The most important fact about our shopping malls, as distinct from the ordinary shopping centers where we go for our groceries, is... that we do not need most of what they sell, not even for our pleasure or entertainment, not really even for a sensation of luxury. Little in them is essential to our survival, our work, or our play, and the same is true of the boutiques that multiply on our streets.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love has meaning only insofar as it includes the idea of its continuance. Even what we rather glibly call a love affair, if it com...es to an end, may continue as a memory that is pleasing in our lives; we can renew the sense of privilege and reward of having been allowed such intimacy and sharing. But Lust dies at the next dawn, and when it returns in the evening, to search where it may, it is with its own past erased. Love wants to enjoy in other ways the human being whom it has enjoyed in bed; it looks forward to having breakfast. But in the morning Lust is always furtive. It dresses as mechanically as it undressed and heads straight for the door, to return to its own solitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The foundation of humility is truth. The humble man sees himself as he is. If his depreciation of himself were untrue,... it would... not be praiseworthy, and would be a form of hypocrisy, which is one of the evils of Pride. The man who is falsely humble, we know from our own experience, is one who is falsely proud.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is still a great deal of legalism in the Old Testament idea of sin. The emphasis in the Sermon on the Mount is very differen...t from that in the commandments that Moses brought down from Sinai. The commandments have been translated into beatitudes. "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth," is not a sentence one could read in the Old Testament without a jolt, but by the time we reach it in the New Testament, we have been prepared for it. It is set in the context of the rest of Christ's life and teaching. Without that example the sentence carries little conviction because there is no evidence that the meek do or ever will inherit the earth. We have been turned away from a concern merely with our outward acts, to contemplate what lies most deep in our innermost selves, hidden from all but ourselves and God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is true ... that animals are not cruel. They cannot be cruel; if we say that they are being cruel, we mean only that they are b...eing savage, whether to survive or simply to triumph. They cannot be cruel because they cannot associate themselves with the feelings of their victims, and even their own feelings are only those of enjoyment, if there is enjoyment at all, of their own power. A man is cruel, on the other hand, and is rightly said to be being cruel, when he is associating himself with the feelings of his victims, when he is enjoying, not only his own power, but the suffering of another.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »