He was quite a Casanova, no doubt about it. He was in a very good mood today and stopped longer than usual. The girls could see he was gloriously drunk. ’Well, Ragna, why do you think I come here so often?’ asked Rolandsen. ’I’ve no idea,’ ...
All boys wish to be manly; but they often try to become so by copying the vices of men rather than their virtues. They see men drinking, smoking, swearing; so these poor little fellows sedulously imitate such bad habits, thinking they are making them...
concluded Elmer Luchterhand, a sociologist at Yale who interviewed fifty-two concentration camp survivors shortly after liberation. Pairs stole food and clothing for each other, exchanged small gifts and planned for the future. If one member of a pai...
I had grazed along the surface of her actions and made deep judgments. Rejecting someone because you couldn't understand their love, that was a new one. The more I thought about it the longer the shadow of doubt stretched over all my conclusions. Mor...
(fragment) 1 All elsewhere being World, how many times have I stood in the bright shadows of a wood, no track or trail leading in, out- as though ground cover renewed as I went through? I sometimes own the moments where I stand alone. Everything else...
My job is not to worry about what everyone else thinks about me but to discover what I think. If I actually want to know what someone else thinks, my job is then to ask that person. More often than not, however, it isn’t important to know. It’s o...
Because I don’t care what anyone says or how often or winningly they say it: no one will ever, ever be able to persuade me that life is some awesome, rewarding treat. Because, here’s the truth: life is a catastrophe. The basic fact of existence �...
In the moral realm, there is very little consensus left in Western countries over the proper basis of moral behavior. And because of the power of the media, for millions of men and women the only venue where moral questions are discussed and weighed ...
In a way, underdevelopment is a paradox. Many parts of the world that are naturally rich are actually poor and parts that are not so well off in wealth of soil and sun-soil are enjoying the highest standards of living. When the capitalists from the d...
Love is not first a feeling. Though the feelings come later and grow thick in the basic loam of love, they don't constitute the sum and substance of love. Love is doing whatever good God says you must do for another, to please God, whether (at first)...
If logic and reason, the hard, cold products of the mind, can be relied upon to deliver justice or produce the truth, how is it that these brain-heavy judges rarely agree? Five-to-four decisions are the rule, not the exception. Nearly half of the cou...
The observer self, a part of who we really are, is that part of us that is watching both our false self and our True Self. We might say that it even watches us when we watch. It is our Consciousness, it is the core experience of our Child Within. It ...
Love not often, but forever. It's one of my mother's sayings, and all my life it has been the story of my heart.... Love for my mother; love for my friends; the dark and complex love of a woman for a man. But when Fleur was born, everything changed. ...
I had a cup of tea, thought about my day and mostly about the horse whom, though I'd only known him a short time, I called my friend. I have few friends and am glad to have a horse for a friend. After the meal I smoked a cigarette and mused on the lu...
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mental...
No, you will never been tamed, you are a monster, the eternal wild one. I often wonder where you came from, only someone with something to hide has such a cloudy beginnings. Who are you? Or more importantly who were you? There is only the odd bits th...
Like Jocelyn, Survivors often think: * That’s just the way I am * I’m not lovable, that’s why I keep having disastrous relationships * I’m not very clever, that’s why I didn’t do well at school * I’m a loner * I’m a weak person * I’...
The fact that he does not tell me the truth all the time makes me not sure of his truth at certain times, and then I work to figure out for myself if what he is telling me is the truth or not, and sometimes I can figure out that it's not the truth an...
Often, our misunderstandings about love are born in disruptive family relationships, where someone was either one-up or one-down to an extreme. There is an appropriate and necessary difference in the balance of power between parents and young childre...
When God makes a covenant with us, God says: 'I will love you with an everlasting love. I will be faithful to you, even when you run away from me, reject me, or betray me.' In our society we don’t speak much about covenants; we speak about contract...
I heard a rapid alternation of notes, a vibrating staccato of an ancient instrument, nearly as old as nature herself, a cricket singing in my garden last night, the first time this year. When turning my garden's soil, I often uncover crickets, curmud...
