Judah Ben-Hur: He gave me water, and the heart to live. What has he done to merit this? Balthasar: He has taken the world of our sins onto Himself. To this end He said He was born, in that stable, where I first saw Him. For this cause, He came into t...
It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria in different degrees. Generally speaking it may be said that the least sensitive bacteria are the Gram...
For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances...
It is very difficult to understand man. It is also very difficult to understand what a man does. If he is able to give an explanation, it may be easier. Even then everything can not be understood. Words have their limitation and comprehension, its li...
Everybody was talking about the religious man who committed suicide. While no one in the monastery approved of the man's action, some say they admired his faith. Faith?" said the Master. He had the courage of his convictions, didn't he?" That was fan...
I've said this before, but people love you for so many reasons. Some love you only for what you do for them. Some love you for how much money you spend. Some love you for your possessions. By now, we should know that isn't love, but merely infatuatio...
Keep going. No matter what you do, no matter how many times you screw up and think to yourself "there's no point to carry on", no matter how many people tell you that you can't do it - keep going. Don't quit. Don't quit because a month from now you w...
Brushing my little teeth every morning of my childhood, I stood on my tippy toes, leaned over the sink and said to myself that when I am a big girl I will see from this high. Today I did the same thing, but the view from my toes was the same from fla...
Do you know what she did today?" He leaned confidentially across the table, pointing at the dishes in the sink. "She went to the market and left all the breakfast dishes there and said she'd do them later. I know what she wanted. She expected me to d...
Charlestonians had a particularly vicious and cunning game, developed after the War. They treated outsiders with so much graciousness and consideration that their politeness became a weapon. 'Visitors end up feeling as if they're wearing shoes for th...
I had a job, I got ill, I left the job to get better, and while I was getting better, I wrote some stories. I sent them to some publishers and the fifth one who replied said they'd take them. Then they went bankrupt. Then that bankrupt publisher got ...
Shukhov stared at the ceiling and said nothing. He no longer knew whether he wanted to be free or not...it had gradually dawned on him that people like himself were not allowed to go home but were packed off into exile. And there was no knowing where...
Years later, when Idi Amin said and did outrageous things, I understood that his motivation was to rattle the good people of Greenwich mean time, have them raise their heads from their tea and scones, and say, Oh yes. Africa. For a fleeting moment th...
I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like - when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn't look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said s...
Camus said there is only really one serious philosophical question, which is whether or not to commit suicide. I think there are four or five serious philosophical questions: The first one is: Who started it? The second is: Are we going to make it? T...
My grandmother caught me climbing the highest tree in her yard, the one we were all forbidden to attempt. All five feet of her stood tall as she tilted her head back and squinted up at me. "Well, don't stop now," she said. "If you're going to fall no...
Freud could never be certain, he said, in view of his wide and early reading, whether what seemed like a new creation might not be the work instead of hidden channels of memory leading back to the notions of others absorbed, coming now an...
You must be excessively hungry, Mr. Merritt,” she said graciously. Mademoiselle would have been so proud of her. “Perhaps you are not a morning person?” He smiled, finally bringing his devastating sky blue morning gaze fully upon her face. “I...
The day he was to sell the children from their mother he would tell that mother to go to some other place to do some work and in their absence he would sell the children. It was the same when he would sell a man's wife, he also sent him to another jo...
I wanted, I told her, to lie under the stars and smell different breezes. I wanted to drink different waters, feel different heats. Stand with my comrades atop the ruin of old ideas. Plant my boot and steel my eye and not run. I said all this to my d...
I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last bath is out of their bodies, and indeed they will remain in the place where t...