When I was a kid, my mother's parenting style teetered between benign neglect and intense bouts of violence.

Happy for America, happy for Europe, perhaps for the world when, on the delivery of Cornwallis's sword to the illustrious, the immortal Washington, or rather by his order, to the brave Lincoln, the sun of Liberty and Independence burst through a sable cloud, and his benign influence was, almost instantaneously, felt in our remotest corners!

Art school had taught me it was far better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success.

Miramax seems to be showing the same faith in Roberto Benigni's 'Pinocchio' that the Republican Party showed in Trent Lott; the live-action version of Carlo Collodi's fairy tale about the wooden puppet whose only ambition was to be a real live boy was sneaked into theaters Christmas Day.

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.

Being made to feel like an irrelevant child was probably an asset. Benign negligence is not a bad parental attitude or at least a cross between a benevolent dictator and benign negligence - you should just let kids crack on with it.

"Always try to be joyful and proactively benign to the people.

"It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.

Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.

The Spy Act strikes a right balance between preserving legitimate and benign uses of this technology while still at the same time protecting unwitting consumers from the harm caused when it is misused and of course designed for nefarious purposes.

Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign.

Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.

Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran no matter how benign their intentions present a condescending view not just of the religion but also of women living in Muslim majority countries as if the desire for choice and happiness is the monopoly of women in the west.

I had been feeling a little rum. I didn't think it was anything serious because years ago I felt a lump and it was benign. I assumed this would be too. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails and I don't know what the future holds if anything.

Art school had taught me it was far better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success.

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world and droop. Sick of its business of its pleasures tired how gracious how benign is solitude.