So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human? I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure.
We'll tell him his mother waits for him in heaven, I suppose." "Is that a lie?" "It's what we tell fools and children." She sighed. "Postulating a heaven gives man an out for having been unable to retain the paradise he was given here on earth.
Four billion people on this earth but my imagination is still the same. It's bad with large numbers. It's still taken by particularity. It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces while all the rest go by, never coming to m...
Monks committed all the same sins that ordinary people did. He had just been shocked by the woman's shamelessness. The sight of her nakedness remained with him, the way the hot heart of a candle flame, stared at for a few moments, would burn on behin...
And where are you going?" His voice was playfully challenging. "To get some breakfast," she said without stopping. He leered. "I've got something for you to eat," he called after her. "I might bite it off, though," she said over her shoulder.
You must take the world as you find it, with a struggle to be something more honest than those around you. Phineas, as he preached himself this sermon, declared to himself that they who attempted more than this flew too high in the clouds to be of se...
Some women seem so voluptuous in every sense, richly bountiful and fertile with generous gifts of plenty, sensual and confident in their female strength that they are called "earth mothers." That’s how some days —when they are bountiful and ferti...
The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of the worlds - to say nothing of stars or galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of r...
The fiendlike skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white ci...
Palaeontology is the Aladdin's lamp of the most deserted and lifeless regions of the earth; it touches the rocks and there spring forth in orderly succession the monarchs of the past and the ancient river streams and savannahs wherein they flourished...
Her insides began to roar with a ferocious explosion of sensation and entitlement. For a moment, her thinking mind know this was what male and females were put on earth to do.
I was trying to get over you! And it didn’t work. I was meant to walk on this earth with only you, I was meant to give only you every piece of me. I don’t want anyone but you. I love you.
When people tell me they can’t afford to join a gym, I tell them to go outside; planet Earth is a gym and we’re already members. Run, climb, sweat, and enjoy all of the natural wonder that is available to you.
The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment o...
Cooper's tremendous love and energy and unchained freedom had captured life itself. Now, as the last shovelful covered him forever, I knew I would always carry a big piece of Cooper Half Malamute with me until I too was covered by the earth.
The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to to forget all that. Don't you agree? Two-thirds of earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is...
Sore loser? You bet your fuckin' ass! What on earth is wrong with being a sore loser? It shows you cared about whatever the contest was in the first place. Fuck losing graciously-that's for chumps. And losers, by the way.
For the people of my country," Renato said, "water is everything: love, life, religion... even God." "It is like that for me too," I said. "In English we call that a metaphor." "Of course," said Renato, "and water is the most abundant metaphor on ear...
Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, Or all the elements by scruples, I know not, Nor greatly care. - Shoot. Shoot! Of all deaths, the violent death is best; For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast, The pain, once apprehended, is quit...
You want us to bargain with a lizard?” “They’re not lizards, Father. They’re extraordinary creatures who were here long before any human was crawling on this earth. They are warriors and scholars and—” “He has long hair like a woman,”...
Though the earth contains greater energy and mass than any single being, linked together, "people make the world go-round".