…in that moment, as he saw and smelled how irresistible its effect was and how with lightning speed it spread and made captives of the people all around him—in that moment his whole disgust for humankind rose up again within him and completely so...
The symbol of a drama, a symphony, or a dance is useful to correct a certain absurdity which may arise if we talk too much of God planning and creating the world for good and then being frustrated by the free will of the creatures. This may raise the...
They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found ...
What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. ...
The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But i...
There were more of out there. More walkers. And I was being asked to step up and be... what? Some kind of Captain Heroism who would lead the boys in the Red, White, and Blue to victory? What was I getting myself into? This wasn't task force duty, thi...
The human mind is itself a miraculous machine. I am writing right now, but I have no idea how this is happening. I know that my brain is composed of a cerebrum, a cerebellum, and a medulla oblongata, but these are just words. I know that electrical i...
Thomas Builds-the-Fire's stories climbed into your clothes like sad, gave you itches that could not be scratched. If you repeated eve a sentence from one of those stories, your throat was never the same again. Those stories hung in your clothes and h...
She laughed. 'It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now.' 'Happy,' I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them...
Maybe tell me about those letters. Confession is good for the soul." I expected her to tear into me yet again, but instead she stayed silent for several seconds, running her fingers over the trim of her blanket. "I do belive my soul is past the point...
Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and writ...
Darling, if I think of all I miss now, I will go crazy. I should not think of that. I only want to think of all that I still have, and then I am rich. Your spirit is always around me, in your diary, our letters, all the things you got for our househo...
I never want to be apart from you,” he said. “I’m going to buy an island and take you there. A ship will come once a month with supplies. The rest of the time it will be just the two of us, wearing leaves and eating exotic fruit and making love...
What kept you distant from me?” she asked. By now, she had regained enough confidence to start a discussion. “Fear,” he replied. “What kind of fear?” “Fear of facing people’s objections. Fear of putting both of our lives at risk. Fear o...
[it] isn't something you just get over. You don't go back to being who you were. It's more like a snow globe. War shakes you up, and suddenly all those pieces of your life - muscles, bones, thoughts, beliefs, relationships, even your dreams - are flo...
...a lot of people never find the person God created them to be. They’re too busy trying to live up to other people’s expectations, or they try to create themselves in the image of a person they admire or envy. Just because we respect someone or ...
Louie found the raft offered an unlikely intellectual refuge. He had never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no flavors on his tongue, nothing ...
What I really love about them... is the fact that they contain someone's personal history...I find myself wondering about their lives. I can never look at a garment... without thinking about the woman who owned it. How old was she? Did she work? Was ...
We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his...
Pamela pulled off her cloak and Alexei gasped. "You have on breeches!" He stared in disbelief. "Breeches!" "I've never worn them before, and they are extremely comfortable. I quite like them." She smoothed the fabric over her hip. "Besides, you don't...
The name Alaska is probably an abbreviation of Unalaska, derived from the original Aleut word agunalaksh, which means "the shores where the sea breaks its back." The war between water and land is never-ending. Waves shatter themselves in spent fury a...
