integr...
Overcoming the problems we face today and planting the seed of peace is not a task for any one nation, people, or religion. This will be possible only when spiritually awakened people from every corner of the world share the power of a single vision ...
The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed." "I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self." "You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one ma...
Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, espec...
Sin is when you turn away from God—or, in the other language, alienation occurs when the ego, that erratic, unreliable driver of the personality, temporarily turns aside from the great quest for integration with the inner self, the self that’s au...
To hold that the Qur’ān believes in an absolute determinism of human behavior, denying free choice on man's part, is not only to deny almost the entire content of theQu r’ān, but to undercut its very basis: the Qur’ān by its own claim is an ...
For a human to win, it is not necessary for a horse to lose. You should not have to take things away from a horse or break him in fragments in order to train him; rather you should add to the horse. The goal should be making, not breaking.
[...] like any human practices, those of religions are not exempt from ethical questioning. Rituals and rites in groups change behavior, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. For the madness of crowds is a very close cousin to the fervor...
For most of human history people owned other people. Then, only a hundred and fifty years ago, our ancestors figured out that was a bad idea. One day we’ll figure out, or our descendants will figure out, that people owning land they don’t live on...
