Rabindranath Tagore, Mevlana Rumi, Dalai Lama, Vonnegut, Nhat Hahn, Lao Tzu, Yoko Ono, Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha <3

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☮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

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I’m sure you’ve noticed that more and more people are getting aware.
- Yoko Ono

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“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

via en.wikiquote.org

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

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‎”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

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“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)

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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

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gPn87l

A #Lunar #Eclipse On #Solstice Day- @nasa @apod #peace #p2 Sagan, Bohm, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Tzu, Starhawk, & Rumi <3

via apod.nasa.gov

#PEACE ✌♡☺∞☼∞♡☮♥♡❥♥ ☮♡☼∞☼｡◦°✰❥ ❀♡❀♥♡☺♡♡☼∞◈∞ ✿❀❤❀✿♡♥♥

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Knowing ignorance is strength; ignoring knowledge is sickness.
- Lao Tzu

http://themodernword.com

via en.wikiquote.org

via en.wikiquote.org

I was persuaded and am, that God’s way is first to turn a soul from its idols, both of heart, worship, and conversation, before it is capable of worship to the true and living God.
~ Roger Williams (Born December 21, 1603)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roger_Williams_(theologian)

All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character or illustrates an existence. ~ Benjamin Disraeli in Coningsby

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (died 21 December 1940)

If there is a God, I don’t think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him. I often have a suspicion that God is still trying to work things out and hasn’t finished. ~ Rebecca West (born 21 December 1892)

This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops; the center is also the circumference of all.
We are awake in the night.
We turn the Wheel to bring the light.
We call the sun from the womb of night.
Blessed Be!
~ Starhawk

i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday… ~ e. e. cummings

We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. ~ Thomas Jefferson

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#21

Faith is the force of life.
- Leo Tolstoy

Joy is what happens to us when we ALLOW ourselves to recognize how GOOD things really are.
- Marianne Williamson

‎”When traveling on the ocean, one comes upon areas, here or there, where the sea is calm. Even so, on the great ocean of delusion one finds, occasionally, areas of exceptional calmness. This happens when an avatar, or divine incarnation, is sent to earth with a special dispensation. All who come to him and tune in to his spirit find it relatively easy to escape delusion’s power.”

‎”Obedience must be to the highest that is in your own self. Spiritual instruction, too, must proceed from that high level of consciousness. It must be attuned to the guidance for which your own soul is longing.”

‎”Never neglect what you can do for yourself in the form of another.”

‎”The real You is the prolific source of all power; the basic you is infinite in its potentiality.”

‎”God cannot be attained by so simple an act as merely dying! To die is easy, but it is very difficult to attain that high level of consciousness in which the soul can merge back into Infinity.”
- Paramahansa Yogananda

All that we are is a result of what we have thought.
- Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
~ Jonathan Swift

It is possible to live in peace.
- Mahatma Gandhi

WE MUST GET RID OF THE LIFE WE PLANNED AND HAVE THE LIFE THAT IS WAITING FOR US.
- JOSEPH CAMPBELL, THE HERO’S JOURNEY

The Universe is one big, cosmic celebration. How you choose to enjoy your stay in this reality is entirely up to you. Remember, life is not coming at you, it’s coming from you. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions are generating the vibration that attracts the circumstances of your life. If you are not enjoying your life, go within to find out why.
- Dorothy Mendoza Row

Peace, like charity, begins at home.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The universe operates through dynamic exchange… giving and receiving are different aspects of the flow of energy in the universe. and in our willingness to give that which we seek, we keep the abundance of the universe circulating in our lives.
- Deepak Chopra

via apod.nasa.gov

We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent “elementary parts” of the world are the fundamental reality, and that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms and arrangements of these parts. Rather, we say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole.

via en.wikiquote.org

There is no reason why an extraphysical general principle is necessarily to be avoided, since such principles could conceivably serve as useful working hypotheses. For the history of scientific research is full of examples in which it was very fruitful indeed to assume that certain objects or elements might be real, long before any procedures were known which would permit them to be observed directly.

Of course, we must avoid postulating a new element for each new phenomenon. But an equally serious mistake is to admit into the theory only those elements which can now be observed. For the purpose of a theory is not only to correlate the results of observations that we already know how to make, but also to suggest the need for new kinds of observations and to predict their results. In fact, the better a theory is able to suggest the need for new kinds of observations and to predict their results correctly, the more confidence we have that this theory is likely to be good representation of the actual properties of matter and not simply an empirical system especially chosen in such a way as to correlate a group of already known facts.

The weekend began with the expectation that there would be a series of lectures and informative discussions with emphasis on content. It gradually emerged that something more important was actually involved — the awakening of the process of dialogue itself as a free flow of meaning among all the participants. In the beginning, people were expressing fixed positions, which they were tending to defend, but later it became clear that to maintain the feeling of friendship in the group was much more important than to hold any position. Such friendship has an impersonal quality in the sense that its establishment does not depend on a close personal relationship between participants. A new kind of mind thus begins to come into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue. People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common meaning which is capable of constant development and change. In this development the group has no pre-established purpose, though at each moment a purpose that is free to change may reveal itself. The group thus begins to engage in a new dynamic relationship in which no speaker is excluded, and in which no particular content is excluded. Thus far we have only begun to explore the possibilities of dialogue in the sense indicated here, but going further along these lines would open up the possibility of transforming not only the relationship between people, but even more, the very nature of consciousness in which these relationships arise.
Unfolding Meaning: a weekend of dialogue with David Bohm (1985)

During the past few decades, modern technology, with radio, TV, air travel, and satellites, has woven a network of communication which puts each part of the world in to almost instant contact with all the other parts. Yet, in spite of this world-wide system of linkages, there is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale…

Dialogue is really aimed at going into the whole thought process and changing the way the thought process occurs collectively. We haven’t really paid much attention to thought as a process. we have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process. Why does thought require attention? Every thinking requires attention, really. If we ran machines withinout paying attention to them, they would break down. Our thought, too, is a process, and it requires attention, otherwise its going to go wrong.

