Real self-worth comes from mastery, from getting good at something. It doesn't matter what. Then you don't have to worry about empty compliments. You don't worry about what other people think. You have self-respect.
And I don't believe you dead. How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I'll have to speak to in a different way, but you not dead to me Nettie. And never will you be.
There was something about the smell of books, the ink-and-paper-and-leather scent, the way dust in a library seemed to behave differently from the dust in any other room -- it was golden in the light of the witchlight tapers, setting like pollen acro...
It’s all fine to say, “Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget”—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of so...
I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. . . . The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. ...
Is that the ultimate need? To secure some agent to act as a salve, a bandage, a cover-up, concealer over the black eye, as opposed to facing the issue head on. Nobody wants to address the fist. We’d all much rather take something for the pain and m...
Cats are cats . . . the world over! These intelligent, peace-loving, four-footed friends- who are without prejudice, without hate, without greed- may someday teach us something. -James Mackintosh Qwilleran
I suppose we cling because we fear losing something we hold dear, and the fear of that loss prevents us from seeing what we might gain if we were to just loosen our grip." Marianne Coyne
Science is often misrepresented as ‘the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory.’ Actually, science is something broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world.
I needed something else, some kind of juice. He gave me a hooked-eyebrow glance and took a showy swig of the water. Mmm, he said, smacking his lips. Water-juice. It's fantastic.
Progress is something with no pity, and no purpose. It just happens. It chews up all you ever knew, and spits out things you can't understand, and the only value it seems to have is to make a few people a lot of money.
Most of us spend all our working life dreaming of doing nothing, then when we end up doing nothing, we long for something. When we have neither longing, I think that is what they call living for the moment.
I wanted to say something to make her pain go away and make everything better. But, I realized that there was no answer. Bad things happen to good people. Rain always falls on the people who deserve nothing less than the sun.
...continue on the right path. You have potential...Don't give up. Don't let yourself get down and quit studying or fighting for what you want. One day something good is bound to happen. You just have to keep at it.
She had a way of moving that moved him as much as music, which was what moved him most of all. Surely the spirit animating that pearless body must be unusual too? Why would nature make a vessel like that, if not to contain something still more valuab...
Maybe reading was just a way to make her feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life.
The phrases “I am not…” has a great creative power. When you tell yourself “I am not…”, remember you have just created something. Be careful of whom you say you are not; you will never be such a person! You are not a loser!
It felt like we were reliving the first day of the school year, when students and teachers do the get-to-know-you dance—teachers tell students something about who they are, students pretend to care, and then vice-versa.
What do you mean, my life is at risk?" I questioned. "From one of the other professors?" "Oh, it goes much deeper than that, Freddy," he said with a half crazed, wide eyed smile. Leaning in, he whispered, "I stole something.
Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a...
The ultimate authority of my life is not the Bible; it is not confined between the covers of a book. It is not something written by men and frozen in time. It is not from a source outside myself. My ultimate authority is the divine voice in my own so...
