Tag Archives: rumi

Shell Galaxies in Pisces – Lao Tzu, Balzac, Mahatma Gandhi, Carl Sagan, Rumi, Martin Luther King, W.H. Auden <3

Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
- Lao Tzu

If you believe that anything other than you can control you, you are wrong.

Once our eyes are opened to the truth, we suddenly realize that we outnumber them. Don’t let them close your eyes.

You are not under any tyranny and suppression of any government. Remember, their power depends on your fear and apathy.
- Yoko Ono

‎”Love is the cure, for your pain
will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love as
effortlessly as your body yields its scent.”
- Rumi

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.

To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.

A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour.

The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.

A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.
A day will come when a cannon will be a museum-piece, as instruments of torture are today. And we will be amazed to think that these things once existed!

God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.

In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.

It is man’s consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.
~ Victor Hugo (born 26 February 1802)

Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even into your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
– SWAMI SIVANANDA

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

If our spirit is turned towards kindness, the positive side of things, loving our neighbors, this is the best way to solve our problems.
- Dalai Lama

☮Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Got no checkbooks, got no banks,
Still I’d like to express my thanks;
I’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.
– IRVING BERLIN

Little darling,
I feel that ice is slowly melting.
Little darling,
It seems like years since it’s been clear.
Here comes the sun…
Here comes the sun,
And I say
It’s alright.

Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover.

Give me love, give me peace on earth, give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth, give me hope, help me cope, with this heavy load, trying to, touch and reach you with, heart and soul.
~ George Harrison ~
(born 25 February 1943)

Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don’t make sense. ~ John Leonard (born 25 February 1939)

When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things. ~ John Leonard

If there is victory in overcoming the enemy, there is a greater victory when a man overcomes himself. ~ José de San Martín

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
- Albert Camus

“Every moment of your life is infinitely creative, and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you”
- Mahatma Ghandi

“We may now care for each Earthian individual at a sustainable billionaire’s level of affluence while living exclusively on less than 1 percent of our planet’s daily energy income from our cosmically designed nuclear reactor, the Sun, optimally located 92 million safe miles away from us.”
- Buckminster Fuller

Despair says I cannot lift that weight. Happiness says I do not have to.
~ James Richardson

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
- Carl Sagan

“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”
— Carl Sagan

In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
- Carl Sagan

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
- T. S. Eliot

It’s enough to have faith in one aspect of God. You have faith in God without form. That is very good. But never get into your head that your faith alone is true and every other is false. Know for certain that God without form is real and that God with form is also real. Then hold fast to whichever faith appeals to you.
- Sri Ramakrishna

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity.
- G.K. Chesterton

The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing.

Common men talk bagfulsof religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action.

Great men have the nature of a child. They are always a child before Him; so they are free from pride. All their strength is of God and not their own. It belongs to Him and comes from Him.
- Sri Ramakrishna

‎”To grasp God’s beauty, you must become God.”
- Rumi

Ethics and Aesthetics are one.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.

My work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

I will admit that an artist may be great and limited; by one word he may light up an abyss of soul; but there must be this one magical and unique word.

The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so irreparably his.
- George Moore

My heart will never seek another heart,
Or smell another flower, knowing you.
Your love has made heart’s field a desert waste;
No love other than yours grows in that place!
- Rumi

If we want to help humanity in a practical way, we must begin by setting an example of mutual respect, harmony and cooperation.

Developing altruism is one of the most powerful methods for countering negative tendencies and destructive impulses.

To promote the idea of nonviolence, we must above all encourage people to foster in themselves an attitude of love and affection for others
- Dalai Lama

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
— Laozi

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
— Laozi (Tao Te Ching)

On any given day, in any given moment, something could happen that opens up for you an entirely new path. Be still, be alert, be ready.
- Marianne Williamson

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.
- Mahatma Gandhi

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.
- Maya Angelou

☮Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

☮Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace
- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910)

☮All we are saying is give peace a chance.
- John Lennon (1940-1980)

☮Peace is the only battle worth waging.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

☮Peace is a daily,a weekly,a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures
- JFK

☮Peace is every step. – Thich Nhat Hahn

☮Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. – Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

☮… and if you think that one person can’t make a difference, you’re wrong, particularly young people. – Jimmy Carter

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

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

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

From there to here,
from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.
~ Dr. Seuss

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process… ~ Karl Jaspers (born 23 February 1883)

The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience. ~ W. E. B. Du Bois

There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.

There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for.
~ W. E. B. Du Bois

We cannot avoid conflict, conflict with society, other individuals and with oneself. Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them.

One who would influence the masses must have recourse to the art of advertisement. The clamour of puffery is to-day requisite even for an intellectual movement.

The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life…

Man, if he is to remain man, must advance by way of consciousness. There is no road leading backward.

Philosophy seemed to me the supreme, even the sole, concern of man.
~ Karl Jaspers

How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily. ~ W. E. B. Du Bois (Born February 23, 1868)

There are two ways to slide through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both save us from thinking.
- Korzybski

The control of the palate is a valuable aid for the control of the mind.
– MAHATMA GANDHI

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
- Alice Walker

Your earthly lover
can be very charming and coquettish
but never very faithful.
The true lover is the one who on your final day
opens a thousand doors.
- Rumi

Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn’t mean he lacks vision.
~ Stevie Wonder

The light which shines in
the eye is really the light of the heart !
- Rumi

“Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Be quiet and tear the thorn from your heart.
Uncover in silence your soul’s own rose garden.
- Rumi

Don’t be afraid. Open your minds. They belong to the world.
- Yoko Ono

The power to move the world is in the subconscious mind.
♥ William James

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
♥ William Blake

It is only when we FORGET our learning…that we begin to KNOW.
♥ Henry David Thoreau

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
– John Ruskin

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
– Oscar Wilde

“Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.”

Morihei Ueshiba

This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.
– THE BUDDHA

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, —
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat — the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain … Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay ~

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
- Elizabeth Drew

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ~ Isaac Asimov

I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. ~ George Washington (born 22 February 1732)

Promote… as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. ~ George Washington

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/February#22

“Being myself on fire I set others on fire.”
- Anais Nin

He is the reason
and all that brings reason to naught.
- Rumi

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
~ Langston Hughes

Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
- Helen Keller

We are all part of the rivers running into the great wide ocean.

The fenceless and doorless world is soon to come. It’s our fear which is keeping the doors closed and the fences high.
- Yoko Ono

Everything you can imagine is real.
– Pablo Picasso

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.
– Groucho Marx

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.
– Lily Tomlin

I’ve always thought people write because they are not living properly.
- Tom Stoppard

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
– THE BUDDHA

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose
comes round in another form.
- Rumi

We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality and reality upon dream.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Life is so fluid that one can only hope to capture the living moment, to capture it alive and fresh … without destroying that moment.

Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.

The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.

The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.

Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds.

Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents.

I seek the real stuff of life. Profound drama.

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there 0is a choice to be made, a selection of elements…

When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.

All writers have concealed more than they revealed.

The writer’s responsibility is to increase, develop our senses, expand our vision, heighten our awareness and enrich our articulateness.

All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives…

You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences…

The dream has to be translated into reality.

The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything.

We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.
~ Anaïs Nin ~

Careful the things you say, children will listen. Guide them along the way, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will look to you for which way to turn; to learn what to be! Careful before you say “Listen to Me.” Children will listen. ~ Into the Woods (Sondheim/Lapine)

For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
~ W. H. Auden (born 21 February 1907)

When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. ~ Anaïs Nin (born 21 February 1903)

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

If, in order to hear some music, a man has to wait for six months and then walk twenty miles, it is easy to tell whether the words, “I should like to hear some music,” mean what they appear to mean, or merely, “At this moment I should like to forget myself.”

The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new.
~ W. H. Auden ~

Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods. ~ W. H. Auden

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
~ W. H. Auden (born 21 February 1907)

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. ~ Anaïs Nin

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
♥ Ralph Waldo Emerson

☮Permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence.
— Mahatma Gandhi

“To stumble twice against the same stone is a proverbial disgrace”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Since the lover patiently continued knocking at the door,
at last one day he gained an intimate meeting.
- Rumi

The more one judges, the less one loves.
- Honore de Balzac

Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov
Shell Galaxies in Pisces
Image Credit &
Copyright:

Stephen Leshin

Explanation:
This Swimming
within

the boundaries of the
prominent on the left;
the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue,
spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470.
The faint, wide arcs or
shells
of NGC 474
could have been formed by a
gravitational encounter with neighbor NGC 470.
Alternately the shells could be
caused by a merger with a
smaller galaxy producing an effect analogous to ripples across
the surface of a pond.
Remarkably, the large galaxy on the right hand side of the deep image,
NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells too,
evidence of another
interacting
galaxy system.
Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around
the field that also includes
Milky Way Galaxy.
The field of view spans 25 arc minutes or about 1/2 degree
on the sky.

Read more at apod.nasa.gov

 

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

☮Peace is every step.
- Thich Nhat Hahn

The Inner Sun

Love is longing and longing, the pain of being parted;
No illness is rich enough for the distress of the heart,
A lover’s lament surpasses all other cries of pain.
Love is the royal threshold to God’s mystery.
The carnival of small affections and polite attachments
Which litter and consume our passing time
Is no match to Love which pulses behind this play.
It’s easy to talk endlessly about Love,
To live Love is to be seized by joy and bewilderment;
Love is not clear-minded, busy with images and argument.
Language is too precocious, too impudent, too sane
To stop the molten lava of Love which churns the blood,
This practicing energy burns the tongue to silence;
The knowing pen is disabled, servile paper
Shrivels in the fire of Love. Bald reason too is an ass
Explaining Love, deceived by spoilt lucidity.
Love is dangerous offering no consolation,

Only those who are ravaged by Love know Love,
The sun alone unveils the sun to those who have
The sense to receive the senseless and not turn away.
Cavernous shadows need the light to play but light
And light alone can lead you to the light alone.
Material shadows weigh down your vision with dross,
But the rising sun splits the ashen moon in empty half.
The outer sun is our daily miracle in timely
Birth and death, the inner sun
Dazzles the inner eye in a timeless space.
Our daily sun is but a working star in a galaxy of stars,
Our inner sun is One, the dancing nuance of eternal light.
You must be set alight by the inner sun,
You have to live your Love or else
You’ll only end in words.
~ Mevlana Rumi

Translated by Raficq Abdulla

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

I tell you one thing – if you want peace of mind, do not find fault with others. Rather learn to see your own faults. Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; this whole world is your own.
– SRI SARADA DEVI

Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival.
This quest for enlightenment must begin now.
It is essential that all men and women become aware of what they are, why they are here on Earth and what they must do to preserve civilization before it is too late. ~ Richard Matheson (born 20 February 1926)

I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgement is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
~ Frederick Douglass ~

There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in streight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, ’twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small Acknowledgments. ~ William Penn

All in all is all we are. ~ Kurt Cobain (born 20 February 1967)

We picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. ~ Hunter S. Thompson (died 20 February 2005)

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. ~ Frederick Douglass

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. ~ Frederick Douglass (died February 20, 1895; born February 1817/1818, birthdate unknown)

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. ~ Frederick Douglass

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
- Dogen Zenji

Words of wisdom
came to me at last
“the beloved you’ve lost
the one you’ve been seeking outside
can only be found inside”
- Rumi

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
- George Bernard Shaw

‎”…meditation is the only way to make you absolutely sane.”
~ Osho

The rose has come from beyond; it is from the other world. That’s why this world cannot encompass the rose. The rose is so graceful, so elegant that the world of dreams is too narrow to dream of the rose. What is meant by the rose, a messenger from the garden of the intellect, from the grove of spirit? What is the rose? A document that describes the beauty and the highness of the rose of truth that neither turns brown nor withers.
~ Rumi

Come come the roses are in bloom!
The Beloved has arrived!
Now it is time to unite the soul and the world.
~ Rumi

Without trying, the world is heading for perfect awareness – and you are part of it.
- Yoko Ono

We cannot be loving and compassionate unless at the same time we curb our own harmful impulses and desires.

Large human movements spring from individual human initiatives.
- Dalai Lama

☮Peace is the only battle worth waging.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

☮All it takes for evil to rule a land is for good men to remain silent.
- Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others. ♥ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
♥ Ralph Waldo Emerson

‎”Responding to adverse situations or conditions with patience and tolerance rather than reacting with anger and hatred involves active restraint, which arises from a strong, self-disciplined mind. We should not see patience as a sign of weakness or giving in, but rather as a sign of strength.”
- Dalai Lama

Seek out the source
which shines forever.
- Mevlana Rumi

“In the midst of death life persists.
In the midst of untruth truth persists.
In the midst of darkness light persists.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
– George Bernard Shaw

I am not so enamored of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. I am aware that a philosopher’s ideas are not subject to the judgement of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavor to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus (born 19 February 1473)

External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It’s important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that’s unique for yourself. ~ Amy Tan (born 19 February 1952)

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
~ Paul Simon ~
(Lyrics to “The Sound of Silence” — written on this day in 1964)

Now that your rose is in bloom,
A light hits the gloom on the grave,
I’ve been kissed by a rose on the grave.
~ Seal ~

And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said “The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence.”
~ Paul Simon ~ (song written on this day in 1964)

People have such terrible assumptions about ghosts — you know, phantoms that haunt you, that make you scared, that turn the house upside down. Yin people are not in our living presence but are around, and kind of guide you to insights. Like in Las Vegas when the bells go off, telling you you’ve hit the jackpot. Yin people ring the bells, saying, “Pay attention.” And you say, “Oh, I see now.” Yet I’m a fairly skeptical person. I’m educated, I’m reasonably sane, and I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule. … To write the book, I had to put that aside. As with any book. I go through the anxiety, “What will people think of me for writing something like this?” But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses. ~ Amy Tan

Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grave.
Ooh, the more I get of you,
Stranger it feels, yeah.
And now that your rose is in bloom,
A light hits the gloom on the grave.
~ Seal ~

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

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

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.”
— William W. Purkey

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
— Dr. Seuss

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.”
— Dr. Seuss

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”
— Maya Angelou

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

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
— Albert Camus

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

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
— Oscar Wilde

“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”
— Abraham Lincoln

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
— Mark Twain

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

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
— C.S. Lewis

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
— Robert Frost

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

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
— John Lennon

“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”
— Malcolm X

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it ‘The Present’.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
— Albert Einstein

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
— Mark Twain

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
— Marilyn Monroe

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
— Elie Wiesel

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
— Mark Twain

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
— Steve Martin

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
— Albert Einstein

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere’s Fan)

“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”
— Jim Henson

The Great Spirit does not toil within the bounds of human time, place, or casualty.
The Great Spirit is superior to these human questionings. It teems with many rich and wandering drives which to our shallow minds seem contradictory; but in the essence of divinity they fraternize and struggle together, faithful comrades-in-arms.
The primordial Spirit branches out, overflows, struggles, fails, succeeds, trains itself. It is the Rose of the Winds.
~ Nikos Kazantzakis ~

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Teachers are those who use themselves as bridges, over which they invite their students to cross; then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis (born 18 February 1883)

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don’t need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can. ~Toni Morrison (born 18 February 1931)

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you. My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I encountered, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

I am a mariner of Odysseus with heart of fire but with mind ruthless and clear.

My entire soul is a cry, and all my work the commentary on that cry.

I said to the almond tree: “Speak to me of God”
and the almond tree blossomed.
~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Do not let your peace depend on the hearts of others; whatever they say about you, good or bad, you are not because of it another, for as you are, you are.
– THOMAS A KEMPIS

‎”I am in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.”
— Louise L. Hay

‎”Love yourself as much as you can and all of life will mirror this love back to you.”
- Louise L. Hay

“Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”
- Eckhart Tolle

The law of nature is that one can never unknow what one knows. So all of us are getting wiser and wiser. There’s no stopping it!

Change is inevitable. And it’s up to us to make it a good change.
- Yoko Ono

☮Peace will be victorious. — Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995)

‎”Ambition is bondage.”
–Ibn Gabirol

Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.
♥ Buddha

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
♥ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.
♥ Buddha

The BIG question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty YES to your adventure!
♥ Joseph Campbell

You cannot travel on the path until you become the path itself.
♥ Buddha

“The seemingly impossible is possible. We can have a good world.”
~ Hans Rosling

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
♥ Horace

“It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it.”
— Terry Pratchett

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)

“However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?”
— Siddhārtha Gautama

“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”
— Albert Einstein

“Love doesn’t just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin (The Lathe of Heaven)

(I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.)”
— Pablo Neruda

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
— Albert Einstein

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC”
— Kurt Vonnegut

“By virtue of being human, each of us has the capacity to choose, to change, to grow.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

“This is the central principle of meditation: we become what we meditate on.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

I claim to be an average man of less than average ability. . . . I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.
– MAHATMA GANDHI

Our body needs peace of mind and is not suited to agitation. This shows that an appreciation for peace of mind is in our blood.
- Dalai Lama

I understand Being in all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in Being, and there is no being without Essence. Thus nothing can be free of the Divine Presence.
~ Giordano Bruno ~

Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be. ~ Anonymous

There is one simple Divinity found in all things, everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being. ~ Giordano Bruno (died 17 February 1600)

Even to have come forth is something, since I see that being able to conquer is placed in the hands of fate. However, there was in me, whatever I was able to do, that which no future century will deny to be mine, that which a victor could have for his own: Not to have feared to die, not to have yielded to any equal in firmness of nature, and to have preferred a courageous death to a noncombatant life. ~ Giordano Bruno (executed 17 February 1600)

A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn
Birds in flight are calling there
Where the heart moves the stones
It’s there that my heart is calling
All for the love of you.
~ Loreena McKennitt ~

All things are in the Universe, and the universe is in all things: we in it, and it in us; in this way everything concurs in a perfect unity. ~ Giordano Bruno

The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it. ~ Giordano Bruno

Writing…is an art; and artists…are human beings. As a human being stands, so a human being is…

Poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality….poetry is being, not doing….if poetry is your goal, you’ve got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities . . .

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel …
the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time —and whenever we do it, we are not poets.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. ~ e. e. cummings

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. ~ Henry Adams (born 16 February 1838)

The counsels of impatience and hatred can always be supported by the crudest and cheapest symbols; for the counsels of moderation, the reasons are often intricate, rather than emotional, and difficult to explain. And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed way: plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless dance on the prospects for human progress, drawing the shadow of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions. And until people learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the sowing of bitterness, suspicion, and intolerance as crimes in themselves — as perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done to the cause of popular government — this sort of thing will continue to occur. ~George F. Kennan

Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics. It may be true, and I suspect it is, that the mass of people everywhere are normally peace-loving and would accept many restraints and sacrifices in preference to the monstrous calamities of war. But I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feelings of the mass of the people at all, but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities — politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts: people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent. ~ George F. Kennan

All experience is an arch, to build upon. ~ Henry Brooks Adams

What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn. ~ Henry Adams

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education. ~ Henry Adams

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
–Walter Benjamin

I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re going and hook up with them later.
- Mitch Hedberg

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
- William Wrigley Jr.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
- George Bernard Shaw

‎”The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.”
- Benjamin Disraeli

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”

Siddhārtha Gautama

All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
- Swami Vivekananda

Love is invisible except here, in us.
Sometimes I praise love,
sometimes love praises me.
Love, a little shell somewhere
on the ocean floor,
open its mouth.
You and I and we, those imaginary beings,
enter that shell as a single sip of seawater.
- Rumi

“Be Yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
- Oscar Wilde

“The actions of men are the best interpreters of thoughts.”
–Zig Ziglar

Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.
♥ Albert Einstein

☮Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
- Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.

Friends and enemies do not exist as such; friendship and enmity depend on many factors, of which the primary one is our own mental attitude.

