Behavior

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

The statement "I am in pain" may be one piece of evidence for the conclusion that the speaker is in pain, but it is not the only possible evidence, and since people sometimes tell lies, not even the best possible evidence. Even if there were stronger grounds for refusing to attribute pain to those who do not have language, the consequences of this refusal might lead us to reject the conclusion. Human infants and young children are unable to use language. Are we to deny that a year-old child can suffer?

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

When I was very young, somebody, maybe it was a squirrel, they talk so much, or a magpie, or maybe a fishie, told me that Pan owned all this forest. Well, not owned owned. Not like he would sell the forest to someone else, or put a wall all around it. It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go.

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

I wish I had an origin story for you. When I was four, I was bitten by a radioactive myth.

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

I love my fans to pieces. They're with me. They get it, you know? They get what I'm saying.

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

I want to wake up every day and do whatever comes in my mind, and not feel pressure or obligations to do anything else in my life.

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. That's the lesson. That lesson alone, will save you a lot of grief. Even doubt means don't.

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

• Add to Bookmarks
• Read and discuss

It was a slender young man, not more than one or two and twenty years old, with rather a grave and thoughtful expression for his years, but likewise a springy alacrity and vigor. These qualities were not only perceptible, physically, in his make and motions, but made themselves felt almost immediately in his character. A brown beard, not too silken in its texture, fringed his chin, but as yet without completely hiding it; he wore a short mustache, too, and his dark, high-featured countenance looked all the better for these natural ornaments. As for his dress, it was of the simplest kind; a summer sack of cheap and ordinary material, thin checkered pantaloons, and a straw hat, by no means of the finest braid. Oak Hall might have supplied his entire equipment. He was chiefly marked as a gentleman--if such, indeed, he made any claim to be--by the rather remarkable whiteness and nicety of his clean linen.