Browsing Category: Short Story

               They were young and poor and much in love, and what they lacked in material things, they accounted for in dreams and lived affections so that—in their poverty of things—they lived perhaps more richly than those that seem to have it all.                To escape into dreams—to travel as they called it—they walked together […]

               “For thy soul be not ashamed to say the truth.  For there is a shame that bringeth sin, and there is a shame that bringeth glory.”—Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 6: 24-25                I was young and foolish; vain in the chase and ways of the world who, when things went wrong, perceived great tragedy; and of […]

               “The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”—Vincent van Gogh                “Are you good at that?” she asked.                “Not every day,” he answered, “but, still, I try—even when I fail.”                She smiled with compassion in countenance, an empathy for […]

               “Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made.  And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?  And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the trees that […]

               “Don’t you want more in life?” she asked, an irritation in her tone.  She paused, looking at him stern, “What do you even want?”                “I don’t know,” he answered.  “I’m back to a beginning.”                “Isn’t it a little late for that?”                He was thirty-three.                “No clue, but why waste effort […]

               I was a little boy, scared of the dark, that failed in being brave.  No more than four or five, I remember the monsters and images over walls in room—shadows cast by silver light of rising moon.                 I went to my father, asking to be saved and comforted in my fears.  He returned […]

               “What is necessary to cause these specters to vanish?  Light.  Light in floods.  Not a single bat can resist the dawn.”—Victor Hugo, Les Miserables                He read alone in the shadows of the room beneath chairside lampstand and single candle burning at a distance.  He read a book of God, fate, and Destinies and […]

               “For all of us, mountains turn into images after a short time and the images turn true.  Gold-tossed waves change into the purple backs of monsters, and so forth.  Always something out of the moving deep, and nearly always oceanic.  Never a lake, never the sky.  But no matter what images I began with, […]

               “’You are kind,’ answered Frodo.  ‘But I do not think that any speech will help me.  For I know what I should do, but I am afraid of doing it, Boromir: afraid…                I think I know already what counsel you would give, Boromir,’ said Frodo.  ‘And it would seem like wisdom but for […]