Wisdom

I could admire his skills, and be relieved when he was on my side in a fight. But for a rat to like the cat? That scenario ended only one way. With one dead rat.

Although you may not be able to physically rewind your experiences, a visual rewind may reveal aspects which you may have missed the first time around. By mentally rewinding scenarios for your life, relationships, experiences, and behavior, you can look back with focused attention to see things more objectively.

I think the reason why strong women have such a powerful impact is that you've got the strength of a man with the heart and sensitivity of a woman.

The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' sense.

Doubt unmasks the lie and illuminates the dark path to truth.

Natural science in England, as Darwin already knew to his cost, was still the purview of Christian scholars. But here was a question that Darwin found compelling: if God had created all the creatures of the world, what possible reason could there be for the variations found in the Galápagos?

Tolkien did admit that, 'As a guide, I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving.' In other words ~ he wrote about what interested him ~ and despite his protestation of including anything allegorical into his tale, Catholic history and mystic prophecy obviously received its fair share of attention ...

You may not have money, you may not have medicine, you may not have miracles, but you do have words, and they can produce life, or death depending on how you use them.

A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author's thoughts; and the value of these will lie either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form which his thoughts take, in other words, what it is that he has thought about it.

To be ordinary, be normal; to be original, be different; to be valuable, be unique; to be priceless, be yourself.

It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with 'I,' 'me,' 'mine,' that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.

Whenever you get an appetite, you feed yourself. Therefore, fill your belly on wisdom of things old and new. Only swallow the truth, less you choke on the lies.

Architecture is restricted to such a limited vocabulary. A building is either a high-rise or a perimeter block or a town house.

Good historians...Have the future in their bones.

Pride is often used as a way to protect our hearts and to hide the truth. Pride causes us to shut down and build walls.

Projections' - attempts to blame all and sundry for my own past folly - will be found of no avail, and we must learn to withdraw them. None other is to blame for our body, home or circumstance, our friends and enemies, our job and place in the world. We made it all; let us accept and use and better it.

Images have enormous power, and images freed from deep within ourselves can change us profoundly.

I shrugged. “I guess that guys who’d never do something like that have a hard time believing some other guy would,” I said, but I could see her point. Awareness and apologies were fine and good, but they could come too late.

There are no accidents in this world, that no living being is seduced into an entanglement that he did not invite with his innermost desires. Would you agree with my estimation?

Kindness has a mysterious power which can transcend and transform anything it touches.