Selected Passages
These sentences were chosen for Today's Passage: lines worth reading slowly, returning to, and turning into copywork.
From Today's Passage
20 of 20 passages
XIII. The Trap of the White Sphinx
There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.
A comfortable world may look peaceful while its deeper powers fall asleep. Ease becomes unsettling when nothing is left to awaken the mind.
VI. The Sunset of Mankind
Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness.
Need sharpens strength; safety can soften it. A sheltered life may lose powers that difficulty once kept awake.
VI. The Sunset of Mankind
Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are!
A neat explanation is not always a true one. The mind often prefers plausibility before it is ready for understanding.
I. Introduction
We are always getting away from the present moment.
The present is hard to inhabit when the mind is always escaping it. Even a journey into the future can begin as an evasion of now.
X. When Night Came
“Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.
The stars can make private troubles feel small without making them false. Wonder gives perspective, not escape.
VI. The Sunset of Mankind
Everything was so entirely different from the world I had known—even the flowers.
Beauty can disguise danger when everything is new. A strange world may welcome the eye before it reveals what lives beneath it.
VII. A Sudden Shock
I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind—a strange animal in an unknown world.
Loneliness is deepest when it cuts across time, language, and kind. Discovery can become exile when no familiar life remains nearby.
XVI. After the Story
They say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at times—but I can’t stand another that won’t fit.
Some dreams become unbearable because waking offers no relief. The mind can be trapped between realities that no longer fit.
XV. The Time Traveller’s Return
I might have slept there, and the whole thing have been a dream.
Some experiences feel dreamlike because the mind cannot yet make room for them. The unreal is sometimes reality arriving too fast.
VII. A Sudden Shock
Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to me?
Fear becomes more real when we ask another person to imagine it with us. Some shocks need a witness before they can be borne.