We probed into the nature of space and time, and of the universal, both with regard to external nature and with regard to mind. But then, we went on to consider the general disorder and confusion that pervades the consciousness of mankind. It is here that I encountered what I feel to be Krishnamurti’s major discovery. What he was seriously proposing is that all this disorder, which is the root cause of such widespread sorrow and misery, and which prevents human beings from properly working together, has its root in the fact that we are ignorant of the general nature of our own processes of thought. Or to put it differently it may be said that we do not see what is actually happening, when we are engaged in the activity of thinking.
“A Brief Introduction to the Work of Krishnamurti”
- David Bohm (Born December 20, 1917)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Bohm

Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
~ John Fletcher (baptized 20 December 1579)

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. ~ John Steinbeck

This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost. ~ John Steinbeck

Learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. ~ Edwin Abbott Abbott (Born 20 December 1838)

For most of human history we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Who are we? What are we? We find that we inhabit an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions, and by the depth of our answers. ~ Carl Sagan (died 20 December 1996)

The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed. ~ Joseph Campbell

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#20

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
- Jimi Hendrix

All works of love are works of peace.
~ Mother Theresa

The whole purport may be stated thus: Act so that ye have no cause to be ashamed of yourselves; and hold fast to this rule.
- Milarepa

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
~ Vincent Van Gogh

Every wall is a door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
~ Henry Miller

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
♥ William James

Be generous with kind words, especially about those who are absent.
♥ Goethe

Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
- Mother Teresa

That’s Capitalism, but they prefer you to call it “freedom.”
~ Paul Nicholson

Never complain and never explain.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

To do is to be
- Nietzsche

To be is to do
- Kant

Do be do be do
- Sinatra

‎”Nobility of spirit is the grace—or ability—to play, whether in heaven or on earth.”
~ Joseph Campbell

Monitor your inner dialogue, and match your thoughts to what you want and what you intend to create.
- Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Genuine love and peace come from loving & being peaceful not from a sense of duty guilt or morality.
- Deepak Chopra

I am really a sea creature. Just a mammal that lost its fins.
~ Kathleen Quinlan

Love is the greatest refreshment in life.
~ Picasso

Man is not made for defeat.
~ Ernest Hemingway

A wise man adapts himself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.
~ Chinese Proverb

I can’t imagine where I would be today were it not for a handful of friends who gave me a heart-full of JOY.
~ C.R.Swindoll

‘Tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes!
- William Wordsworth

One could not pluck a flower without troubling a star.
~ Loren Eiseley

“Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of…” Lydia M. Child http://bit.ly/fip2ge

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
~ Albert Einstein

I believe a proper use of our time is to serve others if we can or at least refrain from harming them. That is the basis of my philosophy.
- Dalai Lama

I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.
~Jim Morrison

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
- Peter Drucker. Action Priority Matrix

People only see what they are prepared to see.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The years teach much which the days never knew.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations.
~ David Gerrold
‎
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
- Emma Lazarus

When we speak of a calm state of mind or peace of mind, we shouldn’t confuse that with an insensitive state of apathy. Having a calm or peaceful state of mind doesn’t mean being spaced out or completely empty. Peace of mind or a calm state of mind is rooted in affection and compassion and is sensitive and responsive to others.
- Dalai Lama

‎Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
- Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

Jean-Dominique Bauby : I decided to stop pitying myself. Other than my eye, two things aren’t paralyzed, my imagination and my memory.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The sky lovingly smiles on the earth and her children.
~ Henry Morton Stanley

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
- Michael Caine

via apod.nasa.gov

via en.wikiquote.org

via en.wikiquote.org

And I won’t be laughing at the lies when I’m gone
And I can’t question how or when or why when I’m gone
Can’t live proud enough to die when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here.
~ Phil Ochs ~

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
~ Wallace Stevens ~

In such an ugly time the true protest is beauty. ~ Phil Ochs

It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can’t expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That’s morality, that’s religion. That’s art. That’s life. ~ Phil Ochs (born 19 December 1940)

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they crush those beneath them. ~ Emily Brontë (died 19 December 1848)

In the winter season, for seven days of calm, Alcyone broods over her nest on the surface of the waters while the sea-waves are quiet. Through this time Aeolus keeps his winds at home, and ocean is smooth for his descendants’ sake. ~ Ovid

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#19

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give us second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the new born King!”
~ Charles Wesley ~ (born 18 December 1707, and song for the Christmas season)

I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For I reside just as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough. ~ Paul Klee

Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental. ~ Paul Klee (born 18 December 1879)

It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die. ~ Steve Biko (born 18 December 1946)

The Tree that was withered shall be renewed, and he shall plant it in the high places, and the City shall be blessed. Sing all ye people! ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
(From The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King (Book VI, Chapter 5, “The Steward and the King”); in the novel this is a song of a great Eagle heralding the victory of Aragorn’s forces against those of Sauron and the Dark Tower.)

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as anothers. We see so much only as we possess. ~ Henry David Thoreau

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#18

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. ~ Bertrand Russell

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.
~ “Arwen” in the film The Return of the King ~ (in relation to the opening of the movie based upon The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien; In the novel The Lord of the Rings this statement first occurs in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Chapter 10, “Strider”, in a letter by Gandalf to Frodo.)

The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange. ~ G. K. Chesterton

Fear… can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy. If you’re afraid you don’t commit yourself to life completely; fear makes you always, always hold something back. ~ Philip K. Dick (born 16 December 1928)

What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art. ~ George Santayana (born 16 December 1863)

Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. ~ Philip K. Dick

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. ~ Arthur C. Clarke (Date of birth)

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ George Santayana

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#16

Nature’s music is never over; her silences are pauses, not conclusions.
~ Mary Webb

“In friendship’s fragrant garden,there are flowers of every hue.Each with its own fair…
-Friendship’s Garden

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. ~ Henri Bergson

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as anothers. We see so much only as we possess. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. ~ Paul Klee

Oaks are the true conservatives; They hold old leaves till summer gives A green exchange.
~ Roy Helton, Come Back to Earth

‎Ben dostalarımı ne kalbimle ne de aklımla severim. ♥
I love my friends neither with my hearth nor with my mind. ♥
Olur Ya …. ♥
Just in case … ♥
Kalp durur… ♥
Hearth might stop… ♥
Akıl unutur … ♥
Mind can forget… ♥
Ben dostlarımı ruhumla severim. ♥
I love them with my soul. ♥
O ne durur ne unutur. ♥
Soul never stops or forget.
- Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi

The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others.
- Albert Schweitzer

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
- Albert Schweitzer

Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.
~ Goethe

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
- Henry Louis Mencken

All is not butter that comes from the cow.
- Proverb

Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.
~ Doris Mortman

Art doesn’t transform. It just plain forms.
~ Roy Lichtenstein

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
~ John Muir

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope or confidence.
- Helen Keller

It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.
- Margaret Thatcher

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Imagination is more important than knowledge…
- Albert Einstein

