Literature (like daily life) is full of stories about people who treat othersintolerably, as if they were their children. Husbands, wives, friends, bosses,neighbors, and government leaders blur the lines of their roles, believing theyhave the right to ‘adopt’ others as they would a child. Naturally,...
Health outweighs all other blessings so much that one may really say that a healthy beggar is happier than an ailing king. A quiet and cheerful temperament, happy in the enjoyment of a perfectly sound physique, an intellect clear, lively, penetrating and seeing things as they are,...
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS[68] (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British polymath, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. Throughout his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist,...
When these walks of my grandmother’s took place after dinner there was one thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: this was if (at one of those points when her circular itinerary brought her back, mothlike, in sight of the lamp...
It is difficult for people of the present age not only to understand the cause of their miserable condition, but even to grasp the fact that their condition is miserable. This is chiefly due to the principal calamity of the age which is called progress and which...
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by experience, which is the bitterest; and third, by imitation, which is easiest. CONFUCIUS “Wise elders” are all around us and these people have much to teach us. Talking to older people to find...
You can truly victimize yourself, your spouse and your children, by giving excessive competitiveness top priority in your philosophy or behavior. Schools which demand all "A's" from students, and force them into sometimes vicious competition with each other, may produce a few shining lights—but are...
The Steppenwolf, too, believes that he bears two souls (wolf and man) in his breast and even so finds his breast disagreeably cramped because of them. The breast and the body are indeed one, but the souls that dwell in it are not two, nor...
You need not go to any school to learn creativity. All that you need is to go withinwards and help the ego dissolve. Don't support it; don't go on strengthening and nourishing it. And whenever the ego is not, all is truth, all is beautiful,...
This room, how well I know it. Now they’re renting it, and the one next to it, as offices. The whole house has become an office building for agents, businessmen, companies. This room, how familiar it is. The couch was here, near the door, a Turkish carpet in front of it. Close...
