Is it possible to be anything in this country without being a politician?
We have an arsenal of ideas about land use possibly as dangerous to human life on the planet as the use of nuclear arms.
With our technologies--ones of incalcuable power: earth-restoring, planet preserving--we can rediscover an intimacy, a mutuality with the natural world, that is not primitive (though based in part on fear), but knowing. It might even be possible to relearn a life of awe. And inhabit the landscape without violation. With the least violation.
After all, this is a world of rock and water and air. It is elemental. It is not ours.
A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.
When we see the many grave-stones which have fallen in, which have been defaced by the footsteps of the congregation, which lie buried under the ruins of the churches, that have themselves crumbled together over them; we may fancy the life after death to be as a second life, into which man enters in the figure, or the picture or the inscription, and lives longer there than when he was really alive. But this figure also, this second existence, dies out too, sooner or later. Time will not allow himself to be cheated of his rights with the monuments of men or with themselves.
Europe is a woman, now middle-aged, who has already had a number of heart attacks and is currently experiencing the biggest health crisis of her life, but one that need not be fatal.
[Pope Francis] has done this not through angry speeches, but through the powerful symbols and examples of embracing a badly deformed man, welcoming refugees to the Vatican, strolling through a shanty town in Rome, visiting a home for the elderly, washing the feet of prisoners on Holy Thursday, and going to a hospital for newborns.