The days that followed passed slowly. I lay in my hotel room and watched the kind of strange European TV that would probably make perfect sense if I understood the language, but because I didn’t, the programs just seemed dreamlike and baffling. In ...
It is doubtful whether a supreme master of style could pack all the elements of truth that complete justice would demand into a hundred word account of what had happened in Korea during the course of several months. For language is by no means a perf...
...I should always find, the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they wer...
I became skilled at covering my tracks, filling in the blanks. Sometimes the blanks were never filled. At other times, I would recall places where I had been or things I had done as if from a dream, which made the playback of my father and other men ...
Prior to Flew, major apologies for atheism were those of Enlightenment thinkers (David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Friedrich Nietzsche). Major philosophers of Flew’s generation who were atheists: W. V. O. Quine and Gilbert Ryle...
That's certainly a problem. But that's not what I was thinking of. It's just that you are so soft, so fragile. I have to mind my actions every moment that we're together so that I don't hurt you. I could kill you quite easily, Bella, simply by accide...
I was so happy when I found out the wounds you’d inflicted weren’t serious, that you had stopped.” “Yes, I stopped. Barry, all of you, see what I did as this suicide attempt. But I didn’t want to die. I only wanted my mom to hear me. To com...
He should have caught up with me inside of fifteen minutes at the outside, if he'd been able to get on the next train after mine. But then there was that station agent to be considered. And Rafe didn't have a solitary coin on him; he'd have to break ...
Every time I go to sleep, I know I may never wake up. How could anyone expect to? You drop your tiny, helpless mind into a bottomless well, crossing your fingers and hoping that when you pull it out on its flimsy fishing wire it hasn't been gnawed to...
Surprised by joy- impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport-- Oh! with whom But thee, deep buried in the silent tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind-- But how could I forget thee? Th...
We speak often, and sentimentally, of being 'enchanted' by the natural world. But what if it's the other way around? What if we are enchanted, literally, by the human world we live in? That seems entirely more likely - that the consumer world amounts...
Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action required or ...
The old oak, utterly transformed, draped in a tent of sappy dark green, basked faintly, undulating in the rays of the evening sun. Of the knotted fingers, the gnarled excrecenses, the aged grief and mistrust- nothing was to be seen. Through the rough...
Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals, a community of thinkers, each of whom is guaranteed from the outset to be able to reach agreement with the others because all participate in the same thinking essence. Nor, of course, is it a single Being ...
He took the pen and book from her and faltered. “Just write anything – anything trivial that won't matter if it comes to pass.” “Erm...” God, he was useless at this. Elena's hair turned blue. “Hey!” “What?” “I don't want blue hair...
Keep in mind too, our failures serve to teach us, and usually teach us more than our successes do. What we may perceive as a failure is also an opportunity for someone else to rise to the occasion and perform a mitzvah, or mitzvot. Do not begrudge so...
Suddenly I came out of my thoughts to notice everything around me again-the catkins on the willows, the lapping of the water, the leafy patterns of the shadows across the path. And then myself, walking with the alignment that only comes after miles, ...
Because school, no matter how insignificant and annoying it may seem as we get older and can't wait to get away, sets us on our life's path. It's plants ideas for us to thrive upon, teaches us where we want to go and who we want to be - feeding us th...
Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more willpower or drive, but because they know productivity is a game played against a childish primal human predilec...
As the chapters took shape, a change came over her. It was the double-sided recognition that this book, the last that she would write, might achieve esteem and success equal to her great novel, but that its emotional heart would lie in her own unhapp...
When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. It just didn't make any ...