Whoever wants to tell a variety of stories ought to have a variety of beginnings.
–Marie de France

“We all need joy, and we can all receive joy in only one way, by adding to the joy of others.”EKNATH EASWARAN(1910–1999)

As Plato sometimes speaks of the divine love, it arises not out of indigency, as created love does, but out of fullness and redundancy.
– JOHN SMITH THE PLATONIST

“The widest possibilities for spiritual growth lie in the give-and-take of everyday relationships.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

“This is the central principle of meditation: we become what we meditate on.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

“The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just. ~ Blaise Pascal

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”

Ram Dass

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
– WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

“By virtue of being human, each of us has the capacity to choose, to change, to grow.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself.
– MEISTER ECKHART

“Nothing can be more important than being able to choose the way we think.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

‎”Your progress depends upon your degree of sustained intensity in a given direction.”
- Roger McDonald

‎”This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”
— Paulo Coelho

look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once
- Rumi

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, and engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

John Keating (Dead Poets Society)

The house of my heart is empty,
devoid of desire, like paradise.
Within it is no work but the LOVE OF GOD,
no inhabitant but the image of union with Him.
I have swept the house clear of good and bad -
my house is full of love for the One…
- Rumi

The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.

Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell – keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping a year.

The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases.

The wilful filing off of gear teeth, the wilful doing without certain obvious pieces of information.

Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut

“Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying.”
– Iain M. Banks

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

Fear breeds fear. Hate breeds hate. And Love breeds love.
- Yoko Ono

A given situation can be viewed as either unbearable or beneficial: it depends how we look at it. We must make certain that things don’t begin to seem unbearable. If we look too closely at problems we will see nothing else and they will appear all out of proportion with reality; that is when they become intolerable. If we can stand back from them, we will be better able to judge them and they will seem less serious.
- Dalai Lama

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
- Paul Valery

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
- Ronald Reagan

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
- Fran Lebowitz

Now I know what a statesman is; he’s a dead politician. We need more statesmen.
- Bob Edwards

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
- Robert Heinlein

God wasn’t too bad a novelist except he was a Realist.
- John Barth

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us ~ Bill Watterson

Never give in and never give up.
- Hubert H. Humphrey

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”
- T.S. Eliot

“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made.”
- Robert Browning

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
- Samuel Johnson

You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.
- Warren Beatty

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
- Gustave Flaubert

The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.

No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied — it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
- Ansel Adams (Born February 20, 1902)

“I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.”
- Kurt Kobain (Born February 20, 1967)

The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.

Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.

God, the Great Giver, can open the whole universe to our gaze in the narrow space of a single land.

My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play, and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.

Love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation.

When we define a man by the market value of the service we can expect of him, we know him imperfectly.

Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity.

The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, from discipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual.

Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover.

The infinite being has assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him who is love the finite and the infinite are made one.

Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God’s dust is greater than your idol.

The wise man warns me that life is but a dewdrop on the lotus leaf.

In the world’s audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.

Wishing to hearten a timid lamp
great night lights all her stars.

God seeks comrades and claims love,
the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.

Life’s errors cry for the merciful beauty
that can modulate their isolation
into a harmony with the whole.

Color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.
- Rabindranath Tagore

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

Alfred North Whitehead, Galileo Galilei, Herman Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, William Shakespeare, Rumi, Carl Jung<3

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other’s opposite and complement.
- Herman Hesse

This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.

Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
- Mevlana Rumi

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

We must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in it’s own way, establishing it’s own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance.

Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Time’s glory is to command contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.
- William Shakespeare

But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be reliev’d by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
~ Prospero in The Tempest

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart … Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.

We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.

Consciousness is a precondition of being.

The judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.

The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness.

I have chosen the term “collective” because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

We cannot imagine events that are connected non-causally and are capable of a non-causal explanation. But that does not mean that such events do not exist.
- Carl Jung

Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, “Seek simplicity and distrust it.”

All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in ‘irreducible and stubborn facts’: all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles.

Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension…
~ Alfred North Whitehead ~

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
~ Galileo Galilei (born 15 February 1564)

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. ~ U.S. Congressman Abraham Lincoln, 15 February 1848 letter to William H. Herndon, opposing the Mexican-American War

A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity. ~ Alfred North Whitehead (born 15 February 1861)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/February#15

I wonder if the artist ever lives his life — he is so busy recreating it. – Anne Sexton

http://themodernword.com/

True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. ~ Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Some things you don’t need until they leave you; they’re the things that you miss. ~ Rob Thomas (born 14 February 1972)

When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
~ Paul of Tarsus ~

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~

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:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
~ William Shakespeare in Sonnet 116 ~

‎” Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” –Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck… But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.” ~ Ellen Goodman

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work – Kahlil Gibran

It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
– Pierre Beaumarchais

Come
Let’s fall
in love again

Let’s turn
all the dirt
in this world
to shiny gold
- Rumi

Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

All the positive states of mind such as love, compassion, insight and so on, have the quality that you can enhance their capacity and increase their potential to a limitless degree, if you regularly practice them through training and by developing constant familiarity with them.
- Dalai Lama

If I know what love is, it is because of you.
~ Herman Hesse

You are what your deep, driving desire is.
– BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD

In this moment, I need to be needed,
With this darkness all around me, I like to be liked,
In this emptiness and fear, I want to be wanted,
‘Cause I love to be loved,
I love to be loved.
~ Peter Gabriel (born 13 February 1950)

Every man’s life (and … every woman’s life), awaits the hour of blossoming that makes it immortal … love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards his own with extraordinary obstinacy. ~ Eleanor Farjeon (born 13 February 1881)

Morning has broken,
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the Word!
~ Eleanor Farjeon ~

Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest. ~ Eleanor Farjeon

Of what use to destroy the children of evil? It is evil itself we must destroy at the roots. ~ Eleanor Farjeon

He could not be captured,
He could not be bought,
His running was rhythm,
His standing was thought;
With one eye on sorrow
And one eye on mirth,
He galloped in heaven
And gambolled on earth.
And only the poet
With wings to his brain
Can mount him and ride him
Without any rein,
The stallion of heaven,
The steed of the skies,
The horse of the singer
Who sings as he flies.
~ Eleanor Farjeon ~

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

‎”We find ourselves living in times in which our very nature is in transition. The scope of change is calling forth patterns & potentials in the human brain-mind system that were not needed before. Things relegated to the unconscious are becoming conscious, and belonging to extraordinary experiences of reality are becoming ordinary. Even the maps of humanity’s possibilities are undergoing change.” ~ Jean Houston

Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room.
– William Hazlitt
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
– Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I can tell you that we have only one mission and that is to make ourselves happy. The only way we can be happy is by being who we are. – Don Miguel Ruiz

‎”Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.”
— Pema Chödrön (The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times)

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh (Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life)

“All situations teach you, and often it is the tough ones that teach you best.”
~Pema Chodron

“Our own life has to be our message.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh (The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology)

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. – Plato

The enemy is more easily overcome if it be not suffered to enter the door of our hearts, but be resisted without the gate at its first knock.
– THOMAS A KEMPIS

“By virtue of being human, each of us has the capacity to choose, to change, to grow.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”

James Baldwin

♥ When true friendship exists between two souls and they seek spiritual and God’s love together… their friendship produces the flame of Spirit. ♥
~Paramhansa Yogananda~

“Faults and virtues arise from our companions.” –Sanskrit Proverb

“Mighty is geometry; joined with art, resistless.” Euripides

It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
~ Abraham Lincoln ~

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity.

The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises — it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. ~ John F. Kennedy

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. ~ Abraham Lincoln (born 12 February 1809)

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. ~ Charles Darwin (born 12 February 1809)

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Lose yourself
Escape from the black cloud that surrounds you
Then you will see your own light
As radiant as the full moon.
- Rumi

In studying ourselves
We find the harmony
That is our total existence

We do not make harmony
We do not achieve it
Or gain it

It is there – all the time

Here we are – in the midst
Of this perfect way
And our practice is…

Simply to realize it
And then
To actualize it
In our everyday life…

Author: Taizan Maezumi

Feelings of anger and hatred arise from a mind that is troubled by dissatisfaction and discontent. So you can prepare to deal with such occasions by constantly working to build inner contentment and by cultivating kindness and compassion. This brings about a certain calmness of mind that can help prevent anger from arising in the first place.
- Dalai Lama

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand
– Kurt Vonnegut
The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
– Walter Bagehot
You don’t get anything clean without getting something else dirty.
– Cecil Baxter

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams

“You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddamn sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddamn phenomenal world.” There was another, slighter pause. “I used to worry about that. I don’t worry about it very much any more. At least I’m still in love with Yorick’s skull. At least I always have time enough to stay in love with Yorick’s skull. I want an honorable goddamn skull when I’m dead, buddy. I hanker after an honorable goddamn skull like Yorick’s.”

J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

The kingdom of God is available to you in the here and the now. But the question is whether you are available to the kingdom. Our practice is to make ourselves ready for the kingdom so that it can manifest in the here and the now. You don’t need to die in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. In fact, you have to be truly alive in order to do so. – Thich Nhat Hanh

The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

‎”To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort.” – Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

“The nicest thing for me is sleep, then at least I can dream.”

Marilyn Monroe

“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression of something beautiful,
but annihilating.”

Sylvia Plath.

“You can’t force love, I realized. It’s there or it isn’t. If it’s not there, you’ve got to be able to admit it. If it is there, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love.”

Richelle Mead

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”

Zelda Fitzgerald

XVII (I do not love you…)
by Pablo Neruda
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom. / I think, therefore I am. / 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.

When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear. ~ René Descartes (died 11 February 1650)

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. ~ George Santayana

You were born with wings.
Why prefer to crawl through life?
Rumi

There are no words to explain,
no tongue,
how when that player touches
the strings, it is me playing.
- Rumi

Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process. ~Thurgood Marshall

The Alchemy True Human Beings Know

Welcome difficulty.
Learn the alchemy True Human Beings know:
the moment you accept what troubles
you’ve been given, the door opens.

Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade.
Joke with torment brought by the Friend.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off. That undressing,
and the beautiful naked body underneath,
is the sweetness that comes after grief.

~Mevlana Rumi

Translation by Coleman Barks

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” Bill Hicks

“Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone Of shadows on the stars.” James Agee 1909-1955

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”
— Emily Dickinson

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. ~~Oscar Wilde

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

“Foster and polish the warrior spirit while serving in the world; illuminate the path according to your inner light.” – Morihei Ueshiba

So be patient with your rose ’cause it just gets better and better. Remember, it is your rose, and nobody elses!
- Yoko Ono

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.
- Morihei Ueshiba

Devote some time to improve yourself rather than finding out faults in others. That would be the best use of your time. ~ Nandini ~

I’m concentrating on staying healthy, having peace, being happy, remembering what is important, taking in nature and animals, spending time reading, trying to understand the universe, where science and the spiritual meet. – Joan Jett

If you don’t like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time. ~Marian Wright Edelman

Each moment contains a hundred messages
from God: To every cry of “Oh Lord,”
He answers a hundred times, “I am here.”
- Rumi

I happen to dig being able to use whatever mystique I have to further the idea of peace. – Garrett Morris

What matters is to live in the present, live now, for every moment is now. It is your thoughts and acts of the moment that create your future. The outline of your future path already exists, for you created its pattern by your past. – Sai Baba

There is no key to Peace. The door is always open.
You are welcome to enter’ Shanti
“In the heart of Emptiness there is a mysterious impulse… the impulse to create, To sing, to shine, to radiate, To send forth, reach out, and celebrate, To sing and shout and walk about, To effervesce and bubble over. ~ Ken Wilber, One Taste ♥

“I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.”

Sylvia Plath

“Avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.”

John Keating, Dead Poet’s Society

‎”Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” George Bernard Shaw

“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” H.G. Wells

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ’twere his own.

Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation.

Mixing one’s wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably. ~ Bertolt Brecht (born 10 February 1898)

“The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice. Cervantes

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
- Vonnegut

“I want for people in the universe, my fans and otherwise, to essentially use me as an escape. I am the jester to the kingdom. I am the route out. I am the excuse to explore your identity. To be exactly who you are and to feel unafraid. To not judge yourself, to not hate yourself.”

Lady Gaga in the March issue of Vogue

We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time. – T.S. Elliot – “Little Gidding”

“What if they gave a war and nobody came?” ~ Bertolt Brecht

‎”Each person is a story that the Soul of the World wants to tell itself.”
-Michael Meade

“Sacred activism is the fusion of the mystic’s passion for God with the activist’s passion for justice — creating a third fire, which is the burning sacred heart that longs to help, preserve, and nurture every living thing. ” – Andrew Harvey

Then, gradually, I became aware that my rose, the one that never left me, the one I gave water to all my life, was me!
- Yoko Ono

“You never change things by
fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model
that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Buckminster Fuller

“If success or failure of the 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 ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.
– “The Wisdom of the Heart” from the 14th Dalai Lama

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. –André Gide

“The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service.” Albert Einstein

“NEVER DO ANYTHING AGAINST CONSCIENCE, EVEN IF THE STATE DEMANDS IT” — Albert Einstein
Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged.
Rumi

‎” One cannot be strong without love…For love is not an irrelevant emotion; it is the blood of life, the power of reunion of the separated.” – Paul Tillich

To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them – while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease. Eckhart Tolle.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid” Fyodor Dostoevsky

“What is uttered from the heart alone, will win the hearts of others to your own” Goethe

When you’re famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature — and it won’t hurt your feelings — like it’s happening to your clothes not you.” – Marilyn Monroe

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls” Picasso

“Through the Thou a person becomes I” Martin Buber

“I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself” Aldous Huxley

“I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things” Franz Kafka

“The real opportunity for success lies within the person and not in the job.”
–Zig Ziglar

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”

Oscar Wilde

“Is not the core of nature in the heart of man?”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.

If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Growth in wisdom may be exactly measured by decrease in bitterness.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

if because of
your generosity and love
a few humans find their lives
what do you think will happen
Rumi

“Nothing can be more important than being able to choose the way we think.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

All mystics speak the same language, for they come from the same country.
– LOUIS-CLAUDE DE SAINT-MARTIN

“The widest possibilities for spiritual growth lie in the give-and-take of everyday relationships.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

‎”Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.”
- Vaclav Havel

If

If you can disentangle
yourself from your selfish self
all heavenly spirits
will stand ready to serve you

if you can finally hunt down
your own beastly self
you have the right
to claim Solomon’s kingdom

you are that blessed soul who
belongs to the garden of paradise
is it fair to let yourself
fall apart in a shattered house

you are the bird of happiness
in the magic of existence
what a pity when you let
yourself be chained and caged

but if you can break free
from this dark prison named body
soon you will see
you are the sage and the fountain of life

~ Rumi ~

The more you think about your own self, the more self-centred you are, the more trouble even small problems can create in your mind. The stronger your sense of ‘I’, the narrower the scope of your thinking becomes; then even small obstacles become unbearable. On the other hand, if you concern yourself mainly with others, the broader your thinking becomes, and life’s inevitable difficulties disturb you less.
- Dalai Lama

☮Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. – Jill Jackson and Sy Miller

… I could not sleep because of the moonlight on my bed. I kept on hearing a voice calling: Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered “Yes” – Zi Ye

“The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.”

Stanley Kubrick

“Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.”

Stephen King

Deep in the heart every mystery of spirit is hidden. ~ Rumi

‎”It is our collective and individual responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live.”
- Dalai Lama

I am filled with you.
Skin, blood, bone, brain, and soul.
There’s no room for lack of trust, or trust.
Nothing in this existence but that existence. ~ Rumi

“Not only the thirsty seek the water,
the water as well seeks the thirsty!”
— Rumi

“The worst of all deaths is to be without Love. Why does the oyster tremble? For its own pearl.” ~ Rumi

In every instant
There’s a dying
And a coming back around.
The Prophet said,
This World is a Moment,
A pouring that refreshes
And renews so rapidly
It seems continous,
As a Burning stick
Taken from the Fire
Looks like a Golden Wire
When you Swirl it
In the air,
So we feel duration
As a string of Sparks.

- Rumi ♥

‎”I am hopelessly in love with you,
no point giving me advice.
I have drunk love’s poison,
no point taking any remedy.
They want to chain my feet but
what’s the point
when it is my heart that’s gone mad!
~Rumi

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep!”
~ Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

With passion pray. With
passion work. With passion make love.
With passion eat and drink and dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish
…in this ocean of God?

Ask my body who I am. It says, “Solid ground.”
Ask my soul,” Dizzy as wind. ” Neither.
I stand here facing Shams Tabriz. ~ Rumi

Let the music drown out the white noise in life.”

Peyton Sawyer
You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. — Malcolm X

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” Thich Nhat Hanh via Cory Booker

Two monologues do not make a dialogue. ~Jeff Daly

Love is pulling
us out by the ears to school.
Love wants
us clean of resentment and those impulses
that misguide our souls.
Rumi

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson

haven’t i told you

that i’m the sea and you’re a small fish

you’re better off staying with me

than venturing the dry shores.
Rumi

” Amidst the attention given to the sciences as how they can lead to the cure of all diseases and daily problems of mankind, I believe that the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered “useless”, will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or live more prosperously.”
- John Maeda

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun. – Katharine Hepburn

People will forget what you said, forget what you did, but never forget how you made them feel. ~Maya Angelou

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. ~Morrie Schwartz

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.
–Paul Celan

‎’Men have forgotten this truth,’ said the fox. ‘But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.’ – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead

If I were the plaything of every thought
I’d be a fool, not a wise man.
- Rumi

We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear. – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way:
stop participating in it.”
–Noam Chomsky

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way. – Wayne Dyer

Let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction,
Love powerfully.
- Martin Buber

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
~ Martin Buber

‎”Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.” – Shakti Gawain

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
- George Santayana

Literature is a state of culture. Poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.
–Juan Ramon Jimenez

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind & won’t change the subject.” – Sir Winston Churchill

There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.

In painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter your manner.
~ John Ruskin ~

In our daily life, tolerance and patience have great benefits: developing them will allow us to sustain and maintain our presence of mind.
- Dalai Lama

The Call of Love

You whispered in my ears like early spring:
“I am the call of Love,
can you hear me in the full grasses,
in the scented winds,
it is I who makes the garden smile.”

My pure source of life, helper of lovers in despair,
where have you been so long?
Your breathtaking beauty creates such excitement,
such a stir everywhere
that you leave me bewildered.
From the spring of love you bring back
life to my ailing heart.
The song of the awakened earth, the seasons,
the changing Moons,
all this fuss you make is glorious.
Creation bows at your feet.

~Maulana Rumi

Translated by Azima Melita Kolin & Maryam Mafi

Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.
♥ Oprah Winfrey

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
– Elvis Costello
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
– Stephen King
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
– William James

I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security.
~ Ronald Reagan ~

The man who has no imagination has no wings – Muhammad Ali

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.
- Virginia Woolf

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
- Helen Keller

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Love one another and help others to rise to the higher levels, simply by pouring out love. Love is infectious and the greatest healing energy.
- Sai Baba

“The bad thing about falling to pieces is that it hurts. The good thing about it is once you’re lying there in shards you’ve got nothing left to protect, and so have no reason not to be honest.”

David James Duncan

I feel that an individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune that one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace – anxiety, doubt, disappointment – these are definitely less.
- Dalai Lama

Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love!
- Rumi

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
- Peter Ustinov

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
- Mahatma Gandhi

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.
~ Hafiz

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

Neale Donald Walsch

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Thou must love God as not-God, not-Spirit, not-person, not-image, but as He is, a sheer, pure absolute One, sundered from all two-ness, and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness.”

Meister Eckhart

Paradise is always where love dwells.
- Jean Paul F. Richter

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
– Bertrand Russell

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

“An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must NEVER let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns, and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you.”

