What is morality? It is not the following of enjoined rules of conduct. It is not a question of standing above temptations, or of conquering hate, anger, greed, lust and violence. Questioning your actions before and after creates the moral problem. W...
Every animal is a tradition, and together they are a vast part of our heritage as human beings. No animal completely lacks humanity, yet no person is ever completely human. By ourselves, we people are simply balls of protoplasm. We merge with animals...
If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginn...
To be beautiful, handsome, means that you possess a power which makes all smile upon and welcome you; that everybody is impressed in your favor and inclined to be of your opinion; that you have only to pass through a street or to show yourself at a b...
I thought about that while he made his next calls, while I kept on with the newsletters. I thought about it during Sunday service at Word of Life, and during study hours in my room, with the Viking Erin and her squeaky pink highlighter. What it meant...
And now, while he didn't particularly think any of these stories was a bit truer, he did realize that he didn't really know his wife at all; and that in fact the entire conception of knowing another person--of trust, of closeness, of marriage itself-...
Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only 'pseudo problems,' because they can be formulated only in terms of questions which are meaningless. Many of the ...
I couldn't think of anything helpful to say, so I resorted to humor, my shield of last resort. 'Just please tell me they don't have a dog and a picket fence.' He smiled. 'No fence, but a dog, two dogs.' 'What kind of dogs?' I asked. He smiled and gla...
There are no known non-biblical references to a historical Jesus by any historian or other writer of the time during and shortly after Jesus's purported advent. As Barbara G. Walker says, 'No literate person of his own time mentioned him in any known...
Women have been driven mad, "gaslighted," for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a prima...
She paused and saw him tense in expectation. He wouldn’t like to hear this, but better from her than one of the others. “You aren’t the only pilot I have in my service. And you aren’t the only person with a dark past, though the illegal thing...
I assume you are the sort of person who would go backstage after the opera in hopes of hearing the prima donna crying on the telephone, or walking in on the baritone fellating the basso buffo. I respect that-I was always the same way myself-though I ...
The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed. Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can. The job might be dif...
There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake. It is the Human desire for Lov...
What we're doing, or, I should say, what doing, since no one has taught me any good words, is dropping recipes into people's brains to cause a neurochemical reaction to knock out the filters. Tie them up just long enough to slip an instruction past. ...
I can worship Nature, and that fulfills my need for miracles and beauty. Art gives a spiritual depth to existence -- I can find worlds bigger and deeper than my own in music, paintings, and books. And from my friends and family I receive the highest ...
You both passed out,” Percy said. “I don’t know why, but Ella told me not to worry about it. She said you were…sharing?” “Sharing,” Ella agreed. She crouched in the stern, preening her wing feathers with her teeth, which didn’t look l...
Many people have got caught up in the belief known as the “Law of Attraction.” They believe that by their thoughts, affirmations, and other “attraction” exercises they will become wealthy. However, the Tanakh wisely says, “In all work there...
Writing … is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the w...
I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as "common decency". I treated somebody well for a little while, or even for a tremendously long time, and that person treat...
This is shitty to say, but there's not much pathos involved in a case like that. Think about it: Little So-and-so the Fourth drowns himself Tuesday night after receiving his midterm grades in the school of civil engineering. The body goes back to Wes...
