The race isn't to the swift, it's to the thoughtful.
Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.
The book, that stubbornly unelectric artifact of pure typography, possesses resources conducive to the flourishing of the soul. A thoughtful reading of the printed text orients one to a world of order, meaning, and the possibility of knowing truth.
Warmth, kindness, and friendship are the most yearned for commodities in the world. The person who can provide them will never be lonely.
It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
I think he [Heidegger] sets the question up in a useful way and, despite appearances, he's not 'against' technology. He just wants us to have a questioning and thoughtful relation to it. This must be relevant to any approach.
Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.
No matter how close thought sticks to the actual, it follows its own rules.
I carefully lifted out of the pose and spoke up: Uh, Fran? When I'm doing the pose (camel), I have this feeling in my chest, kind of a scary, tight feeling. -Fran was adjusting someone across the room. She had a way of looking like a thoughtful seamstress when she made adjustments: an inch let out here, a seam straightened there, and everything would be just right. She might as well have had pins tucked between her lips and a tape measure around her neck. Without missing a beat or looking up she said, Oh, that's fear. Try the pose again. -Fear. I hadn't even known it was there.
If we live by the principles of the gospel, we must be good people, for we will be generous and kind, thoughtful and tolerant, helpful and outreaching to those in distress. We can either subdue the divine nature and hide it so that it finds no expression in our lives, or we can bring it to the front and let it shine through all that we do.
That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.
I had a deep prejudice against the South. It's taken me many years to get over that, be more open and thoughtful.
We shouldn't knee jerk anything. The Iraqi government a few years back, when they had a chance to sign an agreement that would keep some of our presence there, refused to do it. So we've got to be very careful and thoughtful before we do anything.
Making work for me is being in the world, but it's also being specific about being in the world. I'm interested in this increasingly rare space of contemplation and taking the time and energy to be thoughtful.
When the whole world is writing letters, it's easy to lap into the quiet within, tell the story of an hour, keep alive the narrating inner life. To be alone in the presence of one's thought is not a value, only a common practice.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views.
John Stuart Mill believed that the only acceptable reason for government to limit a person's liberty was to prevent him from causing unacceptable harm to others. Mill was not a libertarian, but many libertarians are quick to cite this principle when arguing against a regulation that they oppose. And I believe most thoughtful libertarians are prepared to embrace something fairly close to Mill's harm principle. But accepting that principle implies accepting many of the institutions of the modern welfare state that libertarians have vigorously opposed in the past, such as safety regulation.
I'm pretty sure I can say that no one in my family ever asked Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family. It never occurred to us to ask. It was everyday life. It wasn't something people felt compelled to examine. I have wished, for many years, that I'd been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie that question. She died when I was sixteen. I've spent years imagining what her answer would be. And that is why I wrote this book.