An enormous amount of energy becomes available once we give up the need to be right.
- Deepak Chopra

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.
~ Voltaire

Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.
~ Philip James Bailey

Your life is always perfect: you are always at the right place at the right time.
~ Salerno

The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose.
- William Wordsworth

LOVE is my gift to the world.
- Wayne Dyer

The tree that is beside the running water is fresher and gives more fruit.
~ Saint Teresa of Avila

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
- Socrates

The power of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary efforts.
- Blaise Pascal

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself
- Mark Twain

Be realistic: Plan for a miracle!
~ Osho

I light my candle from their torches.
~ Robert Burton

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
- Abba Eban

Every second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe. A moment that will never be again.
- Pablo Picasso

Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.
~ Charles Dickens

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
- Albert Einstein

People who do not experience self love have little or no capacity to love others.
- Nathaniel Branden

We need to stop saying we can’t rock this boat when it needs to be rocked.
- Sibel Edmonds

We must not bring one war to an end… but the idea of war itself.
- Deepak Chopra

An education that does not cultivate the will is an education that deprives the mind.
- Anatole France

We have come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply our Divine courage, freedom and light!
- Hafiz

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle it in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That “couldn’t be done,” and you’ll do it.
- Edgar A. Guest

The seas are the heart’s blood of the earth
~ Henry Beston

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.
~ Eckhart Tolle

A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.
- Albert Einstein

For me, loving you and your life has never been a function of what you do or don’t do, have or don’t have, are or are not. That would be rather ridiculous, don’t you think? Not to mention superficial, judgmental, and thoroughly dim-witted.
I think you should adopt the same policy.
~ Tallyho, The Universe

A place for everything, everything in its place.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision WITH action can change the world.
~ J. Barker

via eso.org

Inside a lover’s heart, there is another world.. and yet another.
- Rumi

Love the moment and the energy of that moment will spread beyond all boundaries.
- Corita Kent

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.

You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression … If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is an eternal light. Infinite. The thread that binds every beautiful memory & every amazing moment.
~ Toni Carmine Salerno

Don’t give up. I believe in you all. A person’s a person no matter how small.
~ Dr. Seuss

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be! Now put foundations under them.
- Henry David Thoreau

Queen and huntress chaste and fair
Now the sun is laid to sleep
Seated in a silver chair
State in wanted manner keep

Earth let not an envious shade
Dare itself to interpose
Cynthia’s shining orb was made
Heaven to cheer when day did close

Lay the bow of pearl apart
And the crystal-shining quiver
Give unto the flying heart
Space to breath how short so ever

Hesperus entreaty thy light
Goddess excellently bright
Bless us then with wished sight
Thou who makes a day of night
- Mike Oldfield, Incantations #4

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
- Martin Luther King, Jr

This nation will be difficult to govern when one political party insists on creating its own reality.
~ Paul Krugman

Challenge yourself to ask for even more, not just for yourself, but for ALL of humanity.
~ Sanaya Roman

via en.wikiquote.org

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.
- Carl Sagan

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/10538.Carl_Sagan

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/top100/

Dream always of a peaceful, warless, disarmed world.
- Robert Muller

Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight.
~ Rumi

There is no loneliness to the clear-eyed mystic in this luminous, brimming playful world.
~ Hafiz

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.
- Maya Angelou

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
- Abraham Lincoln

Four things come not back. The spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, ad the neglected opportunity.~ Arabian #Proverb

It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

Contrary to appearances, the Earth is in an ascending cycle, and good will triumph.
~ Paramahansa Yogananda

‎Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops… at all.
~ Emily Dickinson

Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent benefit.
- Napolean Hill

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. ~ Mother Teresa

The more you are willing to accept responsibility for your actions, the more credibility you will have.
- Brian Koslow

At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards.
- Hunter S. Thompson

Dance, when you’re broken open… Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
~ Rumi

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’s JOY.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

‎Physical strength is measured by what we can carry; spiritual by what we can bear or let go.
- Cory Booker

Beauty is being in harmony with what you are.
- Peter Nivio Zarlenga

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.
Mohandas Gandhi

Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure.
Phyllis McGinley

One cannot subdue a man by holding back his hands. Lasting peace comes not from force.
David Borenstein

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Thomas Jefferson

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Peace begins with a smile.
Mother Teresa

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Peace hath higher tests of manhood, than battle ever knew.
John Greenleaf Whittier

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
Lyndon B. Johnson

Peace is its own reward.
Mohandas Gandhi

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Baruch Spinoza

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.
George Bernard Shaw

Peace is the first thing the angels sang.
John Keble

Peace is when time doesn’t matter as it passes by.
Maria Schell

People always make war when they say they love peace.
David Herbert Lawrence

The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.
Dag Hammarskjold

The quest for peace begins in the home, in the school and in the workplace.
Silvia Cartwright

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The simplification of life is one of the steps to inner peace. A persistent simplification will create an inner and outer well-being that places harmony in one’s life.
Peace Pilgrim

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
William Hazlitt

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy

To attain inner peace you must actually give your life, not just your possessions. When you at last give your life – bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live then, and only then, can you begin to find inner peace.
Peace Pilgrim

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
H. L. Mencken

We make war that we may live in peace.
Aristotle

We want to take good tidings home to our people, that they may sleep in peace.
Black Kettle

Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.
John Andrew Holmes

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
Virginia Woolf

You don’t have to have fought in a war to love peace.
Geraldine Ferraro

Read more:http://brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_peace3.html#ixzz18Gvb3xa3

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
- Thoreau

If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.
- Chinese Proverb

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
- Albert Einstein

Now I know what love is.
- Virgil

That’s all nonviolence is – organized love.
- Joan Baez

There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence.
- César Chávez

If you cannot find #peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.
~ Marvin Gaye

It is more difficult to organize a peace than to win a war;but the fruits of victory will be lost if the peace is not organized.
- Aristotle

For it isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

There was never a good war or a bad peace.
- Ben Franklin

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.
- Thomas Carlyle

Awaken your true nature. Reach for the stars! True wisdom lies in the empty space between each thought. ~ Salerno

Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves.
- Swami Sivananda

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.
- Benjamin Franklin

For behind all imperialism is ultimately the imperialistic individual, just as behind all peace is ultimately the peaceful individual.
- Irving Babbitt

Every goal, every action, every thought, every feeling one experiences, whether it be consciously or unconsciously known, is an attempt to increase one’s level of peace of mind.
- Sydney Madwed

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
- Mohandas Gandhi

A people free to choose will always choose peace.
- Ronald Reagan

Read more:http://brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_peace.html#ixzz18GkKsnb4

Not only do we inherently possess the potential for compassion but I believe that the basic, underlying nature of human beings is gentleness.

Even our physical structure seems more suited to feelings of love and compassion. We can see how a calm, affectionate, wholesome state of mind benefits our health and physical well-being. Conversely, feelings of frustration, fear, agitation, and anger can be destructive to our health. This is why we are impelled to seek happiness.
- Dalai Lama

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!
~ Maya Angelou

One way to pick a future is to believe it’s inevitable!
~ Richard Bach

I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities.
~ Whoopi Goldberg

The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.
~ Norman Vincent Peale

Optimism is positive thinking lighted up!
- Norman Vincent Peale

If you cannot find #peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.
~ Marvin Gaye

“To See a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
— William Blake

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13453.William_Blake

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0601a/

‎I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror…I’m Asking Him To Change His Ways…And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer… If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change…
- Michael Jackson

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
~ Albert Einstein

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
~ Voltaire

The more time spent running the deep inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peaceful our planet will be.
~ Taylor

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
~ Naguib Mahfouz

Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov

A Lunar Eclipse on Solstice Day Credit & Copyright: Jerry Lodriguss (Catching the Light)

Explanation: Sometime after sunset tonight, the Moon will go dark. This total lunar eclipse, where the entire Moon is engulfed in the shadow of the Earth, will be visible from all of North America, while the partial phase of this eclipse will be visible throughout much of the rest of the world. Observers on North America’s east coast will have to wait until after midnight for totality to begin, while west coasters should be able to see a fully darkened moon before midnight. Pictured above is a digital prediction, in image form, for how the Moon and the surrounding sky could appear near maximum darkness. Rolling your cursor over the image will bring up labels. Parts of the Moon entering the circle labeled umbra will appear the darkest since the Sun there will be completely blocked by the Earth. Parts of the Moon entering the circle labeled penumbra will be exposed to some direct sunlight, and so shine by some degree by reflected light. The diminished glare of the normally full Moon will allow unusually good viewings of nearby celestial wonders such as the supernova remnant Simeis 147, the open star cluster M35, and the Crab Nebula M1. By coincidence this eclipse occurs on the day with the shortest amount of daylight in the northern hemisphere — the Winter Solstice. This solstice eclipse is the first in 456 years, although so far it appears that no one has figured out when the next solstice eclipse will be. Read more at apod.nasa.gov

 

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A Dazzling Planetary Nebula – Hafiz, Sagan, Van Gogh, George Polya, Laozi, Thich Nhat Hanh, & William Shakespeare

via spacetelescope.org

Human Beings, indeed all sentient beings, have the right to pursue happiness and live in peace and freedom.
- The XIVth Dalai Lama

http://twitter.com/peacequotes

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
- Samuel Beckett

http://themodernword.com

I have learned that every heart will get what it prays for most.
- Hafiz

What you think, you create. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you become.
- Adele Basheer

Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, & smarter than you think.
- Christopher to Pooh

Nothing happens unless first we dream.
- Carl Sandburg

My understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe did not come out of my rational mind.
- Albert Einstein

Self-respect is often mistaken for arrogance when in reality it is the opposite. When we can recognize all our good qualities as well as or faults with neutrality, we can start to appreciate ourselves as we would a dear friend and experience the comfortable inner glow of respect. To embrace the journey towards our full potential we need to become our own loving teacher and coach. Spurring ourselves on to become better human beings we develop true regard for ourselves and our life will become sacred.
- Osho

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
- Bertrand Russel

There is no time left for anything but to make peacework a dimension of our every waking activity.
- Elise Boulding

Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
- Adlai E. Stevenson

There is no model; there is only color.
- Paul Cezanne

Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation, so everyone will understand the passage.

Only from the heart can you touch the sky.
- Mevlana Rumi

What we are is God’s Gift to us; What we become is our Gift to God.
- Eleanor Powell

Everybody wants to eat at the government’s table, but nobody wants to do the dishes.
- Werner Finck

All the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind.
- Eckhart Tolle

People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results. – Albert Einstein

Let him that would move the world first move himself.
- Socrates

Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real.
- Deepak Chopra

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Treasure each empty moment of the experience. Something sacred is about to be born!
- Osho

Nothing happens unless first we dream.
- Carl Sandburg

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, “Truth is the daughter of Time.”
- Abraham Lincoln

Be kind to unkind people – they need it the most.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
- Douglas Noel Adams

Where there is great love, there are always miracles.
- Willa Cather

What you seek is seeking you!
- Mevlana Rumi

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

The owners of this country know the truth: It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
- George Carlin

There are three truths: my truth, your truth and the truth.
- Chinese Proverb

‎Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
- Vincent Van Gogh

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
- Albert Einstein

How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway… And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!
- Anne Frank

We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.
- Kofi Annan (Elected Secretary General of the United Nations on December 13, 1996)

Where they burn books, they will also burn people.

Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance.
- Heinrich Heine (Born December 13, 1797)

Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry… To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.

The best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination.
- George Pólya (Born December 3, 1187)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#13

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via en.wikiquote.org

via en.wikiquote.org

The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name.

The Tao is called the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds.

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

A leader is best when people barely know that he exists…

Since before time and space were, the Tao is. It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.

Without the laughter, there would be no Tao.

A journey of a thousand li starts with a single step.

The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas. Tolerant like the sky, all-pervading like sunlight, firm like a mountain, supple like a tree in the wind, he has no destination in view and makes use of anything life happens to bring his way.

The Master has no possessions.
The more he does for others, the happier he is.
The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is.

The Tao nourishes by not forcing.
By not dominating, the Master leads.
- Laozi, Tao Te Ching

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Laozi

Hope isn’t obvious or easy. It takes a stubborn resolve & an indomitable will. With hope, no matter how dark the day, there is always light.
- Cory Booker

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

via en.wikiquote.org

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

Peace is every step.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.
- William Shakespeare

via spacetelescope.org

I am a passenger on Spaceship Earth.
- Buckminster Fuller

via apod.nasa.gov

“Explanation: Have you contemplated your sky recently? Tonight will be a good one for midnight meditators at many northerly locations as meteors from the Geminids meteor shower will frequently streak through. The Geminds meteor shower has slowly been building to a crescendo and should peak tonight. Pictured above ten days ago, a group of celestial sightseers in the Maranjab Desert in Iran, were treated to a dark and wondrous pre-dawn sky that contained the planet Venus and a crescent Moon. Tonight Mars and Mercury should be visible just above the southwestern horizon at sunset, while the first quarter Moon will set around midnight.”

