You can make a successful run for political office in this country without an especially thick résumé, any exceptional talent for expressing yourself, a noteworthy education or, for that matter, a basic grasp of science. But you better have religio...
She was very fond of thinking and getting at the truth of things, but was so far from being pedantic, so full of youthful ways that from the first moment one began to love all these originalities in her, and to accept them. [...] This naive combinati...
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar o...
I suppose there has been nothing like the airports since the age of the stage-stops - nothing quite as lonely, as sombre-silent. The red-brick depots were built right into the towns they marked - people didn't get off at those isolated stations unles...
Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzle...
The slow arrow of beauty. The most noble kind of beauty is that which does not carry us away suddenly, whose attacks are not violent or intoxicating (this kind easily awakens disgust), but rather the kind of beauty which infiltrates slowly, which we ...
Go back to that night when Divine Light, in order to illumine the darkness of men, tabernacled Himself in the world He had made… The angels and a star caught up in the reflection of that Light, as a torch lighted by a torch, and passed it on to the...
Associated with this inner conflict is a tendency to become hypercritical: unhappy souls almost always blame everyone but themselves for their miseries. Shut up within themselves, they are necessarily shut off from all others except to criticize them...
We must sober up and admit that too many of the Republicans and the Democrats have played us, lied to us and stolen from us, while the getaway car was driven by the media. A media that can no longer claim with a straight face the role of journalist. ...
Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry. Because God's law trumps...
If I feel the urge to burst into flames, I'll let you know," Simon was getting fed up. "Look, did you actually ask me to come all the way uptown just so you could stare at me like I'm something in a petrie dish? Next time I'll send you a photo." "And...
We are all surrounded with so much static energy, that it is actually crucial to develop the ability to remove that and to flow through the streams in life that we make— the ones that are not stagnant, the ones that are real, the energy that is flo...
You can't put your heart into everything; you've just got to show up. And if your heart is worn all over you, then so be it, but you can't pull it out of you and put it in places, or put it in people's hands. Because you are like this wild and quiet ...
The only prescription for morality is this: Remember that every woman could have been your mother, every girl could be your daughter. Remember that every man could have been your father, every boy could be your son. When it comes to matters of the he...
Instead of replying, Alec reached down and took Magnus's hands. Magnus let Alec pull him to his feet, a questioning look in his eyes. Before he could say anything, Alec drew him closer and kissed him. Magnus made a soft, pleased sound, and gripped th...
Missy could fall down and hurt herself, even if I'm walking right there beside her. That doesn't mean that I allowed it to happen. She knows, as far as unconditional love, I'll pick her up and I'll carry her. I'll try to heal her. I'll cry when she c...
It is under all circumstances an advantage to be in full possession of one's personality, otherwise the repressed elements will only crop up as a hindrance elsewhere, not just at some unimportant point, but at the very spot where we are most sensitiv...
When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. You've been going along from one day to the next, not realizing that...
But there's a problem," Dr. Bramble said. He tapped his forehad. "And it's right up here." Our greatest talent, he explained, also created the monster that could destroy us. "Unlike any other organism in history, humans have a mind-body conflict: we ...
I have lost patience with the idea of an insignificant human being standing up above the rest of us--whether he is called Reverend or Doctor or Judge--and shouting at us all about this thing or that. As soon as someone starts to pontificate in this w...
In the novelist's profession, as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as winning or losing. Maybe numbers of copies sold, awards won, and critics' praise serve as outward standards for accomplishment in literature, but none of them really matt...
