In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness an...
The world is a cancer eating itself away... I am think that when the great silence descends upon all and everywhere music will at last triumph. When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upo...
Is it not by learning to read the book of nature with the eyes of faith that we come to recognize the drop of divinity that resides in our own souls though hidden, master? In the end is this not faith; to seek the light that takes us further, the lig...
What we dedicate today is not a memorial to war, rather it's a tribute to the physical and moral courage that makes heroes out of farm and city boys and that inspires Americans in every generation to lay down their lives for people they will never me...
We have nothing to fear but fear itself," Otto replied. "Oh, and a megalomaniacal headmaster, the world's deadliets assassin, giant mutated plant monsters, an international cartel of supervillains, and the security forces of every country on earth, b...
We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death
a single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. and, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. this forest e...
Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffe...
Evil itself is a dictator, whether it’s dressed up like a pompous little man with a moustache, or a bunch of faceless terrorists, or a fundamentalist state. That’s what the devil is, you know. And it’s precious difficult to combat. Or rather, i...
For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It was hard to resist the metaphorical impression that women ...
In the forestlichen writhes and assembles itself into signs to light my path through the deep dark north shadow; and I emerge at last onto a hillside strewn with logogrammatic stones, and scramble away from spruce tops." in the poem "Beyond the Beaco...
Nothing makes time pass or shortens the way like a thought that absorbs in itself all the faculties of the one who is thinking. External existence is then like a sleep of which this thought is the dream. Under its influence, time has no more measure,...
For a moment, the cardboard sets come crashing down to reveal that squalling monster, reality, locked up in the confines of its man-made cage. It is a fearsome thing, beautiful, inherent only to itself. Faced with such naked, existential truths, I un...
Sometimes people don't get sick from bacteria or a virus- -living organisms alien to the human body- -but from the human brain itself. Our brains can be our worst enemy, our cruelest opponent.
What I'm going to do up here, kid, is tell you a story. Like all stories, it's an attempt to make sense of something larger than itself. And, like most stories, it fails, to a certain degree. It's a gloss, a rendition, so it's not exact. But it'll do...
Each stroke of your fingers is a different word that describes the story. By itself it’s meaningless, but—” I pushed down on a few fingers helping her play a few notes. “String them together and you have a melody. You have a story. So, Saylor...
Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for ...
Deeds of heroism are wrought here more than those of romance, when, defying torture, and braving death itself, the fugitive voluntarily threads his way back to the terrors and perils of that dark land, that he may bring out his sister, or mother, or ...
When people really hate one another, the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt throughout a room, like atmospheric waves, first hot, then cold, wafted backwards and forwards as if in an invisible process of air conditioning, creating a p...
Both transparency and trust form the basic component of truth itself. With truth, there is no need to be untrue. If one is truthful, then there is godliness because God is truth. And when godliness is on your side, success is guaranteed.
You have a pet theory, one you have been turning over for years, that life itself is a kind of Rube Goldberg device, an extremely complicated machine designed to carry out the extremely simple task of constructing your soul.
