We cannot grow when we are in shame, and we can't use shame to change ourselves or others.
Compassion is not a virtue -- it is a commitment. It's not something we have or don't have -- it's something we choose to practice.
Christ's death is the Christian's life. Christ's cross is the Christian's title to heaven. Christ "lifted up" and put to shame on Calvary is the ladder by which Christians "enter into the holiest," and are at length landed in glory.
And feast on the dead, I thought with a shudder. As if he could read my thoughts, he pressed a hand to my shoulder. His fingers were long and white, splaying over my arm like a waxen spider. If the gesture was meant to comfort me, it failed.
Long after the traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.
If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?
Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy.
Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.
In this journey called "Life" I've learned that God never consults our past to determine our future" ~Lá Tanyha Boyd
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as ...
...the cab of the truck heated up nicely, its windows fogging. I felt like a Dickens character. I thought about explaining that to Mouse, just to occupy my thoughts, but he was suffering enough without being forced to endure Dickens, even by proxy.
We still can't see you!" groaned Alice. "How do we fix that?" asked Melanie. "I don't know...think visible thoughts," said Colleen. "Think visible thoughts?" yelled Melanie. "Actually, that might work. Do it Izzy,
I am not enough in myself; I can barely make it through buying milk and school supplies. Thank goodness there is a Guardian to come before me and throw off the dark.
Wharick, on the other hand, remained there with his eyebrows raised slightly as he waited for her to complain about his behavior. "You have no right, Wharick," she said sternly. And there it is, he thought feeling more than pleased that he knew her b...
The only way to change the world is to quit thinking it's a job for Superman. Real power lies in your own hands.
A liar deceives himself more than anyone, for he believes he can remain a person of good character when he cannot.
Don't judge too harshly, for if weaknesses were to be placed under your footsteps, most likely you would stumble and fall as well.
Perhaps they suspected that I thought less of them because I knew it. (I'm too aware of human frailty to have let that happen. If anything, I thought more of them for wanting to face up to what they had done and for trying to change.)
… scientific thought does not mean thought about scientific subjects with long names. There are no scientific subjects. The subject of science is the human universe; that is to say, everything that is, or has been, or may be related to man.
Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.
I remember reading once that some fellows use language to conceal thought; but it's been my experience that a good many more use it instead of thought.
