Analysis

Close your eyes, cover your ears, and imagine that all your life you will need to get by without being able to see or hear much. Perhaps merely imagining this makes you shiver, and in no way can you associate such a life with joy, independence, or travel. Tony Giles is one of those people who has managed to successfully remove all these...

When faced with great tragedies, the most overwhelming feeling is one of helplessness. What can we do to change the lives of the hurting for the better? How can we help when not even the strong can find solutions? The answer is not simple, but it is more accessible than we might believe if it includes empathy, courage, and the faith that any...

Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was 4 years old, and didn't read until he was 7. His parents thought he was mentally disabled, and one of the teachers described him as "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in his foolish dreams." He was expelled from school and denied admission to the Zurich Polytechnic.

Virtually every civilization has been characterised by religious beliefs about the end of all things, not least about the timing and the conditions that precede the end, and signs of its imminence. There are many differences between these beliefs across civilisations, but many similarities too.

Courage is a special virtue: unlike other virtues that can be formed and polished over time, courage only makes itself known spontaneously and fully in situations where one is required to act, proving its existence.

I have always imagined that well-being, bright prospects, good health and a clear purpose in life tend not to inspire questions about the meaning of life very often.

Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive. – C.S. Lewis

Louis Braille said: "God was pleased to hold before my eyes the dazzling splendours of eternal hope. After that, doesn't it seem that nothing could keep me bound to the earth?"

Walk into any shop and you will find yourself having to choose between not only hundreds of different products but even numerous varieties of a single product. You have two choices: settle for something good or search for the perfect choice. One of these choices will make you unhappy.

Sometimes I think I was born with a magnifying glass in my hand, one through which I critically scrutinize everything I do and say and which relentlessly magnifies every imperfection.

There are so many versions of the “real meaning” of Christmas—kindness, generosity, neighbourliness; family, food and gifts; and, in our part of the world, end-of-year parties, carols by candlelight, summer holidays and trips to the beach or other outdoor adventures. 

“If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war — not missiles but microbes. We are not ready for the next epidemic” – these were the words Bill Gates said at the beginning of his speech at TED Talk conference on April 3, 2015.

Nothing else on earth judges a person as ruthlessly as their own conscience, and truthfully, nothing else should. The painful process happens before and after the harm has been done.

While the historic churches remained at least disinterested in millenarianism, the Apocalypse, and the Parousia—that is to say, when they were not hostile to them—Protestant pluralism allowed for both reluctance[1] and increasingly significant preoccupations with the research and publication of the themes regarding the end of the world.

The increased frequency with which doctors are encountering antibiotic-resistant bacteria is worrying. And it could affect an already precarious medical field—cancer treatment.