A bunch of Angels waving their hands at someone, giving them extraordinary and miraculous abilities, doesn’t make anyone holy,” Satan said. “Holiness has to be earned, and it is earned in this world of pain and woe, not in the world of spirit...
In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the re...
You won't," says the Mayor, smiling again. "Everyone knows you aren't a killer, Todd." He pushes Viola forward again - She calls out from the pain of it - Viola, I think - - I grit my teeth and raise the rifle - I cock it - And I say what's true - "I...
Strange how mean words can return to ones thoughts, years after they’ve been callously thrown at you. They replay in your mind, spiking a sense of remembered pain. Nasty name calling can be an ugly memory that stabs unexpectedly—not unlike a nigh...
It's easy to look at people and make quick judgements about them, their present and their pasts, but you'd be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides. What a person shows to the world is only oneone tiny facet of the iceberg hidden from sit...
It doesn't take two minutes on an examining table for a girl to know that abortion is painful and destructive and it'll have far-reaching effects on her life. Besides the emotional trauma of going through something so violent, there are the physical ...
No. I made that choice. I let all that anger and pain get twisted up in my thoughts for you.” He leaned in. “It fucking kills me. Every night. I relive what I did to you every night.” His forehead rested against mine. “Until you,” he said s...
The Northern powers are more like administrators, who manipulate other people’s history but produce none of their own. They are the stock-jobbers of history, lives are their units of exchange. Lives as they are lived, deaths as they are died, all t...
The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you'll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of everyday life.....Each decision seems as insignific...
As long as there is one person suffering an injustice; as long as one person is forced to bear an unnecessary sorrow; as long as one person is subject to an undeserved pain, the worship of a God is a demoralizing humiliation. As long as there is one ...
There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms ...
I have tried to understand what crucifixion must feel like. I just know that the pain must be beyond what I have ever experienced. I respect, love, and trust the One who endured all this when He didn't have to. I understand Jesus with my heart, and t...
Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that...
Kill me then,' panted Harry, who felt no fear at all, but only rage and contempt. 'Kill me like you killed him, you coward-' DON'T-' screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling...
In a moral dilemma where you lost something either way, making the choice would feel bad either way, so you could temporarily save yourself a little mental pain by refusing to decide. At the cost of not being able to plan anything in advance, and at ...
I cannot understand anti-abortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species we've fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don't believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain and life-lo...
This whole effort to rebuild and stabilize a countryside is not without its disappointments and mistakes... What matter though these temporary growing pains when one can cast his eye upon the hills and see hard-boiled farmers who have spent their liv...
Almost every day I can feel myself suffering mainly in the head, I can explain the pain to myself but knowing it comes from an inflammation of my imagination doesn't prevent it being reality itself. What's more I'd be crazy not to go crazy. We don't ...
Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devis...
...when you go down a dark alley and you feel that tingling across the back of your neck, that's not just a bad feeling, that's a biological gift from God - the Gift of Fear...when you ignore that gift - when you go down the dark alley and say, Y'kno...
Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, yo...
