Religion is concerned not with genuine history, but with sacred history, which does not course through time like a river. Rather, sacred history is like a hallowed tree whose roots dig deep into...

At some time during the process, {of writing} I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months...

As Plato said, every soul is deprived of truth against its will. The same holds true for justice, self-control, goodwill to others, and every similar virtue. It's essential to constantly keep this in...

It takes a special kind of humility to grasp that you know less, even as you know and grasp more and more. It's remembering Socrates' wisdom lay in the fact that he knew that he knew next to nothing.

Everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.

Uneducated people delight in argument and fault-finding, for it is easy to find fault, but difficult to recognize the good and its inner necessity.

Freedom was a word that everyone mentioned but none of us knew.

Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.

Ridicule was a better defense than truth.

Do we miss not only the past but every future the lost past describes? Is that just the nature of missing? All the lost might - have - beens? The certainty that those uncertain futures are gone?

Yeah, exactly. But, actually, boards prefer iron. All that glitters is not hovery.

More lies, but maybe lies were better than the truth.

Mindy had explained that a lot of things had ghosts, not just people. Animals, machines, even things as vast as a paved - over forest or as humble as the smell of good cooking could leave traces of...

We are only what we know.

Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that truly move the world are invisible.

A sprinkle of last-minute despair gives a soul an agreeably earthy aftertaste.

Do spirals end? Or just get so tiny your eyes can't follow any more?

The soul is a verb. . . . Not a noun.

Probably is a word with an emergency ejector seat.

Light in love is joy. Light in faith is hope. Light in compassion is mercy. Light in gratitude is contentment. Light in understanding is awareness. Light in intellect is discernment. Light in...

In the lowest Hell you find ignorance. In the lowest Heaven you find shrewdness.

Light gave birth to the existence. Existence gave birth to reality. Reality gave birth to eternity. Eternity gave birth to time. Time gave birth to life. The past gave birth to the future. The future...

... {W}e should be mucking about all the time, because mucking about is enjoying life for its own sake, now, and not in preparation for an imaginary future. It's obvious that the mirth - filled man,...

James could do all this because he had made a bargain with himself: he wouldn't try to get killed, nor would he try to survive. He could do all this because he felt terribly sorry for the men he...

Do gooders don't interest me. They are the least interesting people on the planet.

There were other ways to live. You could do something else, if you wanted. And if you had a reason.

one of her recent letters asks, Is it hubris to believe we all live epics? {Perhaps it is, but I suspect she's not actually counting on me for an answer.}

For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have...

My sense of urgency is very simple,' said the professor, 'I've remembered that much. It's because what I have to remember has to do with time running out. And that's what anxiety is, in a lot of...

The great and golden rule of art as well as of life, wrote William Blake, is that the more distinct, sharp and defined the boundary line, the more perfect is the work of art; and the less keen and...