There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…

our countrymen are starving, she is decorating herself with diamond aigrettes!

One of the many difficult things about women was that they tended to pick the most unsuitable times to tell you something they considered to be important, and then became irrationally upset when you failed to remember it.

When I was a junior, my school introduced badminton, which was clearly a P.E. department ploy to get me away from the wrestling room, and it worked, since the first time I played badminton was like the first time I tasted sushi or heard the Beatles or read Wordsworth. This was a sport? This counted...

Living on purpose means stopping to make sure your actions still match your big goals.

Asking why you are doing something serves as a check and always moves your focus back to the big picture. Asking why helps you find out if your actions have come unglued from your goals. In theory, you could do this as often as every day, reviewing your to-do list to make sure it ties...

What, then, are some of the shifts that have happened in our understanding of the composing process that make a focus on digital writing in the writing workshop that much more compelling?

I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly ‘sprung,’ I’d kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die.

Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn’t talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.

Weźmy twój rozum. Na pozór wydaje się, że myślisz w sposób uporządkowany, logiczny i sensowny. Ale wszyscy wiemy, że w twojej głowie kwitnie istna dżungla nonsensów. Twój umysł to poskręcany, chaotyczny zlepek przypadkowych informacji, które nie kleją się ze sobą z powodu elementarnego braku wiedzy, nie stosowania zasad logiki, niewiarygodnego zaniku zdolności wnioskowania oraz niczym...

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right.

Nothing like your marvelous facebear,

Doing, in a life of balance, should be driven from who you have decided to be.

Decide, first, to simply be.

Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality—the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the...

Dear White Fella When I am born I’m black When I grow up I’m black When I am sick I’m black When I go out ina sun I’m black When I git cold I’m black When I git scared I’m black And when I die I’m still black. But you white fella When you’re born...

Jake, anyway, and somehow that seemed far, far worse. The couldn’t

With every single fiber of her soul, she wanted to be With every single fiber of her soul, she wanted to be

Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Epilogue Chapter One

We should totally ask him what he thinks!” Caitlin said.

Deep in the meadow, under the willowa bed of grass, a soft green pillow lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyesand when again they open, the sun will rise.Hear it’s safe, here it’s warm hear the daisies guard you from every harm hear your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true hear...

Not darkness, for that implies an understanding of light. Not silence, for that suggests a familiarity with sound. Not loneliness, for that requires knowledge of others. But still, faintly, so tenuous that if it were any less it wouldn’t exist at all: awareness. Nothing more than that. Just awareness—a vague, ethereal sense of being. Being...

You could put a blond wig on a hot-water heater and some dude would try to fuck it.

international force. Finally, these issues are tackled both at the individual

and, if anything, are more likely to respond assertively. (1999:106) In

Has a sense of humor. (Preferably warped.) We know who we are

and her answer to it because she’s driving the conversation. In

Even on especially hard days, I began to notice him everywhere, setting a table before me in the presence of my enemies, pursuing me with his love. Both the child and the cynic walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The cynic focuses on the darkness; the child focuses on the Shepherd.

little children never get frozen by their selfishness. Like the disciples, they come just as they are, totally self-absorbed. They seldom get it right. As parents or friends, we know all that. In fact, we are delighted (most of the time!) to find out what is on their little hearts. We don’t scold them for...

Loving means losing control of our schedule, our money, and our time. When we love we cease to be the master and become a servant.

and they are love and not love. I choose love.

And don’t miss Frank Otto, the world’s most tattooed man! Held hostage in the darkest jungles of Borneo and tried for a crime he didn’t commit, and his punishment? Well, folks, his punishment is written all over his body in permanent ink!

I strain to hear, but my old ears, for all their obscene hugeness, pick up nothing but snippets:

spheres of influence, trade barriers, unequal distribution of the world’s goods, starvation in the midst of plenty, slums with gold coasts next door, poverty supporting luxury: These are marks of an unChristian world.

proof.” It is instead a lens, a way of experiencing life, and a willingness to act.

It’s a tiresome proposition, having to take up the work of the Enlightenment all over again, but it’s happened on your watch.

At that moment, I felt my resistance leave me. And it was a great sense of relief.

A few minutes after he arrived, Lee was talking to a group of astronomers eager to learn what news he could bring them, for there are few natural philosophers as frustrated as astronomers in a fog.

Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and...

The only real difference between a wise man and a fool, Moore knew, was that the wise man tended to make more serious mistakes—and only because no one trusted a fool with really crucial decisions; only the wise had the opportunity to lose battles, or nations.

The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.

book variables, student variables, and school variables.

A man’s life was five dogs long, Cortland believed. The first was the one that taught you. The second was the one you taught. The third and fourth were the ones you worked. The last was the one that outlived you. That was the winter dog. Cortland’s winter dog had no name. He thought of...

He died with his tie on. Do you think that could be our generation’s equivalent of that old saying about dying with your boots on? Harry Blakemoor died with his tie on. I like it, Larry.

Eisenhower has been much criticized for his failure publicly to endorse the Court’s decision. But he felt that doing so would set an undesirable precedent. If a president endorsed decisions he agreed with, might he feel compelled to oppose decisions he did not agree with? And what would that do to the rule of law?...

Call me Richard. That’s my real name. Call me that.

And James Patterson’s probably written one since he got up this morning!” she said, and went off chortling.

The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by. The challenge is getting into the habit of

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.” Siddhrtha Gautama

Sorry,” and stop doing it. Don’t try to explain why you did it or express frustration with her. She is really saying that labor is so difficult right now that nothing helps. You are the safest person for her to lash out at. Later, she will probably apologize.