Sometimes in the company of others I find a disagreeable spirit of competitiveness kicks in and each person is shamed into spending rather more than he would have wished. This is a historically established syndrome, of course. One Magus going to Beth...
What a wonderful word, future. Of all the abstractions we can articulate to ourselves, of all the concepts we have that other animals do not, how extraordinary the ability to consider a time that's never been experienced. And how tragic not to consid...
What a powerful word, future. Of all the abstractions we can articulate to ourselves, of all the concepts we have that other animals do not, how extraordinary the ability to consider a time that's never been experienced. And how tragic not to conside...
The motive that impels modern reason to know must be described as the desire to conquer and dominate. For the Greek philosophers and the Fathers of the church, knowing meant something different: it meant knowing in wonder. By knowing or perceiving on...
What I see here, what I feel here is that people in your world believe spirituality isn't distant. It's close and real. Religion seems born in the home, stays in the home. I mean, the services are even held in the home. And there's not one person in ...
The problem is that we don't believe that we are much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholic and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one human family in this world, and to care about...
I had always thought that I was fine with being alone. Halfway through high school, I moved from Brazil to America, and it took me forever to make friends. I had culture shock of virtually every kind, besides which I was awkward, geeky, and shy. So I...
But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same...
In reality, the laborer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital. His economic bondage is both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of himself, by his change of masters, and by the oscillation in the market price of labor ...
Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?" "I don't know any other way." "Let me show you." And then we're kissing. Or at least, I think we're kissing—I've only seen it done a couple of times, quick closed-mouth pecks at wedd...
Worrying about scarcity is our culture's version of post-traumatic stress. It happens when we've been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability) we're angry and scared and at each other's throats.
What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or biased history - the heroic le...
Say you are at the brink of killing yourself and someone tries to talk you out of it. You’ve already thought about it and your life is not worth living. Someone else comes along and tries to convince you not to kill yourself. Is there someone out t...
I thought carefully as I watched Eyuran treat Uncle Orewen’s wounds. There is no one in their right mind who would assault a Danna, simply because the enemy of an individual becomes the enemy of the whole kennar. Kennar are usually related to each ...
Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could to feel no guilt. When peop...
Clearly there are common sense things we can do to help children to have better lives and keep them from becoming so despondent that their only perceived solution is to kill themselves or others. How oblivious do we have to be to the inner turmoil of...
With intimacy comes the possibility of “engulfment” or being taken hostage by the demands of others. We may have distorted perceptions of the “demands” and obligations placed upon us by those who claim to love us. Trusting that love to be unc...
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affec...
I stare at the stars... And even though there are so many and they look so close together, I know they are light years apart. The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another, but th...
To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does h...
A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions (...) if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or w...