-V for Vendetta

“By learning to suffer injustice in silence one becomes unjust in turn; and blind obedience fosters slaves or tyrants.”
–August Strindbery

Our ideals resemble the stars, which illuminate the night. No one will ever be able to touch them. But the men who, like the sailors on the ocean, take them for guides, will undoubtedly reach their goal.
- Carl Schurz

“‎Beloved Self, do not feel despondent. The little physical difficulty will soon pass away. It is only a little Karmic purgation. Feel that you are getting cured. Be positive in your thoughts and you will soon be well.”

Swami Chidananda

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
- Bukowski

when God created love he didn’t help most
when God created dogs He didn’t help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountians and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.
- Bukowski

Adopting a wider perspective includes working cooperatively with others. Crises that are global by nature, such as problems related to climate change or the modern economic structure, call for coordinated and concerted efforts among many people, with a sense of responsibility and commitment – this is more encompassing than any individual or personal issue.
- Dalai Lama

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
– Voltaire

” Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
- Albert Einstein

Only from the heart Can you touch the sky.
- Rumi

We are what we are for our differences.
- Yoko Ono

“Sustaining advantage requires continuous improvement and change, not a static solution in which strategy can be set and forgotten.”
–Michael Porter

“If now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defenses left are his words and his words are always stronger than the lying, crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality. If any man ever dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world.”

Henry Miller (via thelittlesea)

“Don’t waste time living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs

“Anything of which you are cognizant has a relative
vibration within yourself. One who is quick to see
and judge evil in other persons has the seed of that
evil within himself. The God-like person of pure and
high vibrational tone is always aware of the God-spark
in all he contacts, and his magnetic soul vibration
draws to greater intensity that vibrational force
in those who come within his vibrational range.”

Paramahansa Yogananda, Spiritual Diary

Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
~ Simone Weil ~

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

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.
- James Joyce

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

“When all the stars are falling down
Into the sea and on the ground,
And angry voices carry on the wind,
A beam of light will fill your head
And you’ll remember what’s been said
By all the good men this world’s ever known.
Another man is what you’ll see,
Who looks like you and looks like me,
And yet somehow he will not feel the same,
His life caught up in misery, he doesn’t think like you and me,
‘Cause he can’t see what you and I can see.”
-Moody Blues, Melancholy Man

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
♥ Abraham H. Maslow

‎” Don’t spend your precious time asking ~ “Why isn’t the world a better place?”
It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is “How can I make it better?” To that there is an answer. ”
- Leo Buscaglia

I noticed this process of waking, and predicted with terrifying logic that one of these years not far away I would be awake continuously and never slip back, and never be free of myself again.
- Annie Dillard

I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before,
Or else I am awake for the first time,
and all before has been a mean sleep.
- Walt Whitman

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
- Plutarch

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish.
– Steven Wright
Household tasks are easier and quicker when they are done by somebody else.
– James Thorpe
In case you’re worried about what’s going to become of the younger generation, it’s going to grow up and start worrying about the younger generation.
– Roger Allen

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

A Voice Through the Door

Sometimes you hear a voice through the door
calling you, as fish out of water
hear the waves, or a hunting falcon
hears the drum’s Come back. Come back.

This turning toward what you deeply love
saves you. Read the book of your life,
which has been given you.

A voice comes to your soul saying,
Lift your foot. Cross over.

Move into emptiness
of question and answer and question.

~Mevlana Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain —
All, all the stretch of these great green states —
And make America again!

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
- Langston Hughes

“He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.” – I John

“Love is patient and kind.” – I Corinthians

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
- Italo Calvino

On this path, even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear.
- Bhagavad Gita

“The widest possibilities for spiritual growth lie in the give-and-take of everyday relationships.”

“Nothing can be more important than being able to choose the way we think.”

“By virtue of being human, each of us has the capacity to choose, to change, to grow.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

http://www.easwaran.org/thoughts-for-the-day-quotes.html

We are formed and molded by our thoughts. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.
– THE BUDDHA

A devotee who can call on God while living a householder’s life is a hero indeed. God thinks: “They are blessed indeed who pray to Me in the midst of their worldly duties. They are trying to find Me, overcoming a great obstacle, pushing away, as it were, a huge block of stone weighing a ton. Such a one is a real hero.”
– SRI RAMAKRISHNA

And then there crept a little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.
– JOHN KEATS

◈ The greatest strength is gentleness. ~ Iroquois Indians ◈

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

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
~ Albert Camus

Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world. ~ Archimedes

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes… But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. ~ Douglas MacArthur (born 26 January 1880)

The only gold is love,
A coin that we have minted from the light
Of others who have cared for us on Earth
And who have deposited in us the power
That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

Eat rich strange fish, grow long bright feathers, press
Form’s flesh around thought’s rib, and so derive
From the act of beauty, beauty of the act.

Beauty in this Iron Age must turn
From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn
And sootened fragments…
~ Philip José Farmer ~

Prometheus, I have no Titan’s might,
Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart,
For daytime’s vulture talons tear apart
The tender alcoves built by love at night.
~ Philip José Farmer ~

I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I’m thinking of isn’t Nietzsche’s. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who’s rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That’s the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman. ~ Philip José Farmer

If you don’t have enemies, you don’t have character. ~ Paul Newman

Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth.
We hope to breed a race of men whose power
Dwells in hearts as open as all Space
Itself, who ask for nothing but the light
That rinses the heart of hate so that the stars
Above will be below when man has Love.
~ Philip José Farmer ~

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

If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. ~ Isaac Newton on his intellectual debt to those who preceded him.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
- Isaac Newton

While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace. ~ Orlando: A Biography, by Virginia Woolf (born 25 January 1882)

The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
- Virginia Woolf

I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues. ~ W. Somerset Maugham (born 25 January 1874)

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.
- W. Somerset Maugham

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. ~ Strictly Personal, W. Somerset Maugham

The strongest natures, when they are influenced, submit the most unreservedly; it is perhaps a sign of their strength. ~ Virginia Woolf

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion.
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us
An’ ev’n Devotion.
~ Robert Burns ~

Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in. ~Virginia Woolf

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

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. ~ Albert Einstein

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
~ William Congreve (born 24 January 1670)

Everything that’s realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent. ~ Sharon Tate (born 24 January 1943)

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
~ Edith Wharton (born 24 January 1862)

There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.
~ Edith Wharton ~

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. ~ Edith Wharton

Defer not till tomorrow to be wise,
Tomorrow’s sun to thee may never rise.
~ William Congreve ~

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/January#24

All the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love. ~ Eleanor Farjeon

So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it. ~ Bertrand Russell

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security. ~ Walter M. Miller, Jr. (born 23 January 1923)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. ~ William Pitt the Younger (anniversary of death)

Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely is, therefore, a great step towards happiness. ~ Stendhal

One can acquire everything in solitude — except character. ~ Stendhal

Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one. ~ Stendhal

There is no such thing as natural law, the expression is nothing more than a silly anachronism … There is no such thing as right, except when there is a law to forbid a certain thing under pain of punishment. Before law existed, the only natural thing was the strength of the lion, or the need of a creature who was cold or hungry, to put it in one word, need. ~Stendhal

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/January#23

‎”Acceptance of others, their looks, their behaviors, their beliefs, brings you an inner peace and tranquility — instead of anger and resentment” ~ Source Unknown

‎”When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
When you feel you cannot bear even one minute,
NEVER GIVE UP
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert.”
–Rumi

The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around…. Throughout history, “tender loving care” has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.
~Larry Dossey

Events in life never happen alone.

The mind is omnipresent.
- Yoko Ono

I feel lovely just the way that I am. ♥
- Heather Dominguez

Look within!… The secret is inside you.
- Hui-neng

Treasure is stored in the ruined places. Do not break the hearts of the poor and heartbroken people.
- Rumi

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book. ~Irish Proverb

Fresh air impoverishes the doctor. ~Danish Proverb

I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more. ~Henry Ward Beecher

After these two, Dr. Diet and Dr. Quiet, Dr. Merriman is requisite to preserve health. ~James Howell

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
– H. P. Lovecraft

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
- George Santayana

He plays a beautiful tune, I dance to it;
Love plays a new game on me every instant.
he teases me sometimes:’go sit in a corner!’
Just as I sit in the corner, he calls me back.
Today, he is going to fly me like a hawk again;
What does he want to capture by me?

who does he want me to go after?
I am as generous as thunder, as talkative as the cloud;
Raindrops fall when he embraces me.
My cloud is generous because it partakes of his sea;
I know not on whom he shall make me rain.
When he makes me rain, it is never in vain;
For he lets me, then, live in a hundred plants.
- Rumi

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
- Herman Hesse

“The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

At any moment, you have a choice, that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.
- Thich Nhat Hanh ◈

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
- Alan Alda

“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”
- Eckhart Tolle

I bought a cactus. A week later it died. And I got depressed, because I thought, Damn. I am less nurturing than a desert.
– Demetri Martin
The only paradise is paradise lost.
– Marcel Proust
I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
– Thomas Jefferson

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
- Albert Einstein ✦⌘✦

“Never injure a friend, even in jest.”
~ Cicero

Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.
– P. G. Wodehouse

I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.
– Mark Twain

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
– Sir William Osler

At times we boil in a pot
turning to vapor –
that is the job of the Beloved.
- Rumi

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise. ~Mother Teresa

I want to be where
your bare foot walks,
because maybe before you step,
you will look at the ground.
I want that blessing.
- Rumi

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”
- Brian Tracey

In truth, everyone is a shadow of the Beloved –
Our seeking is His seeking,
Our words are His words.
- Rumi

“The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively. Don’t Gain The World & Lose Your Soul, Wisdom Is Better Than Silver Or Gold.”
~ Bob Marley

“Be like a child – clear, loving, spontaneous, infinitely flexible and ready each moment to wonder and accept miracle.”
~ Mother Meera

“This is no time for ease and comfort.
It is the time to dare and endure.”
- Winston Churchill

“When you do things from the soul
You feel a river moving in you
A joy”
- Rumi

I see my beauty in you. I become
a mirror that cannot close its eyes

to your longing. My eyes wet with
yours in the early light. My mind

every moment giving birth, always
conceiving, always in the ninth

month, always the come-point. How
do I stand this? We become these

words we say, a wailing sound moving
out into the air. These thousands of

worlds that rise from nowhere, how
does your face contain them? I’m

a fly in your honey, then closer, a
moth caught in flame’s allure, then

empty sky stretched out in homage.
- Rumi

Anything but Love
upon this path
is idolatry.
Drink
of the Spirit
of Love,
the sole elixir
in history.
- Rumi ♥

Anything you write, even if you have to start over, is valuable. I let the story write itself through the characters.
- Steve Buscemi

“We, against all odds, are on a planet hurtling through the galaxy, in orbit around a star, at thousands of miles per hour, amidst the ineffable vastness of the universe..
When you think about that, you realize every single day should be a celebration of this fact, and this human experience…”

My head & Somewhere Inside Us All

“‎The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (via titaka)

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.
~ Lao Tzu ♥

‎”People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.”
- Norman Vincent Peale

You can start with nothing. And out of nothing, and out of no way, a way will be made.
- Michael Beckwith

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.
~ Marcus Aurelius

“To love would be an awfully big adventure.”

J.M. Barrie

Life is as easy or hard as you think it is.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
- Zhuangzi

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
- Confucius

” What the world really needs… is more LOVE and less paperwork !”
- Pearl Bailey

” LOVE is our Essence…the fundamental Energy that nourishes us. It is our Birthright.”
- Benjamin Shield

If one billion people in the world would think PEACE… we’ll get it.

Total communication equals Peace.

IMAGINE PEACE: It will eliminate ignorance, apathy and hate.
- Yoko Ono

The heart is the hub of all sacred places. Go there and roam.
~ Bhagawan Nityananda ♡

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.
~ Ryunosuke Satoro

‎”Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, & some don’t turn up at all.”
- S. Ewing

“Speak a new language
so that the world
will be a new world.”
- Rumi

Find something to feel good about, get out of the way, and allow the cells to receive what they’ve been asking for. That is the key to healing.
~ Abraham-Hicks

When you know yourself you are empowered. When you accept yourself you are invincible.
- Tina Lifford

“There is no life,truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.”
~ Mary Baker Eddy

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
- Nietzsche

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
- Leonardo Da Vinci

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I’m with.

If you’re not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can’t hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back to you.
- Rumi

‎”This is love:
to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First to let go of life.
finally, to take a step without feet.”
- Rumi

In spiritual growth, it is important to avoid imbalances between academic or intellectual learning and practical implementation. Otherwise there is a danger that too much intellectualization will kill the more contemplative practices and too much emphasis on practical implementation without study will kill the understanding. There has got to be a balance.
- Dalai Lama

“Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll need them on your way down.”
~ Wilson Mizner

“Life is nothing without friendship.”
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.
- Henri Matisse

What is art? It is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real.
- Tagore

“We must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in it’s own way, establishing it’s own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.”
~ Bono

The cosmos is also within us, We’re made of star stuff, We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
- Carl Sagan

“Golden words open an iron door.”
- Turkish Proverb

The real sign of serenity is not seen so much in the face, as found in the depth and stillness of the eyes.
- Innerspace

A sober-minded man said to Jesus,
“What in this existence is hardest to bear?”
“O dear soul,” he replied, “the hardest is God’s anger,
from which Hell is trembling as we are.”
“And what is the protection against God’s anger?”
Said Jesus, “To abandon your own anger at once.”
- Rumi

“A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, and make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert

We always have a choice: we can limit our perception so that we close off vastness, or we can allow vastness to touch us.
– Chögyam Trungpa

your love entered my house
saw me without you
put its hand over my head
and said pity on you
- Rumi

Don’t look too much at surface actions.
Discover the lion, the rose of his real nature.
Friend, this dog is a garden gate into the invisible.

Anyone preoccupied with pointing out what’s wrong
Misses the unseen. Look at his face!
- Rumi

‎”How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”
~ George Washington Carver

Ignorance makes you believe that life functions haphazardly. Wisdom teaches you that everything that happens in this theatre of life has profound significance. What you see today is not the fruit of chance but a fruit from seeds planted in the past. Plant seeds of peace now and you will create a life of peace in the future.
- Innerspace

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

Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.
- Epictetus

A poor man celebrates the New Year once a year. A rich man celebrates each day. But the richest man celebrates every moment.
- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand – relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.
- Osho

Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.
- Innerspace

Instead of losing sleep over past mistakes, let me be busy doing something right.
- Innerspace

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
~ Leonardo Da Vinci

When my heart is at peace, the world is at peace. ♥ Chinese Proverb

“The highest form of wisdom is kindness” ~The Talmud

We were dry, now we are wet.
We were feet, now we are the head.
We became airborne like a bird.
We are now flying.

We revived and became a spring.
We recoiled and became a river
flowing, we dived in the sea
and boiled over.
- Yunus Emre , Rumi’s contemporary Sufi poet

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. ~ Douglas Adams

Even as the fingers of the two hands are equal, so are human beings equal to one another. No one has any right, nor any preference to claim over another. You are brothers. ~Muhammad

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. ~ Robert E. Howard (born 22 January 22 1906)

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them. ~Francis Bacon (born 22 January 1561)

So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
~ George Gordon, Lord Byron ~ (born 22 January 1788)

Honor is, or should be, the place of virtue and as in nature, things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man’s self, whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. ~ Francis Bacon

Truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
~ Lord Byron in Don Juan

Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince’s part to pardon.
~ Francis Bacon ~

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
- Elizabeth Drew

Other people’s views and troubles can be contagious. Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.
- Epictetus

Infinite Like Love

I can’t pretend to be a lion able to conquer the enemy,
To master myself would be enough.

I am only the dust on my Lover’s path
and from dust I will rise and turn into a flower.

Dark like the night I mourn and hold the pain of love inside me.
But bright like the Moon I will rise from the darkness

For I have seen the source of light and being a child
Whose tutor is love I will not grow up ignorant.
I will rise like a flame out love’s fire and become infinite like love.

When I reach my end, play the music
that will lift me up to Spirit.

~Maulana Rumi

Translated by Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44206766546

When I’m trusting and being myself… everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously.
- Shakti Gawain

Learn to create silence in your mind and peace will flourish in your soul. You will see life with other eyes. You will discover God’s language. To be internally silent do not think too much. Trust yourself. Trust others. Trust life. You will find it is easier than it seems.
- Innerspace

I drank the love’s wine.
I moved into love’s rose garden.

I gave up my existence.
What would I do with rank, why would I need decoration?

I am the one whom I swear is perfectly contended,
By making God part of everyone.

So long as there is a God who created this world,
What would I do with the common folks’s time?
- Yunus Emre , Rumi ‘s contemporary Sufi poet

Listen to What’s Inside
anything I say.
- Rumi

The antidote to frustration is a calm faith, not in your own cleverness, or in hard toil, but in God’s guidance.
- Norman Vincent Peale

“My willingness to change my thinking is changing my life.”
- Louise L. Hay

Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes – goodwill among men and peace on earth.
~ Albert Einstein

‎”Being in a state of gratitude actually creates magnetism, and of course, a magnet draws things to itself. By giving authentic thanks for all the good you now have, as well as the challenges, through this magnetism you’ll start the flow of more good into your life.”
- Dr. Wayne Dyer

“Words do not express thoughts very well; every thing immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom of one man seems nonsense to another.”
— Siddhartha Gautama

There do exist enquiring minds, which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him. For without this knowledge, he will have no focal point in his search. Socrates’ words, “Know thyself” remain for all those who seek true knowledge and being.
- G I Gurdjieff

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
– Edmund Burke

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn’t the slightest intention of putting it into practice.
– Otto von Bismarck

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
– Ernest Benn

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. ~ G. K. Chesterton

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. ~ Thomas Paine

So far as prejudice, or prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first divest ourselves of those impediments and sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly. ~ Ethan Allen (born 21 January 1738)

A revelation, that may be supposed to be really of the institution of God, must also be supposed to be perfectly consistent or uniform, and to be able to stand the test of truth… Reason therefore must be the standard by which we determine the respective claims of revelation; for otherwise we may as well subscribe to the divinity of the one as of the other, or to the whole of them, or to none at all. ~ Ethan Allen

If the general government should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war. It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils. ~ Stonewall Jackson

Was a revelation to be made known to us, it must be accommodated to our external senses, and also to our reason, so that we could come at the perception and understanding of it, the same as we do to that of things in general. We must perceive by our senses, before we can reflect with the mind. ~ Ethan Allen

That which is above comprehension we cannot perceive to be contradictory, nor on the other hand can we perceive its rationality or consistency. ~ Ethan Allen

The gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills, and you shall understand it.
~ Ethan Allen ~

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

No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another ~ Sir Thomas Browne

The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. ~George W. Bush

I don’t understand politics. I don’t understand the concept of two sides. And I think that probably there’s good on both sides, bad on both sides, and there’s a middle ground. But it never seems to come to the middle ground. And it’s very frustrating watching it, and seemingly we’re not moving forward. ~ David Lynch (born 20 January 1946]

What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one…. It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one — which is really the realm of the artist. ~ Federico Fellini (born 20 January 1920)

I love child things because there’s so much mystery when you’re a child. When you’re a child, something as simple as a tree doesn’t make sense. You see it in the distance and it looks small, but as you go closer, it seems to grow — you haven’t got a handle on the rules when you’re a child. We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination. ~ David Lynch

There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. 
I promise you, we as a people will get there. ~Barack Obama

To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. ~ Barack Obama

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. … It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America. ~ Barack Obama

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

“Nothing can exist by itself alone. It has to depend on every other thing. That is called inter-being. To be means to inter-be. The paper inter-is with the sunshine and with the forest. The flower cannot exist by itself alone; it has to inter-be with soil, rain, weeds and insects. There is no being; there is only inter-being.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh

“A listener needs more intelligence than a speaker.”
–Turkish Proverb

I tried to find Him on the Christian cross, but He was not there;
I went to the temple of the Hindus and to the old pagodas,
but I could not find a trace of Him anywhere…
I searced on the mountains and in the valleys
but neither in the heights nor in the depthswas I able to find Him.
I went to the Ka’bah in Mecca, but He was not there either…
I questioned the scholars and philosophers but He was beyond their understanding…
Then I looked into my heart and it was there
where He dwelled that I saw Him,
He was nowhere else to be found…
- Rumi

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

‎”Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”
- Langston Hughes

Asleep or awake, writing or
reading, whatever you do, you must never be without
the remembrance of God.
- Rumi

“Can you stand by and watch the pictures burn? Grab these ashes for your face. Keep the incense burning pure. The flames eat higher on the walls. This is the end of all we’re fond of—all those times that matter.”

