Can you see why I can't stand a lie? People have been lying to me all my life. Even the person I loved the most in the world." Sometimes people lie for good reasons," Jonah said. "To keep you safe, or to avoid breaking your heart, or to make it possi...
While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. ...
Soyons fermes, purs et fidèles ; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n'ont pas cédé. [Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the...
In a world where PG 13 means kinda-sorta-depends on your level of morals, I don’t wish to loosen our kids’ morals just because some adults choose to say, “They are going to see it anyway.” If we don’t show them that integrity is something y...
There were two books I remember changing my life as a introverted, bookish 14 year old. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. One was set in a fantastic world, populated by outlandish characters,tired prose, foul mons...
We try to organize the world, which isn't organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don't think...
In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life pr...
...we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves -- to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good,...
In the Netherlands - where I come from - you actually never see a pig, which is really strange, because, in a population of 16 million people, we have 12 million pigs. And well, of course, the Dutch can't eat all these pigs. They eat about one-third,...
Billions of years from now our sun, then a distended red giant star, will have reduced Earth to a charred cinder. But the Voyager record will still be largely intact, in some other remote region of the Milky Way galaxy, preserving a murmur of an anci...
In other words, Shozaburo Takitani was now alone in the world. This was no great shock to him, however, nor did it make him feel particularly sad or miserable. He did, of course, experience some sense of absence, but he felt that, eventually, life ha...
Humanity should be our Religion and every Human should be our God, This world should be our Temple and doing good to fellow Humans should be our Prayer. Quran Bible and Bhagwad Geeta all have this message if not just read but also understood properly...
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering – for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected wit...
Nanak dukhiya sab sansaar! This whole world is ridden with Sorrow. Stop comparing as we all have a fucked up life, family and job! No matter what others show and potray! ;) "Jhaak ke dekhoge (I mean kareeb se) toh pata chalega ki saamne waale ke toh ...
Today the earth speaks with resonance and clearness and every ear in every civilized country of the world is attuned to its wonderful message of the creative evolution of man, except the ear of William Jennings Bryan; he alone remains stone-deaf, he ...
Going green doesn’t start with doing green acts — it starts with a shift in consciousness. This shift allows you to recognize that with every choice you make, you are voting either for or against the kind of world you wish to see. When you assume...
The DVR thing has rocked my world. Being on the road, I used to not keep up with any shows. Now I got a DVR, so I'm watching everything: 'CSI: Miami,' my favorites 'Criminal Minds' and 'The Mentalist.' I like some of the HBO stuff, 'Entourage' and 'E...
Vampires, contrary to popular belief, don't incinerate when exposed to sunlight. If that were true, there would be a heck of a lot more stories about spontaneous combustion around the world. They are, however, very sensitive to sunlight and their ski...
When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I'm teaching in a ...
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey's prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole...
I began to mourn the simplicity of my childhood, the warmth of my family that now seemed lost, years had passed by and we had all been weathered by the world. At times all I could see in their eyes was the reflection of loneliness in the longing we h...