The blood of Abraham, God's father of the chosen, still flows in the veins of Arab, Jew, and Christian, and too much of it has bee...n spilled in grasping for the inheritance of the revered patriarch in the Middle East. The spilled blood in the Holy Land still cries out to God--an anguished cry for peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know that I will always be expected to have extra insight into black texts--especially texts by black women. A working-class Jew...ish woman from Brooklyn could become an expert on Shakespeare or Baudelaire, my students seemed to believe, if she mastered the language, the texts, and the critical literature. But they would not grant that a middle-class white man could ever be a trusted authority on Toni Morrison.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them serio...usly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During medieval times, all those emotions were missing which have made us cautious and tentative in matters of justice: the insigh...t into diminished capacity, the concept of judicial fallibility, the awareness that society has to share in the blame for the guilt of individuals, the question whether an individual ought not be rehabilitated rather than made to suffer. Or, perhaps, better stated: a vague sense of all this is not lacking, but rather concentrates itself, unverbalized, in instant impulses of charity and forgiveness, unconcerned with the issue of guilt, which could suddenly break through the cruel satisfaction over the administration of justice. While we administer a hesitant, toned down justice, partially filled with a guilty conscience, the Middle Ages knew only two extremes: the full measure of cruel punishment or mercy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, "I ha...ve no pleasure in them"; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain; in the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly; when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets; before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's all sorts of middle-aged white men in suits--forests of middle-aged men in dark suits. All slightly red-faced from eating and... drinking too much.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Years ago we discovered the exact point, the dead center of middle age. It occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too o...ld to rush up to the net.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »