Looking at the children, she knew that any hope for a new life would have to grow within her. She glanced at Nate, wondering if he felt as she did, that children were the only consolation in this world, the only recompense for so much suffering.
What does Mrs Preston want to go abroad for?' asked Mr Leslie. 'I think her doctor wanted her to, Father,' said Agnes. 'Doctors!' said Mr Leslie, wiping the whole of the Royal College of Physicians off the face of the world with this withering remark...
If we were bees, ants, or Lacedaemonian| warriors, to whom personal fear does not exist and cowardice is the most shameful thing in the world, warring would go on forever. But luckily we are only men — and cowards.
Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways. Faith is the central problem of this age. The Western world does not know it, but it already possesses the answer to this problem-but...
If we want to know what God wants from us as Christians, we must have a firm biblical grasp of His intention in making man in the first place.
There are those among us who have erred, deeply and significantly. Who have wounded the world and broken themselves. The worst of them lose themselves in their errors. The best of them crawl back, one foot at a time, and seek to amend their breaches....
There are those amongst us who have erred, deeply and significantly. Who have wounded the world and broken themselves. The worst of them lose themselves in their errors. The best of them crawl back, one foot at a time, and seek to amend their breache...
I'd never had a mind for math. ... It was a logic that made little sense to me. In my perception, the world wasn't a graph or a formula or an equation. It was a story.
It seems an odd idea to my students that poetry, like all art, leads us away from itself, back to the world in which we live. It furnishes the vision. It shows with intense clarity what is already there.
After all we'd been through, we still couldn't take our heads from out of our asses or our hands from around each other's throats.
Buddhism is all about science. If science is the systematic pursuit of the accurate knowledge of reality, then science is Buddhism, Buddhism is science.
Staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing -- by dint of ignorance and innocence -- that beneath this unbearable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way.
I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.
Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.
Owning pipelines, people, products, or even intellectual property is no longer the key to success. Openness is.
Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.
One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are.
Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the job that we have, and the people who are in our lives.
If we emphasized only precision, our meditation might become quite harsh and militant. (...). One thing that is very helpful is to cultivate an overall sense of relaxation while you are doing the meditation.
There's a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable.
It is strange the way trauma deadens curiosity. To suffer cruelty in excess is to be delivered from care. The human heart sets aside its questions when the future is too capricious. This is the irony of tribulation. To know the world will never be so...
