Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the s...
For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous condu...
Clark: Since this is Aunt Bethany's 80th Christmas, I think she should lead us in the saying of Grace. Aunt Bethany: [turns to Lewis] What, dear? Nora Griswold: Grace! Aunt Bethany: Grace? She passed away thirty years ago. Uncle Lewis: They want you ...
Almásy: Let me tell you about winds. There is a, a whirlwind from southern Morrocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. And there is the... the ghibli, from Tunis... Katharine Clifton: [giggling] The "ghibli"? Almá...
Mrs. Chasen: I have here, Harold, the forms sent out by the National Computer Dating Service. It seems to me that as you do not get along with the daughters of my friends, this is the best way for you to find a prospective wife. [Harold starts to int...
Diana Christensen: I watched your 6 o'clock news today; it's straight tabloid. You had a minute and a half of that lady riding a bike naked in Central Park; on the other hand, you had less than a minute of hard national and international news. It was...
[Delivering the eulogy for Aunt Edna, flatly] Clark: O God, ease our suffering in this, our moment of great dispair. Yea, admit this good and decent woman into thine arms in the flock in thine heavenly area, up there. And Moab, he laid its down by th...
Ellen Griswold: Don't just blurt it out about Edna dying. Clark Griswald: How about if I ask him to play 20 Questions? [Clark knocks on the front door of Normie's house and rings the doorbell, but no anwser] Clark Griswald: Oh, for chrissake, he isn'...
Clark Griswald: [to the Dodge City bartender] Hey Knucklehead, set us up with four Red eye's will ya? [the bartender ignors him] Clark Griswald: Hey Yellabelly, I'm talking to you! [the bartender glares at Clark] Clark Griswald: Hey Tender foot, move...
After Napoleon's 1815 defeat at Waterloo, Europeans had created nation-states in the image and likeness of Napoleon. The new states became the foci of popular affection, even worship. All organized themselves as Napoleon had France, and as Hegel had ...
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure....
The question that remains unanswered and keeps coming to the fore is ‘Are the punishment schemes for child sex and sexual abuse deterrent in nature? Amidst ongoing debates in most countries about capital punishment as human rights violation to be i...
If you read history you will find that the Christians begin the most for the present world are just the ones that thought the most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot. in the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built u...
I think about the Old Ones, that they have a past but no history. I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it’s not that very inevitability that inspires us to take photographs and make scrapbooks and tell stories. That that’s how we...
It is a neglected but essential fact that we cannot appreciate the relationship between religion and violence unless we grasp the nature and meaning of the two partners in this relationship. Yet our understandings both of religion and of violence are...
You call forth the world which God has formed and that world only. Nor is this life of yours by which you set such store your doing, however you may choose to tell it. Its shape was forced in the void at the onset and all talk of what might otherwise...
I can't think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as educational experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group...If a child in their classrooms does not succeed with his peer group...
For better or worse, pessimism without compromise lacks public appeal. In all, the few who have gone to the pains of arguing for a sullen appraisal of life might as well never have been born. As history confirms, people will change their minds about ...
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire p...
He grinned. It was a wicked grin, the kind that made the blood in Clary's veins run a little faster. "You want to go on a date?" Caught off guard, she stammered. "A wh-what?" "A date," Jace repeated. "Often 'a boring thing you have to memorize in his...
Why the delay? Why does God let evil and pain so flagrantly exist, even thrive, on this planet?...He holds back for our sakes. Re-creation involves us; we are, in fact, at the center of his plan...the motive behind all human history, is to develop us...
