Eating, drinking, dying - three primary manifestations of the universal and impersonal life. Animals live that impersonal and universal life without knowing its nature. Ordinary people know its nature but don't live it and, if they think seriously ab...
I told Ella Mae Cheeks Johnson, then age 105, that she was the only person over 80 who I'd ever met who never referred to her physical infirmities or health problems. To which she replied, "I have my difficulties; I do not rejoice in them.
The vocational approach at NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) helps build grit in students. It teaches them how to be single-minded in pursuit of a goal, to sacrifice for the sake of a passion. The teachers demand hard work from their k...
I had a dream about you. You took control of my body and forced me to have sex with you. Then you called the cops, and the police said I raped you—but I was the one who was raped. If I had known you were that kind of person, I’d have never voted ...
And so I found myself in a kind of love lock: pining for the wrong person, grieving beside a woman whose body I can't touch, being given a second chance I can't find the clarity to take.
I thought society would do the right thing. Now I look around and I think -- society never does the right thing. Sometimes people do the right thing. Sometimes one person makes a difference. But civilization has rules, and I've learned them well -- n...
Adams dealt him so sound a Compliment over his Face with his Fist, that the Blood immediately gushed out of his Nose in a Stream. The Host being unwilling to be outdone in Courtesy, especially by a Person of Adams's Figure, returned the Favour with s...
In order to live without creating any serious problems for the group's harmony, people avoid expressing their ideas clearly, even the point of avoiding giving a simple yes or no answer. If a person really wanted to say no, he or she said nothing at f...
The pretty ones are usually unhappy. They expect everyone to be enamored of their beauty. How can a person be content when their happiness lies in someone else's hands, ready to be crushed at any moment? Ordinary-looking people are far superior, beca...
Love doesn't want people to stay ignorant and frightened. Love doesn't value obedience over all else. Love doesn't judge and find some lives--or loves--more valuable than others. Love doesn't use people and throw them away. Love stays, and makes you ...
The people who believe themselves superior to you will reveal themselves in how they respond to criticism from you. An opinion of anyone carries as much weight as whatever value that person's social currency has. A poor man spouting words more though...
In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship. You become mature when you become the authority of your own life. Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change...
By means of personal experimentation and observation, we can discover certain simple and universal truths. The mind moves the body, and the body follows the mind. Logically then, negative thought patterns harm not only the mind but also the body. Wha...
Allyson meanwhile is remembering. Why this person? All the things she has told herself, or other people have told her - infatuation or Paris or good acting or lust - no longer hold water, because she remembers so viscerally and feels it anew. It's no...
It seems like with you everything leads back to the subject of death." "Sure and show me the person's road that does not lead to death. we try to divert our attention, to pretend 'tisn't so, but the very air we breathe is vulture's breath. Please don...
Southern political personalities, like sweet corn, travel badly. They lose flavor with every hundred yards away from the patch. By the time they reach New York, they are like Golden Bantam that has been trucked up from Texas ― stale and unprofitabl...
The Brandy Diet is one of my personal favourites – you don’t lose any weight, but if you drink enough of the stuff then you neither care what you look like nor what people think of you. Also, if you’re very lucky, you can lose days.
You have to be objective about money to use it fairly. It doesn't make you any better or any more useful than any other person. Even if you use your money to help people...that doesn't make you better than somebody who has no money but is sympathetic...
It's fallacious reasoning for the atheist to hate all religion due to men who manipulate religion to fit their own agendas. They are counterparts, therefore, if Truth is true, partners in crime. To believers, the atheist and the religiously corrupt b...
It is the philosophers, theologians, and evangelists who are said to be filled with pride and bigotry due to the strong convictions that they represent. On the contrary, teachings can be either taken or dismissed; whereas voting is the only thing the...
The pain of the narcissist is that, to him, everything is really a threat. What doesn't surrender in reverence is blasphemous to a high opinion of oneself - the burden of self-importance. The narcissist reconstructs his own law of gravity which state...