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I’ll never be able to separate the memories of childhood from that of books. They intertwine like colours in fabrics, in a jumble of real and fantastical, bitter and sweet, joy and guilt.

Every day is an opportunity to ask ourselves how it is that human life has such little value in the eyes of some of our contemporaries—those contemporaries living in freedom and democracy (on paper, at least), who are educated and socialised within the same civilization as we are, often even in the same community, or under similar civil laws and generally having the...

In a world of many predetermined things, friends are the family we choose for ourselves. Often, their presence is what keeps us going. In Vital Friends, Tom Rath says that many of those who end up on the streets, divorced, or addicted to overeating, struggle with inner demons precisely because they are alone. They feel excluded, abandoned, unloved.

And they lived happily ever after. This sentence closes many of the stories we often read in just a few minutes. In reality, between the beginning and end of a love story lie years of experiences and events which, at times, can be more difficult than they seem.

“No doubt equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men have made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might; so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good....” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts)

Looking back, I realize how the ferocious world beneath the heavens is tamed, at crucial moments, through communication on that biblical Ladder of Jacob.

"Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.” (Dr John Trainer) Sometimes I pass my grandparents' house, which...

They say self-esteem is a vital ingredient for success in life. But what if everything we were taught about self-esteem is wrong?

I love books as much as I love people, but if I’m honest with myself, sometimes I find a little more comfort in the company of books than in the presence of my fellow humans.

“You can have any colour you want, as long as it’s black,” Henry Ford famously said, and the modern mass production revolution began. Today, however, you can customise almost anything. You can blend your foundation to match your exact skin colour. You can design your own shoes; you can personalise your car, your suit and even your M&Ms.

One of the most powerful pieces of literature illustrating the proper preparation for a financial crisis comes from antiquity. More precisely, from the Bible.

After more than a decade of civil war, during which more than 300,000 civilians have died, Syria is hit by a new crisis. People are digging graves again, for the adults and children who managed to survive the war.

Many years ago, while I was still in high school, our Romanian language and literature teacher assigned us the task of writing a framed story, complete with characters and a plot of our choosing.

We’d been married only a few weeks when we discovered that growing our spirituality as a couple was going to be much more complicated than the instructions on the packet suggested.

How do parents influence their children's marriages?