As historical texts become rich and conceptually dense, readers may slow down not because they fail to comprehend, but because the very act of comprehension demands that they stop to TALK with their texts. In plain English, they pretend to deliberate...
You think your congressman is working all day to get you a job? He may want to. He or she is probably not a bad person. They probably want to do the right thing. But they can't.
I think every person deserves two marriages, because you may not get the first one right. You really never knew. That's why divorce is so big. We all want it to last, but that's not always the reality of it.
I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous.
A kind of silence, if I may say, was walking through the house, and, like most silence, it was not silent at all: it rapped on the doors, echoed in the clocks, creaked on the stairs, leaned forward to peer into my face and explode.
This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
May our eyes focus rightly on Christ ... before the need to please others, before church, and before the busyness of Christian life. Those things will surely have their place, but they will be most valuable if put in their proper position.
But it so happens, and it will ever happen so, that they who have lived to serve their country - no matter how weak their efforts may have been - are sure to receive the thanks and blessings of its people.
I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is―a politician.
It may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invest themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought.
Create a world in which these things do or do not exist, or in which they are extended in some way. Test reality against this fiction. The reader will recognize the world that you're talking about, even though it may be another one altogether.
I failed world geography, civics, Spanish and English. And when you fail Spanish and English, they do not consider you bilingual. They may call you bi-ignorant because you can't speak any language.
I support gun control. But speaking honestly about the combustible mix of race and guns may be more important to stopping the slaughter in minority communities than any new gun-control laws.
In order for someone to follow you, you must be true to heart and purpose. This is true in any relationship. Someone may follow you for awhile without it, but not a lifetime.
Although most Americans apparently loathe inflation, Yale economists have argued that a little inflation may be necessary to grease the wheels of the labor market and enable efficiency-enhancing changes in relative pay to occur without requiring nomi...
Southern girls are God's gift to the entire male population. There is absolutely no woman finer than one raised below the mason-dixon line and once you go southern may the good Lord help you - you never go back
I can make the argument that people who don't have the biggest ranges but have very unique voices, even if they may be pitchy at times... with the right record that's really unique and distinct, they can have big hits.
How did abortion and birth control impact the congressional race of Dan Maffei and Ann Marie Buerkle or the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? I don't know. But I think the so-called social issues were front and center in the min...
Take to every Gallon of Honey, three Gallons of water, and put them both together, and set them over so soft a fire, that you may endure to melt and break the honey with your hands.
We are not reading books merely to check off a list or to be able to say we have read them. We are reading to grow as persons, to know more that we may understand more, and ultimately, it is to be hoped, to act according to our greater wisdom.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself... You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
