The tea ceremony requires years of training and practice ... yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, ...
Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour an serious play. It is also a rhetor...
Otrera stayed dead the second time," Kinzie said, batting her eyes. "We have to thank you for that. If you ever need a new girlfriend...well, I think you'd look great in an iron collar and an orange jumpsuit." Percy couldn't tell if she was kidding o...
An aptitude test established architecture as an alternative [career]. But what decided the matter for [Teddy Cruz] was the sight of a fourth-year architecture student sitting at his desk at a window, drawing and nursing a cup of coffee as rain fell o...
Education continued to come under particularly strong fire...: If women learned how to manage in the world as well as men, if they learned about history and politics and studied for a profession, of course they would soon be demanding a voice and a r...
The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken fro...
The world became more aware that America-despite being the hope of many who have the personal drive and ambition to become part of the "American dream"-is beset by serious operational challenges: a massive and growing national debt, widening social i...
If gold has been prized because it is the most inert element, changeless and incorruptible, water is prized for the opposite reason -- its fluidity, mobility, changeability that make it a necessity and a metaphor for life itself. To value gold over w...
If untruths become part of our language—untruths that in context are intended to be interpreted as polite expressions or figure of speech—then each person is left to decide for themselves the meaning of any sentence. And when language and meaning...
We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner...
The feminist challenge was sweeping: it embraced education and occupation, together with legal, political, and social status. It even dared broach the subject of equality in personal, and especially matrimonial, relationships. Such assertiveness was ...
The talked about their messed-up, dysfunctional families, carefully respecting boundaries, never probing too deep in any one sitting. And they always ended up laughing. Even when the subject matter was intense or macabre, Henry’s sick and twisted a...
Finally, the functionalist organization, by privileging progress (i.e. time), causes the condition of its own possibility--space itself--to be forgotten: space thus becomes the blind spot in a scientific and political technology. This is the way in w...
We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom. ...Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those pr...
The farm work they hated was the only work they knew. Often, even the basic skills of plumbing or electricity or mechanical work were mysteries to them – as were the job discipline and the subtleties that children raised in the industrial world lea...
Don’t deny that you have feelings for this girl! We’ve seen it!” Andrew said. “Hush, you’re annoying,” Oliver muttered. “I assure you that my relationship with Sophie doesn’t overstep the boundaries of friendship, not that it’s any ...
If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy ... to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if these things be libellous ... let the name...
She’s beautiful, but she’s also got brains. I’ll bet zombies would love to eat out of her skull like a bowl of Jell-O that had an IQ of 180—which is absurd, because the last bowl of Jell-O I ate only measured in with an IQ of 123. Still, an I...
A new poll found that 84% of American people were disgusted by Congress, and my only thought is, Are 16% of Americans insane? If they’re not disgusted, they should eat a bowl of vomit soup. It’s fresh, as I just made it after reading the latest p...
As religion starts to mix with politics, we have a culture that allows us to fall behind what were previously third world nations, because we are now treating science the way we did sex in the 1950s, banning or burying evolution theories and research...
Surely the greatest tragedy for men in regard to the feminine principle is that their fear alienates them from their own anima, the principle of relatedness, feeling and connection to the life force. This alienation from self obliges alienation from ...
