Religion and ethics were not always - or even frequently - mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often deflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system...
That's life for you," said MacDunn. "Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone loving some thing more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can't hurt you no more...
You want to be an alchemist so badly? Don't wait to react to the immediate problem. Plan ahead. Look at the big picture and you won't ever have to deal with that problem. Better to save yourself from a major catastrophe than drag your feet over a bun...
Those who believe their suffering has been valuable love more readily than those who see no meaning in their pain. Suffering does not necessarily imply love, but love implies suffering
Love is life's snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight - whiter and purer than snow itself.
Hate is such a strong emotion. Much more powerful than indifference. But those who burn with hate can also love just as intensely. Can't they? When you hate--or --do you do so with all your heart? So much that it feels as if you might die from it?
All but universally, human architecture values front elevations over back entrances, public spaces over private. Danny Jessup says that this aspect of architecture is also a reflection of human nature, that most people care more about their appearanc...
Teenagers are complicated and at times stubborn, yes, but we are not dumb. We see the world in a different light than the rest do, and sometimes, we’re misunderstood because of it. And that’s alright. That must be the definition of ‘human being...
The other problem in my life is Dimitri. He's the one who killed Natalie, and he's a total badass. He's also pretty good-looking. Okay—more than good-looking. He's hot—like, the kind of hot that makes you stop walking on the street and get hit by...
You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to lover her.
God wants you to live a life larger than you and whenever He brings you into something new, it’s always somehow connected to impacting people’s lives and making the world a better place.
The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been...
No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.
After all, what is art? Art is the creative process and it goes through all fields. Einstein’s theory of relativity – now that is a work of art! Einstein was more of an artist in physics than on his violin. Art is this: art is the solution of a p...
Forsaking all other thoughts, he rutted into her, in a fashion more animal than human. His eruption he held fast within, so that she squirmed against the sensation before accepting her own fall into oblivion, her walls pulsing to an echoing rhythm. f...
You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it," she said. "And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
Never would I have a more memorable time than the month I spent in the mountains, though I wonder, when I say this, if it appears so only because it is our nature to make a heaven out of places to which we can never return.
Miss her a little? God, was she daft? He was going to miss her more than a little. No, he wasn't. He leaped to his feet and practically ran to the door. He wasn't going to miss her at all. He was going to find her and bring her home.
Though I would have died rather than told anyone, I was worried my exuberant drug use had damaged my brain and my nervous system and maybe even my soul in some irreparable and perhaps not readily apparent way.
I see now that my faith was becoming an ally rather than an enemy because I could vent anger freely, even toward God, without fearing retribution.
