We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that dee...
I’ve met a man and fallen in love with him. I allowed myself to fall in love for one simple reason: I’m not expecting anything to come of it. I know that, in three months’ time, I’ll be far away and he’ll be just a memory, but I couldn’t ...
Where the world comes in my way - and it comes in my way everywhere - I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but - my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, th...
So, O king, does the present life of man on earth seem to me, in comparison with the time which is unknown to us, as though a sparrow flew swiftly through the hall, coming in by one door and going out by the other, and you, the while, sat at meat wit...
It's funny. When we were alive we spent much of our time staring up at the cosmos and wondering what was out there. We were obsessed with the moon and whether we could one day visit it. The day we finally walked on it was celebrated worldwide as perh...
This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experi...
Others Exonerated the plebs and threw the blame upon the patricians: it was owing to their artful canvassing that the plebeians found the road to office blocked; if the plebs might have a breathing-spell from the mingled prayers and menaces of the no...
A smaller rocket cut across the sky, trailing smoke. It exploded in a red heart. "Awwwww!" said the crowd. "Upside down," said Sean. The heart was, indeed, upside down. It grew and grew, upside down, until it's lights trailed and faded. A bigger rock...
But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you th...
Let me tell you something you haven’t learned yet, something you learn only by living awhile. As you get older, you find that life begins to wear you down. Doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, it happens. Experience, time, events—they all...
ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the British elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate? How few have we met ...
A pastor struggled for years with sexual addiction, eventually becoming so despondent that hospitalized himself. He joined an inpatient group and was mostly silent as others shared. When he decided not to come one day, the leader found he had fallen ...
The books are to remind us what asses and fool we are. They're Caeser's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal." Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of t...
The two keys to success as a sportswriter are: 1) A blind willingness to believe anything you're told by the coaches, flacks, hustlers and other "official spokesmen" for the team-owners who provide the free booze ... and: 2) A Roget's Thesaurus, in o...
Meditation is one of the most serious things; you do it all day, in the office, with the family, when you say to somebody "I love you", when you are considering your children, when you educate them to become soldiers, to kill, to be nationalized, wor...
On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel...
An author needs a lot more than one person to succumb to his literary seductive charms, but, like Saul, he must realize that he doesn't have to--and indeed cannot--capture the hearts of every possible reader out there. No matter who the writer, his i...
The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better morals but to create a community of prophets and ...
Vasco bought a bottle of vodka to celebrate and they drank it in the old sailors' graveyard in Mangrove South. This was where the funeral business had first put down its roots. Over the wall, between two warehouses, Jed could just make out the Witch'...
Don't you remember what your grandfather used to say? That thing about pots and people?" "That pots were like people," Alex replied flatly, thinking back to his grandfather carrying a tray of wet freshly thrown clay pots across the studio in ancient ...
The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black wo...