Amplify’d from www.spacetelescope.org

A Dazzling Planetary Nebula

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has turned its eagle eye to the planetary nebula NGC 6572, a very bright example of these strange but beautiful objects. Planetary nebulae are created during the late stages of the evolution of certain stars that eject gas into space and emit intense ultraviolet radiation that makes the material glow. This picture of NGC 6572 shows the intricate shapes that can develop as stars exhale their last breaths. Hubble has even imaged the central white dwarf star, the origin of the dazzling nebula, but now a faint, but hot, vestige of its former glory.

NGC 6572 only began to shed its gases a few thousand years ago, so it is a fairly young planetary nebula. As a result the material is still quite concentrated, which explains why it is abnormally bright. The envelope of gas is currently racing out into space at a speed of around 15 kilometres every second and as it becomes more diffuse, it will dim.

NGC 6572 was discovered in 1825 by the German astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, who came from a family of distinguished stargazers. The name planetary nebula is left over from the time when the telescopes of early astronomers were not good enough to reveal the true nature of these objects. To many, the discs looked like the outer planets Uranus and Neptune. The application of spectral analysis, later in the 19th century, first revealed that they were glowing gas clouds.

NGC 6572 is magnitude 8.1, easily bright enough to make it an appealing target for amateur astronomers with telescopes. It is located within the large constellation of Ophiuchus (the Serpent Bearer) and at low magnification it will appear to be just a coloured star, but higher magnification will reveal its shape. Some observers report that NGC 6572 looks blue, while others state that it is green. Colour as seen through the eyepiece is often a matter of interpretation, so you may make your own decision!

This picture was created from images taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 2. Images through a blue filter that isolates the glow from hydrogen gas (Hβ, F487N, coloured dark blue), a green filter that isolates emission from ionised oxygen (F502N, coloured blue), a yellow broadband filter (F555W, coloured green) and a red filter that passes emission from hydrogen (Hα, F656N) have been combined. The exposure times were 360 s, 240 s, 100 s and 180 s, respectively and the field of view is just 29 arcseconds across.

Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA Read more at www.spacetelescope.org

 

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M33: Triangulum Galaxy – Twain, Goldman, Conrad, Cicero, Camus, Einstein, Godard, Aristotle, Heine, Zappa, Gandhi

via apod.nasa.gov

“I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education.

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.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
- Mark Twain

via en.wikiquote.org

“Free love? As if love is anything but free! … Love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.

There are…some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry — the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth.

There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration.

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.”
- Emma Goldman

via en.wikiquote.org

“All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality.

The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition — and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation — and to the subtle but invincible, conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity — the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”
- Joseph Conrad (Born December 3, 1857)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#3

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero

“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

http://goodreads.com/quotes

“All men by nature desire to know.”
- Aristotle

http://brainyquote.com

“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
- Albert Einstein

“Photography is truth.”
- Jean-Luc Godard (Born December 3, 1930)

http://thinkexist.com

“Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.”
- Heinrich Heine

http://themodernword.com

“So many books, so little time.”
- Frank Zappa

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov

M33: Triangulum Galaxy Image Credit & Copyright: Manfred Konrad

Explanation: The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other’s grand spiral star systems. As for the view from planet Earth, star forming regions that trace the galaxy’s loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 4 o’clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33′s population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for Read more at apod.nasa.gov

 

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Hartley 2 Star Cluster Tour – Helen Keller, Ivan Illich, Benazir Bhutto, Maria Callas, & William Wordsworth #arts

via apod.nasa.gov

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
- William Wordsworth

http://themodernword.com

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.”
- Helen Keller

“I do not believe that friendship today can flower out — can come out — of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life-to-be — to remain for us, in this world of technology — then it begins with friendship.

The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.

Learned and leisured hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge. I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship.

I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality— recovering threshold, table, patience, listening, and from there generating seedbeds for virtue and friendship on the one hand — on the other hand radiating out for possible community, for rebirth of community.”
- Ivan Illich (Died December 2, 2002)

“Ultimately, leadership requires action: daring to take steps that are necessary but unpopular, challenging the status quo in order to reach a brighter future. And to push for peace is ultimately personal sacrifice, for leadership is not easy. It is born of a passion, and it is a commitment. Leadership is a commitment to an idea, to a dream, and to a vision of what can be. And my dream is for my land and my people to cease fighting and allow our children to reach their full potential regardless of sex, status, or belief.”
- Benazir Bhutto (became first female Prime Minister of Pakistan on 2 December 1988)

“It is not enough to have a beautiful voice. What does that mean? When you interpret a role, you have to have a thousand colors to portray happiness, joy, sorrow, fear. How can you do this with only a beautiful voice? Even if you sing harshly sometimes, as I have frequently done, it is a necessity of expression. You have to do it, even if people will not understand. But in the long run they will, because you must persuade them of what you’re doing.”
- Maria Callas (Born December 2, 1923)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#2

Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov

Hartley 2 Star Cluster Tour Image Credit & Copyright: Rolando Ligustri (CARA Project, CAST)

Explanation: Early in November, small but active Comet Hartley 2 (103/P Hartley) became the fifth comet imaged close-up by a spacecraft from planet Earth. Continuing its own tour of the solar system with a 6 year nautical constellation Puppis. Still a target for binoculars or small telescopes from dark sky locations, the comet is captured in this composite image from November 27, sharing the rich 2.5 degree wide field of view with some star clusters well known to earthbound skygazers. Below and right of the comet’s alluring green coma lies bright M47, a young open star cluster some 80 milion years old, about 1,600 light-years away. Below and left open cluster M46 is older, around 300 million years of age, and 5,400 light-years distant. Hartley 2′s short, faint tail even extends up and right toward another fainter star cluster in the scene, NGC 2423. On November 27, Comet Hartley 2 was about 2.25 Read more at apod.nasa.gov

 

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Star Streams Of NGC 4216 – Daily Muse – Robyn Hitchcock – Bruce Lee (Born November 27, 1940) – Meister Eckhart <3

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“Love is the distance between reality and pain.”
- Robyn Hitchcock

http://themodernword.com

via en.wikiquote.org

“Put every great teacher together in a room, and they’d agree about everything, put their disciples in there and they’d argue about everything.

Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.

Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.

Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.

Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

True thusness is the substance of thought, and thought is the function of true thusness. There is no thought except that of true thusness. Thusness does not move, but its motion and function are inexhaustible.

The all illuminating light shines and is beyond the movement of the opposites.

Taoist philosophy … is essentially monistic. … Matter and energy, Yang and Yin, heaven and earth, are conceived of as essentially one or as two coexistent poles of one indivisible whole.

What IS is more important than WHAT SHOULD BE.

We have finally come back to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who said everything is flow, flux, process. There are no “things.”

If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed.

We all have time to spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever

Emptiness the starting point.

The intangible represents the real power of the universe. It is the seed of the tangible.

Faith makes it possible to achieve that which man’s mind can conceive and believe.

The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.

Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourelf and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The classical man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself.”
- Bruce Lee

via en.wikiquote.org

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘Thank You’, that would suffice.

The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.”
- Meister Eckhart

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Meister_Eckhart

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/November#27

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Star Streams of NGC 4216 Image Credit & Copyright: Ken Crawford (Rancho Del Sol Obs.), Collaboration: David Martinez-Delgado (MPIA, IAC), et al.

Explanation: Some 40 million light-years distant, edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 4216 is nearly 100,000 light-years across, about the size of our own Milky Way. Found in the dense star streams extending for thousands of light-years into the halo of NGC 4216. Taken as part of a survey negative view. The streams should more easily stand out as dark swaths against a white background. Read more at apod.nasa.gov

 

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Flame Nebula Close-Up – William Cowper (Poet), Eugène Ionesco (Playwright), Ellen G. White, & F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one… just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher — a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity.

There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people if he’s any good.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

http://themodernword.com

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald

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via en.wikiquote.org

“Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.”
- William Cowper (Born November 26, 1731)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Cowper

“It is not earthly rank, nor birth, nor nationality, nor religious privilege, which proves that we are members of the family of God; it is love, a love that embraces all humanity.”
- Ellen G. White (Born November 26, 1827)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/November#26

via apod.nasa.gov

Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov

Flame Nebula Close-Up Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, U. Arizona

Explanation: Of course, the Flame Nebula is not on fire. Also known as of hydrogen atoms at the edge of the giant Orion molecular cloud complex some 1,500 light-years away. The hydrogen atoms have been hydrogen atoms? In this close-up view, the central dark lane of absorbing interstellar dust stands out in silhouette against the hydrogen glow and actually hides the true source of the Flame Nebula’s energy from optical telescopes. Behind the dark lane lies a cluster of hot, young stars, seen at infrared wavelengths through the obscuring dust. A young, massive star in that cluster is the likely source of energetic ultraviolet radiation that ionizes the hydrogen gas in the Flame Nebula. Read more at apod.nasa.gov

 

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Stardust In Aries – Albert Camus On The Purpose Of Writers – Ba Jin (Born November 25, 1904) – Tecumseh On Wisdom

via en.wikiquote.org

via en.wikiquote.org

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

There are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye.

When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man … there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.”
- Albert Camus

http://themodernword.com/

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

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via en.wikiquote.org

“The battle to save life is still going on. … This battle to save life will eventually be won. … Blind faith in established experience has been shattered, outmoded regulations have been smashed.

Loving truth and living honestly is my attitude to life. Be true to yourself and be true to others, thus you can be the judge of your behavior.

Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.”
- Ba Jin (Born November 25, 1904)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ba_Jin

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/November#25

via en.wikiquote.org

“Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.”
- Tecumseh

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tecumseh

via apod.nasa.gov

Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov

Stardust in Aries Credit & Copyright: Explanation: This composition in stardust covers almost 2 degrees on the sky, close to the border of the zodiacal constellation Aries and the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. At the lower right of the gorgeous skyscape is a dusty blue reflection nebula surrounding a bright star cataloged as van den Bergh 13 (vdB 13), about 1,000 light-years away. At that estimated distance, the dark dusty nebulae sprawl across the scene. Near the edge of a large molecular cloud, they can hide newly protostars form around dense cores embedded in the molecular cloud. Read more at apod.nasa.gov   See this Amp at http://bit.ly/eoo3aF A Massive Star In NGC 6357 – Voltaire, Berkman, Singer, Rumi, Emerson, Sagan, Ono, Hanh, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare November 21, 2010beauty, beginning, change, disarmament, dream, dreams, ecology, environment, freedom, government, humor, imagination, justice, literature, love, magic, peace, philosophy, poetry, quotes, social justice, truth, uncategorized, understanding, universe, visions, world, writingalexander berkman, Astronomy, beauty, Carl Sagan, daily muse, ermerson, explanation, isaac beshavis singer, kierkegaard, Life, Light, love, massive, massive star, nebula, ngc, peace, Philosophy, Photography, poetry, quotes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, rumi, Sagan, shakespeare, soren kierkegaard, the modern word, Thich Nhat Hanh, truth, voltaire, wikiquote, william shakespeare, wisdom, world peace, yoko onoJoshua Oakley “You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. …You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.” - Mevlana Rumi http://www.facebook.com/mevlana “The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.” - Harry Golden http://www.facebook.com/corybooker “If we don’t end war, war will end us.” - H. G. Wells http://www.brainyquote.com via en.wikiquote.org “I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker. It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother’s womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him. What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbor’s, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. Man is free at the instant he wants to be.” - Voltaire (Born November 21, 1691) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/November#21 http://thinkexist.com/ via upload.wikimedia.org “”Man’s inhumanity to man” is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep. If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and compulsion. If you intend to live in peace and harmony with your fellow-men, you and they should cultivate brotherhood and respect for each other. If you want to work together with them for your mutual benefit, you must practice cooperation. The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence.” - Alexander Berkman (Born November 21, 1870) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Berkman via upload.wikimedia.org via upload.wikimedia.org via upload.wikimedia.org “A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise… Because that is how life is — full of surprises. There must be a way for man to attain all possible pleasures, all the powers and knowledge that nature can grant him, and still serve God — a God who speaks in deeds, not in words, and whose vocabulary is the Cosmos. We must believe in free will — we have no choice. The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer (Born November 21, 1902) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Bashevis_Singer “Fame is something which must be won; honor is something which must not be lost.” - Arthur Schopenhauer “I’ve always thought people write because they are not living properly.” - Tom Stoppard http://themodernword.com “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” - Dr. Carl Sagan “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson http://www.quotesdaddy.com “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards.” - Soren Kierkegaard http://quotationsbook.com via en.wikiquote.org “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts… This above all — to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Time’s glory is to command contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.” - William Shakespeare http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hamlet “I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. We live in a troubled world, and the United States and China, as two great nations, share a special responsibility to help reduce the risks of war. We both agree that there can be only one sane policy to preserve our precious civilization in this modern age: A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war. We must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of this Earth.” - Ronald Reagan http://china.usc.edu/%28X%281%29A%28E2T3twcNywEkAAAAMTExNmE5ZmYtOGU1Zi00MjMwLTg1YjEtYTA3YjliMWQwODU4riCgx6qMnHg0Yj-puCctoiubugs1%29S%28xxr5ib55ni1br255qwceifzm%29%29/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=521 via upload.wikimedia.org “The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now. We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize. It’s wonderful to be alive and to walk on earth. You are a miracle, and everything you touch could be a miracle. Your true home is in the here and the now. It is not limited by time, space, nationality, or race. If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. If we really know how to live, what better way to start the day than with a smile? Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy. The source of a true smile is an awakened mind. Peace is every step.” - Thich Nhat Hanh http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nhat_Hanh via en.wikiquote.org via en.wikiquote.org “Y E S Give wings to things around you so they can fly. A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. I trust in the human wisdom. We are incredibly intelligent beings. So we might know something without thinking that we know. Don’t ever give up on life. Life can be so beautiful, especially after you’ve spent a lot of time with it.” - Yoko Ono http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yoko_Ono via apod.nasa.gov Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov A Massive Star in NGC 6357 Credit: NASA, ESA and J. M. Apellániz (IAA, Spain) Explanation: For reasons unknown, NGC 6357 is forming some of the most massive stars ever discovered. One such massive star, near the center of NGC 6357, is framed above carving out its own interstellar castle with its energetic light from surrounding gas and dust. In the greater nebula, the intricate patterns are caused by complex interactions between interstellar winds, radiation pressures, magnetic fields, and gravity. The overall glow of the nebula results from the emission of light from ionized hydrogen gas. Near the more obvious Cat’s Paw nebula, NGC 6357 houses the open star cluster Pismis 24, home to many of these tremendously bright and blue stars. The central part of NGC 6357 shown spans about 10 light years and lies about 8,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Scorpion. Read more at apod.nasa.gov   See this Amp at http://bit.ly/c5y9Sb Stephan’s Quintet – Robert F. Kennedy, Benoit Mandelbrot, & Nadine Gordimer – Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream <3 November 20, 2010uncategorizedAstronomy, astronomy picture of the day, beauty, benoit mandelbrot, daily muse, dream, future, Galaxy, hubble legacy archive, imagination, interacting, Life, Literature, love, Martin Luther King Jr., nadine gordimer, peace, poetry, quote, quote of the day, quotes of the day, robert f. kennedy, storytelling, the modern word, understanding, wikiquote, wisdomJoshua Oakley “Knowing ignorance is strength; ignoring knowledge is sickness.” - Lao Tzu http://themodernword.com/ “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. Please remember that your difficulties do not define you. They simply strengthen your ability to overcome.” - Maya Angelou “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” - David Viscott http://www.quotesdaddy.com/ via en.wikiquote.org via upload.wikimedia.org “An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in “inventing” something. It’s an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered. My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back I see a pattern.” - Benoît Mandelbrot (Born November 20, 1924) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Beno%C3%AEt_Mandelbrot “A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability. Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly. … Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” Quoting George Bernard Shaw - Robert F. Kennedy (Born November 20, 1925) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy “Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it. The Truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is. Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you’ve made sense of one small area.” - Nadine Gordimer (Born November 20, 1923) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nadine_Gordimer http://thinkexist.com/ “The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.” - Margot Fonteyn http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/November#20 “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” - Martin Luther King, Jr. http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html via apod.nasa.gov Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov Stephan’s Quintet Image Data: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing: Hunter Wilson Explanation: The first identified compact galaxy group, this eye-catching image constructed with data drawn from the extensive Hubble Legacy Archive. About 300 million light-years away, only four galaxies of the group are actually locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. The odd man out is loops and tails, grown under the influence of disruptive gravitational tides. But the larger bluish galaxy, NGC 7320, is much closer than the others. Just 40 million light-years distant, it isn’t part of the interacting group. In fact, individual stars in the foreground galaxy can be seen in the sharp Hubble view, hinting that it is much closer than the others. Stephan’s Quintet lies within the boundaries of the high flying constellation Pegasus. Read more at apod.nasa.gov   See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bQfa98 Nebulae In The Northern Cross – Indira Gandhi (Born Nov 19, 1917), Eleanor Roosevelt, Oprah Winfrey, & John Barth November 19, 2010uncategorizedAstronomy, beauty, Clouds, daily muse, eleanor roosevelt, Humanity, imagination, indira gandhi, john barth, Life, Literature, milky way galaxy, nebulae, northern cross, oprah winfrey, poetry, quote of the day, rolf geissinger, the modern word, wikiquote, wisdomJoshua Oakley “One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” - Eleanor Roosevelt “Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have.” - Oprah Winfrey “We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities.” - Indira Gandhi (Born November 19, 1917) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/November#19 “God wasn’t too bad a novelist except he was a Realist.” - John Barth http://themodernword.com via apod.nasa.gov Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov Nebulae in the Northern Cross Credit & Copyright: Rolf Geissinger Explanation: Explore a beautiful and complex region of nebulae strewn along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in this widefield skyscape. The image emphasizes cosmic gas clouds in a 25 by 25 degree view centered on the Northern Cross, the famous asterism in the constellation Cygnus. Bright, hot, supergiant star Deneb at the top of the cross, Sadr near the center, and beautiful Albireo run diagonally through the scene. Popular telescopic tour destinations such as the North America and Pelican emission regions, the Butterfly Nebula (IC 1318), and the Crescent and Veil nebulae can be identified by placing your cursor over the image. Silhouetted by the glowing interstellar clouds and crowded star fields, the dark Northern Coal Sack also stands out, part of a series of obscuring dust clouds forming the Great Rift in the Milky Way. These Northern Cross nebulosities are all located about 2,000 light-years away. Along with the Sun, they lie within the Orion spiral arm of our galaxy. Read more at apod.nasa.gov   See this Amp at http://bit.ly/cvdBHP APOD: 2010 November 15 – Home From Above & The Modern Word Daily Muse November 15, 2010uncategorizedanne sexton, Astronomy, astronomy picture of the day, beauty, Blue, Clouds, daily muse, earth, explanation, featured, home, Oceans, Photography, poetry, related, Science, Sky, the modern wordJoshua Oakley URL:  http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap101115.html “I wonder if the artist ever lives his life — he is so busy recreating it.” - Anne Sexton http://themodernword.com/ See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aRNzgX Spiral Galaxy M66 – Samuel Beckett – Daily Muse & Astronomy Picture Of The Day For November 13, 2010 November 13, 2010astronomy, beauty, photography, quotesapod, Astronomy, beauty, daily muse, Galaxy, Leo Triplet, Literature, Milky Way, quotes, samuel beckett, spiral galaxy, Star cluster, Star formation, StarsJoshua Oakley via apod.nasa.gov “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” - Samuel Beckett Explanation: Big beautiful spiral galaxy M66 lies a mere 35 million light-years away. About 100 thousand light-years across, the gorgeous island universe is well known to astronomers as a member of the Leo Triplet of galaxies. In M66, pronounced dust lanes and young, blue star clusters sweep along spiral arms dotted with the tell-tale glow of pink star forming regions. This colorful and deep view also reveals faint extensions beyond the brighter galactic disk. Of course, the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground, within our own Milky Way Galaxy, but many, small, distant background galaxies can be seen in the cosmic snapshot. Gravitational interactions with its neighboring galaxies have likely influenced the shape of spiral galaxy M66. via apod.nasa.gov See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/f4qa Universal Love: Earth Sun Galaxy Universe Cosmos Democratic Socialism and Transcendental Pragmatism Peace in Opposition Nonviolence in Resolution Interconnection in Community Transcendence in Work Beauty in Art Sustainability in Balance Light in Truth Wisdom in Equality Love in Cooperation Unity in Diversity Freedom in Preservation quotes Joshua likes Goodreads Quotes "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” - Pablo Picasso "All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree... Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." - Albert Einstein "Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group." - Carl Sagan "Dreams are the touchstones of our characters." - Henry David Thoreau "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." - Martin Luther King, Jr. "I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that source in you. Let us work together for unity and love." - Mahatma Gandhi "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing." - William Butler Yeats "By Being, It Is." - Parmenides "Without music, life would be a mistake." - Friedrich Nietzsche "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." - Carl Jung "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." - Rene Descartes "We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on." - Richard Feynman "Then he said 'Remember Bob: no fear, no envy, no meanness,' and I said 'hmmm, right.'" - Bob Dylan "The reverse side also has a reverse side." - Japanese Proverb "We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep." - William James "If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do... How would I be? What would I do?" - Buckminster Fuller "The most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge...." - Sri Aurobindo "The Self alone exists; and the Self alone is real. Verily the Self alone is the world, the I-I and God. All that exists is but the manifestation of the Supreme Being." - Ramana Maharshi "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." - John F. Kennedy Twitter Updates Reaching the ’weather weapon’ stage on.msnbc.com/10N7xmT via @MaddowBlog 11 hours ago Creativity Is The Source Of Sexiness | Thought Catalog po.st/qljtWD via @thoughtcatalog 11 hours ago Alex Jones Explains How Government "Weather Weapon" Could Have Been Behind Oklahoma Tornado mm4a.org/1a2mfYk 11 hours ago Did David Koch Kill Critical PBS Documentary? dailykos.com/story/2013/05/… via @dailykos 11 hours ago Oklahoma senator: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid salon.com/2013/05/21/okl… via @Salon 11 hours ago California Police Beat Man Nearly To Death For Asking To Read His Ticket thkpr.gs/13Fk1KX via @thinkprogress 11 hours ago Joyner: Timothy McVeigh Was 'Left-Wing'; Media Number One Terrorist Organization In The World | Right Wing Watch rightwingwatch.org/content/joyner… 12 hours ago An Open Letter To Dreamy But Distant Boy | Thought Catalog thoughtcatalog.com/2011/an-open-l… 1 day ago Galaxy's Ring of Fire phys.org/news/2013-05-g… 1 day ago APOD: 2013 May 21 - The Red Rectangle Nebula from Hubble apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130521.… 1 day ago I Used to Be a Design Student: Advice on Design and Life from Famous Graphic Designers | Brain Pickings brainpickings.org/index.php/2013… @brainpicker 1 day ago 32 Signs You’re Dating A Keeper | Thought Catalog thoughtcatalog.com/2012/32-signs-… 1 day ago xkcd: Wake Up Sheeple xkcd.com/1013/ 1 day ago Likes the quote: "Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored in books, and alive, in the consciousness of me... bit.ly/13D3as4 1 day ago McConnell predicts Obamacare will be ‘biggest issue’ of 2014 election washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-pol… 1 day ago Type O Negative - Symphony for the Devil (Full DVD) - YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=SQDqmr… 2 days ago Type O Negative - Summer Breeze / Set Me On Fire - YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=E0o5Ga… 2 days ago Type O Negative - Cinnamon Girl - YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=BO9aD4… 2 days ago Follow @joshuastarlight Interdisciplinary Postmodern Liberal Democratic Salon Follow Blog via Email Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Join 11,703 other followers Archives May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 April 2010 March 2010 Categories activism art astronomy beauty beginning books change civil rights compassion delicious diplomacy disarmament drawings dream dreams ecology environment fantasy fiction freedom government health reform humor imagination justice literature love magic music mythology peace philosophy photography poetry politics president quotes satire science fiction social justice transformation truth uncategorized understanding universe visions world writing Pages About Book of Questions: Memories of Leaving and Returning Dream Poetry Visions: The Secret Library Everlasting Starflower Fractal Mandala Diamond Soul Dreams Top Posts Dailymotion - 08 Controversy~Dirty Mind...- LoveSexy Tour Dortmund 1988 - une vidéo Musique Kate Bush HOL 09 (Watching You Without Me) Mike Oldfield & Anita Hegerland - Innocent - Peter’s Pop Show 1989 Crab Nebula: Energy for 100,000 Suns – Carl Sagan On Courage In The Face Of The Vastness Of The Universe (NASA, Chandra, 11/23/09) Gustave Dore - Paradiso Canto 31 - Rosa Celeste: Dante And Beatrice Gaze Upon The Highest Heaven, The Empyrean - Henry David Thoreau On Dreams, Imagination, & Memory "Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well." ~ Vincent van Gogh (born 30 March 1853) Lexx - Yo Way Yo - Brunnen G Lyrics At the Edge of Faery and Earth Prince - I Would Die for You Live 1985 Atlanta HQ "Sell your cleverness & buy bewilderment. 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