Often, as she leafed through the sticky, plastic-coated pages, spotting herself with a frizzy perm or wearing a loud, printed blouse, she was struck by how long life was, and how much time had passed, and she wished she could go back and apologize to...
In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much...
The commonest error of the gifted scholar, inexperienced in teaching, is to expect pupils to know what they have been told. But telling is not teaching. The expression of facts that are in one's mind is a natural impulse when one wishes others to kno...
Why do you doubt your senses and your soul?’ ‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects either of them. A slight disorder of the stomach or the mind makes them cheats. You could be an undigested bit of Baloney paired with my lecture not...
I thought maybe if she could express herself rather than suffer herself, if she had a way to relieve the burden, she lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own, she helped out at the store, then ...
In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds u...
Fish held the silence for so long that I had to restrain myself from prodding her. That's never a good idea. Sometimes people hesitate because they don't have the courage to come out with whatever needs to be said; other times they desperately want t...
Due to their soft bodies and ephemeral nature, it is unlikely that biological evidence of mushrooms will even be discovered in the archaeological record. This fact poses certain difficulties in determining the antiquity of modern cultural uses of psy...
...there is no real advance in human reason, for what we gain in one direction we lose in another; for all minds start from the same point, and as the time spent in learning what others have thought is so much time lost in learning to think for ourse...
It’s almost funny, isn’t it?” “What is?” “How some animals are worth more than others?” “Well,” he handed Konrad a sugar cube from a tin on the shelf. “It isn’t just the animal; it’s the type of animal.” “Color, shape, siz...
Love is a hollow word which seems at home in song lyrics and greeting cards, until you fall in love and discover it’s disconcerting power. Depression means nothing more than the blues, commercially packaged angst, a hole in the ground; until you fi...
My 30th birthday will be arriving in a few months. It’s not arriving unexpectedly, I just wish it would have given me more of an advance notice, say another 30 years.
After my first coaching experience, the field looked more like Gettysburg than a normal defeat. But it wasn’t that bad, as only about half my team lay dead, while the rest were merely dying.
No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments, no one can do more than mark out the little plot of infinity which he intends to cultivate, and thrust in the spade, trusting that th...
There is nothing more romantic than candles and flowers, except candles that smell like flowers and flowers that can be burned, as they flicker light while you dine alone and ponder how much of a romantic you are.
I had a missed call. It’s probably the all you can eat buffet calling to say, “Come back! We know you can eat just a little bit more.
Once the bar gets set too high, simply lower it so you can keep on hitting your goals. You could get a lot more chin-ups done this way.
Having a clone to bounce ideas off of would be a way to generate more ideas. Another way would be to build an idea generator that plugs into a wall socket and works only when the power has gone out.
Literature keeps presenting the most vicious things to us an entertainment, but what it appeals to is not any pleasure of these things, but the exhilaration of standing apart from them and being able to see them for what they are because they aren't ...
In these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the “shooting” showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, earth’...
When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Inst...
