The word “religion” has been hi-jacked and debased by the priests of faiths like these, until now it has become a dirty word amongst intelligent, right-thinking people in the Western world. The word “religion” springs from roots meaning piety...
There exists a great uncertainty that comes with life. It is like a tree, its roots formed below the surface, its body penetrating a layer of top soil, its roots spreading outward, and affecting the domain it inhabits. With this natural uncertainty o...
I am not well-versed in theory, but in my view, the cow deserves her life. As does the ram. As does the ladybug. As does the elephant. As do the fish, and the dog and the bee; as do other sentient beings. I will always be in favor of veganism as a mi...
I stepped to the tank's edge, leaned in, and concentrated on keeping my eyes open. Which fish would be the shooter? The fish were all facing me, but one in particular seemed to be staring directly at my left eye, like a hunter targeting his prey. Wha...
In the bitter waves of woe, Beaten and tossed about By the sullen winds that blow From the desolate shores of doubt, When the anchors that faith had cast Are dragging in the gale, I am quietly holding fa...
The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain There it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed A place to go to in ...
This indignation builds up an accumulation of anger over the many ways I am being reminded by the system then and now of my inferiority. This gradual anger over one humiliation after another may be hard for men to understand and even women who have n...
We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walki...
There is a thought among some brands of theology that souls are waiting up in heaven to be born. Now how in the world anybody comes up with that is beyond me, and how you can be so sure of that is also beyond me. I always like to go back to Snoopy's ...
Life was transparent, literature opaque. Life was open, literature a closed system. Life was composed of things, literature of words. Life was what it appeared to be: if you were afraid your plane would crash it was about death, if you were trying to...
When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size. Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and m...
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine – in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical and something of a mystic – now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a speci...
To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable o...
What have you done to my cat?" Magnus demanded... "You drank his blood, didn't you? You said you weren't hungry!" Simon was indignant. "I did not drink his blood. He's fine!" He poked the Chairman in the stomach. The cat yawned. "Second, you asked me...
But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn't understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot - see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As ...
He had set up a telescope on a corner of the roof, and we went up to take a look. This is time travel, he said, narrowing an eye to set the lens. Because the light is old. We're seeing back in time. No, we said, wrinkling our noses. We are seeing rig...
For his part, Mendeleev scanned Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s data on gallium and told the experimentalist, with no justification, that he must have measured something wrong, because the density and weight of gallium differed from Mendeleev’s prediction...
You may be sure of this, my son: that no decision you may take, nor any course, will meet with universal favor. Though you turn to the right or to the left, or go ahead, or turn back, or attempt to stand still, there will come to you some critic to a...
John Locke, called the Father of Liberalism, made the argument that the individual instead of the community was the foundation of society. He believed that government existed by the consent of the governed, not by divine right. But the reason governm...
I thought of many an autumn I had known: Seemly autumns approaching deliberately, with amplitude. I thought of wild asters, Michaelmas daisies, mushrooms, leaves idling down the air, two or three at a time, warblers twittering and glittering in every...
I can wait in silence no longer, but I’m afraid I’m already too late. I am trapped between agony and hope—believing I have no right to speak, but knowing more how much I’d regret it if I did not. Tell me I’m not wrong. Tell me that, this ti...
