My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought.
My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought.
When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being--and a normal one, at that?
How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me.
Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real.
I got the sexton, who was digging Linton's grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again-it is hers yet-he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it...
Thinking of death--strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off--made me feel happier than ever.
We were restless for ages...After a while I heard an owl hooting and calmed myself by thinking of it flying over the dark fields - and then I remembered it would be pouncing on mice. I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.
Strange the workings of the heart. One could go on for years, habituated to loss, reconciled to it, and then, in a moments unwary thought, the pain resurfaced, sharp and raw as a fresh wound.
Mc Donalds he thought. There's no longer any such thing as a Mc Donalds hamburger. He passed out. When he came around seconds later he found he was sobbing for his mother.
I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting it to come true.
One cannot pass by without thinking of the density of men in the ground.
He's laughing me into a stupor, she thought. I could heckle, I suppose, I could throw a bread roll at him, but he's eaten them all. She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show? Eat a meal, go to bed, fall in love with me and I promise you years and years of top notch material like this?
I love him, she thought. I'm just not in love with him and also I don't love him. I've tried, I've strained to love him but I can't. I am building a life with a man I don't love, and I don't know what to do about it.
She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show?
It had occurred to Sean once - on a bender about ten years before with some buddies, Sean and a bloodstream full of bourbon turning philosophical - that maybe they HAD gotten in that car. All three of them. And what they now thought of as their life was just a dream state. That all three of them were, in reality, still eleven-year-old boys trapped in some cellar, imagining what they'd become if they ever escaped and grew up.
This was nonsense, he thought. The need of her was a physical thing, like the thirsty of a sailor becalmed for weeks on the sea. He'd felt the need before, often, often, in their years apart. But why now? She was safe; he knew where she was - was it only the exhaustion of the past weeks and days, or perhaps the weakness of creeping age that made his bones ache, as though she had in fact been torn from his body, as God had made Eve from Adam's rib?
No wonder men got impervious to superficial pain, I thought. It came from this habit of hammering each other incessantly.
I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.
Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return -- that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.
My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing. I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people - the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in - the me in what is going to happen next.
But I have had enough melodrama in this life, and would willingly give my five senses if they could ensure us our present peace and security. Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind. Of course we have our moments of depression; but there are other moments too, when time, unmeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity and, catching his smile, I know we are together, we march in unison, no flash of thought or opinion makes a barrier between us.
I would have gone too but I wanted to come straight back to you.I kept thinking of you, waiting here, all by yourself, not knowing what was going to happen.
He didn't reject the idea so much as not react to it and watch as it floated away. He thought very broadly of desires and ideas being watched but not acted upon, he thought of impulses being starved of expression and dying out and floating dryly away.
Magic is the art of thinking, not strength or language.
It got so that when he closed his eyes, letters and words danced in his mind. He thought of little else during that time.
My first time I jacked off, I thought I'd invented it. I looked down at my sloppy handful of junk and thought, This is going to make me rich.
The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the name of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.
Yes, Mo would come. Meggie could think of nothing else as Fenoglio led her away with him, his arm around her as if he could really protect her from Capricorn and Basta and all the others. But he couldn't. Would Mo be able to protect her? Of course not. He mustn't come, she thought. Please. Perhaps he won't be able to find his way in again! He mustn't come. Yet there was nothing she wanted more, nothing in the whole wide world.
Skepticism has become a virtue. Cynicism and demand for proof has become enlightened thought. Is it any wonder that humans now feel more depressed and defeated than they have at any point in human history?
Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.
The power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share that thought.
No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like then world when the deluge was gone by.
All that running and getting nowhere, he thought. Story of my life.
Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness.
And in some way, Clary thought, he meant it, meant his gratitude. He had long ago lost the ability to distinguish between force and cooperation, between fear and willingness, between love and torture. And with that realization came a rush of numbness-what was the point of hating Valentine for being a monster when he didn't even know he was one?
To talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.
How had it happened, Simon thought, that he was bound to these people-to people who thought of him as nothing more than a Downworlder, half human at best?
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
She looked out then, through the crowd, and saw Simon with the Lightwoods, looking at her across the empty space that separated them. It was the same way that Jace had looked at her at the manor. It was the one thread that bound these two boys that she loved so much, she thought, their one commonality: They both believed in her even when she didn't believe in herself.
I'm thinking of being a professional mourner. How hard can it be? Tear at your hair, sing a dirge or two, take the rest of the week off.
She thought of the way Jace had looked at her then, the blaze of faith in his eyes, his belief in her. He had always thought she was strong. He had showed it in everything he did, in every look and every touch. Simon had faith in her too, yet when he'd held her, it had been as if she were something fragile, something made of delicate glass. But Jace had held her with all the strength he had, never wondering if she could take it -- he'd known she was as strong as he was.
The horse grunted softly. He had huge teeth, Clary noticed uneasily; each one the size of a Pez dispenser. She imagined those teeth sinking into her leg and thought of all the girls she'd known in middle school who'd wanted ponies of their own. She wondered if they were insane.
Anger, Tessa thought, was satisfying in its own way, when you gave in to it. There was something gratifying about shouting in a blind rage until your words ran out.
Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.
When I thought of the ferocity and strength of the fairy race, and the fact that it took all I had to open the damn blister pack and extricate the water pistols, my chosen method of defense seemed ludicrous. I'd be armed with a plastic water pistol and a trowel.
My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.
But you know very well you are thinking of another they, and that he is not thinking of you
For I too liked reading, thought of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial.
I thought of him now-in his room-watching the sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return; it was not too late.
It is not saying too much; I know what I feel, and how averse are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money-speculation. And I do not want a stranger--unsympathizing, alien, different from me. I want my kindred--those with whom I have full fellow-feeling.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories