It seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world. I implore you, do not become a moralist; you will destroy your art and your mind.

We’d all lost ourselves and found something far more significant together. We reached with gaping wounds for a healing we desired so badly, like a blind man picturing the world around him—the lively children skipping rope, green grass, blue sky. It’s like that man standing in his vision, rising from the park bench, arms outstretched, taking the first steps into a world he only hopes exists.

Work, then, institutionalizes homicide as a way of life. People think the Cambodians were crazy for exterminating themselves, but are we any different? The Pol Pot regime at least had a vision, however blurred, of an egalitarian society. We kill people in the six-figure range (at least) in order to sell Big Macs and Cadillacs to the survivors. Our forty or fifty thousand annual highway fatalities are victims, not martyrs. They died for nothing — or rather, they died for work. But work is nothing to die for.

And when he ran the blades over her she felt light as a feather, floating happily into that place where pain and pleasure walked hand in hand, fully clear and conscious and she looked out to the darkness that lay outside of their artificial day. All too soon it was gone, her vision dimming and her breaths evening as she found somewhere darker which centred around the golden light of her Master’s voice as he spoke to her.

The problem is that stepping away from Brian, leaving him standing under that pergola on Wednesday, is no longer enough to leave behind how he made me feel in that hour. I could leave him there, we could part as strangers, but God, I know that I would look for him. He would live in my peripheral vision, a ghost nudging me to turn and look behind me, only to find a spot that is emptier than empty

Solitary writers come out of nowhere and do not belong anywhere. They are not domesticated or socialized, not as writers. Their subject is not the world about them but the one within them. From story to story or poem to poem, they repeat themselves because all they have to work with are themselves and their dreams, which are strange dreams and often bad dreams. As anyone knows, nothing is more troublesome to communicate than yourself and your dreams, the feelings and visions that have molded you into what you are.

What's all this nonsense about odd vision and not fitting in? There are plenty worse things in this world than not fitting in--like fitting in way too much. You strike me as a real original, Izzy Malone, in a world that loves carbon copies. If you think you beautified something, I believe you. I've never understood why folks love safe, neutral colors so much. Colors are what make this world worth living in.

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosopher to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so helplessly lost to all honourable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what us, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera glasses at home.

So dear to heaven is saintly chastity, That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream, and solemn vision Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heavenly habitants Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal

“[That modesty has worked well for the 47-year-old Bodenheimer, and ESPN has flourished in his seven years at the helm. Sure, the ESPN he inherited had already extended itself from TV to print, the Internet, and other platforms. And its smart-aleck, testosterone-laden culture was already a trademark. But Bodenheimer's vision of his company, where he started in the mailroom, is as a ubiquitous sports network -- and more. To really understand ESPN, you need to see it as a cluster of feisty, creative enterprises under one killer brand. Its units, spread out mostly over offices in Connecticut, New York, and Los Angeles, act like startups, full of passionate staffers who are given the freedom to drive forward but always with a mission to keep the customers (rabid and tech-savvy fans like themselves) happy. Bodenheimer] realizes ESPN has to be fast-paced, ... In his realm, if you stand still you're dead.”