☮Peace is every step.
- Thich Nhat Hahn
The Inner Sun
Love is longing and longing, the pain of being parted;
No illness is rich enough for the distress of the heart,
A lover’s lament surpasses all other cries of pain.
Love is the royal threshold to God’s mystery.
The carnival of small affections and polite attachments
Which litter and consume our passing time
Is no match to Love which pulses behind this play.
It’s easy to talk endlessly about Love,
To live Love is to be seized by joy and bewilderment;
Love is not clear-minded, busy with images and argument.
Language is too precocious, too impudent, too sane
To stop the molten lava of Love which churns the blood,
This practicing energy burns the tongue to silence;
The knowing pen is disabled, servile paper
Shrivels in the fire of Love. Bald reason too is an ass
Explaining Love, deceived by spoilt lucidity.
Love is dangerous offering no consolation,
Only those who are ravaged by Love know Love,
The sun alone unveils the sun to those who have
The sense to receive the senseless and not turn away.
Cavernous shadows need the light to play but light
And light alone can lead you to the light alone.
Material shadows weigh down your vision with dross,
But the rising sun splits the ashen moon in empty half.
The outer sun is our daily miracle in timely
Birth and death, the inner sun
Dazzles the inner eye in a timeless space.
Our daily sun is but a working star in a galaxy of stars,
Our inner sun is One, the dancing nuance of eternal light.
You must be set alight by the inner sun,
You have to live your Love or else
You’ll only end in words.
~ Mevlana Rumi
Translated by Raficq Abdulla
Knowing ignorance is strength; ignoring knowledge is sickness.
- Lao Tzu
I tell you one thing – if you want peace of mind, do not find fault with others. Rather learn to see your own faults. Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; this whole world is your own.
– SRI SARADA DEVI
Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival.
This quest for enlightenment must begin now.
It is essential that all men and women become aware of what they are, why they are here on Earth and what they must do to preserve civilization before it is too late. ~ Richard Matheson (born 20 February 1926)
I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgement is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
~ Frederick Douglass ~
There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in streight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, ’twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small Acknowledgments. ~ William Penn
All in all is all we are. ~ Kurt Cobain (born 20 February 1967)
We picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. ~ Hunter S. Thompson (died 20 February 2005)
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. ~ Frederick Douglass
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. ~ Frederick Douglass (died February 20, 1895; born February 1817/1818, birthdate unknown)
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. ~ Frederick Douglass
If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
- Dogen Zenji
Words of wisdom
came to me at last
“the beloved you’ve lost
the one you’ve been seeking outside
can only be found inside”
- Rumi
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
- George Bernard Shaw
”…meditation is the only way to make you absolutely sane.”
~ Osho
The rose has come from beyond; it is from the other world. That’s why this world cannot encompass the rose. The rose is so graceful, so elegant that the world of dreams is too narrow to dream of the rose. What is meant by the rose, a messenger from the garden of the intellect, from the grove of spirit? What is the rose? A document that describes the beauty and the highness of the rose of truth that neither turns brown nor withers.
~ Rumi
Come come the roses are in bloom!
The Beloved has arrived!
Now it is time to unite the soul and the world.
~ Rumi
Without trying, the world is heading for perfect awareness – and you are part of it.
- Yoko Ono
We cannot be loving and compassionate unless at the same time we curb our own harmful impulses and desires.
Large human movements spring from individual human initiatives.
- Dalai Lama
☮Peace is the only battle worth waging.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)
☮All it takes for evil to rule a land is for good men to remain silent.
- Daniel Webster (1782-1852)
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others. ♥ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
♥ Ralph Waldo Emerson
”Responding to adverse situations or conditions with patience and tolerance rather than reacting with anger and hatred involves active restraint, which arises from a strong, self-disciplined mind. We should not see patience as a sign of weakness or giving in, but rather as a sign of strength.”
- Dalai Lama
Seek out the source
which shines forever.
- Mevlana Rumi
“In the midst of death life persists.
In the midst of untruth truth persists.
In the midst of darkness light persists.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
– George Bernard Shaw
I am not so enamored of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. I am aware that a philosopher’s ideas are not subject to the judgement of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavor to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus (born 19 February 1473)
External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It’s important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that’s unique for yourself. ~ Amy Tan (born 19 February 1952)
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
~ Paul Simon ~
(Lyrics to “The Sound of Silence” — written on this day in 1964)
Now that your rose is in bloom,
A light hits the gloom on the grave,
I’ve been kissed by a rose on the grave.
~ Seal ~
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said “The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence.”
~ Paul Simon ~ (song written on this day in 1964)
People have such terrible assumptions about ghosts — you know, phantoms that haunt you, that make you scared, that turn the house upside down. Yin people are not in our living presence but are around, and kind of guide you to insights. Like in Las Vegas when the bells go off, telling you you’ve hit the jackpot. Yin people ring the bells, saying, “Pay attention.” And you say, “Oh, I see now.” Yet I’m a fairly skeptical person. I’m educated, I’m reasonably sane, and I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule. … To write the book, I had to put that aside. As with any book. I go through the anxiety, “What will people think of me for writing something like this?” But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses. ~ Amy Tan
Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grave.
