I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex.
I was only good at one thing: words. I had read more, much more, than anybody else, and I knew how words worked in the way that some boys knew how engines worked.
There was nothing particularly striking about them except that they were artists of the kind that talk. Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art a...
Where God gives opportunity for preaching it is more than likely that he has some people to convert. Usually the Word of God takes root among some, though often in but a few.
Though the earth contains greater energy and mass than any single being, linked together, "people make the world go-round".
One of the key characteristics of an elite corps is its susceptibility to those more powerful than itself. Elite power is naturally attracted to a power hierarchy and fits itself neatly, obediently into the one that promises the most personal benefit...
Interests evolve into hobbies or volunteer work, which grow into passions. It takes time, more time than anyone imagines.
Though denigrated by some outside academia and research, she embraced knowledge for its own sake and what better way to honor that than reveling in the intricacies of the brain? If there were any answers to the human condition, if an immortal soul ma...
Science would not be what it is if there had not been a , a or a , any more than music would be what it is if , and had never lived. The world as we know it is the product of its geniuses—and there may be evil as well as beneficent genius—and to ...
Suppose you turn your attention inward in search of this 'I'. You may encounter nothing more than an ever changing stream of consciousness, a flow of thoughts and feelings in which there is no real self to be discovered.
In the dynamics of the main family of the story, a rising socialist in England's postwar government expects his grandparents to be pleased that the local aristocrat's garden is commandeered to allow the people to get coal underneath. Instead, the gra...
Wouldn't it be nice, for once, to find a world which was at peace with itself. No matter how always those few wanted more than others. Those not satisfied with running their own lives but wishing to have power over the lives of the others. Greedy peo...
In his talk, Suzuki Roshi says that meditation and the whole process of finding your own true nature is one continuous mistake, and that rather than that being a reason for depression or discouragement, it's actually the motivation.
Of course Will was right again. But I realized clearly for the first time how desperate our plight was. It has been foolish to think we could rescue Kai. Now, wherever he is, it couldn't be worse than being held captive by pirates. Even cannibals wer...
I had a dream about you. You were a florist, and I was a floorist. You thought you were more romantic than me, but I knew all the barefoot women in the Nicholas Sparks fan club would disagree.
I had a dream about you. You started following me on Twitter, and then you started following me around town. I wouldn’t mind so much of you would start throwing your hashtags away, rather than tossing them into the street.
Money I don’t earn is worse than money I squandered—because not only do I not have the money, but I don’t have the trinkets, knickknacks, vacation photos, or whatever else I could have left over in place of my money.
I had a dream about you. We walked along the beach like two lovers in motorized wheelchairs. You said, “Isn’t this romantic?” and I replied, “Nothing is more romantic than being able to park in a handicapped spot.”
Stop looking back on your life and wishing it was different because pursuing that kind of mental activity will never lead to any worthy accomplishment. Think about what ‘can be’ rather than what ‘was’.
Stalin was always exceptional, even from childhood. We have relied on Trotsky’s unrecognizably prejudiced portrait for too long. The truth was different. Trotsky’s view tells us more about his own vanity, snobbery and lack of political skills tha...
They jostled one another, competed for space below as they did above, in a minuet of ruin and triumph. In the subway, down in the dark, no citizen was more significant or more decrepit than another. All were smeared into a common average of existence...
