How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to real...
Early youth is a baffling time. The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting but some day you will have to leave it and you do not know where...
Suppose it should turn out that no such person as Christ ever lived. What harm would that do justice or mercy? Wouldn't the tear of pity be as pure as now, and wouldn't justice, holding aloft her scales, from which she blows even the dust of prejudic...
Those who support such survivors of abuse often find it difficult to hear the reality of those survivors' lives and experience and are often unsupported themselves. Rather than being supported, workers are often ridiculed, castigated or accused of be...
I had a dream about you. Half the people wanted to kill me, and half the people wanted me as their President. It was up to you whether I lived or reigned, and you made the logical choice—you chose not to choose. You exercised your right to not exer...
Homeward bound I suddenly noticed before me my own shadow as I had seen the shadow of the other war behind the actual one. During all this time it has never budged from me, that irremovable shadow, it hovers over every thought of mine by day and by n...
As writers we intend to make a difference, to alter people's lives for the greater good. . .this is why we write, to have an impact on society, to put a personal stamp on history. . .Art and literature are the legacies we leave to succeeding generati...
You say people's struggles are a game! That's totally wrong! Facing yourself no matter how tough things get... and keeping up the fight... that's what games are really about! You bet your chip of life as if it meant nothing! You lost to yourself! Whe...
We are all wounded. But wounds are necessary for his healing light to enter into our beings. Without wounds and failure and frustrations and defeats, there will be no opening for his brilliance to tickle in and invade our lives. Failures in life are ...
People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart ...
…When you’re in the darkness, know that the light will come. We are light and dark, sun and moon, male and female, yin and yang; life is composed of opposites, in a continuing cycle of change…. When you are in the light, don’t step back into ...
In terms of days and moments lived, you’ll never again be as young as you are right now, so spend this day, the youth of your future, in a way that deflects regret. Invest in yourself. Have some fun. Do something important. Love somebody extra. In ...
Hand, nobody told me about the weight. Why didn't our parents tell us about the weight? —What weight? —The fucking weight, Hand. How does the woman Ingres live? The one from Marrakesh? If we're vessels, and we are, then we, you and I, are overful...
All zoos, even the most enlightened, are built upon the idea both beguiling and repellent—the notion that we can seek out the wildness of the world and behold its beauty, but that we must first contain that wildness. Zoos argue that they are fighti...
Normally we divide the external world into that which we consider to be good or valuable, bad or worthless, or neither. Most of the time these discriminations are incorrect or have little meaning. For example, our habitual way of categorizing people ...
We wish we could have been there for you. We didn't have many role models of our own--we latched on to the foolish love of Oscar Wilde and the well-versed longing of Walt Whitman because nobody else was there to show us an untortured path. We were go...
Even greater shifts will be needed if we are to finally understand that we cannot continue to live on this planet as if it is nothing more than a collection of resources for us to exploit. A greater shift will be needed if we are to realize that no o...
I know you can't wash in the same river even once I know the river will bring new lights that you will not see I know we live slightly longer than a horse and not nearly as long as a crow I know this has troubled people before and will trouble those ...
During the crash and burn, I began to burn from cranial crown to flat sole, for meaning and understanding. Every concept, psychological perceptions with hardened pathways, everything that registered as inherited from the communal was starting to diss...
I'm not one of those pious types who spend their whole lives hunched on prayer rugs while their eyes and hearts remain closed to the outside world. They read the Qur'an only on the surface. But I read the Qur'an in the budding flowers and migrating b...
While the opportunity to improve yourself and your situation is a great thing, our striving to build perfect lives seems to have morphed into perfectionism so focused on itself that we forget about others in the world. We work so hard to build the ul...