Ooh, the more I get of you,
Stranger it feels, yeah.
And now that your rose is in bloom,
A light hits the gloom on the grave.
~ Seal ~
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/February#19
I’m sure you’ve noticed that more and more people are getting aware.
- Yoko Ono
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.”
— William W. Purkey
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
— Dr. Seuss
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.”
— Dr. Seuss
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”
— Maya Angelou
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
— Albert Camus
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
— Mark Twain
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
— Oscar Wilde
“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
— Mark Twain
“So many books, so little time.”
— Frank Zappa
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
— C.S. Lewis
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
— Robert Frost
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
— John Lennon
“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”
— Malcolm X
“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it ‘The Present’.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
— Albert Einstein
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
— Mark Twain
“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
— Marilyn Monroe
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
— Elie Wiesel
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
— Mark Twain
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
— Steve Martin
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
— Albert Einstein
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere’s Fan)
“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”
— Jim Henson
The Great Spirit does not toil within the bounds of human time, place, or casualty.
The Great Spirit is superior to these human questionings. It teems with many rich and wandering drives which to our shallow minds seem contradictory; but in the essence of divinity they fraternize and struggle together, faithful comrades-in-arms.
The primordial Spirit branches out, overflows, struggles, fails, succeeds, trains itself. It is the Rose of the Winds.
~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Teachers are those who use themselves as bridges, over which they invite their students to cross; then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis (born 18 February 1883)
At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don’t need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can. ~Toni Morrison (born 18 February 1931)
The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you. My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I encountered, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
I am a mariner of Odysseus with heart of fire but with mind ruthless and clear.
My entire soul is a cry, and all my work the commentary on that cry.
I said to the almond tree: “Speak to me of God”
and the almond tree blossomed.
~ Nikos Kazantzakis
Do not let your peace depend on the hearts of others; whatever they say about you, good or bad, you are not because of it another, for as you are, you are.
– THOMAS A KEMPIS
”I am in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.”
— Louise L. Hay
”Love yourself as much as you can and all of life will mirror this love back to you.”
- Louise L. Hay
“Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”
- Eckhart Tolle
The law of nature is that one can never unknow what one knows. So all of us are getting wiser and wiser. There’s no stopping it!
Change is inevitable. And it’s up to us to make it a good change.
- Yoko Ono
☮Peace will be victorious. — Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995)
”Ambition is bondage.”
–Ibn Gabirol
Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.
♥ Buddha
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
♥ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.
♥ Buddha
The BIG question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty YES to your adventure!
♥ Joseph Campbell
You cannot travel on the path until you become the path itself.
♥ Buddha
“The seemingly impossible is possible. We can have a good world.”
~ Hans Rosling
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
♥ Horace
“It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it.”
— Terry Pratchett
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
“However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?”
— Siddhārtha Gautama
“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”
— Albert Einstein
“Love doesn’t just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin (The Lathe of Heaven)
(I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.)”
— Pablo Neruda
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
— Albert Einstein
“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC”
— Kurt Vonnegut
“By virtue of being human, each of us has the capacity to choose, to change, to grow.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)
“This is the central principle of meditation: we become what we meditate on.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)
I claim to be an average man of less than average ability. . . . I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.
– MAHATMA GANDHI
Our body needs peace of mind and is not suited to agitation. This shows that an appreciation for peace of mind is in our blood.
- Dalai Lama
I understand Being in all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in Being, and there is no being without Essence. Thus nothing can be free of the Divine Presence.
~ Giordano Bruno ~
Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be. ~ Anonymous
There is one simple Divinity found in all things, everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being. ~ Giordano Bruno (died 17 February 1600)
Even to have come forth is something, since I see that being able to conquer is placed in the hands of fate. However, there was in me, whatever I was able to do, that which no future century will deny to be mine, that which a victor could have for his own: Not to have feared to die, not to have yielded to any equal in firmness of nature, and to have preferred a courageous death to a noncombatant life. ~ Giordano Bruno (executed 17 February 1600)
A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn
Birds in flight are calling there
Where the heart moves the stones
It’s there that my heart is calling
All for the love of you.
~ Loreena McKennitt ~
All things are in the Universe, and the universe is in all things: we in it, and it in us; in this way everything concurs in a perfect unity. ~ Giordano Bruno
The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it. ~ Giordano Bruno
Writing…is an art; and artists…are human beings. As a human being stands, so a human being is…
Poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality….poetry is being, not doing….if poetry is your goal, you’ve got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities . . .
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel …
the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time —and whenever we do it, we are not poets.
