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hunger is a powerful reorganizer of the conscience.
The leader had a beard and was wearing a caftan that looked as if it had been sewn by elves on hash.
We have betrayed the trust of the Animals, and defiled our sacred task of stewardship.
Nobody gives a hoot, Nobody gives a hoot, And that is why we’re down the chute, Cause nobody gives a hoot!
Hunger is the best sauce.
She made friends with everyone by asking them the right way to do things.
“Why are you sucking up so much?” I asked Amanda. “It’s how you find stuff out,” she said.
It is better to hope than to mope!
If you had composed a splendid symphony, would you want it to be obliterated?
God was no longer so well pleased. He knew something had gone very wrong with his last experiment, Man, but that it was too late for him to fix it. “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite every thing living, as I have done,” say the Human Words of God in Genesis 8:21.
consider the wholesale slaughter of ecosystems, each one a living reflection of God’s infinite care for detail
Then God says a noteworthy thing. He says, “And the fear of you” – that is, Man – “and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air . . . into your hand are they delivered.” Genesis 9:2. This is not God telling Man that he has a right to destroy all the Animals, as some claim. Instead it is a warning to God’s beloved Creatures: Beware of Man, and of his evil heart.
This thing I’m doing can hardly be called living. Instead I’m lying dormant, like a bacterium in a glacier. Getting time over with. That’s all.
She must fight against lethargy. It’s a strong desire – to sleep. To sleep and sleep. To sleep forever. She can’t live only in the present, like a shrub. But the past is a closed door, and she can’t see any future. Maybe she’ll go on from day to day and year to year until she simply withers, folds in on herself, shrivels up like an old spider.
time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.
Only the Now counted. Say about others as you would have them say about you. In other words, nothing.
The bloom is off the rose, thought Toby. And the rose doesn’t like it.
For drinking Life there are two cups, Nuala taught the small children. What’s in each of them might be exactly the same, but my, oh my, the taste is so different! The No Cup is bitter, the Yes Cup is yummy – Now, which one would you rather have in your tummy?
there was no record of the first Adam and the first Eve going through a wedding, so in their eyes neither the clergymen of other religions nor any secular official had the power to marry people.
Both parties had to proclaim in front of witnesses that they loved each other. They exchanged green leaves to symbolize growth and fertility and jumped over a bonfire to symbolize the energy of the universe, then declared themselves married and went to bed. For divorces they did the whole thing in reverse: a public statement of non- love and separation, the exchange of dead twigs, and a swift hop over a heap of cold ashes.
Remember, nothing is unclean to us if gratitude is felt and pardon asked,
Bernice was getting more and more pious. Maybe it was her substitute for not having any real friends.
Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don’t really care about them all that much?
How misguided were our ancestors in their preserving of corpses – their embalmings, their adornings, their encasings in mausoleums. What a horror – to turn the Soul’s husk into an unholy fetish! And, in the end, how selfish! Shall we not repay the gift of Life by regifting ourselves to Life when the time comes?
What a horror – to turn the Soul’s husk into an unholy fetish!
When next you hold a handful of moist compost, say a silent prayer of thanks to all of Earth’s previous Creatures. Picture your fingers giving each and every one of them a loving squeeze. For they are surely here with us, ever present in that nourishing matrix.
