Of the numerous regrettable elements that go to make up the unlawful carnal-knowledge industry, I should single out for distinction the look of undisguised contempt that is often worn on the faces of...
How sad to be a woman—not to know Aught of the glory of this breast of snow, All unconcerned to comb this mighty hair; To be a woman and yet never know! Were I a woman, I would all day long Sing my ow...
From Alan Lightman's intricate 1993 novel Einstein's Dreams; set in Berne in 1905: With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great-aunt...
Brave? Hah! Save it for a fight you can't run away from.
Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be af...
And it seems possible, moving to the psychological arena, that people can be better off believing in something than in nothing, however untrue that something may be.
The lawbreaking itch is not always an anarchic one. In the first place, the human personality has (or ought to have) a natural resistance to coercion. We don't like to be pushed and shoved, even if it...
Even if I accepted that Jesus - like almost every other prophet on record - was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same wou...
Mass indoctrination of uneducated young men with such ideas is in itself a lethal danger to society and to international order.
Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.
Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for.
There was also the time that competitors were asked to submit a paragraph of a Graham Greene parody: Greene himself entered under a pseudonym and placed third.
The politicized sponsors of this pseudoscientific nonsense should be ashamed to live, let alone die. If you want to take part in the war against cancer, and other terrible maladies, too, then join the...
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with...
The most educated person in the world now has to admit-- I shall not say confess-- that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.
The idea of a utopian state on earth, perhaps modeled on some heavenly ideal, is very hard to efface and has led people to commit terrible crimes in the name of the ideal.
The holy book in the longest continuous use—the Talmud—commands the observant one to thank his maker every day that he was not born a woman.
Some years ago, after the disappearance of civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwirner in Mississippi, some friends of mine were dragging the rivers for their bodies. This one wasn’t Schwirner...
Real rustics are not conscious of being picturesque, they do not construct bird sanctuaries, they are uninterested in any bird or animal that does not affect them directly ... The fact is that those w...
People keep saying, God is in the details. He isn't in ours, unless his yokel creationist fans wish to take credit for his clumsiness, failure, and incompetence.