Jim Morrison

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it. Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it. Life is life, fight for it.
- Mother Teresa

Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.
– George Iles

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
– Voltaire

It isn’t necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy.
– Groucho Marx

Healing, when properly understood, merely means casting a firm decision in the direction of your Higher Self’s priorities.
- Doreen Virtue

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Smile, breathe and go slowly.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

How beautiful it is to migrate away from a former land every day!
How lovely it is to perch on a different branch every day!
How nice it is to keep flowing uncontaminated, unfrozen!
All the words of yesterday vanished with the passing day, o my soul!
Now it is time to tel something new and fresh…
- Rumi

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
~ Howard Thurman, African American mystic & activist

If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.
~ Lao Tzu

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’
One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity.
In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognize the opportunity.”
- John F. Kennedy

“Waste no more time talking about great souls and how they should be. Become one yourself!”
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Feel Good, Be Good, and Do Good
~*~ Yogi Bhajan

I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world.
I think we are all granted by God and I believe it was necessary for people to whom these religions were revealed.
And I believe that if we could all read the scriptures of different faiths, from the point of view of their followers, should we discover that,deep down, were all the same thing and always helpful to each other.
- Mahatma Gandhi

“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.”
- Martin Luther King, National Conference for a New Politics keynote, 1967

Awards are so unnecessary, because I think we get so much out of our work just by doing it. The work is a reward in itself.
~ Natalie Portman

Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life in the struggle against prejudice and for equality; against hatred and for brotherhood; against division and for non-violence. As we mark Martin Luther King Day with service and reflection, let us seek a renewed commitment to the causes championed by Dr. King: equality, hope, civility, and peace.
- Nancy Pelosi

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

‎”Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

‎”An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.
~ Dale Carnegie

“The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.”
- Harry Golden

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I came from the lands of heart,
What would I do with this mortal spot?

I let out my desire to every house,
What would I do with only this one?
- Yunus Emre, Rumi ‘s contemporary Sufi poet

‎”An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Jack Kerouac

It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.
– Lewis Carroll

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
– Baltasar Gracian

“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.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking… The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds…”

- Albert Einstein

“Ultimately, humanity is one, and this small planet is our only home. If we are to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to feel a vivid sense of universal altruism. It is only this feeling that can remove the self-centered motives that cause people to deceive and misuse one another. If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel self-worth and confidence, and there is no need to be fearful of others.

For the rest of your life to be as meaningful as possible, engage in spiritual practice if you can. It is nothing more than acting out of concern for others. If you practice sincerely and with persistence, little by little, step by step you will gradually reorder your habits and attitudes so as to think less about your own narrow concerns and more about others’ – and thereby find peace and happiness yourself.”

- Dalai Lama

“A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group.

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 size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young, and curious, and brave. It shows much promise.

We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.

We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.

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.

Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants, it is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity we could plunge our world into a time of darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilisation and the Italian Renaissance. But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.

As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.

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

I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, un-available to us without such drugs.

…The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day.

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. Recently we have waded a little way out, and the water seems inviting.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”

- Carl Sagan

“It is only in the act of contemplation when words and even personality are transcended, that the pure state of the Perennial Philosophy can actually be known. The records left by those who have known it in this way make it abundantly clear that all of them, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Hebrew, Taoist, Christian, or Mohammedan, were attempting to describe the same essentially indescribable Fact.

The phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness — the world of things and animals and men and even gods — is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.

Human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.

Something inexpressively lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And, oh, inexpressively terrifying…

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.”

- Aldous Huxley

“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.

Every moment of your life is infinitely creative, and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

“Every moment of your life is infinitely creative, and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you”

- 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.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

“When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear; when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them.”

- Chief Seattle

“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.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart … Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”

- Carl Gustav Jung

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.

In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.

Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things.

There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of Evil, whose limited empire is that of ethics; I speak of the infinite.

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.”

- Jorge Luis Borges

“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?

We may now care for each Earthian individual at a sustainable billionaire’s level of affluence while living exclusively on less than 1 percent of our planet’s daily energy income from our cosmically designed nuclear reactor, the Sun, optimally located 92 million safe miles away from us.”

- 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.

We have lost it, or we have never had it; and, because we do not know how to judge anything, we have been led here and pushed there, beaten up, driven, politically, religiously and socially. We don’t know, but it is difficult to say we don’t know”.

- Jiddhu Krishnamurti

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”

- Leonardo da Vinci

“No great thing is created suddenly.”

Epictetus

“All life is an experiment.

Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

- Italo Calvino

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

- Laozi

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.”

- Pablo Neruda

“A beginning is a very delicate time….”

- Princess Irulan in Dune (film)

“Bless the Maker and all His Water. Bless the coming and going of Him, May His passing cleanse the world. May He keep the world for his people.~ Fremen saying, recited by Liet-Kynes, in the presence of Paul Atreides.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy. Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual (Frank Herbert, Dune)

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”

“We are generalists. You can’t draw neat lines around planet-wide problems. Planetology is a cut-and-fit science.”

- Pardot Kynes (Frank Herbert, Dune)

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one… I have been… and always shall be… your friend. Live long… and prosper.”

- Spock

“An idea is salvation by imagination.”

- Frank Lloyd Wright

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”

- Maya Angelou

“I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

- Vincent van Gogh

“God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.

God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter.”

I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.

The indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers.

We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us.”

- Leo Tolstoy

“The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of union.”

- Rabindranath Tagore

“Legends can be now and forever

Teaching us to love for goodness sake.

Legends can be now and forever

Loved by the sun, loved by the sun.”

- Jon Anderson

“This that we are now … The human body and the universe grew from this, not this from the universe and the human body.

Love said to me, there is nothing that is not me. Be silent.

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,

Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.

Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry

moving through, and be silent.

Reason is like an officer when the King appears;

The officer then loses his power and hides himself.

Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.

If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I will meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about

language, ideas, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.”

- Mevlana Rumi

“Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.

All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.”

- Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

- Lao Tzu

“We’re playing those mind games together

Pushing the barriers, planting seeds

Playing the mind guerrilla

Chanting the mantra, Peace on Earth.

We all been playing those mind games forever

Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.

Doing the mind guerrilla,

Some call it magic — the search for the grail.

Love is the answer and you know that for sure.

Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow.

Yes is the answer and you know that for sure.

Yes is surrender, you got to let it, you got to let it go…

So keep on playing those mind games together

Doing the ritual dance in the sun.

Millions of mind guerrillas

Putting their soul power to the karmic wheel.

I want you to make love, not war — I know you’ve heard it before.”

- John Lennon

“The truth is that my work — I was going to say my mission — is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire.”

- Miguel de Unamuno

“Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,

Or like a fairy trip upon the green,

Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell’d hair,

Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen:

Love is a spirit all compact of fire,

Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover;

What though the rose have prickles, yet ’tis pluck’d:

Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,

Yet love breaks through and picks them all at last.

For where Love reigns, disturbing Jealousy

Doth call himself Affection’s sentinel;

Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny.

This carry-tale, dissentious Jealousy,

That sometime true news, sometime false doth bring.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.

Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,

And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast

The sun ariseth in his majesty.”

- William Shakespeare

“There are people that can’t go to Fantastica. There are those who can but never return. And there are just a few who go to Fantastica and come back. And they make both worlds well again.”

- Michael Ende

“Here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.

Love does not entreat; or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

One never reaches home. But whenever friendly paths intersect, the whole world looks like home for a time.”

- Hermann Hesse

“It is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin. It is characteristic of the superior man, appearing insipid, yet never to produce satiety; while showing a simple negligence, yet to have his accomplishments recognized; while seemingly plain, yet to be discriminating. He knows how what is distant lies in what is near. He knows where the wind proceeds from. He knows how what is minute becomes manifested. Such a one, we may be sure, will enter into virtue.”

- Confucius

“Activism is my rent for living on the planet.”

- Alice Walker

“God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled…”

- Leonard Cohen

“I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance

Throughout my being’s limitless expanse,

Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages

I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages.”

- Novalis

“Grand is the seen, the light, to me — grand are the sky and stars,

Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,

And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;

But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,

Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea,

(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?)

More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!

More multiform far — more lasting thou than they.

I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,

Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing,

(nothing but sea and sky,)

The tossing waves, the foam,

the ships in the distance,

The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps –

that inbound urge and urge of waves….”

- Walt Whitman

“I don’t take drugs: I am drugs.

Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy – the joy of being Salvador Dalí – and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things this Salvador Dalí is going to accomplish today?

The sole difference between myself and a madman is the fact that I am not mad.”

- Salvador Dali

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”

- Oprah Winfrey

“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

- Marilyn Monroe

“Our earth is round, and, among other things, that means that you and I can hold completely different points of view and both be right. The difference of our positions will show stars in your window I cannot even imagine. Your sky may burn with light, while mine, at the same moment, spreads beautiful to darkness. Still we must choose how we separately corner the circling universe of our experience. Once chosen, our cornering will determine the message of any star and darkness we encounter.”

- June Jordan

“People come and go all the time; the world has always been in movement.”

- V. S. Naipaul

“One can’t build little white picket fences to keep nightmares out.”

– Anne Sexton

“Do not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do not enfeeble your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it — and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart’s indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you — for only the truth that builds up is truth for you.”

- Søren Kierkegaard

“He that loveth not, Knoweth not God; for God is Love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us. God is Love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him.”

- Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

- Howard Zinn

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out”

- Vaclav Havel

“Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”

- John F. Kennedy

“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.”
~ Robert H. Schuller

Where there is peace, God is.
- George Herbert

I see my beauty in you.
- Rumi

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.
♥ Tennessee Williams

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
- Aristotle

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.
~ Buddha

“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still small voice’ within me.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Human felicity is produc’d not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. ~ Benjamin Franklin (born 17 January 1706)

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. ~ Benjamin Franklin

All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge. I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others; but the world may judge for itself. Shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture; and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend. ~ Anne Brontë (born 17 January 1820)

We have this window of opportunity; we have a chance to make something real happen. Something possible happen, to live beyond our fear — think about that, and help us. Help lift us up, help us fight this fight to change, — transform — this country in a fundamental way.
This chance won’t come around again. ~ Michelle Obama

I somehow see what’s beautiful
In things that are ephemeral.
I’m my only friend of mine,
And love is just a piece of time
In the world
In the world.
And I couldn’t help but fall in love again.
~ Zooey Deschanel ~

“Elohim,” the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as “God,” but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean “goddesses.” Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still.
~ Robert Anton Wilson ~

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
- Walter Benjamin

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

‎”The biggest thread in the country today is not communism, its moving America toward a fascist theocracy.”
- Frank Zappa

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself…is enlightened.
~ Tao te Ching

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If you can’t fly then run,
if you can’t run then walk,
if you can’t walk then crawl,
but whatever you do
you have to
keep moving forward.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Either pure or impure, or having passed through all conditions of material life, if one can remember the lotus-eyed Krishna, he becomes externally and internally clean.

–Garuda Purana

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr. ♥

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.-Mahatma Gandhi

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

With the realization of ones own potential and self-confidence in ones ability, one can build a better world.

If we have a positive mental attitude, then even when surrounded by hostility, we shall not lack inner peace.
- Dalai Lama

Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
- MLK, Jr.

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.
– Leonard Bernstein

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.
– Mark B. Cohen

If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.
- Emma Goldman

From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art.

If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.
- Susan Sontag

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

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. ~Arthur C. Clarke

If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. ~ Ernest Hemingway

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love… I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. (Martin Luther King Day 2006 in U.S.)

To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That’s what lasts. That’s what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better. A better state of one’s feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one’s self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same. ~ Susan Sontag (born January 16, 1933)

I don’t want to express alienation. It isn’t what I feel. I’m interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up. ~ Susan Sontag

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. ~ Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction. We measure truth in terms of the cost to the writer in suffering — rather than by the standard of an objective truth to which a writer’s words correspond. Each of our truths must have a martyr. ~ Susan Sontag

We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new? It seems to me that one should always be seeking to talk oneself out of these stark oppositions.
~ Susan Sontag ~

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

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. … There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ~ Douglas Adams

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.(born 15 January 1929)

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing. ~ Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia Day — Wikipedia started 15 January 2001)

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I’m concerned about justice. I’m concerned about brotherhood. I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate… I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those whose conduct gives room for talk
Are always the first to attack their neighbors.
~ Molière (born 15 January 1622)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/January#15

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

“To truly laugh…you must be able to take your pain and PLAY with it.”
~ Charlie Chaplin

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
– Thomas Jefferson

The saying “Getting there is half the fun” became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines.
– Henry J. Tillman

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
– Mark Twain

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.
- Wallace Stevens

“My religion is love.”
- Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi

Peace is a daily,a weekly,a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
- JFK

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
~ Albert Schweitzer

By lifting up our brothers and sisters through service, we honor Dr. King’s memory and reaffirm our common humanity.
- President Barack Obama

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

There are no laws, there are no rules, just grab your friend and love him.
~ Jim Morrison ♡☺

Angels have no philosophy but love.
~ Terri Guillemets

If we develop a good heart, then whether the field is science, agriculture or politics, since motivation is important these will all improve.
- Dalai Lama

When love is present, the body & mind are lifted up. They are infused with light, possibility & celebration.
♥ Paul Ferrini

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 ♥

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

“The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
- Yoko Ono

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Dr. King
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.
- Henry David Thoreau

I would ask the people / stakeholders if they were satisfied & also what could be done to make things better for the service in question.
- Me

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.
- Jonathan Swift

Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. ~ Robert Heinlein in Stranger In A Strange Land

Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen. ~ Æschylus

Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage. ~ Albert Schweitzer (born 14 January 1875)

Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
Please pardon my levity, I don’t see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it. ~ Yukio Mishima (born January 14, 1925)

In my great tiredness and discouragement, the phrase, Reverence for Life, struck me like a flash. As far as I knew, it was a phrase I had never heard nor ever read. I realized at once that it carried within itself the solution to the problem that had been torturing me. Now I knew that a system of values which concerns itself only with our relationship to other people is incomplete and therefore lacking in power for good. Only by means of reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this fashion can we avoid harming others, and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us. ~ Albert Schweitzer

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in all experience retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself. ~ Albert Schweitzer

To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe. ~ Albert Schweitzer

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/January#14

“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”
~ Tich Nhat Hanh

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
– Oscar Wilde

The guardian angels of life fly so high as to be beyond our sight, but they are always looking down upon us.
~ Jean Paul Richter

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.
– George Bernard Shaw

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
~ Mark Twain

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”
- The Buddha

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book. ~Irish Proverb

Fresh air impoverishes the doctor. ~Danish Proverb

I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more. ~Henry Ward Beecher

After these two, Dr. Diet and Dr. Quiet, Dr. Merriman is requisite to preserve health. ~James Howell

Love seeks no cause beyond itself; it is its own fruit. I love because I love; I love in order to love.
- St. Bernard

“Open to me, so that I may open.
Provide me your inspiration
So that I might see mine.”
–Rumi

‎”At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of people who happen to think differently than we do, it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”
- President Barack Obama, Tuscon, 1-12-11

“The widest possibilities for spiritual growth lie in the give-and-take of everyday relationships.”
EKNATH EASWARAN
(1910–1999)

http://www.easwaran.org/thoughts-for-the-day-quotes.html

There’s just one thing we’re all waiting for, is peace on earth & an end to war.
- Freddie Mercury

“Minds are like parachutes – they only function when open.”
- Thomas Dewar

If we have a good heart, a warm heart, warm feelings, we will be happy and satisfied ourselves.
- Dalai Lama

The world has so many lessons to teach us. I consider the world to be like a school & our life the classrooms.
~ @Oprah

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

There may be love without jealousy, but there is none without fear. ~ Miguel de Cervantes

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one’s awareness of one’s ignorance. ~ Anthony de Mello

I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. ~ Émile Zola (J’accuse published 13 January 1898)

I still feel that sincerity and realism are avant-garde, or can be, just as I did when I started out. ~ Edmund White (born January 13, 1940)

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find. ~ Sir Edmund Hillary

All religions speak about death during this life on earth. Death must come before rebirth. But what must die? False confidence in one’s own knowledge, self-love and egoism. Our egoism must be broken. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff

Conscious faith is freedom.
Emotional faith is slavery.
Mechanical faith is foolishness.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.

It is impossible to recognize a wrong way without knowing the right way. This means that it is no use troubling oneself how to recognize a wrong way. One must think of how to find the right way.

In properly organized groups no faith is required; what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him.

Remember your self always and everywhere.

By teaching others you will learn yourself.

Faith of consciousness is freedom.

Love of consciousness evokes the same in response.

Hope of consciousness is strength.
- G. I. Gurdjieff (13 January 1872 – 29 October 1949)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G._I._Gurdjieff

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.
~ Edmund Spenser ~

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

‎”We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all.”
~ John Muir

Gratitude is not only the Greatest of Virtues, but the parent of all the others.
- Cicero ♦

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
- Albert Einstein

‎”Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.”
- Denis Waitley

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

don’t you know that my thorn
is better than the queen of roses

don’t you know my heresy
is the essence of spirituality
- Rumi

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
– Peter Ustinov

Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but television’s message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers whiter teeth *and* fresher breath.
– Dave Barry

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.
– Russell Baker

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.”
~ Galileo Galilei

‎”If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
- Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970

“Let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together… If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we lost.

It has been discussed in recent days their deaths can help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that its not because of a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation in a way that would make the victims proud.”
- President Obama, Tucson Memorial Service

“Honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.

What matters is … how well we have loved, & what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

Honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”

“Sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.”
- President Barack Obama

Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it is too late. Today, this hour, this minute is the day, the hour, the minute for each of us to sense the fact that life is good, with all of its trials and troubles, and perhaps more interesting because of them.
- Robert R. Updegraff

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

Heroism is not just found on the field of battle. Heroism does not require special training. Heroism is right here.
- President Obama

“If this tragedy prompt reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure its worthy of those we have lost.”
- President Obama

Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them. ~ Aristotle

Do not think of knocking out another person’s brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. ~ Horace Mann

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. ~ Edmund Burke (born 12 January 1729)

Society is indeed a contract… it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. ~ Edmund Burke

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. ~ Edmund Burke (born 12 January 1729)

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. ~ Edmund Burke

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe. ~ Edmund Burke

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
~ Edmund Burke ~

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/January#12

First they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
- Mahatma Ghandi

“Information is the currency of Democracy.”
- Thomas Jefferson

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The purpose of our life needs to be positive. We weren’t born with the purpose of causing trouble, harming others.
- Dalai Lama

Nothing will work unless you do.
~ Maya Angelou

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. ~Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Book I, chapter 4

Remember, men need laughter sometimes more than food. ~Anna Fellows Johnston

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything. ~Kurt Vonnegut

A man isn’t poor if he can still laugh. ~Raymond Hitchcock

The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence. ~Solomon ibn Gabirol

Gratitude is not only the Greatest of Virtues, but the parent of all the others. – Cicero

For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself ~Thoreau

Be thoughtful of others and you will not be shy, for they are incompatible addictions. ~Robert Brault

The best way to knock the chip off your neighbor’s shoulder is to pat him on the back. ~Author Unknown

Kindness is the greatest wisdom. ~Author Unknown

A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. ~Dave Barry, “Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn”

If thou are a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf. ~Thomas Fuller

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame. ~Alexander Pope, Epilogue to the Satires, 1738

Life is short but there is always time for courtesy. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Social Aims

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks. ~Henri Bergson

“All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.”
- Groucho Marx

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

Colors are the smiles of nature – Leigh Hunt

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love – Albert Einstein

Nature uses as little as possible of anything – Johannes Kepler

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former – Albert Einstein

All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God ~ Thomas Browne

Simplicity is nature’s first step, and the last of art ~ Philip James Bailey

No man is a failure who is enjoying life ~ William Feather

I’ve always regarded nature as the clothing of God – Alan Hovhaness

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city – George Burns

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you – Charlotte Whitton

Waters are distilled out of Herbs, Flowers, Fruits, and Roots – Nicholas Culpeper

Don’t go through life, grow through life – Eric Butterworth

Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are – Alfred Austin

All gardening is landscape painting – William Kent

Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds ~ Carolus Linnaeus

Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise – George Gershwin

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow – Lawrence Clark Powell

All art is but imitation of nature – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” – John F Kennedy

It is better to deserve honors and not have them, than to have them and not to deserve them. ~Mark Twain

‎”Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.”- Markus Zusak

To the Ones who really See, the Chosen Lovers, Love is a Shattering Eternal Light.
- Rumi ♥

There is a window
between heart and heart:
They are never separate
like two bodies.
Two lamps
may not be united
in their form –
But their light merges
into each other.
No lover
ever searched for Union
If his beloved
is not also seeking him.
The love of lovers
makes them think;
The Beloved’s love
makes them full
and shining.

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi ♥

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=124308007584175

‘I saw an angel in the marble and I just chiseled to set him free.’ – Michaelangelo

‘The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.’ – Arthur C. Clarke

We cannot overcome anger and hatred simply by suppressing them. We need to actively cultivate the antidotes: patience and tolerance.

It is my fundamental conviction that compassion constitutes a basic aspect of our nature as well as being the foundation of our happiness.
- Dalai Lama

◈ Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it.
~ Arapaho Indian Proverb

It is my fundamental conviction that compassion constitutes a basic aspect of our nature as well as being the foundation of our happiness.
- Dalai Lama

Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
– Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance, / And toss them on the wheels of Chance.
– Juvenal

Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible.
– Margaret Mead

One Whisper of the Beloved

Lovers share a sacred decree –
to seek the Beloved.
They roll head over heels,
rushing toward the Beautiful One
like a torrent of water.

In truth, everyone is a shadow of the Beloved –
Our seeking is His seeking,
Our words are His words.

At times we flow toward the Beloved
like a dancing stream.
At times we are still water
held in His pitcher.
At times we boil in a pot
turning to vapor –
that is the job of the Beloved.

He breathes into my ear
until my soul
takes on His fragrance.
He is the soul of my soul –
How can I escape?
But why would any soul in this world
want to escape from the Beloved?

He will melt your pride
making you thin as a strand of hair,
Yet do not trade, even for both worlds,
One strand of His hair.

We search for Him here and there
while looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side we ask,
“O Beloved, where is the Beloved?”

Enough with such questions! –
Let silence take you to the core of life.

All your talk is worthless
When compared to one whisper
of the Beloved.

~Maulana Rumi

Translated by Jonathan Star & Shahram Shiva

If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world. ~ Joseph Addison

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. ~ Alexander Hamilton (born 11 January 1755)

Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity. ~ Alexander Hamilton

I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly. ~ William James (born 11 January 1842)

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

I should esteem it the extreme of imprudence to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and to expose the union to the jeopardy of successive experiments, in the chimerical pursuit of a perfect plan. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom of the individuals of whom they are composed. ~ Alexander Hamilton

We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel (11 January 1907 – 23 December 1972)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/January#11

Martin Luther King didn’t become famous by saying “I have a complaint.”
- Van Jones

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices.”
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Creation is only the projection into form of that which already exists.
~ Bhagavad Gita

If reasonable people don’t feel the presence of love within the universe, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
- Rumi

“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.”
- Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)

Nature is neutral.
- Adlai E. Stevenson

When people are laughing, they’re generally not killing each other.
~ Alan Alda

I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, “Ain’t that the truth.”
~ Quincy Jones

Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
~ Rabindranath Tagore

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
- William James

Marks on paper are free – free speech – press – pictures all go together I suppose.
- Georgia O’Keeffe

I have no more words. Let the soul speak with the silent articulation of a face.
~ Rumi

We are all dreamers creating the next world, the next beautiful world for ourselves and for our children.
- Yoko Ono

I will love the light for it shows me the way. Yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
- Og Mandino

Nothing leads to good that is not natural
- Friedrich Schiller

The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.
- Pierre Corneille

Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun – Frank Lloyd Wright

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance – Thomas Huxley

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes ~ Marcel Proust

Patience is the companion of wisdom – Saint Augustine

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature – C. S. Lewis

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground ~ Buddha

We live in a rainbow of chaos ~ Paul Cezanne

Try to leave the Earth a better place than when you arrived – Sidney Sheldon

Life is a comedy for those who think… and a tragedy for those who feel – Horace Walpole

There are always flowers for those who want to see them – Henri Matisse

On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it – Jules Renard

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself – Wallace Stevens

Faith is reason grown courageous ~Sherwood Eddy

A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements ~ Bo Bennett

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful…
… the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
~ Robinson Jeffers (born 10 January 1887)

Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~

I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine. ~ Robinson Jeffers

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history. ~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains. ~ Robinson Jeffers

All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton ~

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/January#10

Those things that nature denied to human sight, she revealed to the eyes of the soul.
~ Ovid

Let’s dance together in our hearts and play the game of life in peace.

It’s Time for Action.

We protect our world from destruction with our sense of joy.
- Yoko Ono

Not until we experience it is it more that just words. After we experience it, there is no need for words.
- Milton Trager

Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Learning is the first step in making positive changes within yourself. Other factors are conviction, determination, action and effort. Learning and education help develop conviction about the need to change and increase your commitment. Conviction then develops into determination. Next, strong determination leads to action: a sustained effort to implement the changes. This final factor of effort is critical.
- Dalai Lama

‎”Each of us is a role model for somebody, and if we aren’t, we should behave as though we are — cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes.”
- Maya Angelou

To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.
– Robert Orben

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
– Carl Sagan

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
– E. W. Dijkstra

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
- Albert Einstein

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!”

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”

Gandhi

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions!
- Hafiz ☺

Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration.
- Evan Esar

The aim of life is to live! And to live means to be aware … joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
~ Henry Miller

” Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.”
~ Jimi Hendrix

The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation.”
~ Michael Jackson

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.
~ Blaise Pasca

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do.
~ John Ruskin

Gardening requires lots of water – most of it in the form of perspiration.
~ Lou Erickson

The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
- Thomas H. Huxley

Amplify’d from www.spacetelescope.org

Old Stars with a Youthful Glow

Old Stars with a Youthful Glow

The dazzling stars in Messier 15 look fresh and new in this image from the NASA/Hubble Space Telescope, but they are actually all roughly 13 billion years old, making them some of the most ancient objects in the Universe. Unlike another recent Hubble Picture of the Week, which featured the unusually sparse cluster Palomar 1, Messier 15 is rich and bright despite its age.

Messier 15 is a globular cluster — a spherical conglomeration of old stars that formed together from the same cloud of gas, found in the outer reaches of the Milky Way in a region known as the halo and orbiting the Galactic Centre. This globular lies about 35 000 light-years from the Earth, in the constellation of Pegasus (The Flying Horse).

Messier 15 is one of the densest globulars known, with the vast majority of the cluster’s mass concentrated in the core. Astronomers think that particularly dense globulars, like this one, underwent a process called core collapse, in which gravitational interactions between stars led to many members of the cluster migrating towards the centre.

Messier 15 is also the first globular cluster known to harbour a planetary nebula, and it is still one of only four globulars known to do so. The planetary nebula, called Pease 1, can be seen in this image as a small blue blob to the lower left of the globular’s core.

This picture was put together from images taken with the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images through yellow/orange (F606W, coloured blue) and near-infrared (F814W, coloured red) filters were combined. The total exposure times were 535 s and 615 s respectively and the field of view is 3.4 arcminutes across.

Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Read more at www.spacetelescope.org

 

A Green Flash From The Sun – Dalai Lama, Einstein, Gandhi, Rumi, Sagan, Newton (Born Jan. 4, 1643), TS Eliot<3

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. ~ Isaac Newton (born 4 January 1643)

Men learn little from others’ experience. But in the life of one man, never the same time returns. ~ T. S. Eliot, in Murder in the Cathedral (died 4 January 1965)

The main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical. ~ Isaac Newton (born 4 January 1643)

It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).
~ R.E.M. ~ (birthday of Michael Stipe, lead singer and major song writer in the band — which divides the credit on all its songs equally)

That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough.
~ R.E.M. ~

The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt.
The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify mens curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world. For the event of things predicted many ages before will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by Providence.
~ Isaac Newton

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/January#4

Every man’s memory is his private literature.
- Aldous Huxley

“There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
- Everett Dirksen

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.
- Lao Tzu

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
- Voltaire

Determination and hope are key factors for a brighter future.

As I see it, compassion is the essence of a spiritual life.
-Dalai Lama

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. ~Frank Herbert, Dune Chronicles

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the and the blind can see.
~ Mark Twain

Fall down seven times, stand up eight.
♥ Japanese Proverb

☮Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.
- Jill Jackson and Sy Miller

Ever since happiness heard your name,
it has been running through the streets trying to find you.
~ Hafiz

Our possibilities, opportunities and horizons expand and increase as our fears diminish and decrease. Fear itself has no physical reality of it’s own. The fact that it is a mental construct is the key to its own undoing. We are the only force that gives it any meaning or power over us through our belief in it and thus we can withdraw its hold over us by replacing it with a new meaning.
~ Hal Tipper

Friends are kisses blown to us by angels.
♥ Author Unknown

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee… ~ John Donne

Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age? ~ Cicero (born 3 January 106 BC)

Each comprehended only that part of the mind of Ilúvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion (Tolkien born 3 January 1892)

The rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. ~ “Gandalf” inThe Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

This is an ancient hallow, and ere the kings failed or the Tree withered in the court, a fruit must have been set here. For it is said that, though the fruit of the Tree comes seldom to ripeness, yet the life within may then lie sleeping through many long years, and none can foretell the time in which it will awake. ~ Gandalf in The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion

He who looks on a true friend looks, as it were, upon a kind of image of himself: wherefore friends, though absent, are still present; though in poverty, they are rich; though weak, yet in the enjoyment of health; and, what is still more difficult to assert, though dead, they are alive.
~ Cicero ~

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

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
– Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.
– Douglas Adams

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
– Groucho Marx

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

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profundity. Kindness in giving creates love.
~ Lao Tzu ♥

Better to remain silent & be thought a fool that to speak & remove all doubt.
- English proverbs

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
- Wordsworth

I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.
~ Harold Kushner

Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it!
-Ram Dass

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
~ Albert Einstein

We are all in this together. ~ English proverb

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection…That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers. ~ Isaac Asimov (born 2 January 1920)

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~ Isaac Asimov

When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field. ~ Isaac Asimov

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be … ~ Isaac Asimov

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. ~ Isaac Asimov

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
~ Isaac Asimov ~

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

“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.

The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking… The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
- Albert Einstein

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”
- Carl Sagan

“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.”
- 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.

My life is my message.

Every moment of your life is infinitely creative, and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.”
- 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.”
- Nietzsche

“When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear; when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them.”
- Chief Seattle

“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

Dont GO through life, GROW through life. ♥ Eric Butterworth

When will you begin your long journey into yourself?
- Mevlana Rumi

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

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
- Oscar Wilde

“My love of poetry is love of joy.”
- Jack Kerouac

I you can’t love do not come to my alley; if you can’t be naked don’t come to my river, if you have resentments stay on your side
- Rumi

We can’t wait for a miracle or simply pray for our dreams/ We can’t just condemn the violence and denounce the mean/ We are the ones who must be held to account/ For the mountain ahead, we can’t just give commentary; we must fight, climb and surmount.
- Cory Booker

We stand on this beautiful planet enjoying the sunrise sunset changeofseasons oceans mountains & lovely towns & cities we created together
- Yoko Ono

http://twitter.com/yokoono

An ancient dictum says that when Zeus wanted to destroy someone, he would first drive him mad.
- Jean-Marie Le Pen

If once in this world I win a moment with thee,
I will trample on both worlds; I will dance in triumph forever !
~Maulana Rumi

These words are a drop,
From love’s infinite ocean.
To the world,
thirst-quenching nectar,
To the soul,
everlasting life.

Stand with dignity in the magnificent current of my words and they will carry you into God’s arms.
~Rumi

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, yet again, come, come.

~Inscribed on Rumi’s Shrine in Konya, Turkey
What is to be done, O Moslems? For I do not recognise myself.

I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem.

I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea;

I am not of Nature’s mint, nor of the circling heaven.

I am not of earth, nor of water, nor of air, nor of fire;

I am not of the empyrean, nor of the dust, nor of existence, nor of entity.

I am not of India , nor of China , nor of Bulgaria , nor of Saqsin.

I am not of the kingdom of ’Iraqian, nor of the country of Khorasan

I am not of this world, nor of the next, nor of Paradise , nor of Hell.

I am not of Adam, nor of Eve, nor of Eden and Rizwan.

My place is the Placeless; my trace is the Traceless;

’Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.

- Rumi
The Soul of the Beloved

What is to be done, O Moslems? For I do not recognise myself.
I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem.

I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea;
I am not of Nature’s mint, nor of the circling heaven.

I am not of earth, nor of water, nor of air, nor of fire;
I am not of the empyrean, nor of the dust, nor of existence, nor of entity.

I am not of India , nor of China , nor of Bulgaria , nor of Saqsin.
I am not of the kingdom of ’Iraqian, nor of the country of Khorasan

I am not of this world, nor of the next, nor of Paradise , nor of Hell.
I am not of Adam, nor of Eve, nor of Eden and Rizwan.

My place is the Placeless; my trace is the Traceless;
’Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.

I have put duality away; I have seen that the two worlds are one;
One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call.

He is the first, He is the last, He is the outward, He is the inward;
I am intoxicated with Love’s cup, the two worlds have passed out of my ken;

If once in my life I spent a moment without thee,
From that time and from that hour I repent of my life.

If once in this world I win a moment with thee,
I will trample on both worlds; I will dance in triumph forever.

~Maulana Rumi

Translate­d by Reynold A. Nicholson

http://www.facebook.com/beloved.of.rumi

“The capacity to be patient, to bear with others through thick and thin, is within the reach of anyone”
- Eknath Easwaran

✦ Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
- Aristotle

A hug is like a boomerang – you get it back right away.
- Bil Keane

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better. ♥ Jim Rohn

☮Nonviolence is absolute respect for each human being. – Adolpho Perez Esquival

☮If you let go a little you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace. ~ Ajahn Cha

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
- Italo Calvino

http://themodernword.com/

Be an angel to someone else whenever you can, as a way of thanking God for the help your angel has given you. ♥ Eileen Elias Freeman

All we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next.
~ J. D. Salinger ~

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. ~ E. M. Forster (date of birth)

I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self defence, one has to formulate a creed of one’s own. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules, and Science, which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy — they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long. ~ E. M. Forster

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse. ~ E. M. Forster

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. ~ E. M. Forster

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it. ~ J. D. Salinger

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/January

A person hears only what they understand.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. ♥ Albert Einstein

☮Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain. — Marquis de Sade

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
— Leo Tolstoy

At each stage I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find that there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness — I re-enter through the breach — and I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again.
~ Henri Matisse ~

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:
And down the wave and in the flame was borne
A naked babe…
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
~ “Auld Lang Syne” by Robert Burns ~

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself. ~ Henri Matisse (born December 31, 1869)

It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy… Let’s go exploring! ~ Bill Watterson – Final strip of Calvin and Hobbes, published December 31, 1995

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it. ~ George Marshall

When a thing is done, it’s done. Don’t look back. Look forward to your next objective. ~ George Marshall

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#31

Compassion creates a positive, friendly atmosphere. With such an attitude, you can create the possibility of receiving affection or a positive response from someone else. If the other person doesn’t respond to you in a positive way, your own feeling of openness gives you the flexibility and freedom to change your approach as needed and still allows for the possibility of having a meaningful conversation with them.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

Awareness of impermanence and appreciation of our human potential will give us a sense of urgency that we must use every precious moment.
~Dalai Lama

☮If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. — Mother Theresa (1910-1997)

☮We do not inherit the earth from our fathers. We borrow it from our children.

☮Either war is obsolete or men are. — Buckminster Fuller

☮How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. — Anne Frank

☮The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens. — Baha’ullah

☮Nonviolence is the supreme law of life. — Indian Proverb

☮Imagine all the people living life in peace You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. — John Lennon

☮ — Albert Camus (1913-1960)

☮Nonviolence is absolute respect for each human being. – Adolpho Perez Esquival

http://twitter.com/PeaceQuotes

Man won’t fly for a thousand years.
- Wilbur Wright

http://themodernword.com/

“Love is the Ultimate Expression of Faith” -
- AntHallTheJedi

I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too…
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
~ Rudyard Kipling ~ (born 30 December 1865)

The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest. ~ Romain Rolland(died 30 December 1944)

It is the artist’s business to create sunshine when the sun fails. ~ Romain Rolland
Justice has nothing to do with victor nations and vanquished nations, but must be a moral standard that all the world’s peoples can agree to. To seek this and to achieve it — that is true civilization. ~ Hideki Tojo

One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved. ~ Romain Rolland

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#30s

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
- Herman Melville

http://themodernword.com/

Procrastination isn’t the problem, it’s the solution. So procrastinate now, don’t put it off.
– Ellen DeGeneres

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
– Ernest Rutherford

I was the kid next door’s imaginary friend.
– Emo Phillips

He who knows patience knows peace.
♥ Chinese Proverb

Success is not the key to happiness. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
- Albert Schweitzer

The worried, heroic doings of men and women seem weary and futile to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit
~ Rumi

Stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities. ♥ Terry Josephson

I will make company with creators, with harvesters, with rejoicers; I will show them the rainbow and the stairway to the Superman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

If I am shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet. ~ Andrew Johnson (born 29 December 1808)

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? There is a brotherhood among all men. This must be recognized if life is to remain. We must learn the love of man. ~ Pablo Casals

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not

poet enough to call forth its riches. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (Date of death)

Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home. ~ William Ewart Gladstone (born December 29, 1809)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#29

Never mistake motion for action.
- Ernest Hemingway

http://themodernword.com

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. ~ Marcel Proust ☺

The good man is the friend of all living things.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
~ G.K. Chesteron

When you say it’s difficult, it becomes more difficult. When you say it’s easy, it actually becomes easier.
♥ Nithya

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

We all must seek and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

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

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
– George Santayana

We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld

There’s no point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes.
– Doctor Who

You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
♥ Zig Ziglar

Speak truth to power. ~Marian Wright Edelman

I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. … Recently, we’ve managed to wade a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting.

For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young, and curious, and brave. It shows much promise.

We are made of starstuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

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.
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
– Aldous Huxley

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
– Laurence J. Peter

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
– A. A. Milne

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
♥ Albert Einstein

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group.

