He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure ...
Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent fr...
Call it "a wonder" or "a mystery" and you have an excuse to never try understanding it - an excuse to not take responsibility for it. People knew about love no more than they knew about Science, but at least most did not jump into Science headstrong,...
Christine did not live, or love, as most people do. She lived boundlessly, as generous as she could be cruel, prepared to give her life at any moment for a worthy cause, but rarely sparing a thought for the many casualties that fell in her wake.
Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a comple...
It's natural. Nature is dark and light, birth and death. Everything and its opposite. And in nature there are predators and prey. The hunters and the hunted. The heartbreakers and the heartbroken. The beautiful thing is that Nature lets us choose whi...
If integrity is considered a virtue, it may be because most people lack integrity. Also, as only a few succeed in their pursuits, some may link failure with a lack of integrity. But this is not fully true. When you reason it out, you might conclude t...
The problem is that without an understanding for their meaning and purpose, most relationships quickly become little more than vehicles for the pursuit of selfish and individual goals. Disagreements then become a battle between conflicting interests,...
Love is the most valuable gift we can give to another person. What we need to do is to open our heart and release our love to the world, to the people, to nature, to the animals, to the trees and to the sky – and this love will be returned a thousa...
Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and o...
In the most general terms, the Enlightenment goes back to Plato's belief that truth and beauty and goodness are connected; that truth and beauty, disseminated widely, will sooner or later lead to goodness. (While we're making at effort at truth and g...
All it takes for generosity to flow is awareness. By actively pursuing awareness and knowledge, we can make choices that cause less harm and greater good to others in the global community of our shared earth.
My generation was, in effect, the product of a social experiment. If we did not understand marital intimacy, it was because we had not seen it modelled. We lurched from relationship to relationship, dazzled by the newness of meaninglessness, relentle...
I think that for humans, the most regrettable of omissions, along with unshed tears and unexamined lives, is untold stories, the things not shared, the lost opportunity to be honest about oneself and tender toward others.
My life and most people's lives are a series of little miracles -- strange coincidences which spring from uncontrollable impulses and give rise to incomprehensible dreams. We spend a lot of time pretending that we are normal, but underneath the surfa...
What's your favorite book?' is a question that is usually only asked by children and banking identity-verification services--and favorite isn't, anyway, the right word to describe the relationship a reader has with a particularly cherished book. Most...
That's what got her, of course. That everyone thought it so unbelievable that she could possibly attract a man like him. It shouldn't upset her because it was true. She couldn't. Not in this world, in this lifetime. Yet she didn't appreciated everyon...
There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep...
It is impossible to control outcomes or results, although most of us have been programmed from a very young age to believe otherwise. The idea that we can perform actual ‘magic’ causes tremendous dysfunction, unnecessary suffering and prevents th...
I hate it that she has so insinuated herself into the interstices of my mind that I can never root her out. And most of all, I hate that at the end of my life I feel compelled to ask, "How'd I do, Mama?".
In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results wi...
