For this reason, the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or taste...
It is truth, in the old saying, that is 'the daughter of time,' and the lapse of half a century has not left us many of our illusions. Churchill tried and failed to preserve one empire. He failed to preserve his own empire, but succeeded in aggrandiz...
At the railroad station he noted that he still had thirty minutes. He quickly recalled that in a cafe on the Calle Brazil (a few dozen feet from Yrigoyen's house) there was an enormous cat which allowed itself to be caressed as if it were a disdainfu...
How many times did the sun shine, how many times did the wind howl over the desolate tundras, over the bleak immensity of the Siberian taigas, over the brown deserts where the Earth’s salt shines, over the high peaks capped with silver, over the sh...
Perhaps I shouldn't call it shit. That's a bit crude. I don't really despise Christianity or even the Roman Church, and certainly not the incontrovertible glory of the Middle Ages. What I do despise is the contemporary inclination to flop to the knee...
Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They've given up all for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes." Waddington reflected for a little while. "I wonder if it matters what they h...
Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value ove...
[The thief-taker] was conspicuous by his age, I should estimate he is in his middle fifties, and by a bearing, I am tempted to call it dignity, wanting in the others. He has a good head of hair, only a bit thin on top, blond going grey, and sea green...
My pain builds like storm clouds―massive, dark, and heavy with teardrops. Moisture falls torrential as if my world is a violent, eternal downpour; however, at long last the source runs dry and the bitter storm does cease. Blue skies dare to glow wh...
... ongoing care for the soul rather than seek for a cure appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life. I sees every fall into ignorance and confusion as an opportunity to discover that the beast r...
Like the body craves oxygen, the mind is desperate for certainty. It believes that without a safe foothold on reality, it will die. But the fascinating thing is that the illusion of certainty is exactly the opposite of safety because it hardens and n...
As McMasters raised the shotgun, the man removed his glasses. There were fields of stars where his eyes should have been. But they weren’t reflections of the night sky. These stars were a glimpse of a dim and distant future where the very laws of p...
As an adult, emerging from the ether's of an abusive childhood, i found myself left with a constant craving for protection, safety and security. I spent many years living my life, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I needed to control everything, in...
Robert Frobisher: Sixsmith. I climb the steps of the Scott Monument every morning and all becomes clear. Wish I could make you see this brightness. Don't worry, all is well. All is so perfectly, damnably well. I understand now that boundaries between...
[last lines] Raoul Duke: What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle that he helped create. A generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the acid culture:...
Captain Paul Prescott: [about Alicia] I don't like this, I don't like her coming here. Walter Beardsley: She's had me worried for some time. A woman of that sort. Devlin: What sort is that, Mr. Beardsley? Walter Beardsley: Oh, I don't think any of us...
Younger love, it seemed, was mainly about the idea of potential--the illusion that magical transformations were bound to occur when the person you think you love has a miraculous impromptu awakening after some metaphorical lightning bolt, made out of...
Love releases us into the realm of divine imagination, where the soul is expanded and reminded of its unearthly cravings and needs. We think that when a lover inflates his loved one he is failing to acknowledge her flaws - "Love is blind." But it may...
Life was transparent, literature opaque. Life was open, literature a closed system. Life was composed of things, literature of words. Life was what it appeared to be: if you were afraid your plane would crash it was about death, if you were trying to...
I don’t sell spells, and I don’t sell tricks. I don’t carry illusions or marked cards or weighted coins. I cannot sell you an endless purse or help you win the lottery. I can’t make that girl you’ve got your eye on fall in love with you, an...
I don’t sell spells, and I don’t sell tricks. I don’t carry illusions or marked cards or weighted coins. I can not sell you an endless purse or help you win the lottery. I can’t make that girl you’ve got your eye on fall in love with you, a...