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us ââ,¬” 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 size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young, and curious, and brave. It shows much promise.

We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.

We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.

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 ââ,¬” 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

A person hears only what they understand.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.
- Marquis de Sade

I am still learning. ~ Michelangelo ☺

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift ~ Albert Einstein

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

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
- Victor Hugo
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44206766546

Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov
A Green Flash from the Sun
Credit & Copyright:
Juan José Manzano
(Grupo de Observadores
Astronómicos de Tenerife
)

Explanation:
Many think it is just a myth.
Others think it is true but its cause isn’t known.
Adventurers pride themselves on having seen it.
It’s a green flash from the
Sun.
The truth is the
green flash
does exist and its cause is well understood.
Just as the setting
Sun disappears completely from view,
a last glimmer appears startlingly
green.
The effect is typically visible only from locations with a low,
distant horizon, and lasts just a few seconds.
A green flash is also visible for a rising
Sun, but takes better timing to spot.
A dramatic
green flash, as well as an even more rare
blue flash, was caught in the
above photograph recently
observed
during a sunset visible from
Teide Observatory at
Tenerife,
Cannary Islands,
Spain.
The Sun itself does not turn
partly
green or blue
the effect is caused by layers of the
Earth’s atmosphere acting like a prism.

Read more at apod.nasa.gov

 

Doing Cartwheels To Celebrate The End Of An Era #Astronomy #Photography #Quotes #Beauty #Imagination #Peace #Love

Physics isn’t the most important thing. Love is. ~ Richard Feynman
— This statement has been discovered to very probably be a misattribution, and seems to have been created as part of a paraphrase of Feynman’s note to the mother of Marcus Chown: “Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough.”
No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation. ~ Woodrow Wilson, (born 28 December 1856)
The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated. … Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it. ~ Benazir Bhutto (recent death)
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (Date of death)
At terrestrial temperatures matter has complex properties which are likely to prove most difficult to unravel; but it is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star. ~ Arthur Stanley Eddington

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#28

The external world of physics has … become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. … The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil.
The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.
~ Arthur Stanley Eddington ~

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

Where they burn books, sooner or later they will also burn people
- Heinrich Heine

http://themodernword.com/

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

As you breathe in cherish yourself. As you breathe out cherish all beings. ~ Dalai Lama ♡

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. ♥ Edith Wharton

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. ♥ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Time heals what reason cannot.” Seneca

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
~ Albert Einstein

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

I’ve always regarded nature as the clothing of God – Alan Hovhaness

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.
- Mahatma Gandhi

One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me…
~ Louis Pasteur ~

The time is always right to do what is right ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
selected by Kalki

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight — always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary? ~ J. M. Barrie

Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between. ~ Sarah Vowell (born 27 December 1969)

I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner. ~ Louis Pasteur (born 27 December 1822)

I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity. ~ Louis Pasteur

There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost. ~ Harold Pinter

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. ~ Louis Pasteur

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

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

It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.
- Kingsley Amis

In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
- Peter Drucker

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.
- Hesketh Pearson

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu

Books to the ceiling,/ Books to the sky,/ My pile of books is a mile high./ How I love them! How I need them!/ I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.
- Arnold Lobel

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
- Edwin Schlossberg

It is true that I was born in Iowa, but I can’t speak for my twin sister.
- Abigail Van Buren

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
- Dalai Lama

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. ♥ Epitectus

“Only from the heart
Can you touch the sky.”
- Rumi

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace. ~ Buddha

To begin, begin – William Wordsworth

The authentic self is the soul made visible.
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach ♡

Peace on earth can’t just be an occasional prayer it has to be a daily purpose.
- Cory Booker

“Look deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
- Albert Einstein

“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.”
- William Butler Yeats

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

Glory lies in the attempt to reach one’s goal and not in reaching it.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.

Infinite striving to be the best is man’s duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God’s hands.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.
- Mahatma Gandhi

“If we give up the notion that everybody’s life is perfect but ours, we would be a lot happier. No one’s life is perfect.”
- Joy Browne

In order to create a happy century, a peaceful century we must promote the concept of dialogue.
- Dalai Lama

The Wheel of Heaven could wind to a halt: The World of Lovers will go on turning.
~ Rumi

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated. ~ Henry David Thoreau

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened. ~ Maya Angelou

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself.
Go forward and make your dreams come true.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

http://themodernword.com/

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world. ~ Wayne Dyer ♥

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. ♥ Elbert Hubbard

There isn’t anyone anywhere that isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know — listen to me, now — don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy. ~ J. D. Salinger

It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion. ~ Norman Angell (born 26 December 1872)

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually, genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole, of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made, not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right. ~ Norman Angell (date of birth)

The responsibility of the great states is to serve and not to dominate the world. ~ Harry S. Truman (died 26 December 1972)

Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring, as she sings,
Waves in the eye of Heav’n her many-colour’d wings.
~ Thomas Gray ~

The obstacles to peace are in the minds and hearts of men.
In the study of matter we can be honest, impartial, true. That is why we succeed in dealing with it. But about the things we care for — which are ourselves, our desires and lusts, our patriotisms and hates — we find a harder test of thinking straight and truly. Yet there is the greater need. Only by intellectual rectitude and in that field shall we be saved. There is no refuge but in truth, in human intelligence, in the unconquerable mind of man. ~ Norman Angell

To each his suff’rings: all are men,
Condemn’d alike to groan,
The tender for another’s pain;
Th’ unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.
~ Thomas Gray ~

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

People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. ~ Maya Angelou ♡

I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.
~ William Blake

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein

☮Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.
- Mahatma Gandhi

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.”
- George Santayana

For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it. ~ Ivan Panin ♡

Go within; hear the story of sunrise from the Sun itself. Rumi

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony & the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. ~Wordsworth

Do not say ‘It is morning’ & dismiss it, see it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name. ~Tagore

Listen, my friend, to that song deep within you with which the essence of beauty calls to you. ~Faouzi Skali

Life rushes from within. ~Willa Cather

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. ~Sir Thomas Browne

All things depend upon the Unseen. All sounds depend upon Silence. Adyashanti

The vital person vitalizes! – Joseph Campbell ∞☼∞

Respond to every call that excites your spirit. ♥ Rumi

To reach peace, teach peace. — Pope John Paul II

Rumi:

If there were no ears to receive the message from the Unseen,
no prophet would have brought a revelation from Heaven.

A wise man asked holy Jesus,
“What is the harshest thing in the universe?”
Jesus said, “Oh my dear, the most severe thing is God’s wrath,
From that, even hell trembles like us.”
The man asked, “What shelters us from God’s wrath? “
Jesus said, “Leaving your anger at the time (of anger).
The origin of vengeance is hell,
And your vengeance is a part of that whole and the enemy of your faith.
If you are a part of heaven, your pleasure like heaven is everlasting.
Bitter is joining bitters for certain;
How can the breath of evil become a companion of the Truth (God)?
Hell is the anger and needs an enemy,
So it could live, otherwise a merciful one can terminate it.
If there were no enemy and foe in the world,
Then the anger would have died amongst people.
How can it live since it dies from the light of the (love of) righteous ones?
There are hundred thousands of darkness because of your anger,
Calm your anger, open your eyes, be happy,
Learn from your true friends and become a master (of love).”

Look and see
All that is good comes from the heart.
And all that is not good comes from mixing water with dirt.

If you chase after your desires, overcome by lust,
The mud around you will increase One hundred fold.
Salvation comes when you give up
The fancies and desires that opened the door to all your troubles, in the first place.
The only reason you cant give up your desires is that you are lazy.
Since you are the problem, it will follow you wherever you go.

Promise yourself that you won’t break your oath.
Otherwise the disease will remain and the cure will be lost.
If you stay firm in that oath, your soul will give birth to one hundred thousand pleasures.

Then this iron heart will turn into a mirror.
And every moment, a mature and perfect face will look back at you. (Rumi)

if you can finally hunt down
your own beastly self
you have the right
to claim Solomon’s kingdom

In the cracks of my mind
and in the crevices of my memories
lie places where I have been
and the places where I could be

Where the cracks end
is the beginning of me
and if the ending was any different
I would be you
and you would be me

Don’t weep.
The joy that has gone
will come ’round again in another form -
Have no doubt about this!

A child’s first joy
comes from its mother’s milk;
After the child is weaned
his joy comes from drinking sweet wine.

Some people say about human beings,
“Dust to dust”, but can that be true of
one who changes from road dust to doorway?

If I was not so pitifully in love,
I wouldn’t then be standing at your door.
Don’t say, “Go away, don’t stand at my door !”
I wouldn’t exist, my dear, if I didn’t stand here.
-Rumi

”You think you are alive because you breathe air? Shame on you, that you are alive in such a limited way. Don’t be without Love, so you won’t feel dead. Die in Love and stay alive forever.”
❤Mevlana Muhammed Celaleddin Rumi❤

When you lose all sense of self
the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish.
Lose yourself completely.
Return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

“Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?
You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.”

Feed your heart in conversation with
someone harmonious with it;
seek spiritual advancement from one
who is advanced.

IF YOU CAN DISENTANGLE
yourself from your selfish self
all heavenly spirits
will stand ready to serve you.
Rumi

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rumi-and-love/144944992180

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
- Albert Camus

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. ♥ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it!
~ Ram Dass

“That’s what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.”
- Simone De Beauvoir

People are disturbed not by things but by the VIEW they take on them.
♥ Epictetus

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
~ Robert Green Ingersoll

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that? ~ Bob Hope

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. ~ Calvin Coolidge

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.
~ Isaac Watts ~

The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart. ~ Helen Keller

How many observe Christ’s Birth-day! how few his Precepts! O! ’tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments. ~ Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack (in relation to Christmas)

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King.
Let ev’ry heart prepare Him room,
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.
~ Isaac Watts ~ (traditional Christmas carol)

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

All the talents of God are within you. How could this be otherwise when your soul derived from His genes!? ~ Hafiz ♡

Peace comes from within. ♥ Do not seek it without. ♥ Buddha

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

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.

- Ralph W. Sockman

Christmas gift suggestions:

To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.

- Oren Arnold

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.

- Agnes M. Pharo

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
- P. G. Wodehouse

Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.
- Chester Bowles

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
- Euripides

Never, never, never give up.
♥ Winston Churchill

You are more of who you are becoming, than of who you’ve ever been.
- Aine Belton

‎”The sangha is like a beehive – each bee working for the well being of the whole beehive.”

“Merry Christmas to everyone.”
- Plum Village, 2010, Thich Nhat Hanh

My basic belief is that first you need to realize the usefulness of compassion, that’s the key factor. Once you accept the fact that compassion is not something childish or sentimental, once you realize that compassion is something really worthwhile and realize its deeper value, then you immediately develop an attraction towards it, a willingness to cultivate it.

I think that cultivating positive mental states like kindness and compassion definitely leads to better psychological health and happiness.

In the final analysis, the hope of every person is simply peace of mind.

Compassion creates a positive, friendly atmosphere.

It is worth remembering that the time of greatest gain in terms of wisdom and inner strength is often that of greatest difficulty.
~ Dalai Lama

Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful. — Johann von Schiller

I think that cultivating positive mental states like kindness and compassion definitely leads to better psychological health and happiness.
- Dalai Lama

We are grateful for the miracle of consciousness that we share, that gives us the power to remember, to love, to care.
- Gillis ♡☺

It is clear that feelings of love, affection, closeness and compassion bring happiness.
- Dalai Lama

Many people like to think that they’ll find balance AFTER they find success. But in reality, achieving balance IS success.
♥ Brian Koslow

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
~ Eden Phillpotts ๑♡

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
~ Sydney Carter ~

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
~ “A Visit from St. Nicholas”

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. ~ John Muir

Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. ~ Francis Pharcellus Church in “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. ~ John Muir (Date of death)

People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success. ~ Norman Vincent Peale (Date of death)

Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city’s jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.
~ Matthew Arnold ~ (born December 24, 1822)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#24

Making a mistake and then judging ourselves harshly is like paying compound interest on a bad investment. ♥ Doc Childre

I strive for peace that is not affected by outside circumstances. Quite a challenge, that is definitely worth the work. If I am not peaceful, I must remember that I am responsible for that experience, and that I am the only one who can change it. Prayer, meditation, breath, service….. these are things that help ground me and bring me back to the center… bring me back to peace. – Joanne Edmonds Kiel

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

Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.
♥ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced.
♥ Alan Watts

‎” If you don’t go after what you want…you’ll never have it.
If you don’t ask…the answer is always no.
If you don’t step forward you’re always in the same place. “
~ Nora Roberts

‎”Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.”
~ Albert Schweitzer

The truth is, the Universe will always take care of you.
~ Abraham Hick

“When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.” – Peace Pilgrim

One simple change – seeking and finding peace within – could, were it undertaken by everyone, end all wars, eliminate conflict, prevent injustice, and bring the world everlasting peace. World peace is a personal thing. What is needed is not a change of circumstance, but a change of consciousness. – Neale Donald Walsch

“I do not fix problems. I fix my thinking. Then problems fix themselves.” – Louise L. Hay

” If we truly desire to make changes in our lives and our world, we must first make those changes within ourselves, in our beliefs.” – Stephen Edwards

“Peace of mind happens to a man only after he has developed deep insight, only after he starts seeing the things in the right perspective. ~ Sam Veda

Life is not an exact science, it is an art. – Samuel Butler

The good man is the friend of all living things. – Mahatma Gandhi

Asking good questions is half of learning. – Muhammad (Essential Sufism)

Live to give everything away So nothing keeps us apart Love brings you here; Light-atom pulsing Always, at the Sun’s Heart. – Rumi

“Whatever pearl you seek,
look for the pearl within the pearl!
The surface of the earth says,
“The treasure is within.”
The glowing jewel says,
“Don’t be fooled by my beauty
the light of my face
comes from the candle of my spirit.”
What else can I say?
You will only hear
what you are ready to hear.
Don’t nod your head,
Don’t try to fool me
the truth of what you see
is written all over your face!
- Rumi♥

No need to inquire if your Heart’s not on Fire. But down in the unlit places, the poor didn’t even raise their eyes. So Messengers were sent in every direction with invitations numberless as Stars. – Rumi ♥

“Do not confuse peace of mind with spaced-out insensitivity. A truly peaceful mind is very sensitive, very aware.”
~ Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama ~

☮Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.

http://twitter.com/peacequotes

There is no way to peace; peace is the way.
~ A.J. Muste

Can miles truly separate you from friends… If you want to be with someone you love, aren’t you already there? ~ Richard Bach ♥

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.

Every day, when you get up, you can develop a sincere positive motivation: I will utilize this day in a more positive way.
- Dalai Lama

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. ~ Plato ♡☺

<a href=”http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Baltasar_Graci%C3
%A1n_(retrato_de_Graus2).jpg”>

All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that.

Some marry the first information they receive, and turn what comes later into their concubine. Since deceit is always first to arrive, there is no room left for truth.

When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.

Politeness and a sense of honor have this advantage: we bestow them on others without losing a thing.

If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend.

Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people’s expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would. This rule does not hold true for bad things: when an evil has been exaggerated, its reality makes people applaud. What was feared as ruinous comes to seem tolerable.

Complaints will always discredit you. Rather than compassion and consolation, they provoke passion and insolence, and encourage those who hear our complaints to behave like those we complain about. Once divulged to others, the offenses done to us seem to make others pardonable. Some complain of past offenses and give rise to future ones.

Knowing how to keep a friend is more important than gaining a new one.

Because the ignorant do not know themselves, they never know for what they are lacking. Some would be sages if they did not believe they were so already.

Some die because they feel everything, others because they feel nothing. Some are fools because they suffer no regrets, and others because they do.

Don’t live by generalities, unless it be to act virtuously, and don’t ask desire to follow precise laws, for you will have to drink tomorrow from the water you scorn today.

Virtue alone is for real; all else is sham. Talent and greatness depend on virtue, not on fortune. Only virtue is sufficient unto herself. She makes us love the living and remember the dead.
- Baltasar Gracian

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Baltasar_Graci%C3%A1n

Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.
- Buddha

Develop interest in life as you see;in people,things,literature,music,The world is so rich,simply throbbing with rich treasures,beautiful souls and interesting people,Forget yourself…
- Henry Miller

People often expect the other person to respond first in a positive way, instead of taking the initiative to create that possibility. I feel that’s wrong; it can act as a barrier that just promotes a feeling of isolation from others. To overcome feelings of isolation and loneliness, your underlying attitude makes a tremendous difference – approaching others with the thought of compassion in your mind is the best way.

I believe that our underlying or fundamental nature is gentleness, and intelligence is a later development.

Achieving genuine happiness may require bringing about a transformation in your outlook and way of thinking.

For mental peace, one of the most important factors is compassion and affection, a sense of caring.

At one level, all major religious traditions have the same aim – to transform the individual into a positive being.
- Dalai Lama

“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.”
~ Oscar Wilde

Just because you make a mistake doesn’t mean you are a mistake.
♥ Georgette Mosbacher

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
- Jim Jarmusch

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
- Frank Loyd Wright

For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it.
~ Ivan Panin ♡

“What the world needs is not dogma, but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.”
- Bertrand Russell

☮Peace is the respect for the rights of others. (El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz ). — Benito Juarez (1806-1872)

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former – Albert Einstein
Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.
— Henry Ward Beecher

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

I look at people from a positive angle, seeking positive aspects. This immediately creates a feeling of affinity, a kind of connectedness.
- Dalai Lama

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

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

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

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
- Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970)

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.
– Albert Schweitzer

“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Wisdom is knowing what to overlook, what to ignore, and what to pay close attention to
~ Rick Warren

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
- Latin Proverb

I’ve always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best.
♥ Akeem Olajuwon

Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river.
~ Victor Hugo

The creator of the universe is lining up things in my favour.
~ Joel Osteen ✔

“Step up the stairs or stare at the steps”
~ Ralph Nichol

“Of all animals, the cat alone attains to the comtemplative life. He regards the wheel of existence from without, like the Buddha.”
- Andrew Lang

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
- Helen Keller

Sometimes it’s what you don’t say that counts.

If you must say yes, say it with an open heart. If you must say no, say it without fear.
~ Paulo Coelho

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
~ Joseph Brackett ~

Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way . . . out of that a new holiday was born . . . a Festivus for the rest of us! ~ Jerry Stiller as “Frank Costanza” in Seinfeld (Festivus holiday)

The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it’s also the most important — and that’s the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations. ~ Wesley Clark

I think we should be very clear on this… this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment… It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn’t founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can’t lose that in this country. We’ve got to get it back. ~ Wesley Clark (born 23 December 1944)

Working together, we can build a world in which the rule of law — not the rule of force — governs relations between states. A world in which leaders respect the rights of their people, and nations seek peace, not destruction or domination. And neither we nor anyone else should live in fear ever again. ~ Wesley Clark

“Heaven helps those who help themselves” is a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless. ~ Samuel Smiles

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery. ~ Samuel Smiles

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#23

Good fortune attend each merry man’s friend
That doth but the best that he may,
Forgetting old wrongs with carols and songs
To drive the cold winter away.
~ “All Hail to The Days” (or “The Praise of Christmas”) ~
Traditional 17th century English carol

My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy. ~ George Eliot (died 22 December 1880)

It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

The holiness of the real
Is always there, accessible
In total immanence. The nodes
Of transcendence coagulate
In you, the experiencer,
And in the other, the lover.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~

While you live … you have a duty to life. … The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them. … Otherwise they fade away. ~ Charles de Lint

That’s the thing with magic. You’ve got to know it’s still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you. ~ Charles de Lint

God is not, as in scholasticism, the final subject of all predicates. He is being as unpredicable. The existence of the creature, in so far as it exists, is the existence of God, and the creature’s experience of God is therefore in the final analysis equally unpredicable. Neither can even be described; both can only be indicated. We can only point at reality, our own or God’s. The soul comes to the realization of God by knowledge, not as in the older Christian mysticism by love. Love is the garment of knowledge. The soul first trains itself by systematic unknowing until at last it confronts the only reality, the only knowledge, God manifest in itself. The soul can say nothing about this experience in the sense of defining it. It can only reveal it to others. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#22

.•❀◦*☺❀♡❀✰∗⋄*˚°•.❤.•°˚*⋄∗✰

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

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

All art is but imitation of nature
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“”We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”"
- Aristotle

My eyes sing with excitement.. they see your Divine Worth!
~ Hafiz

The Bird That Is Your Soul

When His light shines — without a veil — neither the sky remains nor the earth, not the sun, nor the moon.

