The monks' response was to climb into their curraghs and row off toward Greenland. They were drawn across the storm-racked ocean, drawn west past the edge of the known world, by nothing more than a hunger of the spirit, a yearning of such queer inten...
It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest ...
Power and influence: things that should be obtained not for means of greed, nor pride, nor ego, but rather to ensure that in the right moment, when your wisdom and benevolence are required to keep humanity strong and united, you can deliver and orche...
Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.
All this was new to me. Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move towards the unknown - even when we don't want to and we think we don't need to.
I don't really want people looking to me for inspiration. I just want to be a sign along the way that points toward Heaven.
She reminded me of the sea; the way she came dancing towards you, wild and beautiful, and just when she was almost close enough to touch she'd rush away again.
You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?
The music, the prayers, the bowing and rising, the incense--all of it was breaking down my defenses. That's what good liturgy does. It breaks your heart open and turns you toward God.
Do not just envisage your own hopes, dreams — but, have the courage to strive toward them.
Whether we're on the path toward victory or defeat is determined by the very next choice we make. Not the choices from yesterday. Not the choices five minutes ago.
But the character of the music emphasized the tale as allegory--humorous, poignant, humane allegory--disclosing the metamorphosis of life itself, in which man moves from confident inexperience through the bitterness of experience, toward the rueful w...
...what really makes for readability is not clarity but attitude: the attitude of your prose toward out elusive friend the Reader and the role you invent for that invented being in your invented world.
I went back to those graves not long afterward and found as I stood there that sadness was a very heavy thing. My body weighed twice what it had only a moment earlier, as if those graves were pulling me down toward them.
I finally felt myself lifted definitively away on the winds of adventure toward worlds I envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations I imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be.
Ever since the robot was first invented, there have been people who swear up and down that this marks the first step towards the fall of man … To be fair, their arguments are backed with scientific fact taken from documentary films such as The Term...
The buckets emptied quickly, and men from different squads took turns bringing water from the gully that lay towards the city, where, in the feeble shade of emaciated mulberries, a muddy stream lived out its last days in the diabolical heat.
You know, sometimes I think this is just not it,” he said, his glasses flashing from the early night’s light. He turned toward me in a thoughtful pause. “You know what I mean, Tom?” he asked. “It’s just not.
I shuffle along, letting the current pull me, and i have the sense that I am like a rat caught in a maze of tunnels, moving endlessly toward some promise of...of what? Light? Life? Cheese?
Dedicated to the memory of MY FATHER. For if I had not believed that he would have wished me to give such help as I could toward making his life's work of service to mankind, I should never have been led to write this book.
The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and an understanding of the facts of the problem -- a magnanimous understanding by both races -- is the first step toward its solution.
