Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Eroticism differs from animal sexuality in that human sexuality is limited by taboos and the domain of eroticism is that of the transgression of these taboos. Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself.
Here is a simple recipe to begin with. Get up every morning with the set intention of writing and go to your desk and sit there for three hours, whether you accomplish anything or not. Before long you will find that you are writing madly, not waiting for inspiration.
In its flawless grace and superior self-sufficiency I have seen a symbol of the perfect beauty and bland impersonality of the universe itself, objectively considered, and in its air of silent mystery there resides for me all the wonder and fascination of the unknown.
It is often said that everything happens for a reason, but you must embrace the perspective that it's never a reason that is predetermined or out of your control. It is always your responsibility to choose the most empowering reasons for the occurrences of your life.
God doesn't promise security from life's storms but security in life's storms. God doesn't always call the equipped, but he will always equip the called. In the long run, avoiding danger is no safer than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
Many voters think about the makeup of the Supreme Court when they are choosing a president. The justices deal not only with constitutional issues but also with social issues that were unknown to the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution more than 200 years ago.
We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings today?
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.
The man of genius knows what he is aiming at; nobody else knows. And he alone knows when something comes between him and his object. In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.
It is remarkable that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake.
Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.
Subjection to fear is weakness, bondage, feverish unrest. To be afraid is to have no soul that we can call our own; it is to be at the beck and call of alien powers, to be chained and driven and tormented; it is to lose the life itself in the anxious care to keep it.
A memoir is not an autobiography. It's a true story told as a novel, using techniques of novelization. The author is allowed to compress events, combine characters, change names, change the sequence of events, just as if he's writing a novel. But it's got to be true.
There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.
The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior; it is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal disposition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit.
A successful home is based on the love and helpfulness of children just as it is based on loving parents handling their responsibilities. ... Be eager to forgive when problems arise at home. Help with your younger brothers and sisters when needed. You are their hero.
It is to be regretted that domestication has seriously deteriorated the moral character of the duck. In a wild state, he is a faithful husband.....but no sooner is he domesticated than he becomes polygamous, and makes nothing of owning ten or a dozen wives at a time.
Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence.
If you take the approach that “good” is not an accident - that everyone and everything that shows up in your life is there for a reason - you’ll begin to see every event (no matter how difficult or challenging) as a chance for enrichment and advancement in your life.
Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature.
Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.
Faith has its price. When misfortune strikes the true believer, he assumes he has done something to deserve punishment, but isn't quite certain what. The realist, recognizing that he lives in a Darwinian universe, is simply grateful to have made it to another sunset.
The term congressional hearing is an oxymoron. No congressional hearing is ever called to gather information. Rather, it is an exercise designed strictly for posturing, by people who have already made up their minds, looking for ammunition to support their positions.
There is still in many schools complete misapprehension that children with reading difficulties are stupid. It is so easy to teach a child that they're dumb. There needs to be a recognition that you need different ways to teach children who have got reading problems.
It is probably well on the conservative side to estimate that during the past ten to fifteen years the camera has destroyed a thousand pairs of eyes, corrupted ten thousand, and seriously deceived a hundred thousand, for every one pair that it has opened, and taught.
If we desire to do what will please God, and what will help men, we presently find ourselves taken out of our narrow habits of thought and action; we find new elements of our nature called into activity; we are no longer running along a narrow track of selfish habit.
To have a healthy and thriving business, there must be healthy relationships with the C.E.O.S. in the organization and I'm not referring to the Chief Executive Offficers. I am talking about the Customers, the Employees, the Owner (or stockholders), and the Suppliers.
My name is Daniel, and this is the first volume of my life story, which, hopefully, will be a very long and distinguished one. Who should you read it? Very good question. Maybe because this is your planet, and you have a right to know what's actually happening on it.
He pulled her into a tight embrace. There was the sting of tears on her cheeks, but they weren't hers. He kissed the top of her head and murmured something. She didn't hear what he'd said, but that didn't matter. He was alive. Riley wanted to stay in his arms, but...