God embraces all…there is nothing that is not a part of him already.

Remember God! His remembrance is the strength in the wings of the bird that is your soul.

The souls of all friends of God are connected with one another.

You must seek anything that you wish to find.
Not so with the Friend…
You begin to seek after you find Him.
~ Mevlana Rumi

Translation by Fatemeh Keshavarz

Carl Sagan:

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the Cosmic Ocean …

We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself ….

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. … Recently, we’ve managed to wade a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting.

For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young, and curious, and brave. It shows much promise.

We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature.

The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after.

We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.

We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.

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 size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.- Carl Sagan

Bliss is not added to your nature,
it is merely revealed as your true natural state,
eternal and imperishable.
~Ramana Maharishi

“I do not fix problems. I fix my thinking. Then problems fix themselves.”
- Louise L. Hay

Sometimes life is all about perspective… I’m not living the life I thought I would lead, but it does have meaning, purpose. There is love… there is joy… there is laughter.
- Christopher Reeve

‎”Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
- Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
- Kahlil Gibran

There is nothing more uncommon than common sense
- Frank Lloyd Wright

“The difference between the impossible & the possible lies in a person’s determination”
~ Tommy Lasorda

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.
~ Turkish Proverb

“A universal approach to World problems is the only sound basis for peace”
~ Dalai Lama

There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do
- Bill Watterson

“Success requires no explanation; failures must be doctored with alibis.”
~ Napoleon Hill

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
- Kahlil Gibran

“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.”
~ Hunter S Thompson

The Amen of nature is always a flower.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.
~ Roy Goodman

Life is a paradise for those who love many things with a passion.
~ L. Buscaglia ♥

There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.
- Bill Watterson

START bandwagoning among GOP shows that first best is stopping Obama, but second best isn’t always voting no.
- Ezra Klein

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month’s study of books.
~ Chinese Proverb

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

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

Man is not made for defeat.
~ Ernest Hemingway

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

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
~ Albert Einstein

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

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

Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations.
~ David Gerrold

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.
~ John Ruskin

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

“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

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

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

“Compassion is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace, mental stability and for human survival.”
- Dalai Lama

“The best way to succeed in this world is to act on the advice we give to other people.”
- Proverb

“When it’s obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”
- Confucius

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
~ Dr. Maya Angelou

Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its troubles…. it empties TODAY of its strength.
~ Corrie Ten Boom ✔

Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it.
♥ Bernard Meltzerabout

“Nothing compares — in anything I have ever done — with passing the health care bill.”
- Nancy Pelosi

“The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.”
- William M. Thackeray

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.
~ Aristotle Onassis

The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom, in the heart.
~ William Hazlitt

All things are born in an explosion of LOVE. Life is whatever you imagine it to be. Dream it and you’ll create it.
~ Salerno ♥

♥ “I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you’re prepared for it.”
-Denzel Washington

No person was ever wise by chance.
~ Seneca

God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise.
♥ George Bernard Shaw

Remedy your deficiencies and your merits will take care of themselves.
~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, They are in each other all along.
~ Rumi

I have fallen in love with Someone who hides inside you.
~ Hafiz ♥

My goal is God Himself Not joy, nor peace Nor even blessing But Himself, my God!
- Joyce Rogers

Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving!
~ Kahlil Gibran

Who gets up early to discover the moment life begins?
~ Rumi

I love inspiring people, and if I can make a difference in one person’s life, then that’s success for me!
~ Sasha Azevedo

Freedom isn’t worth having if it doesn’t include the freedom to make mistakes.
♥ Mahatma Gandhi

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
~ Rumi

Achieving genuine happiness may require bringing about a transformation in your outlook and way of thinking.
- Dalai Lama

Work in the invisible world at least as hard as you do in the visible.
~ Rumi

If you speak it often enough, you will come to feel what you speak.
~ Abraham-Hicks

Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on.
♥ Les Brown

Knowing thyself is the only way to experience the meaning and significance of existence.
- Osho

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
~ Carl Sagan

YOU, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. ~ Buddha

“When you come to a fork in the road….take it” ~Yogi Berra

Everyone who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.
~ Aldous Huxley

‎”Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free and realizing you were the prisoner!” – Max Lucado

When My servants ask you concerning Me, I am indeed Close to them. I listen to the prayer of every suppliant when he calls on Me. Islam

Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness. -Oprah Winfrey

On earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it – Jules Renard

An open heart is a sanctuary where all are welcome. ~ Paul Ferrini ♡

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.
- George Bernard Shaw

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
- Joseph Conrad

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
- Jean Paul Richter

“When you lose, don’t lose the lesson”
~ Dalai Lama

A deep silence revives the listening and the speaking of those two who meet on the riverbank
- Rumi

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is”
~ William Blake

“We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”
- Indira Gandhi

If you never did you should. These things are FUN and fun is GOOD!
~ Dr. Seuss (◕‿◕)✰

In the long dark night/ before hope of morning light/ the choice is clear/ surrender or fight/ give into darkness or let your soul ignite.
- Cory Booker

As one has planted, so does one harvest; such is the field of karma.
~ Sri Guru Granth Sahib

☮We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
- Jimmy Carter

The flood of peace flows over the boundaries of your mind and moves on in infinite directions.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

We believe that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and it is through love that the world will change.
~ Leslie Temple Thurston

Amplify’d from www.spacetelescope.org

Doing Cartwheels to Celebrate the End of an Era

Doing Cartwheels to Celebrate the End of an Era

An image of the Cartwheel Galaxy taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been reprocessed using the latest techniques to mark the closure of the Space Telescope European Coordination Facility (ST-ECF), based near Munich in Germany, and to celebrate its achievements in supporting Hubble science in Europe over the past 26 years.

Astronomer Bob Fosbury, who is stepping down as Head of the ST-ECF, was responsible for much of the early research into the Cartwheel Galaxy along with the late Tim Hawarden — including giving the object its very apposite name — and so this image was selected as a fitting tribute. The object was first spotted on wide-field images from the UK Schmidt telescope and then studied in detail using the Anglo-Australian Telescope.

Lying about 500 million light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor, the cartwheel shape of this galaxy is the result of a violent galactic collision. A smaller galaxy has passed right through a large disc galaxy and produced shock waves that swept up gas and dust — much like the ripples produced when a stone is dropped into a lake — and sparked regions of intense star formation (appearing blue). The outermost ring of the galaxy, which is 1.5 times the size of our Milky Way, marks the shock wave’s leading edge. This object is one of the most dramatic examples of the small class of ring galaxies.

This image was produced after Hubble data was reprocessed using the free open source software FITS Liberator 3, which was developed at the ST-ECF. Careful use of this widely used state-of-the-art tool on the original Hubble observations of the Cartwheel Galaxy has brought out more detail in the image than ever before.

Although the ST-ECF is closing, ESA’s mission to bring amazing Hubble discoveries to the public will be unaffected, with Hubblecasts, press and photo releases, and Hubble Pictures of the Week continuing to be regularly posted on spacetelescope.org.

Read more at www.spacetelescope.org

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

#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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

I am a passenger on Spaceship Earth.
- Buckminster Fuller

“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

 

The Greatest Stars- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, George Mason, Max Born, Kennedy, Santana, Baez, Gaye, Trungpa, & Zinn

Peace is the only battle worth waging.
- Albert Camus

Nonviolence is absolute respect for each human being.
- Adolpho Perez Esquival

The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.

Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.

I’m laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing.
- Carlos Santana

If you want peace, work for justice.
- Pope Paul VI

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

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

A lot of Americans think they got a tax cut, and they didn’t because their local property tax went up, their excise tax went up, their sales tax went up, and their prices went up and everything else, because we failed to invest in some of these other things we ought to be doing. … We are squeezing the middle class, we are losing the middle class, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is growing wider and wider, not closing as it used to be.
- Senator John Kerry (Born December 11, 1943)

http://thinkexist.com

Serenity is not freedom from the storm but peace amid the storm.
- Alcoholics Anonymous

One man in the right makes a majority.
- Abraham Lincoln

To save one life, it is as if you had saved the world.
- Talmud

Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace
- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Don’t think, just do.
- Horace

A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.
- Marquis de Sade

Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.
- Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
- John F. Kennedy

Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.
- William Wordsworth

http://www.quotesaboutlife.ca/

A thorn in the foot is hard to find.
What about a thorn in the heart?
If everyone saw the thorn in his heart,
when would sorrow gain the upper hand?
- Mevlana Rumi

Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44206766546

http://www.facebook.com/beloved.of.rumi

When will you begin your long journey into yourself?
- Rumi

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
- Blaise Pascal

Peace is a daily,a weekly,a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures
- John F. Kennedy

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

But more than that, no unloving words were ever spoken, and everything was held up as another small piece of proof that it can be this way, it doesn’t have to be that way; if there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it heavy walls, and we will furnish it with soft red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweler’s felt so that we should never hear it.

Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.
- Jonathan Safran Foer

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life is either a daring adventure.. or nothing.
- Helen Keller

The sacred heart is a secret heart.
- Swami Satchidananda

When your thoughts, speech and actions all go together, then they will bear fruit.
- Integral Yoga

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
- Henry David Thoreau

Today, the values of democracy, open society, respect for human rights, and equality are becoming recognized all over the world as universal values. To my mind there is an intimate connection between democratic values, such as transparency, the rule of law and freedom of information, and the fundamental values of human goodness.
- Dalai Lama

Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats dominate our political, economic and cultural systems.
- Cornel West

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

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

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

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

If it’s natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
- Joan Baez

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
- Howard Zinn

We always have a choice: we can limit our perception so that we close off vastness, or we can allow vastness to touch us.
- Chögyam Trungpa

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.
- Louis D. Brandeis

Nothing happens unless first we dream.
- Carl Sandburg

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
- Basho

The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world.
- Max Born (Born December 11, 1882)

The classical Greeks were not influenced by the classical Greeks.
-Principia Discordia

When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future.
- Bernard Meltzer

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
- Thomas Carlyle

Love as much as you can from wherever you are.
- Thaddeus Golas

Let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE.

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?

I believe that world literature has it in its power to help mankind, in these its troubled hours, to see itself as it really is, notwithstanding the indoctrinations of prejudiced people and parties.

They were mistaken, and will always be mistaken, who prophesy that art will disintegrate, that it will outlive its forms and die. It is we who shall die — art will remain.

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

I am of course confident that I will fulfil my tasks as a writer in all circumstances — from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer’s pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.

One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.

At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years. Neither the wisest of leaders, nor the noblest of kings, nor yet the Church — none of them has been able to stop it. And don’t succumb to the facile belief that wars will be stopped by hotheaded socialists. Or that rational and just wars can be sorted out from the rest. There will always be thousands of thousands to whom even such a war will be senseless and unjustified. Quite simply, no state can live without war, that is one of the state’s essential functions. … War is the price we pay for living in a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and evil is rooted out of human beings. The state was created to protect us from evil. In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand foci of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The state is called upon to check these impulses — but it generates others of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction — and that is war.
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Born December 11, 1918)

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.

I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can’t even describe and aren’t even aware of.

Values are not trendy items that are casually traded in.

When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need.

You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.
- Ellen Goodman

Our All is at Stake, and the little Conveniencys and Comforts of Life, when set in Competition with our Liberty, ought to be rejected not with Reluctance but with Pleasure.

In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim — that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.
- George Mason (Born December 11, 1725)

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
- Jean Cocteau

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James

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

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
- Audrey Hepburn

You really can change, your reality is based on the way you think.
- Oprah

The real friendship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Go in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.
- Henry David Thoreau

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.
- Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Born December 11, 1931)

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
- Peace Quotes

http://twitter.com/peacequotes

“Explanation: Created as planet Earth sweeps through dusty debris from mysterious, asteroid-like, 3200 Phaethon, the annual Geminid Meteor Shower should be the best meteor shower of the year. The Geminids are predicted to peak on the night of December 13/14, but you can start watching for Geminid meteors this weekend. The best viewing is after midnight in a dark, moonless sky, with the shower’s radiant constellation Gemini well above the horizon – a situation that favors skygazers in the northern hemisphere. In this picture from the 2009 Geminid shower, a bright meteor with a greenish tinge flashes through the sky over the Mojave Desert near Barstow, California, USA. Recognizable in the background are bright stars in the northern asterism known as the Big Dipper, framing the meteor streak.”

Amplify’d from www.nasa.gov

The Greatest Stars

The small open star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the NGC 6357 nebula in Scorpius, about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. The brightest object in the center of this image is designated Pismis 24-1 and was once thought to weigh as much as 200 to 300 solar masses. This would not only have made it by far the most massive known star in the galaxy, but would have put it considerably above the currently believed upper mass limit of about 150 solar masses for individual stars.

However, Hubble Space Telescope high-resolution images of the star show that it is really two stars orbiting one another that are each estimated to be 100 solar masses.

In addition, spectroscopic observations with ground-based telescopes further reveal that one of the stars is actually a tight binary that is too compact to be resolved even by Hubble. This divides the estimated mass for Pismis 24-1 among the three stars. Although the stars are still among the heaviest known, the mass limit has not been broken due to the multiplicity of the system.

The images of NGC 6357 were taken with Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in April 2002.

ImageCredit: NASA, ESA, and J. Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain)

Read more at www.nasa.gov

 

Too Close To A Black Hole- Willa Cather, Chomsky, Einstein, Paulo Coelho, Nietzsche, Rumi, Hafiz, Gaiman, Kundera

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving…

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Never memorize something that you can look up.

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
- Albert Einstein

And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.

It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away
- Paulo Coelho

Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.
- Alan Moore

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.
- Kahlil Gibran

He is not dead who departs from life with a high and noble fame; but he is dead, even while living, whose brow is branded with infamy.”
- Johann Ludwig Tieck

If you are going to tell people the truth, be funny or they will kill you.
- Billy Wilder

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
- Erica Jong

If there’s anything unsettling to the stomach, it’s watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.
- Marlon Brando

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
- Walt Whitman

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
- Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that’s beautiful.

You can’t measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.
- Milan Kundera

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.
I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.
I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.
I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.

Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
- Neil Gaiman

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

Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man has but little heeded the advice of the wise men. He has been – fatefully, if not willingly – less virtuous, less constant, less rational, less peaceful than he knows how to be, than he is fully capable of being. He has been led astray from the ways of peace and brotherhood by his addiction to concepts and attitudes of narrow nationalism, racial and religious bigotry, greed and lust for power.
- Ralph J. Bunche

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
- Avram Noam Chomsky (Born December 7, 1928)

Peace is a chain reaction of love.
- A First Grader

If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends.
- Mohammad Ali Jinnah

There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Transparency, info, clarity & interpretation, are required for a deep democracy. That’s why Wikileaks is a challenge to the powers that be.
- Cornel West

The great threat to the young and pure in heart is not what they read but what they don’t read.
- Heywood C. Broun (Born December 7, 1888)

Oh, if a man tried to take his time on earth and prove before he died what one man’s life could be worth, I wonder what would happen to this world?
- Harry Chapin

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
- Willa Cather (Born December 7, 1973)

I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for.
- Thornton Wilder (Died December 7, 1975)

It’s an alethiometer. It’s one of only six that were ever made. Lyra, I urge you again: keep it private. … It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you’ll have to learn by yourself. Now go — it’s getting lighter…
- Philip Pullman (Quote from The Golden Compass (1995) the movie adaptation opening on December 7, 2007)

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed. – Algernon Sydney (Executed on this date, no birthdate known)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#7

War is fear cloaked in courage.
- William C. Westmoreland

You are a precious gift of God….now go be who you are.
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path
- Morpheus, The Matrix

Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
- A. G. Bell

Literature is a state of culture. Poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.
- Juan Ramon Jimenez

http://themodernword.com

All know the way, but few actually walk it
- Bodhidharma

For beautiful lips, speak words of kindness.
- Audrey Hepburn

There are different wells within your heart. Some fill with each good rain, Others are far too deep for that.

This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love!

The fish needs to say “Something ain’t right about this camel ride- and I’m feeling so damn thirsty”
- Hafiz

During your life, never stop dreaming. No one can take away your dreams.
- 2pac

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
- Basho

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
- Plato

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

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The giving of love is an education in itself.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

I’ve discovered that the fastest way “to find God” is to find each other. To
stop hiding out from each other, of course, we must stop hiding from
ourselves.
- Neale Donald Walsch

If I adore You out of fear of Hell,
Burn me in Hell!
If I adore you out of desire for Paradise
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore you for Yourself alone,
Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty
- Rabia al-Basri

This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

‎The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

Only from the heart can you touch the sky.

I pretended to leap to see if I could live there. Someday I must actually arrive there or nothing will be left to arrive.

O lovers, lovers it is time
to set out from the world.
I hear a drum in my soul’s ear
coming from the depths of the stars.
Our camel driver is at work;
the caravan is being readied.
He asks that we forgive him
for the disturbance he has caused us,
He asks why we travelers are asleep.
Everywhere the murmur of departure;
the stars, like candles
thrust at us from behind blue veils,
and as if to make the invisible plain,
a wondrous people have come forth.

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

And just the moment
when you are all confused
leaps forth a voice
hold me close
I’m love and
………I’m always yours.

Before a flower can open in His rose garden thousands of thotns come to pierce it. Although the soul has received only grief from Him, Love has made her turn away from all worldly attachments: She has preferred this anguish to all rewards. She has chosen suffering above all joys. In her eyes, His thorn is more glorious than any flower, His lock more precious than all other keys, His tyranny victorious over all earthly happiness. The poison of His anger transforms itself into tenderness, His refusal is worth far more than the agreement of others. Cornelian and happiness of supreme lover of God-All the joys of this world are nothing to it.

Silence
You are the diamond in me
the Jewel of my real wealth!
From your soft earth
grow thousands
of rose gardens
whose perfumes
drown me
in my heart.

My love, you are closer to me than myself,
you shine through my eyes.
Your light is brighter than the Moon.
Step into the garden
so all the flowers,
even the tall poplar
can kneel before your beauty.

Let your voice silence he lily
famous for its hundred tounges
When you want to be kind
you are Softer than the soul
but when you widraw
You can be so cold and harsh

The Buraq of love has taken my mind as well as my heart, do not ask me where. I have reached such a realm that there is no moon, nor day. I have reached a world where the world is no longer the world.

And just the moment
when you are all confused
leaps forth a voice
hold me close
I’m love and
I’m always yours.

That barbed wire on your path is the mind
Cut the wire and your path clearly find.
Heart trickster, soul veil and mind bind
To find the path you must put all three behind.
When you transcend heart and soul as well as mind
…It is like giving sight to the blind.

There is no salvation for the soul
but to fall in Love.
Only lovers can escape
out of these two worlds.
This was ordained in creation.
Only from the heart
can you reach the sky:
The Rose of Glory
can grow only from the heart.

‎I want to see you.
Know your voice.

