It is not a Buddhist approach to say that if everyone practiced Buddhism, the world would be a better place. Wars and oppression begin from this kind of thinking.
If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.
There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is calle...
Should the discovery of fire have been avoided because arsonists can misuse it? Any kind of information can be misused by those who are determined to do so. The place to stop the misuse of knowledge is not at the point of inquiry, but at the point of...
One of the problems with trying to find yourself through other people ... it’s kind of easier to lose yourself in them. On the plus side, they get to find you, sometimes. And you can ask them what you’re like. Because obviously don’t have a clu...
Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don’t insult anybody with their performances, and they neither sing nor dance politics. So I like them; but don’t let me hea...
It was good to be a stranger in a land when you felt aggressive and acquisitive, but when you began to weave your horizons into some kind of shelter it was good to know that hands you loved had helped in their spinning - made you feel as if the threa...
If I were king, I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind.
Putting the brakes on is not an easy thing for a vamp to do. It's kind of like a shark trying to stop a feeding frenzy, or that old potato chip slogan: "Bet you can't eat just one.
What kind of ministry is that, just talking to people?" Criticism directed at Francis Schaeffer's plan to open an obscure spot in the Swiss Alps to those who came with questions.
Let me get this straight. I can't take the vampire with me because if I remove the stake, he can kill us all. Now I can't take the girl because she's what? some kind of ninja witch?
The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.
Okay", I breathed. "Then what will it take?" I was completely out of my element. Begging a girl to go on a date with me. This was fucked up." "Miss it." I stared into her cold, blue eyes and knew I'd just met the kind of girl books are written about.
I hate these affairs", he'd told her once, tearing up an engraved invitation to an exclusive charity ball. "They're the worst kind of discrimination. An invitation doesn't really mean that you're invited; it means that a whole lot of people aren't
But sometimes this hatred broke like a wave, unexplainably collapsing under its own weight, and before it would begin to well up again, she suddenly felt nothing but pure compassion for him, a kindness and forgiveness that almost broke her heart.
His music gave no lesser joy than a vacation. Creativity in his music and its success stood out as an example to all kinds of artists, in the lectures of business speakers, engineers, and to anyone who built or constructed something in their respecti...
Seeing each choice as a kind of energy can empower us. To say "yes" might feel like a dripping faucet. To say "no" might feel like a playful puppy. In feeling the energy, we get to choose beyond what is expected and routine.
Why do you want to have a drink with me?” “Because I like you. Because you’re fun. Because I want to get to know you better. Because I want you to see for yourself I’m not the kind of guy you think I am.
We did a Tarot card reading. She told me different things, most of them depressing and worth forgetting. But what I'll always remember is her prediction of my death, and how I'd become a kind of ghost, ‘wandering’ she said, with a ‘spiritual re...
I began drinking because the thought that I was drinking gave me a kind of identity: each time I poured myself a brandy in the deserted afternoon I could say to myself 'I am a woman who drinks.
Fervent Christians are always remembering themselves as - and thus, by extension, judging everyone else outside their sect to be - lost and hopeless and just barely clinging to any kind of interior sense of value or reason or even to go on living, be...
