Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all th...
The man who did the shouting at the P.S.U.C. post down on our right was an artist at the job. Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the Facists how much better we were being fed than they were. His account of the Governm...
It’s easy to think that if we had a different house, different car, different job, different relationship, different city, everything would be different; that we would feel different then. The problem is, you are the main character in the story tha...
There was a small glass vase between us, three gladioli in a few ounces of water. One of the gladioli had dropped a petal- brushstroke of purple on fine white cloth. Rinpoche drank the last sip of his tea, then set the cup aside, took the petal with ...
The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, l...
How monotonous our speaking becomes when we speak only to ourselves! And how to the other beings – to foraging black bears and twisted old cypresses – that no longer sense us talking to them, but only about them, as though they were not present i...
He remembered how nice the kids at Camp Half-Blood had been to him after the war with Kronos. Great job, Nico! Thanks for bringing the armies of the Underworld to save us! Everybody smiled. They all invited him to sit at their table. After about a we...
Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the sm...
Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilitie...
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to ...
Of course I am not referring to those outburts of passions that drive us to do and say things we will later regret, that delude us into thinking we cannot life without a certain person, that set us quivering with anxiety at the mere possibility we mi...
When distinction of any kind, even intellectual distinction, is somehow resented as a betrayal of the American spirit of equal opportunity for all, the result must be just this terror of individualistic impulses setting us apart, either above or belo...
You meet me after school right here", I said. "Why?" he asked. I couldn't believe he was so stupid. "Because we're going to finish this fight." "You're crazy," Roger said. He got to his feet and walked away. His gang stared at me like I was a serail ...
One of the great Confederate combat leaders, General John B. Gordon, had sat at his horse and spoken farewell to his men. Some he had seen weeping as they folded burnt and shot-pierced battle flags and laid them on the stacked arms of surrender. As h...
Like a great fool, I went ashore with them, and they gave me some cursed stuff they called gin, - such blasphemy I never heard! At first when they told me they had set up a great distillery of gin, I thought them very useful, clever, good men; for yo...
Stella, the only planet of my light, Light of my life, and life of my desire, Chief good, whereto my hope doth only aspire, World of my wealth, and heav'n of my delight: Why dost thou spend the treasure of thy sprite, With voice more fit to wed Amphi...
A key ingredient in appreciating what mathematics is about is to realize that it is concerned with ideas, understanding, and communication more than it is with any specific brand of symbols....It is almost as if ideas set in mathematical form melt an...
When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it; no, it ...
Malphas surveyed the women's bodies with utter disgust and sorrow until he realized Tabitha was still alive. He knelt by her side and cradled her head tenderly. "Tabby... I'm so sorry" Grimacing she opened her eyes as she labored to breathe. She laug...
means you feel the pulse of other people's pain as well as your own, and saying it means you take a share of it. And so it binds us together, makes us trodden and sodden as one another. is a lot of things. It's a hole refilled. A debt repaid. is the ...
They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth in the inner soul of a city in which honor and justice, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the market-place, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolv...
