The rocking of the boat by the waves was soothing but unknown. The men on the shore were asleep. Not the twelve-year-old, though. He shifted and lay on his back and decided to look up at the sky. What he saw took him by surprise. He was basically a c...
But if a man be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, t...
I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowe...
I understood that people are trying to transform themselves all the time: the universal urge to be otherwise. So as not to look as they look, sound as they sound, be treated as they are treated, suffer in the ways they suffer, etc., etc., they change...
When returned from Italy he called on Mr. and invited him to dinner: in the course of his rapturous address to him he declared that a statue of gold ought to be erected to him in every city in the universe, assuring him that he always slept with his ...
I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some ot...
After a universal silence, Leo was the first to speak. “Did anyone else notice—” “Yes,” Catherine said. “What do you make of it?” “I haven’t decided yet.” Leo frowned and took a sip of port. “He’s not someone I would pair Bea ...
River smiled sweetly at his tormentors and told them, "If you want to kick my ass, go ahead. Just explain to me why you're doing it." After a confused pause, one of the skinheads said, "Ah, you wouldn't be worth it." "We're all worth it, man," River ...
God is universal," spluttered the priest. The imam nodded strong approval. "There is only one God." "And with their one god Muslims are always causing troubles and provoking riots. The proof of how bad Islam is, is how uncivilized Muslims are,: prono...
The word bisexual had stood out so bright and clear in my head that all else had ceased to exist. Bisexual. I had a word. I understood; it was me… a nice clear label that said it all. I didn't have to choose. I didn’t have to be not attracted to ...
For, from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to t...
We are accustomed to repeating the cliché, and to believing, that 'our most precious resource is our children.' But we have plenty of children to go around, God knows, and as with Doritos, we can always make more. The true scarcity we face is practi...
Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman...
Each word, as someone once wrote, contains the universe. The visible carries all the invisible on its back. Tonight, in the unconditional, what moves in the long-limbed grasses, what touches me As though I didn’t exist? What is it that keeps on mov...
You probably never realized this, but God wants to partner with us so that we can establish his kingdom here on earth. Have you heard of the universal principal of receiving? This principal is simply that in order to receive, you have to share. Accor...
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of...
I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker," he continued, as though he had not heard her. "We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme in...
It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel i...
Sometimes I try to erase myself. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl. And I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, an...
Jake's POV: It was just too bad that Chloe was freezing Ally out even though her family hadn't been affected. Because otherwise Ally would be here and maybe I could be making out with her instead of Lisa Freckles. Except that Ally would be making out...
I couldn't help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of aba...
