Condemnation feels good and it is now a staple of religion, politics, and the media (both left and right), but it changes nothing. Compassion, on the other hand, changes everything. (p. 121)
There is nothing noble about being superior to some other person. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please, With too much spirit to be e'er at ease, With too much quickness ever to be taught, With too much thinking to have common thought: You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but...
Elizabeth scowled, feeling like a nobody, a nothing. She felt like her entire self had been made worthless. She could change her interests, but she couldn’t change her looks. She’d never be six feet tall. She’d never look like a supermodel.
Your mama coming back. Just cause you cant sees a person aint mean nothing. They still there. You worry you never gonna find your mama but she gonna come to you. Close your eyes. I bets you see her good.
He wanted to stick his finger in it and see what happened. Some story, some quest, started here, and he wanted to go on it. It felt fresh and clean and unsafe, nothing like the heavy warm lard of palace life. The protective plastic wrap had been peel...
Nothing happens without God’s will, and life doesn’t always go according to plan. Man proposes, God disposes. And it is God’s will that we need to surrender to. In retrospect it usually all makes sense.
I am touched by her life, how it moves forward, pulses and springs. There is no fragmentation, nothing stunted or wedged. I circle back, I regress, the past doesn't let go. It might as well be a malfunction, a scene repeating itself, a scratched vinl...
I can see how James or Greene might agree with this point of view: the former finds that the ugly old lamp no longer produces a genie when rubbed and the latter realizes he has nothing left to wish for.
There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing.
Running cleared the day's cobwebs from my mind and focused my thinking, and gave me time and space to sort out anything that was bothering me, or to detach and think of nothing at all.
Pushing magic toward the candle, I willed it to light. Nothing happened. Irys made a strangled sound and the candle burned. “Are you directing your magic to the candle?” “Yes. Why?” “You just ordered me to light the candle for you,” Irys ...
A man can lead a reasonably full life without a family, a fixed local residence, or a religious affiliation, but if he is stateless he is nothing. He has no rights, no security, and little opportunity for a useful career. There is no salvation on ear...
I become quite melancholy and deeply grieved to see men behave to each other as they do. Everywhere I find nothing but base flattery, injustice , self-interest, deceit and roguery. I cannot bear it any longer; I'm furious; and my intention is to brea...
Once you commit to something, you just manage through each moment. And nothing truly awful happened. The voyage over was uneventful. I found work right away, just not very good work. The worst thing wasn't something terrible, it was the lack of anyth...
I’ll tell you what I can do, but I’ll tell you silently and invisibly, because honestly, there’s nothing I can do. And what I can do is love you.
You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.
Our responsibility has never been to moralize the unconverted; it's to convert the immoral. Our responsibility is redemptive, not political. We do not have a moral agenda; we have a redemptive agenda. We can't reform the kingdom of darkness that Sata...
When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him; and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear of corn...
No, no, one can imagine nothing in the world, not the least thing. Everything is composed of so many isolated details that are not to be foreseen. In one's imagining one passes over them and hasty as one is doesn't notice that they are missing. But r...
That morning, he was afraid of becoming old, and it was a very specific kind of old age he feared, one which had nothing to do with the number of years since your birth. He feared the premature old age of missed opportunities.
