Amongst democratic nations men easily attain a certain equality of conditions: they can never attain the equality they desire. It perpetually retires from before them, yet without hiding itself from their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At ever...
You continue to stare at me for a few seconds, assessing my face, before you lean even closer to me. Your lips graze against mine briefly… Just enough to reassure that you’re not truly upset with me, but are nonetheless quite prepared to have som...
Being at home was like a mattress to fall back on with the smallest of peas on the bottom, just large enough to bother the princess. I was damn lucky that I had a place to call home, but I didn't like the feeling of stealing my parents food and being...
if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no ti...
The...act of surrender—or devotion, as the case may be—was, to him, a kind of lifeline for those who sought a quick answer and didn’t want to stick around long enough to see their doubt through to its ultimate conclusion. A conclusion, which, o...
Far from such din, when blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flutter inside my head. To hear them, one must be calm and pay close attention, for their wingbeats are barely audible. Loud breathing is enough to drown them out. ...
She was of traditional build herself, but her figure was largely concealed by the folds of a generously cut shift dress made out of a flecked green fabric. It was like a tent, thought Mma Ramotswe--a camouflage tent of the sort that the Botswana Defe...
I have often plotted my great escape to the beach. To live seaside and to be able to stare possibility and tranquility in the face every day ... I wanted it bad enough to taste. All the while forgetting, I can lap underneath an open sky at any moment...
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to...
The new fashions sold in department stores had thrown skilled American seamstresses out of work, you see. They’d been displaced by immigrant girls doing piecework for a pittance in terrible sweatshops. I refused to patronize a garment industry that...
The truth is, it's not the act that I'm scared of, but giving myself so entirely to someone. As long as there are lines to draw and boundaries to cling to, I can pretend that I'm safe from the wanting that threatens to consume me. I'm separate, still...
Today the average lifetime is over seventy years, long enough for a great number of accomplishments. But this development has occurred within the present century. Before that, people tended to die much younger than they do today, and among those earl...
Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough ...
All right, the universe is energy. All of it. Everything is energy that can be altered simply by willing it to be altered. It's as if we are God's waking dream, each gifted with a small piece of his consciousness; the beauty of that arrangement is th...
You don't have to do this," Ronan said. "There isn't anything else, man." "There's reality." Kavinsky laughed the word. "Reality! Reality's what other people dream for you." "Reality's where other people are," Ronan replied. He stretched out his arms...
And not just the right thing; it’s profoundly the right thing to do, because the one argument for accessibility that doesn’t get made nearly often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people’s lives. How many opportunities do we h...
But Amy Pond. Oh! The Sea had briefly been able to touch her mind — it knew that the Doctor was the most important thing in the world to her, and it had given a copy of him to her. If they spent enough time together, the copy would become every bit...
I must pack my short lifer full of interesting events and creative activity. Philosophy and aesthetic contemplation are not enough. I intend to do everything possible to broaden my experiences and allow myself to reach the fullest development. Then, ...
..I don't count Jennifer among my mistakes. She had a severe infection and precious little reserve. Nevertheless, I think of her often. Those minutes of terror and confusion I felt standing powerless in her room served as a visceral reminder througho...
Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also––either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth...
Sometimes… Sometimes doubt is the opposite of faith, but sometimes doubt can be a pathway to faith. Sometimes weakness is the opposite of strength, but sometimes weakness can be the pathway to strength. Sometimes addiction is the opposite of sobrie...
