Everything is impermanent. Every physical and mental experience arises and passes. Everything in existence is endlessly arising out of causes and conditions. We all create suffering for ourselves through our resistance, through our desire to have thi...
The world was so unbearably pretty, and it continued being so all the way down the mountain to school. I felt slightly high because of the beauty, and the inside of my head tickled. I wondered if this is how artists go through life, with all of its s...
Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without: It was his own gri...
John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth,and the life: no man cometh unto the Father,but by me. Psalm 45:1 My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready w...
Usually when people talk about the trickle-down theory, it has to do with economics. The richer people at the top of a society become, supposedly, the more wealth there is to trickle down to the people below. It never really works out that way, of co...
Tiffany has been apprenticing as a witch by visiting people in need with her mentor. After meeting with one particularly sad case, she tells her mentor, "It shouldn't be like this." Her mentor replies, "There isn't a way things should be. There's jus...
There were more recent markings as well-initials scratched over the pictographs, some with dates. people were always wanting to announce their existence to the world in a way that would surpass the ages, creating some sort of immortality. For all Kar...
In that quietness they were speaking their own language, with their eyes, with the way they stood, with what they put into the air about them, each knowing what the other was saying, and having strength one from the other, for they had been learning ...
Think it over carefully. This is very important," I say, "because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or b...
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that ther...
At the level of high culture with which this book is concerned, active bigotry is probably fairly rare. , since the social context is so far from neutral. To act in a way both sexist and racist, to maintain one's class privilege, it is only necessary...
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. Aside from you, The Carpenter was also there. I was a cross between a hammer and a nail, and I was looking for a way to build myself up. You tried to sell me two pieces of lumber, but The Carpenter outbid me.
I had a dream about you. You were rich and I was poor, but I didn’t mind, because if I were rich I’d be trying to steal my own stuff, which is a very unproductive way to spend one’s time.
It was the dog Abel, who - as animals have been reported to do - had made his way over all England's hills and rivers, to return to that home where he was first kindly treated. The warm fire, by which he sleeps even now, and the fattening dish will b...
It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same tim...
Yet, reality operates in a consistent way – the same physical, interactive functions are in play for every conscious human in existence. If religion reflected reality as it actually works, all religions would be the same: accurate rendering in word...
The Kalambo River and Waterfall exemplify life and afterlife: From birth at its source, the river twists and turns to overcome hurdles on its way to enhance the life of others before falling off the edge in death to flow quietly into Lake Tanganyika,...
No matter how hard Evil tries, it can never quite match up to the power of Good, because Evil is ultimately self-destructive. Evil may set out to corrupt others, but in the process corrupts itself. That's just the way Evil is. All things considered, ...
You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago--they don't expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know ...
For women as a class, the ability to transform sexual practice, to achieve respect from men as equal human beings and thus break out of their subordinate status, is undermined by the ability of men to escape from the responsibility of acknowledging w...
