“When our life becomes unpredictable and uncertain, we pray as we can’t predict the important events of life. If you are in a business or profession where luck plays an important role, you regularly pray to God for good luck. Students pray for good luck before their examinations. The villagers pray for a good, timely monsoon or adequate supply of electricity.”
Source: Myths are Real, Reality is a Myth
“I was beginning to think there was no adequate reason for our existence. I realized that so long as the main pursuit of my life boiled down to hedonism that I was more like the hamster on the wheel than I cared to admit.”
Source: Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
“I was beginning to think there was no adequate reason for our existence. I realized that so long as the main pursuit of my life boiled down to hedonism that I was more like the hamster on the wheel than I cared to admit.
As I watched the people around me chase different things, I realized I wasn’t the only one on a hamster wheel. Many college students think that partying on the weekends and filling their lives with one-night stands is the path towards satisfaction. Many adults think that education, success, luxury, vacationing and wealth are better paths. I had hoped so as well, but they were proving to be just as empty. The harder I ran towards success, the more burnt out I felt.”
Source: Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
“There are two races on earth. Those who need others, who are distracted, occupied and refreshed by others, who are worried, exhausted and unnerved by solitude as by the ascension of a terrible glacier or the crossing of a desert; and those, on the other hand, who are wearied, bored, embarrassed, utterly fatigued by others, while isolation calms them, and the detachment and imaginative activity of their minds bathes them in peace.”
Source: 88 Short Stories
“Did you ever sleep in a field of orange-trees in bloom? The air which one inhales deliciously is a quintessence of perfumes. This powerful and sweet smell, as savoury as a sweetmeat, seems to penetrate one, to impregnate, to intoxicate, to induce languor, to bring about a dreamy and somnolent torpor. It is like opium prepared by fairy hands and not by chemists.”
Source: 88 Short Stories
“He himself was one of your noisy roisterers, for whom life holds no greater pleasures than wine and bought women. Outside these two poles of existence, he understood nothing. Braggart, brawler, contemptuous of every living person, he despised the whole world from the heights of his ignorance.”
Source: 88 Short Stories
“You are not broken. You are not a problem to be fixed. You are a human being with a mind that has learned, often for good reasons, how to survive.”
Source: The Therapist's Handbook for Breaking the Loop - Your NeuroFlex ACT Workbook: Rewire Your Mind. Reclaim Your Life.
“Next item—three ladies, all English, a mother and two daughters. Each wears a helping of whipped white of egg on the top of their head; rather remarkable. The daughters are old, like the mother. The mother is old, like the daughters. All three are thin, flat-chested, tall, stiff, and tired-looking; their front teeth are worn outside, to intimidate plates and men.”
Source: 88 Short Stories
“I should add that there are undoubtedly charming Englishmen; I have often met them. But they are rarely our fellow-guests at hotels.”
Source: 88 Short Stories
“For some years he had felt weighing on him the burden of loneliness which sometimes overwhelms old bachelors. He had been strong, active and cheerful, spending his days in sport, and his evenings in amusement. Now he was growing dull, and no longer took interest in anything. Exercise tired him, suppers and even dinners made him ill, while women bored him as much as they had once amused him.”
Source: 88 Short Stories