Then there was Mani, the Mighty Good-For-Nothing. He towered above all the other boys of the class. He seldom brought any books to the class, and never bothered about homework. He came to the class, monopolized the last bench, ans slept bravely. No t...
Gandhi once said be the change you want to see in the world. Truth is...we must rise above our problems in our lives to contribute positive energy to humanity to do so. When we overcome painful situations and give back to help others...we not only he...
He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books...
... when she called to mind all this utter and crushing misery that had come upon my aunts' old music-master, she was moved to very real grief, and shuddered to think of that other grief, so different in its bitterness, which Mlle. Vinteuil must now ...
Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, m...
When our hearts are in a state of coherence, we more easily experience feelings such as love, care, appreciation, and kindness. On the other hand, feelings such as irritation, anger, hurt, and envy are more likely to occur when the head and heart are...
Anxiety is a state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a realistic or fantasized threatening event or situation. Often, men will appear confident and self-assured to others but actually be living with a great dea...
The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a wh...
look you, there are only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes, and, to make up for ...
My self-imposed solitude, at first a punishment I inflicted upon myself, became a kind of solace. I was apart from the city, my only reality the thoughts inside myself. Slowly, without the distractions of other companions and the need to mold and mod...
Courage to me is doing something daring, no matter how afraid, insecure, intimidated, alone, unworthy, incapable, ridiculed or whatever other paralyzing emotion you might feel. Courage is taking action.....no matter what. So you're afraid? Be afr...
Some people are like gravity; they draw you into a room with a hop in your step and a smile on your face. Others are like the stench of sulfur; they make you scowl and want to swivel on the balls of your feet towards a quick exit. Have you stopped to...
Even those fortunate ones among us who get sex right don’t necessarily feel compelled to talk about it. For all they know, everybody else is having the same experience. Sex being a naturally private act, we don’t share experiences with others the...
But from the start I had withheld from him any information about the giant redwoods. It seemed to me that a Long Island poodle who had made his devoirs to or might be set apart from other dogs--might even be like that Galahad who saw the Grail. The c...
And the bummer thing is, ghosts never leave. They might leave you alone sometimes, but they're always there deep down, whispering lies in your ear. They echo the lies others told you: That you're not smart enough; that you're not pretty; that you'll ...
And reading this way - with no deadline, no agenda - she remembered why she loved literature so much. It was like fucking a new man and knowing that he had made other women come, but that when she came it would be an unshareable, untranslatable pleas...
Individuals who speak languages other than English, who speak patois as well as standard English, find it a necessary aspect of self-affirmation not to feel compelled to chose one voice over another, not to claim one as more authentic but rather to c...
It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners. It was understood that whoever was caught doing this received a severe beating. A number of us decided to pay the price for the privilege of preaching, so we accepted their [the communists' ] te...
As you travel around medieval England you will come across a sport described by some contemporaries as 'abominable ... more common, undignified and worthless than any other game, rarely ending but with some loss, accident or disadvantage to the playe...
Until the sixteenth century, men--priests, academics, judges, merchants, princes, and many others--wore skirts, or robes. For men, the skirt was a 'sign of leisure and a symbol of dignity,' writes Quentin Bell. This is still true for men in high posi...
The others moved in like a wake of vultures, ready to devour their prey. she had seen it on television once. 'Scavengers,' Tatinek called them. They swoop in and feed off the carcasses of animals that are too weak to escape - lots of them on battlefi...