This means, in a way, that true light is dependent on the presence of other lights. Take the others away and darkness results. Yet the reverse is not true: take away darkness and there is only more darkness. Darkness can exist by itself. Light cannot.

The institution that had the greatest effect on Berenson's education was the Boston public library, the first in the country that allowed people to take books home to read them.

The sad part about our past is that religions, ironically enough, are responsible for creating the most destructive idea that has ever been visited upon the human race: the idea that there is such a thing as 'better.'.

Offence is an event, offended is a decision. Offence and offended we have to live through it but to stay offended? To live in that place denies the very nature of the salvation that you claimed to have received.

The frontier will nevertheless survive in the attitudes a few of us inherited from it. One of those attitudes--to me a beatitude--is the conviction that the past matters, that history weighs on us and refuses to be forgotten by us, and that the worst poverty women--or men--can suffer is to be bereft of their past.