• Buechner on Time

    There’s hours for you. It’s inch by inch and hour by hour to death. It’s hours gone and hours still to go. No puzzle there. A child can count it out. But what is time itself, dear friend? What is the sea where hours float? Am I daft, or is it true there's no such thing as hours past and other hours still to pass, but all of them instead are all at once and never gone? Is there no time lost that ever was? Is there no time yet to come that's not here now? There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion with…

  • Merton on Disunity Among Men

    As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a Body of broken bones. Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish, without some pain at the differences that come between them. There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion with other men. They can love or they can hate.

  • Roosevelt on Cynicism (Part II)

    Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as the cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.

  • Roosevelt on Cynicism (Part I)

    Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as the cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.

  • Hopkins on the World of Wanting

    Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;     And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;     And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.