Altogether forty-five Emperors had claimed the Spear of Destiny as their possession between the coronation in Rome of Charlemagne and the fall of the old German Empire exactly a thousand years later. And what a pagentry it was! THe Spear had passed l...
Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know Superman can possibly fly, or Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day...
Jess thought for a moment. 'You know those films where people fight up the top of the Empire State Building or up a mountain or whatever? And there's always that bit when the baddie slips off and the hero tries to save him, but, like, the sleeve of t...
Seeing the moving handmill, Kabir wept and said, "Alas, no one has survived the pressure of the two millstones (of the heavens and the earth). They left all their mighty empire and pomp and show behind them and but for a handful of dust no trace rema...
In the case of Tunisia, it was indeed this single act that sparked what had been long-standing active protest movements and moved them forward. But that's not so unusual. Let's look at our own history. Take the civil rights movement. There had been p...
For the developing world, the past half-century has been a time of recurring hope and frequent disappointment. Great waves of change have washed over the landscape, from the crumbling of colonial hegemonies in mid-century to the recent collapse of Co...
Religion asks followers to believe in things nobody can see, however, animal activists ask people to see things they can prove. When Christian animal and environmental activists finally demand that their church be better stewards over the world, we w...
If for instance the sentiment possessing for the moment the empire of our mind is sorrow, will not the genius sharpen the sorrow and the sorrow purify the genius? Together, will they not be like a cut diamond for which language is only the wax on whi...
[Frank and Basie are about to leave Jim in the street] Jim: [desperately] Basie, first I could show you some rich pickings. Hundreds of houses left empty. I could show you some of the houses I lived in before Frank found me. They were luxuriant! Basi...
[first lines] Narrator: [title card] In 1941 China and Japan had been in a state of undeclared war for four years. A Japanese army of occupation was in control of much of the countryside and many towns and cities. In Shanghai thousands of Westerners,...
Otto: Don't call me stupid. Wendy: Why on earth not? Otto: Oh, you English are *so* superior, aren't you? Well, would you like to know what you'd be without us, the good ol' U.S. of A. to protect you? I'll tell you. The smallest fucking province in t...
Nova Prime Rael: Ronan is destroying Xandarian outposts throughout the galaxy! I should think that would call for some slight response on the part of the Kree. Kree Ambassador: We signed your peace treaty, Nova Prime. What more do you want? Nova Prim...
Humphrey: Now two boys have been found rubbing linseed oil into the school cormorant. Now some of you may feel that the cormorant does not play an important part in the life of the school, but I would remind you that it was presented to us by the cor...
Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is s...
At the end, one didn't remember life as a whole but as just a string of moments.
Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!
People don't always get what they deserve in this world.
Everything worth loving in this world is difficult.
It's hard to stay committed when our heart isn't in it.
But sometimes a shattered view is the only way to see truth.
What we expect rarely occurs; what we don't expect is what happens.
