They say in Zen, waking up to life requires three things: great faith, great doubt, and great effort. Faith isn’t a way of going to sleep. It’s the work of waking up. And, in order to wake up, you’ll need both great faith and great doubt. In it...
I took a breath. Pictured the bed waiting for me upstairs. Then retreated to the lobby bar alone and ordered an ice-cold gin martini, a small signal to myself that my work was done. I held the glass, its inverted construction an insult to gravity and...
In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much...
But when you have order, you don't need Gods. When everything is well ordered and disciplined then nothing is unexpected. If you understand everything,' I said carefully, 'then there's no room left for magic. It's only when you're lost and frightened...
No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments, no one can do more than mark out the little plot of infinity which he intends to cultivate, and thrust in the spade, trusting that th...
Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency—a chaos—, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this ve...
Hesitancy is the surest destroyer of talent. One cannot be timorous and reticent, one must be original and loud. New metaphors, new rhythms, new expressions of emotion can only spring from unhindered gall. Nothing should interfere with that intuition...
Our society needs criminals like Wolfgang Priklopil in order to give a face to the evil that lives within and to split it off from ... It needs the images of cellar dungeons so as not to have to see the many homes in which violence rears its conformi...
I urge pupils when studying a work and in order to master its most important aspic, the rhythmic structure, or the ordering of the time process, to do just what a conductor does with the score: to place music on the desk and to conduct the work from ...
But some part of him realized, even as he fought to break free from Lupin, that Sirius had never kept him waiting before. . . . Sirius had risked everything, always, to see Harry, to help him. . . . If Sirius was not reappearing out of that archway w...
Excellent,” said Lupin, looking up as Tonks and Harry entered. “We’ve got about a minute, I think. We should probably get out into the garden so we’re ready. Harry, I’ve left a letter telling your aunt and uncle not to worry —” “They ...
So,” sneered Fudge, recovering himself, “you intend to take on Dawlish, Shacklebolt, Dolores, and myself single-handed, do you, Dumbledore?” “Merlin’s beard, no,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “Not unless you are foolish enough to force me ...
You know, I don’t get why Fred and George only got three O.W.L.s each,” said Harry, watching as Fred, George, and Lee collected gold from the eager crowd. “They really know their stuff. . . .” “Oh, they only know flashy stuff that’s no re...
With another shock of excitement, Harry saw Sirius give James the thumbs-up. Sirius was lounging in his chair at his ease, tilting it back on two legs. He was very good-looking, his dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance neither ...
Did you see me disarm Hermione, Harry?" "Only once" said Hermione stung. "I got you loads more then you got me—" "I did not only get you once, I got you at least three times—" "Well if you're counting the one where you tripped over your own feet ...
The faithful man perceives nothing less than opportunity in difficulties. Flowing through his spine, faith and courage work together: Such a man does not fear losing his life, thus he will risk losing it at times in order to empower it. By this he ac...
Like Solon, Plato intended to write a long fable about legendary Atlantis; like Solon, he never did write it. Yet there existed beyond the Atlantic an unvisited land, after all, and it is more strange than any of Plato's myths that Plato's apprehensi...
Inevitably, people tell me that poor folks are lazy or unintelligent, that they are somehow deserving of their poverty. However, if you begin to look at the sociological literature on poverty, a more complex picture emerges. Poverty and unemployment ...
I didn't just love him…I needed him. Not in some desperate "you complete me" sort of way. No, Vincent didn’t make me whole. He improved me. Something about him—something I didn't understand—had a way of amplifying the good in my nature while ...
Nature is typified by strength; humanity by weakness. Nature adheres to an immutable order; humanity to an ever-increasing chaos. Nature recognizes no equality at any level of it's order; humanity preaches an all-prevasive equality and freely hands-o...
It would be indeed unusual if it turned out that the set of orders that our mind is able to construct and accept, having as it does a deep sense of “understanding the essence of things,” matches precisely the set of all possible orders to be dete...
