Sometimes what we lack is the thrill of anticipation or the delay of gratification. We enjoy things far more when we've really desired them but had to wait for them. The real value is found in our self control and patience, which allows us to delay g...
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the...
Our current contempt for poverty stems from information overload--this is the enabler---our over education as privileged people-- perhaps the real culprit--and our secret assurance that we ourselves owe no one anything beyond the exhausting daily rou...
Millions are impressed by the victories of power and take it for the sign of strength. To be sure, power over people is an expression of superior strength in a purely material sense. If I have the power over another person to kill him, I am "stronger...
Ghosts Take shape under moonlight, materialize in dreams. Shadows. Silhouettes of what is no more. But ghosts don't bother me. The day brings bigger things to worry about than flimsy remains of yesterday. No, spooks don't scare me. Gauzy apparitions ...
I am weary of this notion of faithfulness to a point of view at all cost. Life around us is ever changing, and I believe that one should try to change one’s slant accordingly—at least once every ten years. The great heroic devotion to one point o...
Music, this complex and mysterious act, precise as algebra and vague as a dream, this art made out of mathematics and air, is simply the result of the strange properties of a little membrane. If that membrane did not exist, sound would not exist eith...
He realized that he agonized over everything all the time, and he admitted that part of the problem in the Carter game had been his own lack of belief in his abilities. He knew the reason why he was like this, that it was the price he paid for carefu...
I have noticed more than once in life that a taste for the ineffably twee can go hand-in-hand with a distinctly uncharitable outlook on the world, I once shared an office with a woman who had covered the wall space behind her desk with pictures of fl...
Many lessons can be learned from the history of Western civilization, but one of them is especially clear. Lack of involvement in the affairs of one's society can lead to a sense of powerlessness. In an age that is often crisis-laden and chaotic, an ...
Thomas Jefferson once said: 'Of course the people don't want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exp...
Goodness preaches constantly, wants to change humanity, to work miracles from one day to the next, makes a show of its substance, wants to question essentials, but in fact is most often just hollow, lacking in substance, essence itself. A good word w...
Flanagan: Fucking black people, huh? Graham: What did you just say? Flanagan: I mean, I know all the sociological reasons why, per capita eight times more black men are incarcerated than white men... Schools are a disgrace, lack of opportunity, bias ...
The Emperor: If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed! [shoots Luke with Force lightning] The Emperor: Young fool... Only now, at the end, do you understand... [the Emperor shoots at Luke with more Force lighting] The Emperor: Your feeble ski...
Agent Phil Coulson: You're gonna lose. Loki: Am I? Agent Phil Coulson: It's in your nature. Loki: Your heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falls from the sky... where is my disadvantage? Agent Phil Coulson: You lack conviction. Loki: I don't...
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ig...
I could not possibly have been placed in circumstances more highly favorable for study and exploration than those which I now enjoy. I am free from the distractions constantly arising in civilized life from social claims. Nature offers unceasingly th...
You speak of love but are you the love you speak of? I can tell the depth of somebody's faith by how far and broad their love stretches. If you lack in faith hit your knees and pray for it. It's not about just loving people who see eye to eye with yo...
What sticks with me now is that this man said he needed to get to a hospital. He probably needed to reach his destination more than anyone else on the bus, yet he lacked the capacity to ride without getting kicked off. Maybe he reached the hospital e...
ESPE: So, in both conversations, Lama Sangyay steers you away from thinking directly about Epifanio or your relationship (or lack thereof) and right into the nature of your mind. So masterful. CLARA: Isn't he? I hate those instructions. I do not want...