I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. ~ e. e. cummings
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. ~ Henry Adams (born 16 February 1838)
The counsels of impatience and hatred can always be supported by the crudest and cheapest symbols; for the counsels of moderation, the reasons are often intricate, rather than emotional, and difficult to explain. And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed way: plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless dance on the prospects for human progress, drawing the shadow of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions. And until people learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the sowing of bitterness, suspicion, and intolerance as crimes in themselves — as perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done to the cause of popular government — this sort of thing will continue to occur. ~George F. Kennan
Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics. It may be true, and I suspect it is, that the mass of people everywhere are normally peace-loving and would accept many restraints and sacrifices in preference to the monstrous calamities of war. But I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feelings of the mass of the people at all, but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities — politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts: people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent. ~ George F. Kennan
All experience is an arch, to build upon. ~ Henry Brooks Adams
What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn. ~ Henry Adams
Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education. ~ Henry Adams
To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
–Walter Benjamin
I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re going and hook up with them later.
- Mitch Hedberg
When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
- William Wrigley Jr.
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
- George Bernard Shaw
”The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.”
- Benjamin Disraeli
“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”
—
Siddhārtha Gautama
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
- Swami Vivekananda
Love is invisible except here, in us.
Sometimes I praise love,
sometimes love praises me.
Love, a little shell somewhere
on the ocean floor,
open its mouth.
You and I and we, those imaginary beings,
enter that shell as a single sip of seawater.
- Rumi
“Be Yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
- Oscar Wilde
“The actions of men are the best interpreters of thoughts.”
–Zig Ziglar
Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.
♥ Albert Einstein
☮Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
- Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.
Friends and enemies do not exist as such; friendship and enmity depend on many factors, of which the primary one is our own mental attitude.
Whoever wants to tell a variety of stories ought to have a variety of beginnings.
–Marie de France
“We all need joy, and we can all receive joy in only one way, by adding to the joy of others.”EKNATH EASWARAN(1910–1999)
As Plato sometimes speaks of the divine love, it arises not out of indigency, as created love does, but out of fullness and redundancy.
– JOHN SMITH THE PLATONIST
“The widest possibilities for spiritual growth lie in the give-and-take of everyday relationships.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)
“This is the central principle of meditation: we become what we meditate on.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)
“The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just. ~ Blaise Pascal
“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”
—
Ram Dass
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
– WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
“By virtue of being human, each of us has the capacity to choose, to change, to grow.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)
If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself.
– MEISTER ECKHART
“Nothing can be more important than being able to choose the way we think.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)
”Your progress depends upon your degree of sustained intensity in a given direction.”
- Roger McDonald
”This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”
— Paulo Coelho
look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once
- Rumi
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, and engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
—
John Keating (Dead Poets Society)
The house of my heart is empty,
devoid of desire, like paradise.
Within it is no work but the LOVE OF GOD,
no inhabitant but the image of union with Him.
I have swept the house clear of good and bad -
my house is full of love for the One…
- Rumi
The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.
Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell – keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping a year.
The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases.
The wilful filing off of gear teeth, the wilful doing without certain obvious pieces of information.
Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut
“Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying.”
– Iain M. Banks
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
♥ Martin Luther King Jr.
Fear breeds fear. Hate breeds hate. And Love breeds love.
- Yoko Ono
A given situation can be viewed as either unbearable or beneficial: it depends how we look at it. We must make certain that things don’t begin to seem unbearable. If we look too closely at problems we will see nothing else and they will appear all out of proportion with reality; that is when they become intolerable. If we can stand back from them, we will be better able to judge them and they will seem less serious.
- Dalai Lama
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
- Paul Valery
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
- Ronald Reagan
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
- Fran Lebowitz
Now I know what a statesman is; he’s a dead politician. We need more statesmen.
- Bob Edwards
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
- Robert Heinlein
God wasn’t too bad a novelist except he was a Realist.
- John Barth
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us ~ Bill Watterson
Never give in and never give up.
- Hubert H. Humphrey
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”
- T.S. Eliot
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made.”
- Robert Browning
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
- Samuel Johnson
You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.
- Warren Beatty
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
- Gustave Flaubert
The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.
No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied — it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
- Ansel Adams (Born February 20, 1902)
“I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.”
- Kurt Kobain (Born February 20, 1967)
The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.
Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.
God, the Great Giver, can open the whole universe to our gaze in the narrow space of a single land.
My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.
In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play, and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.
Love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation.
When we define a man by the market value of the service we can expect of him, we know him imperfectly.
Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity.
The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, from discipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual.
Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover.
The infinite being has assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him who is love the finite and the infinite are made one.
Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God’s dust is greater than your idol.
The wise man warns me that life is but a dewdrop on the lotus leaf.
In the world’s audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.
Wishing to hearten a timid lamp
great night lights all her stars.
God seeks comrades and claims love,
the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
Life’s errors cry for the merciful beauty
that can modulate their isolation
into a harmony with the whole.
Color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.
- Rabindranath Tagore
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore
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“My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality… The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in 
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