As I obsess about my ancient problems, I feel more like I'm sinking in quicksand than lighting a torch. I'm creating neither heat nor light, just the icky, perversely pleasurable squish of self-pity between my toes. My only defense is that I'm not th...
I wonder" he wrote, "if the day will ever come that the loveliest of hymns, , will come into the minds of the people throughout the world to express the German heart. I belive it is the expression of the heart of many Germans...[and]of most people th...
I know this issue is very controversial. But unless and until it can be proven that an unborn child is not a human being, can we justify assuming without proof that it isn’t? No one has yet offered such proof; indeed, all the evidence is to the con...
The scene [Bruegel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'] is filled with a vast field, and a cow and a farmer plowing. In the left-hand corner is a tiny ocean the size of a palm, and there, I can barely make it out, the two legs of a man who fell hea...
Debts are subject to the laws of mathematics rather than physics. Unlike wealth, which is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, debts do not rot with old age and are not consumed in the process of living. On the contrary, they grow at so much per ce...
Since my mother passed away, my father and I forged a bond that is so tighter than one could possibly imagine. Keep in mind, I am an only child, so I was always fiercely close with both my parents. The tragedy my father and I endured when my mother p...
In a fit of anger he had said to her, "You'll always be miserable," to which she thoughtfully replied, "Is that so? It's impossible to be miserable when you've known tragedy and hardship. Both strengthen and refine a person to the point where they ma...
Sally: [sings] I sense there's something in the wind / That feels like tragedy's at hand. / And though I'd like to stand by him, / Can't shake this feeling that we have. / The worst is just around the bend. / And does he notice / My feelings for him?...
Mrs. Blackmer: I came here to thank you. It was my little girl that got killed with that bomb. Ness: I'm sorry, please. I'm so sorry. Mrs. Blackmer: You see it's because I know that you have children too... and that this is real for you, that these m...
Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the ima...
You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirt...
I think you're under no obligation whatsoever to forgive anything, to forget anything. You're not required to push away the years of abuse because the abuser now chooses to be sober and in his sobriety regrets his actions. And white may be small and ...
I'll never be ready. Yet at the same time, you always want to reach the end. You can't fly to a destination and linger in the air. I want to reach the end of this thing, and I feel terrible about it.
Don't fear the gods, Don't worry about death; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure.
Part of the terrible irony of war is that it enlists the best in human nature for purposes of mutual destruction.
Because if they grow up holding on to such terrible feelings, it could lead to another war come time in the future when the fate of the country is in their hands.
There is a terrible beauty to isolation. You don’t have to accept responsibility for others, or live up to their expectations. You could dip your toe into humanity’s maelstrom from time to time, or sit on the river bank and observe.
There’s been terrible things we seen, en’t there? And more a coming, more’n likely. So I think I’d rather not know what’s in the future. I’ll stick to the present.
Investigating Koreiko's case might take a long time," said Ostap. "God only knows how long. And since there is no God, nobody knows. We are in a terrible bind.
It is better to go near the truth and be imprisoned than to stay with the wrong and roam about freely, master Galilei. In fact, getting attached to falsity is terrible slavery, and real freedom is only next to the right.
Her heart kicked hard against her ribs, seized by a terrible fear that refused to let go no matter how hard she pushed.
