Study in China

William Somerset Maugham That must be the story of innumerable couples,and the pattern of lifeof life it offers has a homely grace.It reminds you of a placid rivulet,meandering smoohtly through green pastures and shaded by pleasant trees,till at last it falls into the vasty sea;but the sea is so calm,so silent,so infifferent,that you are troubled suddently by a vague uneasiness.Perhaps it is only by a kink in my nature,strong in

SHALL WE CHOOSE DEATH? Bertrand RussellDecember 30, 1954 I am speaking not as a Briton, not as a European, not as a member of a western democracy, but as a human being, a member of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts: Jews and Arabs; Indians and Pakistanis; white men and Negroes in Africa; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between communism and anticommunism.Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but I want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings for the moment and consider yourself only as a member of a biological species which has had a remarkable history and whose disappearance none of us can desire. I shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it. We have to learn to think in a new wa...

Henry David Thoreau However mean your life is,meet it and live it ;do not shun it and call it hard names.It is not so bad as you are.It looks poorest when you are richest.The fault-finder will find faults in paradise.Love your life,poor as it is.You may perhaps have some pleasant,thrilling,glorious hourss,even in a poor-house.The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode;the snow melts before its door as early in the spring.I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there,and have as cheering thoughts,as in a palace.The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any.May be they are simply great enough to receive without