I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental an...
If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singulary generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment - is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning...
It [fiction] allows us to see the world from the point of view of someone else and there has been quite a lot of neurological research that shows reading novels is actually good for you. It embeds you in society and makes you think about other people...
And Kate thought about a time, long ago, when she had witnessed an ongoing romance between two mental patients. As a teenager watching their unlikely relationship unfold in front of her, she had understood that people did whatever they needed to do t...
Does doing something old with new technology mean that I’m teaching with technology and that I’m doing so in a way as to really improve the reading and writing skills of the students in my classroom?” (2007, 214). Her answer, as well as mine, w...
If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, the general practice of...
Fantasy is escapism, but wait... Why is this wrong? What are you escaping from, and where are you escaping to? Is the story opening windows or slamming doors? The British author G.K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its pu...
Love is stronger than both fear and hope - if you can love the natural beauty around you, the amazing gifts and skills we have, the fact that you are alive to experience life, each moment that you have, and love yourself and those around you just as ...
Allowing children to learn about what interests them is good, but helping them do it in a meaningful, rigorous way is better. Freedom and choice are good, but a life steeped in thinking, learning, and doing is better. It’s not enough to say, “Go,...
If you want help in starting to write memoirs, you don't want to fall into the clutches of a famous writer who has been hired to teach at a writing workshop solely because of his name's ability to attract students, rather than because of any teaching...
We need to have far less confidence in what man can do and far more confidence in what God can do for every believing soul. He longs to have you reach after Him by faith. He longs to have you expect great things from Him. He longs to give you underst...
There is nothing in the world which an artist cannot recreate into something poetic, ennobling. And why do we read these things? They are not facts, they do not improve our business skills, our techniques in manufacturing goods, the management of a h...
When the subject is sacred, proud and clever men may come to think that the outsiders who don't know it are not merely inferior to them in skill but lower in God's eyes; as the priests said, 'All that rabble who are not experts in the Torah are accur...
Devoting yourself to a particular art is invaluable. The art becomes our vehicle with which we drive down the road of life. We use this vehicle to learn about ourselves and this place, to conquer fears, to become more of what we already are. In my ow...
Early in her career, Muse engaged her skills for technical purposes, such as document translation and schematic visualizations for government entities. She continued to write and paint poetically, in secret, using her pen name, Muse. An inner compass...
Did you ever ask yourself if each one of us pursued a high educational degree, who would do the skilled manual work? Craftsmanship may not earn us the money we want but that does not mean we should scorn on anyone doing it. We are obliged to be respe...
Allowing attachments to people/things create a compulsive addiction in us to be controlling. This “control” (fueled by fear of loss) fools us into a false sense of security and love. At first glance, it is common to confuse the idea of Conscious ...
Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting ...
Oskar Schindler: What are you doing? These are mine. These are my workers. They should be on my train. They're skilled munitions workers. They're essential. Essential girls! [shows the guard Danka Dresner's hand] Oskar Schindler: Their fingers polish...
Dr. Schreber: When they first brought us here, they extracted what was in us and stored the information, remixed it like so much paint, and gave us back new memories of their choosing. But they still needed an artist to help them. I understood the hu...
[on taking Katsushiro as a student] Kambei Shimada: You embarrass me. You're overestimating me. Listen, I'm not a man with any special skill, but I've had plenty of experience in battles; losing battles, all of them. In short, that's all I am. Drop s...
