The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they might be related to one another in ways frowned on by the Old Testament.
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account.
It is not accidental that the most unsympathetic characters in Austen's novels are those who are incapable of genuine dialogue with others. They rant. They lecture. They scold. This incapacity for...
But what if someone from another faith won't recognize yours? Or wants you dead for it?That is not faith. That is hate. He sighed. And if you ask me, God sits up there and cries when that happens.
Timing is everything. That´s right. Which is why our sages tell us to repent exactly one day before we die." But how do you know it´s the day before you die? I asked. He raised his eyebrows....
You ask me what it means to be irrelevant? The feeling is akin to visiting your old house as a wandering ghost with unfinished business. Imagine going back: the structure is familiar ,but the door is...
She resented the fact that her veil, which to her was a symbol of scared relationship to god, had now become an instrument of power, turning the women who wore them into political signs and symbols.
Mitch, that's what faith is. If they spit in your face, you say it must be raining. But you still come back tomorrow.
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order to survive, to protect some aspect of myself that was now in constant retreat.
I was reminded of a painter friend who had started her career by depicting scenes from life, mainly deserted rooms, abandoned houses and discarded photographs of women. Gradually, her work became more...
It's frightening to be free, to have to take responsibility for your decisions.
There are different forms of seduction, and the kind I have witnessed in Persian dancers is so unique, such a mixture of subtlety and brazenness, I cannot find a Western equivalent to compare it to. I...
God and the decision he renders is correct. God doesn't punish anyone out of the blue. God knows what He is doing.
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the ones who had taken it away--become afraid, more protective of their endangered interests, more...
One, as in the singular God. One, as in the Lord's creation, Adam.
My friends, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled...
In any conversation, I was taught, there are at least three parties: you, the other person, and the Lord.
I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination. I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without the...
He kept the outside world at bay by keeping the inside world at hand.
How do we say good-bye to you without saying good-bye to apiece of ourselves? Where do we look for you now?
Napoleon once dismissed religion as 'what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.' Meaning, without the fear of God--or literally the hell we might have to pay--the rest of us would just take what we...
Then Adam boldly said, 'Lord, what if I am willing to bestow on that soul some of the years of my life?' And God answered Adam, saying, 'If that is your wish, that I will grant.' Adam, we are told,...
Just think, I say, trying to calm her down. The two of us naked in a car, but safe and sound all the same, kissing each other to the clap of thunder and the sound of the driving rain!This is...
You can feel the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain - no matter how smart or accomplished - they cry, they yearn, they hurt. We all want the same things: comfort, love,...
A eulogy is no more than a summation of memories, and we will never forget you, because we cannot forget you, because we will miss you every day. To imagine a world without you in it is to imagine a...
simplicity and surrender to the universe.
And slowly a discussion begins - as Morrie has wanted all along - about the effect of silence on human relations. Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?
But today is not yesterday, and the Reb could do nothing but listen to the worst imaginable words-We couldn't save her-told to him by a doctor he had never met before that night. How could this...
That's the thing when people leave us too suddenly, isn't it? We always have so many questions.
When you come to the end, that's where God begins. Many
The second death. To think that you died and no one would remember you.
Poshlust, Nabokov explains, is not only the obviously trashy but mainly the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive.
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been...
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great....
Inscribed on the back was a line from Virgil in Latin: Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the...
It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?
The rain was pattering hypnotically on the plane's exterior.