I think that certain emotions can compromise you when you’re at war. If you stop to mourn the dead, or even to breathe in what you’ve done, you’ll be dead as well. Your brain goes to a primitive region, one inaccessible to feelings beyond pure ...
For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we desperately wanted to say yes. . . . When we don't l...
Hence to be happy is nothing but not to be in need, that is, to be wise. But if you seek what wisdom is, reason has already explained and declared this as far as presently possible. For wisdom is nothing but the measure of the soul, that is, that by ...
I don't want to know about love.' 'But you should, my child. You need to know about love. The things people will do for love. All truths come down to love, do they not? One way or another, they do. See, there is a difference between love and need. So...
Who am I?" "What is the purpose of my life?" These questions arise spontaneously throughout our lives, either unbidden or through conscious intent. Anyone who wishes to live an authentic life must answer these questions, regardless of whether they be...
In good company there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly coextensive with the several consciousnesses there ...
Cancer seems a high price to pay for an innocuous-looking habit. You get into smoking and you are robbed of the last 25 years of your life. Some cocky souls will say, 'Ah yes, but they are the worst 25 years.' Nobody feels like that in a cancer ward....
What do you think it is that makes a man" I started on the Definition. He cut me of after five words. "It is not!" he said. "A wax figure could have all that, and he'd still be a wax figure, wouldn't he?" ... "Well, then, what makes a man a man is so...
There is a sort of light surrounding Abel, something pure and strong radiates from him no matter where he is or what he's doing. Sometimes Cain thinks he possesses a soul without shadows. That's what people want to be close to. But if so, it's not li...
Out of reach and out of sight Oh my heart will follow you’re light Won’t you hear my heart Need you tonight …. You’re my soul I know it’s true When you’re far I’m missing you Won’t you save my heart Won’t you save my soul Oh your lo...
Remember that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an...
Freedom is not the absence of commitment, and to be committed to something or to someone does not mean the loss of freedom. But freedom exists in the realm of the unbound and to be free is to be committed to that which is a part of the unbound realm....
Can you not see, […] that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but that this everlasting fiction about modern life is in its nature essentially incredible? Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is...
The night I sat down to read Dostoievski for the first time was a most important event in my life, even more important than my first love. It was the first deliberate, conscious act which had significance for me; it changed the whole face of the worl...
I believe - I daily find it proved - that we can get nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, except out of purifying flame, or through strengthening peril. We err; we fall; we are humbled - then we walk more c...
Since it is likely that, being men, they would sin every day, St. Paul consoles his hearers by saying ‘renew yourselves’ from day to day. This is what we do with houses: we keep constantly repairing them as they wear old. You should do the same t...
Incarceration There is but one form of incarceration that I could ever enjoy. Incarceration is one of the most confining things that can be done to a person, but there is one type of incarceration that I can enjoy. If by chance in this life time, I s...
At the conclusion of all our studies we must try once again to experience the human soul as soul, and not just as a buzz of bioelectricity; the human will as will, and not just a surge of hormones; the human heart not as a fibrous, sticky pump, but a...
The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of t...
I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
I don't look at our society today too much. My focus is still in the past, and part of the reason is because what I do - the wellspring of art, or what I do - l get from the blues. So I listen to the music of a particular period that I'm working on, ...
