In the first place, it would efface from everybody’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice. No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a cer- tain degree, but the safest way to make them respected is to make them respe...
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.... During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride ...
You ask me what it feels like to have wings. I can only tell you the feeling with words. And words have neither feelings nor wings. Words are leaky vessels into which a cargo of meaning and emotion are placed, and when they leave you and reach the fa...
Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret...
Sometimes all that’s needed to heal a wounded soul and lift a sagging spirit is one loving listener, for at its core, listening is love–love that sacrifices its need to be heard in favor of hearing, a desire to lecture in favor of learning, an op...
Corrival looked around. 'So is this it? Is everyone here? Erskine, maybe you should start the ball rolling. I have places to go and things to do.' 'Me?' Ravel asked. 'Why do I have to start it? You're the most respected mage here. You start it, or Sk...
Write the words "The FIve Senses" on an index card and tack it to a bulletin board above your desk. You should have a bulletin board above your desk, if at all possible. Some place where you can tack images, quotes, postcards, scraps of thoughts and ...
October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: "It is simply a matter," he explained...
Creatures cannot image even the true God in biblical thinking generally speaking. Nevertheless - and here is the extraordinary exception - there ARE "gods" in the world. There ARE images of God placed in a temple. These images are none other than the...
I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and whic...
The hope was, people like me got to finally find our place in college or in the actual world. People who understood this told you that high school wasn't the actual world, that it was more like a temporary alternate reality you were forced to believe...
The logic: Reading is a private pursuit, one that often takes place behind closed doors. A young lady might retreat with a book, might even take it into her boudoir, and there, reclining on here silken sheets, imbibing the thrills and chills manufact...
Mother is in herself a concrete denial of the idea of sexual pleasure since her sexuality has been placed at the service of reproductive function alone. She is the perpetually violated passive principle; her autonomy has been sufficiently eroded by t...
We look up, if only to see if we're likely to be rained on. The sky calls attention to itself, whether scored by herons, cranes, or wires; illumined by sunsets, Perseids, or ballparks; broken up by the twigwork of oaks or maples, painted in rainbows,...
I have tried hard to be a good person and to leave the world a better place. To feel that I have in any small way succeeded is to me a prize beyond measure, the most wonderful wealth that I could ask for, a form of prosperity that I would wish for th...
Stacey muttered, "But I hate this school, and this city, and the sooner I leave, the better. I want to start over in a new place. I haven't . . ." her voice trailed off and she looked away from Jason, hoping instead to find her words among the fallin...
Living is getting knocked down time and again, then standing up time and again, and once more. It's easy to act honorable when things are coming along and all your pastures are green. Plenty difficult when the ground is dried and burned and people ha...
Tzedakah is different than charity. Charity comes from the word charitus, which means heart. Tzedakah comes from the word tzedek, which means justice, so when you are giving tzedakah, you are not just making the world a better place by contributing t...
Perhaps she moves too slowly now, or the world moves too fast for her. She enters the lift, a giant wheel turns and steel cables lower the mechanized box. The lift drops down a black shaft, which exists at the heart of each HDB block. The country may...
Intercourse was now forbidden to everyone but married people; bundling disappeared. In its place young courting couples engaged in "petting"--which, interpreted broadly, meant that they were could do anything sexual short of intercourse. Women were n...
Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos,...
