Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat's ears in the sun, indigo shadow, a...
God has created each soul in God’s image, and every soul is inherently good. Just as certain conditions can cause mold to grow on food, so too do certain circumstances cause an un-spiritual mold to grow on a person’s soul. Before long, the mold h...
The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having b...
The fact is, the primary way that Ottawa and Washington deal with Native people is to ignore us. They know that the court system favors the powerful and the wealthy and the influential, and that, if we buy into the notion of an impartial justice syst...
They can see everything they want to, but never forget that they cannot see beyond the distortion of their imagination where there is no color and everything exists in black and white. And that is why we will survive, because they do not have what is...
We sometimes fail to realise that when we pray to Allah we are in fact performing a great act of ibadah (worship). On the surface it might seem as if we are asking out of self-interest, but we are really proving the sincerity of our belief in the tau...
You don’t have to act crazy anymore— We all know you were good at that, Now retire, my dear, From all that hard work you do Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart. Look in a clear mountain mirror See the beautiful ancient warrior And the d...
We all colour devotion according to our own likings and dispositions. One man sets great value on fasting, and believes himself to be leading a very devout life, so long as he fasts rigorously, although the while his heart is full of bitterness;–an...
Already, I know that all of this will stay with me forever. It'll haunt me, but I also fear it will make me feel grateful. I say because at times I really don't want this to be a fond memory until it's over. I also fear that nothing really ends at th...
]Sardis often turning her thoughts here ] you like a goddess and in your song most of all she rejoiced. But now she is conspicuous among Lydian women as sometimes at sunset the rosyfingered moon surpasses all the stars. And her light stretches over s...
The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your chu...
I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened; that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to ...
He shook off the thoughts—that wasn’t anything he needed to worry about tonight. Any second now, he was going to hear the chime of a new text message, the chime that signaled the demise of rich, slick Maybe-next-time-we-can-meet-for-more-than-two...
It does not count if you believe in yourself when it’s easy to believe in yourself. It does not count if you believe the world can be a better place when the future looks bright. It does not count if you think you’re going to make it when the fin...
The majority of men in every generation, even those who, as it is described, devote themselves to thinking, live and die under the impression that life is simply a matter of understanding more and more, and that if it were granted to them to live lon...
When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are th...
I often wondered after David’s death: Had they known something then? Did their very souls recognize each other? Did Jacob, closer to God than anyone else I knew, somehow sense this was the last time he would see his grandpa? Had there been a messag...
She's on the stairs, ma'am, getting her breath,' said the young servant, who had not been long up from the country, where my mother had the excellent habit of getting all her servants. Often she had seen them born. That's the only way to get really g...
Ribs closing on his heart, Will battled internal sirens whose song he couldn’t yet decipher. During his childhood, ‘sin’ had been such an abstract word. It denoted getting your Sunday best dirty and torn, or lying to have your brother punished ...
You can't imagine what it's like to be torn between darkness and light- to be a traitor no matter what move you make. If my grandmother and Marissa died tonight, it would be because I had stayed in the darkness too long, flirting with the idea of bei...
Let us also acknowledge that the hearts which suffer the most from our wars are those of mothers. Their vital voices have been left out of the political equation for too long. An Iraqi or American mother cries the same as an Israeli or Afghan mother....
