The attacks of 9/11 were the biggest surprise in American history, and for the past ten years we haven't stopped being surprised. The war on terror has had no discernible trajectory, and, unlike other military conflicts, it's almost impossible to def...
No matter what choice you make, it doesn't define you. Not forever. People can make bad choices and change their minds and hearts and do good things later; just as people can make good choices and then turn around and walk a bad path. No choice we ma...
He was filled with loss and an off-brand of nostalgia for events that were supposed to become part of his past but now wouldn't at all. In the mind's special processes, a ten-mile run takes far longer than the minutes reported by a grandfather clock....
I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The...
Things that look like they were designed, probably were... If intelligence is an operative component of the universe, a science that methodologically excludes its existence will be susceptible to being trapped in an endless chase for materialistic ca...
Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the devil's foot, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind. If t...
For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous condu...
...Americans didn’t stick to cities, which makes us different from the people in other industrialized countries. We no sooner arrived in town, turning those towns into great mid-century metropolises, than we decided to take off for the green world ...
Much of the oxygen we breathe comes from plants that died long ago. We can give thanks to these ancestors of our present-pay foliage, but we can't give back to them. We can, however, give forward. When we are unable to return the favor, we can pay it...
Teammates...were fine things. Piling onto the bus before the game, edgy with shared nerves, egging one another on with the genial, meaningless phrase C'mon, you guys!, collapsing back into the same seats for the ride home—the sense of striving in a...
Principal Evans: Mr. and Mrs. Abagnale, this is not a question of your son's attendance. I regret to inform you that, for the past week, Frank has been teaching Mrs. Glasser's French class. Paula Abagnale: He what? Principal Evans: Your son has been ...
Deckard Shaw: [first lines, speaking to comatose Owen Shaw] They say if you want to glimpse the future, just look behind you. I used to think that was bollocks. And now I realise you can't outrun the past. When we were kids, you started fights with t...
Aragorn: [to the corsair ships] You may go no further! You will not enter Gondor. Captain: Who are you to deny us passage? Aragorn: Legolas, fire a warning shot past the bosun's ear. Gimli: Mind your aim! [Legolas aims; Gimli knocks the bow as he sho...
Stansfield: Tony, you've killed for us in the past, and we've always been satisfied, which is why it's very hard for me to come down here today. One of my men was killed today in your territory, and the chinks tell me the killer was of the... Italian...
Pappy O'Daniel: Sounded to me like he was harboring a hateful grudge against the Soggy Bottom Boys on account of their rough and rowdy past. Looks like Homer Stokes is the kind of fellow who wants to cast the first stone. [boos] Pappy O'Daniel: Well,...
Jack Sparrow: Last time... I was here a grand total of three days, all right? Last time, the rum runners used this island as a cache, they came past and I was able to barter passage off. By the look of things, they've long been out of business. Proba...
Mr. Darcy: Miss Elizabeth. I have struggled in vain and I can bear it no longer. These past months have been a torment. I came to Rosings with the single object of seeing you... I had to see you. I have fought against my better judgment, my family's ...
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I've accessed a Borg neuroprocessor and I've discovered what they're trying to do. They're transforming the deflector dish into an interplexing beacon. Lt. Hawk: [confused] "Interplexing"? Captain Jean-Luc Picard: It's a subs...
Eric Cartman: Mom, there's someone at the door. [No reply] Eric Cartman: Mom, I said there's someone at the door! Mrs. Cartman: Coming, hun. Eric Cartman: [as Liane walks past] Ay, I can't see the TV! Mrs. Cartman: Oh, look Eric, It's your little fri...
Marty DiBergi: Given the history of Spinal Tap drummers, uh, in the past, do you have any fears, uh, for your life? Mick Shrimpton: When I did join, you know, they did tell me - they kind of took me aside and said, "Well, Mick. It's, you know, it's l...
Cropsey, Rogue Lieutenant: [Luther just made a phone call and is excited] Well? Luther: Some two-bit outfit almost got them, but they bopped their way past. Cropsey, Rogue Lieutenant: We can meet them at the 96th street station. Luther: Yeah, platfor...
