Beliefs are not some special category of idea sitting at a higher station of truth than our ordinary, everyday mortal thoughts. Beliefs are not neccesarily "the truth" at all. (Remember, there was a time everyone believed the earth was flat)
It is, I think, the rarest of leisure, hard work mixed with hard pleasure, to refine one's time of deep thought or light regard into the utterly self-absorbed and equally and abundantly outward-seeking shape of the personal essay -- a story comprised...
Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man. Every victory we seemed to win has led us, step by step, to this conclusion. All Nature’s apparent reverses have been but tactical withdrawal...
Bernstein looked like one of those counterculture journalists that Woodward despised. Bernstein thought that Woodward's rapid rise at the Post had less to do with his ability than his Establishment credentials. They had never worked on a story togeth...
I can feel myself gently slipping away into a light trance by the quarter moon light as the candles are blown out, and my last thought is that we have gone back to the jungle, back to the great green womb—we have returned full circle from whence we...
All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had delibe...
It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the so...
When you live with a potentially life-threatening condition you get used to the thought of dying. You accept it, you push on. The thing that scared me was the picture of dying slowly and painfully, the loss of independence and identity to illness.
For a split second, Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking that quietly through a sheet of glass, when there were buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of street full of shoppers. Then he remind...
I don't think you should be an Auror, Harry," said Luna unexpectedly. Everybody looked at her. "The Aurors are part of the Rotfang Conspiracy, I thought everyone knew that. They're working to bring down the Ministry of Magic from within using a mixtu...
He paused, twisting his goatee, considering the law in Deuteronomy that forbade clothes with mixed fibers. A problematic bit of Scripture. A matter that required thought. "Only the devil wants man to have a wide range of lightweight and comfortable s...
I thought you quit smoking." "Did. For recreational purposes." His father flicked open his Zippo lighter. The smell of the lighter fluid filled the immediate proximity. "This is medicinal." He lit the cigarette, clicked the top of the lighter shut, a...
But it is possible to let go of this addiction. Consciousness is power. Once we are aware of ourselves as a separate Presence from our thoughts, we can then witness them and perhaps notice the addictive quality of thinking.
There is this quote that I read a long time ago. A quote that I loved and made me feel strong. It had stuck with me over the years, like so many of the other words by the author. .- I thought about that quote right now. I might be little. I might be ...
He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quite path-for him. ~ Stephen speaking of Rachael
Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking. When you pray, think well what you are saying, and make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that manner, your prayer will have strength, and that strength shall become part of you...
I had a dream about you. You were a burlesque dancer in a burlap sack, and I was a first-time kidnapper. I wanted to be rich in dance moves, and I thought the best way to achieve it would be to extort it from your talented family.
I had a dream about you. You were drinking coffee, and I was eating coffee with a spoon, like soup. You thought I must be hungry, and you were right—I was hungry for your body. You had woken up my desire.
Hot. I’ve been upgraded to hot.No one has ever called me hot. Cute? Yes. Adorable? yes, often and it makes me want to punch them. I didn’t know short girls could even be hot. I thought I’d been permanently relegated to elfin-pixie-child status.
He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic," he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips s...
It’s horrible," she said. He looked at her in surprise. Horrible? Wasn’t that odd? He hadn’t thought that for years. For him the word “horror” had become obsolete. A surfeiting of terror made terror a cliché. To Robert Neville the situatio...