In a train...smash. In his arm her last...breath.' He had loved her. But he hated himself more. Such suffering, so much pain. And he thought it made him hateful. As if suffering was shameful, disgusting, as if pain were a crime. Who can judge another man's suffering?
All writers - all beings - are exiles as a matter of course. The certainty about living is that it is a succession of expulsions of whatever carries the life force...All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land.
We are still a pioneer culture in some ways. A pioneer culture has to put all of its muscle into surviving on the frontier and pushing back the wilderness. So when you start to talk about imagination, inner space, and the structures of the psyche, that becomes scary.
The fruit of the Spirit is fundamentally relational. Rather than originating with us, it flows to us from our union with Christ, and it flows beyond us to bring us into fellowship with others. The secret of this flow - and our unity with God and others - is humility.
So much of my writing derives from these questions that I ask myself - things that are utterly beyond my personal set of experiences - and it's my attempt to try to... understand, to sort of break out of my own consciousness, you know, the limitations of my own life.
It bothered me that he was right. Without Sir Stuart's intervention, I'd have been dead again already. That's right--you heard me: dead again already. I mean, come on. How screwed up is your life (after- or otherwise) when you find yourself needing phrases like that?
What do we mean by 'crazy?' What do we mean by 'mad?' At what point is a person just different and at what point can we call it a disease and say that they are not responsible for their actions? Or are we all slaves to the chemical processes that go on in our brains?
Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbing - resistance to experiencing our pain for the world and other beings.
The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe... All is registered in the 'boundless heart' of the bodhisattva. Through our deepest and innermost reponses to our world - to hunger and torture and the threat of annihilation - we touch that boundless heart.
In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.
If you're afraid of everyone leaving you, what do you do?" Make them stay." And if you can't do that, or don't know how to?" Ellie shrugged. "I don't know." Yes, you do. In fact, you've done it. You leave first," Coop said, "so you don't have to watch them walk away.
I have never fit into this town, this marriage, this skin. I am the child who was picked last to play tag; I am the girl who laughed although she did not get the joke; I am the piecemeal part of you that you pretend doesn't exist, except it is all I am, all the time.
I don't write the same book over and over - I think if I did that, I would stop writing. I couldn't write a series with the same character, and I couldn't write a romance novel over and over again that takes place at a different beach every year. That's not who I am.
Why would God send people to our church if we don't have a great dream? Why would God give a multigifted, multitalented, and multifinancially wealthy person to a church if the biggest thing you are going to do is paint the restrooms next year? That's bad stewardship.
Erak. The one they call the Oberjarl," the Arridi answered him. Impulsively, Axl took a pace forward, raising his ax threateningly. You'll have to go through the rest of us to take him!" he shouted defiantly. Well done, Axl," he said. "You've just told them I'm here.
Hazel Grace,” he said. “Hi,” I said. “How are you?” “Grand,” he said. “I have been wanting to call you on a nearly minutely basis, but I have been waiting until I could form a coherent thought in re An Imperial Affliction.” (He said “in re.” He really did. That boy.)
Now jamming - which is about collaborative improvisation - has to do with getting people together to be creative musically. But it is a very powerful metaphor for understanding the grammar of the creative process. It applies to business and to other pursuits as well.
Despite its successes, in the end, philosophical thinking always falls short of its real goal. It involves both the wonder of aspiring toward the Truth and the distress of falling short of that Truth. In this way, philosophy can be characterized as wondrous distress.
I like to walk, touch living Mother Earth—bare feet best, and thrill every step. Used to envy happy reptiles that had advantage of so much body in contact with earth, bosom to bosom. [We] live with our heels as well as head and most of our pleasure comes in that way.
From ancient times, the core idea of the soul is the soul is the capacity to integrate different functions into a single being or into a single person. The soul is what holds us all together: what connects our will and our minds and our bodies and connects us to God.