She was forthright to the point of rudeness, yet he couldn’t help admiring her for saying what she really thought. It was rather refreshing to be challenged for a change – it had been many years since anyone had dared to do that. His wealth and p...
The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled. It is from the progeny of this ...
Night is the permanent revolution, that of the globe. Every sundown the streets change, becoming sinister or libidinous, or, for that matter, longer or narrower or unexpectedly twisted. The familiar rebels against those who presume to know it. The ma...
Chorus of old men: If we give them the least hold over us, 'tis all up! their audacity will know no bounds! We shall see them building ships, and fighting sea-fights like Artemisia; nay if they want to mount and ride as cavalry, we had best cashier t...
You must go further than I did," Nedra said. "You know that." "Further?" "With your life. You must become free." She did not explain it; she could not. It was not a matter of living alone, though in her case this had been necessary. The freedom she m...
I am... me. No matter what I say or do, I'm still me. That 's what Satozuki told me once. The things I feel, the things I do... Being a vampire, Being a man, being betrayed by my mother... when all those things come together, they make up "me." But n...
Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities,' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as war...
[My dad] didn't do much apart from the traditional winning of bread. He didn't take me to get my hair cut or my teeth cleaned; he didn't make the appointments. He didn't shop for my clothes. He didn't make my breakfast, lunch, or dinner. My mom did a...
Aphros nodded, a glint of pride in his eyes. “We have trained all the famous mer-heroes! Name a famous mer-hero, and we have trained him or her!” “Oh, sure,” Leo said. “Like…um, the Little Mermaid?” Aphros frowned. “Who? No! Like Trit...
Maxine,” Grant said, but I barely heard him. I was lost in that vision, in those emotions—the pain, and hunger for pain, forming the root of so much agonized rage. “ ‘Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate,’” I muttered. “Yoda, from S...
Sometimes I wait at the bottom of those dark stairs, I sit at the bottom of the stairs, I wait beyond the bottom of the stairs and listen to the sounds my wife and children make as they sleep, the sounds our animals make as they step carefully throug...
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it woul...
What if we choose not to do the things we are supposed to do? The principal gain is a sense of an authentic act – and an authentic life. It may be a short one, but it is an authentic one, and that's a lot better than those short lives full of bored...
The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which w...
By the time it has gotten dressed, it has become he; has become already more or less George — though still not the whole George they demand and are prepared to recognize. Those who call him on the phone at this hour of the morning would be bewilder...
As they embrace, she kisses him full on the mouth. And suddenly sticks her tongue right in. She has done this before, often. It’s one of those drunken long shots which just might, at least theoretically, once in ten thousand tries, throw a relation...
I then began to study arithmetical questions without any great apparent result, and without suspecting that they could have the least connexion with my previous researches. Disgusted at my want of success, I went away to spend a few days at the seasi...
Can Power speak the truth to love? These men certainly blurted it out. And what did we learn from them? That power is blind, and love at first sight is a fickle judge of those who grasp too desperately.
Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walk only on feelings. That faces upward and in its mirror receives heavenly roads, which travel along themselves. That has learned to walk upon water when it scoops, that walks upon wells, transfiguring ev...
Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vagu...
Whoever believes physical size and tests of speed or strength have anything to do with a soccer player's prowess is sorely mistaken. Just as mistaken as those who believe that IQ tests have anything to do with talent or that there is a relationship b...
