God has made [our] fantasies … so preposterously unrewarding that we are forced to turn to him for help and for mercy. We seek wealth and find we've accumulated worthless pieces of paper. We seek security and find we've acquired the means to blow ourselves and our little earth to smithereens. We seek carnal indulgence only to find ourselves involved in the prevailing erotomania.

—Malcolm ...

Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want."

—Irving Kristol (1920—), U.S. author

Among Eastern European Jews in the early 1900s, the world of sacred and scholarly learning belonged only to men. In the movie Yentl, a young, unmarried woman named Yentl (Barbara Streisand) has such an insatiable appetite for learning and sacred wisdom that she leaves home, changes her name, masquerades as an older boy, and gets accepted into a Talmudic academy.

In a scene near the beginning of the ...

We're too comfortable to be spiritual…. We think we will be able to pursue God better without danger or hardship. And yet it works in just the opposite way. Nothing is more difficult than to grow spiritually when comfortable.

That's why the believer Alexander Solzhenitsyn's reaction to his exile to the Soviet labor camp was to bless it, because it was there that he discovered that "the meaning of earthly ...

A grandfather was talking to his grandson. “Grandson,” he said, “there are two wolves living in my heart and they are at war with each other. One is vicious and cruel, the other is wise and kind.”

“Grandfather,” said the alarmed grandson, “which one will win?”

The grandfather paused before he said, “The one I feed.”

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C. S. Lewis, from the sermon "The Weight of Glory"

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.

—Author, poet Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)

In the film The Shawshank Redemption, Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman) tells the story of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins)—a young, successful banker wrongly convicted of murdering his wife in 1947 and sentenced to two consecutive life terms at Shawshank Prison.

At one point in the film, Dufresne is given the task of sorting through a whole load of classical records that were donated to the ...

Warren Buffett is one of the greatest investors in our day, and he is also the second richest man in the world, with an estimated worth of $44 billion. Buffett is so famous that a special edition of the Monopoly board game features him and his companies. In June 2005, Buffett decided to help raise money for his charitable foundation by offering an online auction for someone to have lunch with him. ...

Imagine that you just found out you have a rare and terminal illness. You sit down with your doctor.

"Is there no hope?" you ask.

"Well," he says, "there is one thing. Without this one thing, it's over. But with this one thing, you will be completely healed. But let me be utterly clear: It's impossible for you to live without this one thing."

What would you say?

"Listen, Doc, you're boring me. My favorite ...