‘Well,’ said the old mother, ‘he looks a very good man, I’m sure he’ll be a kind husband, and don’t tell me there’s any part of the world where women don’t like kind husbands.’ Then the friend who had gone out to look for my husband came
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“We awaken this bodhichitta, this tenderness for life, when we can no longer shield ourselves from the vulnerability of our condition, from the basic fragility of existence. In the words of the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, “You take it all in. You let the pain of the world touch your heart and you turn it into compassion.” It is said that in difficult times, it is only bodhichitta that heals.”
― When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
― When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
“How Are We to Live is a collection of short stories, not a novel. This in itself is a disappointment. It seems to diminish the book’s authority, making the author seem like somebody who is just hanging on to the gates of Literature, rather than safely settled inside.”
― Too Much Happiness: Stories
― Too Much Happiness: Stories
“The whole thing is too abstract, continued Zafar, this business of our lives standing for something else. All we know is that we don’t want it to stand for nothing. So we dive headlong into becoming heroes, becoming the big swinging dick on Wall Street or the rock star or the hot-shot human rights lawyer. Which is about making our lives stand for something that our intelligence can grasp, saving us from confronting what we fear might be true—or what we would fear if we gave ourselves the chance—namely, that we’re accidental pieces of flesh, mutton without meaning.”
― In the Light of What We Know
― In the Light of What We Know
“My point is that you could think of the people you meet in your life as questions, there to help you figure out who you are, what you’re made of, and what you want. In life, as in our new version of the game, you start off not knowing the answer. It’s only when the particles rub against each other that we figure out their properties. It’s the strangest thing, this idea in quantum physics, and yet somehow unsurprising when you consider it as a metaphor. It’s when the thing interacts that its properties are revealed, even resolved.”
― In the Light of What We Know
― In the Light of What We Know
“Avoid Calcutta’s un- healthy monsoon. From June until the end of September over a meter and a half of rain bombards the city. Outhouses overflow and contaminate water used for drinking, bathing, and washing cooking utensils. Many of the eight thousand annual deaths caused by cholera and gastrointestinal diseases occur during the rains. Antiquated, silt-clogged sewage pipes drain only a quarter inch of rainwater per hour. Manhole covers are removed to facilitate drainage, and in nonstop rains (more than thirty centimeters, or a foot, in twenty-four hours), open sewers, hidden under water, become booby traps as pedestrians inadvertently plunge into them and drown.”
― Travelers' Tales India: True Stories
― Travelers' Tales India: True Stories
Colorado College Alumni Book Club
— 443 members
— last activity Nov 14, 2019 05:32AM
Welcome to the Colorado College Alumni Book Club! Each quarter we will read and discuss a book by an alumnus or alumna author, CC faculty member, or v ...more
Rachel’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Rachel’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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