We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive... Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die.
Travel does not exist without home....If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost. Home is a reflecting surface, a place to measure our growth and enrich us after being infused with the outside world.
To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehend...
It is not incumbent on the world to conform to your vision of change. It is up to you to explain the future in terms that those living in the past and present can follow.
Apostasy was the major justification for terminating internal opposition throughout the history of Islamic empires. That is why we have heard of whole tribes and groups being eradicated for apostasy. Muslim philosophers, mathematicians and scientists...
And when her lips met mine, I knew that I could live to be a hundred and visit every country in the world, but nothing would ever compare to that single moment when I first kissed the girl of my dreams and knew that my love would last forever.
Those rabbits stopped fighting the system, because it was easier to take the loss of freedom, to forget what it was like before the fence kept them in, than to be out there in the world struggling to find shelter and food. They had decided that the l...
But if they're so successful, why haven't parasites taken over the world? The answer is simple: they have. We just haven't noticed. That's because successful parasites don't kill us; they become part of us, making us perform all the work to keep them...
When we grow up, we find ways to hide our anxieties, our loneliness, our fear and sorrow. But children hide nothing, putting everything into their tears, which they spread liberally about for the whole world to see.
Who leads the world in consumption? America! Who has more lawyers per capita? America! Who has the highest incarceration rate? America! What is the greatest country on earth? America!
I'd like to see a flag made not out of stars and stripes, but rather fingers and knuckles, so that it could really wave in the wind. It would be the most welcoming flag in all the world.
The world is a goddamned evil place, the strong prey on the weak, the rich on the poor; I’ve given up hope that there is a God that will save us all. How am I supposed to believe that there’s a heaven and a hell when all I see now is hell.
Bring me all of your dreams, You dreamer, Bring me all your Heart melodies That I may wrap them In a blue cloud-cloth Away from the too-rough fingers Of the world.
What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy’s death as any of us, but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the wor...
Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, ju...
What does freedom mean if we accept the fundamental premise that humans are social beings, raised in certain social and historical contexts and belonging to particular communities that shape their desires and understandings of the world?
When I say forever,' Koschei whispered, 'I mean until the black death of the world. An Ivan means just the present moment, the flickering light of it, in a green field, his mouth on yours. He means the stretching of that moment. But forever isn't bri...
His face went somber for half a second, and then it dissolved into an absolutely wonderful and fearless laugh. The old Ronan Lynch's laugh. No, it was better than that one, because this new one had just a hint of darkness beneath it. This Ronan knew ...
Strangers are never seen through a window. When our eyes are cast upon another, we are in fact gazing into the depths of a mirror. If you truly desire to understand how you feel about yourself, just take an honest look at how you view the world aroun...
Ursula, we have to talk…' he said, almost blurting. He couldn’t believe he was in the “we have to talk” position. It was so unnerving. 'I have to ask you… Let’s be each other’s emergency contact numbers.' This was his first concession t...
Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atl...
