It’s crucial to practice self-empathy, for trust can’t be willed into existence. That didn’t work when our caregivers tried to impose their will on us, and it won’t work internally, either. Only when we can tap into a place of self-trust, wit...
To construct mechanically the brain of a somniferous tale, it is not enough to dissect nonsense & mightily stupefy the reader's intelligence with renowned doses, so as to paralyze his faculties for the rest of his life by the infallible law of fatigu...
So, how’d you get the tattoo?” she said. “Drunken frat boys don’t say no to things their drunken frat brothers are telling them to do.” “That almost sounds like an admission of weakness from the invulnerable Andrew Sheffield.” “Not we...
The Bear had once confided to me that Durrell's ego could fit snugly in the basilica of St. Peter's in Rome but in very few other public places. This runaway megalomania marked him as a blood member of the fraternity of generals. If looks alone could...
Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things--unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and ...
Do you like my working persona?" Saiman asked softly. "An aesthetically pleasing combination of intelligence and elegance, wouldn't you say?" Aren't we pleased with ourselves. "Are you Chinese, Japanese, half-white? I can't tell, your features are ne...
If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not ...
They may already know too much about their mother and father--nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I've noticed this is often the time wh...
Be realistic, Aiden, I told myself. You know your value to the penny and it's measured in inches, time, age, stamina, looks, and being able to put up with gross and sometimes bizarre situations. Personality was far down on a much longer list, and eve...
I've never really had any luck with women in my life. Well, at first I was fairly lucky. Then all of a sudden, they all thought they had to get married for some reason. And not to me. It's especially strange, because I almost always fell in love with...
There's no obvious reason to assume that the very same rare properties that allow for our existence would also provide the best overall setting to make discoveries about the world around us. We don't think this is merely coincidental. It cries out fo...
You want to be the first to do something. You want to create something. You want to innovate something...I often think of Edison inventing the light bulb. That's what I want to do. I want to drive over the bridge coming out of New York there and look...
I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to w...
I'm marrying him because I admire his intelligence and his compassion. I'm marrying him because he's part of me already. Because he's the one person who has always known my heart. Because I could trust him to know what I needed if I couldn't figure i...
If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for h...
You humans are biological machines designed to create ever more intelligent tools. You have reached the pinnacle of your species. All your ancestors’ lives, the rise and fall of your nations, every pink and squirming baby—they have all led you he...
What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon ...
Oh, no, no, you've got that all wrong. You're not required to respect elders. After all, most people are idiots, regardless of age. In tribal cultures, we just make sure that elders remain an active part of the culture, even if they're idiots. Especi...
He says that there can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and...
I believe emotional suppression fueled by a shamed imagination lies at the root of society's ailments. It is the believing leaders of religion that keep the “denial circus” going decade after decade. We have, for too long, supported this tyranny ...
We can remove the veil that shrouds our understanding and made us forget who we truly are. When we understand the core self and live from the core self, the myth of separation, concepts of separation, color, religion, class, intelligence…all these ...