Recognize you when you
first come ’round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come
into a room you’ve just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
“more”

Let the beauty we love be what we do

The grapes of my body can only become wineAfter the winemaker tramples me.I surrender my spirit like grapes to his tramplingSo my inmost heart can blaze and dance with joy.Although the grapes go on weeping blood and sobbing“I cannot bear any more anguish, any more cruelty”The trampler stuffs cotton in his ears: “I am not working in ignoranceYou can deny me if you want, you have every excuse, But it is I who am the Master of this Work. And when through my Passion you reach Perfection,You will never be done praising my name.

And if every way is closed before you, the secret one will show a secret path no other eyes have seen.

I hear nothing in my ear but your voice.
Heart has plundered mind of its eloquence.

Love writes a transparent calligraphy, so on
the empty page my soul can read and recollect.

My beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be

Do you want to enter paradise?
To walk to the path of Truth, you need the grace of GOD.
We all face death in the end.
But on the way, be careful, never to hurt a human heart

You’ve no idea how hard I’ve looked for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.
What’s the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the Ocean.
Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient.
It’s no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these.
So- I’ve brought you a mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me

Because of love
I have become
the giver of light.

Only You
i choose
among the entire world

is it fair
of you
letting me be unhappy?

The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere,
…they’re in each other all along.

if you pass your night
and merge it with dawn
for the sake of heart
what do you think will happen?

if the entire world
is covered with the blossoms
you have labored to plant
what do you think will happen?

if the elixir of life
that has been hidden in the dark
fills the desert and towns
what do you think will happen?

if because of
your generosity and love
a few humans find their lives
what do you think will happen?

if you pour an entire jar
filled with joyous wine
on the head of those already drunk
what do you think will happen?

go my friend
bestow your love
even on your enemies
if you touch their hearts
what do you think will happen?

what is it you seek everyday n everynight…..
if it is pleasure it will elude you
if it is contentment pleasure will be at your feet..

Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something else.

My sweet heart,
you have aroused my passion,
your touch has filled me with desire,
I am no longer separate from you,
these are precious moments,
I beseech you,
don’t let me wait,
let me merge with you.

Don’t mind the destination,
Don’t mind the end.

Don’t mind the good or bad
or right and wrong.
Grow from the past,
But grab hold of now.
Now is always evolving.
Listen my love,

As you walk this eternal path,
Show courage by remaining guiltless
in the midst of an ever-reaching end.

Don’t expect to find any more in me
Than what you give
Don’t search for Hidden pockets
Because I have shown you that
All I have is all you gave…

Death comes, and what we thought
we needed loses importance.

The living shiver, focused
on a muscular dark hand,
rather than the glowing cup it holds
or the toast being proposed.

In that same way love enters
your life, and the I, the ego,
a corrupt, self-absorbed king,
dies during the night.

Let him go.
Breathe cold new air,
the nothing of roselight.

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there

This is how I would die into the love I have for you:
As pieces of cloud dissolve in Sunlight.

People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.

When I see your face, the stones start spinning.
You appear. All studying wanders.
I lose my place.

Water turns pearly.
Fire dies down and does not consume.

In your presence I do not want
what I thought I wanted,
those three little hanging lamps.

Inside your face the ancient manuscripts
seem like rusty mirrors.
You breathe, and new shapes appear.

The music of a desire as widespread as spring
begins to move like a great wagon.

Drive slowly.
Some of us walking alongside are lame.

Oh soul,you worry too much.

You have seen your own strength.

You have seen your own beauty.

You have seen your golden wings.

Of anything less, why do you worry?

You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul.

Rationality
He who perceives Your chain-like, linked tress-on-tress and then stays “rational” is mad.

Today, like every other day, we wake up emptyand frightened. Don’t open the door to the studyand begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Mevlana Rumi

http://www.facebook.com/mevlana

Amplify’d from apod.nasa.gov
Too Close to a Black Hole
Credit & Copyright:
Alain Riazuelo

Explanation:
What would you see if you went right up to a black hole?
Above is a
computer generated image highlighting how strange things would look.
The black hole
has such strong gravity that light is noticeably bent towards it -
causing some very unusual
visual distortions.
Every star in the normal frame has at least two bright
images -
one on each side of the
black hole.
Near the
black hole, you can see the whole sky – light from
every direction is bent
around
and comes back to you.
The original background map was taken from the
2MASS
infrared sky survey, with stars from the
Henry Draper
catalog superposed.
Black holes
are thought to be the densest state of matter, and there is
indirect evidence
for their presence in
stellar binary systems and the centers of
globular clusters,
galaxies, and
quasars.

Read more at apod.nasa.gov

 

“Sell your cleverness & buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.” – Mevlana Rumi <3

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.

Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.

This is what is signified by the words Anā l-Ḥaqq, “I am God.” People imagine that it is a presumptuous claim, whereas it is really a presumptuous claim to say Ana ‘l-’abd, “I am the slave of God”; and Anā l-Ḥaqq, “I am God” is an expression of great humility. The man who says Ana ‘l-’abd, “I am the servant of God” affirms two existences, his own and God’s, but he that says Anā l-Ḥaqq, “I am God” has made himself non-existent and has given himself up and says “I am God”, that is, “I am naught, He is all; there is no being but God’s.” This is the extreme of humility and self-abasement.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it.
Whoever has polished it more sees more — more unseen forms become manifest to him.

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones, To Him we shall return.

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn’t matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.

Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood, move to an infant drinking milk, to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom, to a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo. You might say, “The world outside is vast and intricate. There are wheatfields and mountain passes, and orchards in bloom. At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.”
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up in the dark with eyes closed. Listen to the answer.
There is no “other world.” I only know what I’ve experienced. You must be hallucinating.

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

I am so happy, I cannot be contained in the world;
But like a spirit, I am hidden from the eyes of the world.
If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me;
For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.

The men of God are like fishes in the ocean; they pop up into view on the surface here and there and everywhere, as they please.

He whose intellect overcomes his desire is higher than the angels; he whose desire overcomes his intellect is less than an animal.

The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

He says, “There’s nothing left of me.
I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight.”
This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
and told the truth!
The ruby and the sunrise are one.
Be courageous and discipline yourself.
Completely become hearing and ear, and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.

I want a heart which is split, part by part, because of the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longing and complaint to it.

You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?

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

As everything
changes overnight,
I praise
the breaking of promises.
Whatever Love
wants, it gets,
not next year, now!
I swear by the one
who never says
tomorrow,
as the circle
of the moon
refuses to sell
installments
of light.
It gives
all it has.

From Heaven, the Starry Spheres, the void, you will receive, continually, hundreds of impressions. Why do I say impressions? I mean; the direct Vision of God.

Polish your Heart
and you’ll soar
above all color
and perfume;
you will contemplate
Beauty ceaselessly;
you will abandon
the form
and rind of
consciousness,
and unfurl
the flag
of Certainty.
When the forms
of the
Eight Paradises
flame out,
you will know
your Heart’s tablets
are receptive.

You are looking for God. That is the problem. The God in you is the one who looks.

The nightingale bestows a definite desire.
There is an ocean and there is a bridge.
There are two or three numbered days.
I am none of those.
I am more the way you are,
flowers opening,
and the soul in silence,
but something in YOU will not let ME keep quiet.

Come,
like a real dervish,
and dance among us,
Don’t joke,
don’t boast
I am already present.
In the center
of your house
I am like a pillar,
On your rooftop
I bow my head
like a gutter.
I turn
like a cup
in the heart
of your assembly;
In the thick
of your battles,
I strike
like an arrow.
When I give
my life
for yours,
what Grace
descends!
Each life
I give
gives you
a thousand
new
worlds!

Like a dream
that flows
from heart
to heart,
I, too,
flow continually
through all hearts.
Everything you think,
I know;
Your heart
is so close
to mine.
I have other symbols,
even more I intimate,
Come closer
still,
dare
to invoke
them.

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, yet again, come, come.
- Inscribed on Rumi’s Shrine in Konya, Turkey

A spirit that lives in this world
and does not wear the shirt of love,
such an existence is a deep disgrace.
Be foolishly in love, because love is
all there is.
There is no way into presence
except through a love exchange.
If someone asks, But what is love?
answer, Dissolving the will.
True freedom comes to those
who have escaped the questions
of freewill and fate.

The moon has become a dancer
at this festival of love.
This dance of light,
This sacred blessing,
This divine love,
beckons us
to a world beyond
only lovers can see
with their eyes of fiery passion.
They are the chosen ones
who have surrendered.
Once they were particles of light
now they are the radiant sun.
They have left behind
the world of deceitful games.
They are the privileged lovers
who create a new world
with their eyes of burning passion.

In this house,
there are
thousands of corpses
You sit and say:
“Here is my kingdom.”
A handful of dust moans
“I was hair.”
Another handful whispers:
“I was bones.”
Another cries:
“I was old.”
Yet another:
“I was young.”
Another shouts:
“Stop where you are!
Stop!
Don’t you know
who I am!
You sit
destroyed,
astounded,
and then suddenly
Love appears.
“Come closer still,”
Love says,
“it is I,
Eternal Life.”

We are a warm spell that comes in a relentless winter.
We are the sun, with all the different kinds of light.
We are the wind.
Doves, when they call coo, where they are looking for us.
Nightingales and parrots change their perches, hoping to be near us.
Fish, they swerved and leapt!
Waves from that stirring keep coming in.
The soul has been given its own ears,
to hear things the mind does not understand.
we have come out of slavery with bales of sugar cane,
no need to mention Egypt.
The sweetness of how we talk together
is what we crush and bring to the world.

Your soul
is so close
to mine
I know
what you
dream.
Friends
scan each other’s
depths;
Would I
be a Friend,
if I didn’t?
A Friend
is a mirror
of clear water;
I see my gains
in you,
and
my losses.

Suddenly the drunken sweetheart appeared out of my door.
She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side.
Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair
My face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands.

When an image brushes against You, it returns the Sun’s Rays like a Mirror.

‎Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

My words
become drunk
through one
of Your qualities,
Stagger
a thousand

times
between tongue
and heart,
heart and
tongue.
My words
are drunk,
my heart
is drunk,
and Your images
are drunk –
They all
pile up
on top of
each other,
and just
gaze.

When
Your image
dances
into
My Heart
How many
drunken images
seethe
along
with it!
They whirl
around
Your image,
Your moon-like
splendor whirling
at the center.
When
an image
brushes against
You,
it returns
the Sun’s Rays
like a Mirror.

Shatter open
my skull,
pour in it
the wine
of madness!
Let me be mad,
as mad as You,
mad with You,
with us.
Beyond
the sanity
of fools
is a burning desert
Where Your Sun
is whirling
in every atom;
drag me there,
Beloved,
drag me there,
let me roast
in Perfection!

Your face is the light in here
That makes my arms full of gentleness.
The beginning of a monthlong holiday,
the disc of the full moon, the shade of your hair,
these draw me in.
I dive deep into the pool of a mountain river,
folded into union,
as the split second
when the bat meets the ball
and there is one cry between us.

O,
sudden
Resurrection!
O,
boundless,
endless,
compassion!
You,
who set the Bush
of the Mind
on Fire
Have come
at last,
key to this
vast prison,
You Blaze
among
the poverty-stricken
like Gold,
Chamberlain
of the
Sun,
Heart
of All
Hope.

Lovers, it is time
for the taste of fire.
Let sadness and your fears of death
sit in the corner and sulk.
The sky itself reels with love.
There is one being inside
all of us, one peace.
Poet, let every word tremble its wind bell.

Nothingness,
through You,
births these songs
of pure passion,
Time’s darkness
is adorned
with their luminous
tears.
Cupbearer!
Never forget us!
Fill the worlds
with your breath!
Archangel of the Heart,
make clay and water live!
Breathe into our ears
the Divine Breath of Love!
Blow on us,
separate us,
Send grief
to grief,
and joy
to joy
So mind sinks back
to mind,
and the Heart
Soars to Heaven!

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.

Show
Your Beauty,
Moon of God,
So friends
and enemies
can witness it
With
whitened faces
and eyes dark
with tears.
Grief
and longing
make all men
groan:
“Save us
from the agony
this tyrant inflicts
Beautiful
and terrible
as a dragon!”
You have
made grief’s lute
sing out.

Come! Take a pick-axe
And break apart
Your stony self.
The heart’s matrix
is glutted with rubies.
Springs of laughter
are buried in your breast.
Unstop the wine jar
Batter down the door
to the treasury
of nonexistence.
The water in your jug
is brackish and low.
Smash the jug
and come to the river!

You are the comfort of my soul in the season of sorrow, You are the wealth of my spirit in the heartbreak of loss, The unimaginable the unknowable, that is what you give my soul when it moves in your direction … Inside me a hundred beings are putting their fingers to their lips and saying, “That’s enough for now. Shhhhh.” Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.

From
the King’s hand
comes to me
directly
The cup
…and jar
of Eternal
Wine
The source
of the sun
itself
begs me
for a mouthful.
I am silent,
my throat
is sick,
you go on
talking
if you have
to.

I wave
my hands
like leaves,
I whirl
dancing
…like the moon;
My turning
may seem
earthly,
but it is purer,
far purer,
Than the turning
of all the spheres
of Heaven.

The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere,
they’re in each other all along.

Without destroying me,
how could He pour me
this treasure?
He had to throw me
to the waves
or Love’s Sea
to sweep me
away.
What can the man
of words guess
of the sweetness
of silence?
What can
the arid heart
know of always-flowing
freshness?
I am the mirror,
I am the mirror,
I am not a man
of words –
You’ll know
my spiritual state
when your ears
become gaze.

Dissolver of sugar,
dissolve me if this is the time.
Do it gently with the touch of a hand,
or a look.
Every morning I wait at dawn.
That is when it has happened before.
Or do it suddenly like an execution.
How else can I be ready for this death.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44206766546

Amplify’d from en.wikiquote.org

This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.

I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
and told the truth!

The ruby and the sunrise are one.

I want a heart which is split, part by part, because of the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longing and complaint to it.

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.

The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.

Whoever gives reverence receives reverence.

If you wish to shine like day, burn up the night of self-existence. Dissolve in the Being who is everything.

What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe.

There is a community of the spirit Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise.

There is no reality but God, says the completely surrendered sheik, who is an ocean for all beings.

I can’t stop pointing to the beauty. Every moment and place says, “Put this design in your carpet!”

Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being.

Every object and being in the universe is a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin.

Christ is the population of the world, and every object as well.

The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did about the future.

Good and bad are mixed. If you don’t have both,you don’t belong with us.

Learn from Ali how to fight without your ego participating.

God’s lion did nothing that didn’t originate from his deep center.

This that we are now … The human body and the universe grew from this, not this from the universe and the human body.

Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.

Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart.

That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

To Love is to reach God.

Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.

My head is bursting with the joy of the unknown.

This is a gathering of Lovers. In this gathering there is no high, no low, no smart, no ignorant ,no special assembly, no grand discourse, no proper schooling required…

Love said to me, there is nothing that is not me. Be silent.

Even if you lose yourself in wrath for a hundred thousand years, at the end you will discover, it is me, who is the culmination of your dreams.

Didn’t I tell you?
They will accuse you of all the wrongdoings, they will call you ugly names, they will make you forget it is me, who is the source of your happiness.

The branch might seem like the fruit’s origin: In fact, the branch exist because of the fruit.

Rumi

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi or مولانا جلال الدين محمد بلخى Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi (30 September 120717 December 1273) was a Persian philosopher, theologian, poet, teacher, and founder of the Mevlevi (or Mawlawi) order of Sufism; also known as Mevlana (Our Guide), Jalaluddin Rumi, or simply Rumi.

Read more at en.wikiquote.org

 

Galactic Moths Drawn To A Bright Light – Happy Birthday George Eliot & André Gide- Rumi, Tolstoy, Albert Einstein

“Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.”
- Leo Tolstoy

“The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.”
- Elizabeth Drew

http://themodernword.com

“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
- Orson Welles

“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
- Winnie the Pooh

“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.”
- Charlotte Whitton

“They always talk who never think.”
- Matthew Prior

“Peace as a goal is an ideal which will not be contested by any government or nation, not even the most belligerent.”
- Aung San Suu Kyi

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
- Pericles

“Don’t be concerned that things appear to be falling apart: this has to happen in order for something new and wonderful to emerge.”
- Marianne Williamson

“The one who moves the mountain is the one who starts moving the small stones. The mountain could be the self, a relationship, a challenging task or situation. All challenges are opportunities in disguise. An opportunity to elevate the universe one person at a time.”
- Roozbeh Bahramali

“It is better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for someone you are not.

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself — and thus make yourself indispensable.”
- André Gide (Born November 22, 1869)

“I’d rather be a climbing ape than a falling angel.”
- Terry Pratchett

“My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

Those who trust us educate us.

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.

O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men’s search
To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.

This is life to come, —
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, — be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

The realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

The heart must break
For lack of voice, or fingers that can wake
The lyre’s full answer; nay, its chords were all
Too few to meet the growing spirit’s call.

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.”
- George Eliot (Born November 22, 1819)

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

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”
- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

http://www.notable-quotes.com/

“Kisses, even to the air, are beautiful.”
- Drew Barrymore

“There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.”
- Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
- Star Trek

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.”
- Azarias

“The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.

If all things are in common among friends, the most precious is Wisdom…

Anything we take in the Universe, because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way, the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it.

Everything that consists in generation, decay, alteration and change is not an entity, but a condition and circumstance of entity and being…

This whole which is visible in different ways in bodies, as far as formation, constitution, appearance, colors and other properties and common qualities, is none other than the diverse face of the same substance…

What you receive from others is a testimony to their virtue; but all that you do for others is the sign and clear indication of your own.

That which others saw from afar, I leave far behind me.

Divinity reveals herself in all things… everything has Divinity latent within itself.

The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life…

The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter.

Eternity maintaineth her substance throughout time, immensity throughout space, universal form throughout motion.

The single spirit doth simultaneously temper the whole together; this is the single soul of all things; all are filled with God.”
- Giordano Bruno

“This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say. I don’t plan it. When I’m outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous, Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.

I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.

I want a heart which is split, part by part, because of the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longing and complaint to it.

You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.

The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.

Whoever gives reverence receives reverence.

If you wish to shine like day, burn up the night of self-existence. Dissolve in the Being who is everything.

What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe.

There is a community of the spirit Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise.

There is no reality but God, says the completely surrendered sheik, who is an ocean for all beings.

I can’t stop pointing to the beauty. Every moment and place says, “Put this design in your carpet!”

Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being.

Every object and being in the universe is a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin.

Christ is the population of the world, and every object as well.

The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did about the future.

Good and bad are mixed. If you don’t have both,you don’t belong with us.

Learn from Ali how to fight without your ego participating.

God’s lion did nothing that didn’t originate from his deep center.

This that we are now … The human body and the universe grew from this, not this from the universe and the human body.

Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation? What do you know of Love except the name? Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain, and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.

Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart.

That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

To Love is to reach God.

Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.

My head is bursting with the joy of the unknown.

This is a gathering of Lovers. In this gathering there is no high, no low, no smart, no ignorant, no special assembly, no grand discourse, no proper schooling required…

Love said to me, there is nothing that is not me. Be silent.

Even if you lose yourself in wrath for a hundred thousand years, at the end you will discover, it is me, who is the culmination of your dreams.

Didn’t I tell you?They will accuse you of all the wrongdoings, they will call you ugly names, they will make you forget it is me, who is the source of your happiness.

The branch might seem like the fruit’s origin: In fact, the branch exists because of the fruit.

The Astronomy of the Spirit
The body is a device to calculate
the astronomy of the spirit.
Look through that astrolabe
and become oceanic.

Your soul is so close to mine
I know what you dream.
Friends scan each other’s depths;
Would I be a Friend, if I didn’t?
A Friend is a mirror of clear water;
I see my gains in you, and my losses.

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.”
- Mevlana Rumi

“No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. Even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you no good without a sense of taking part.

Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists…

Whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.

I’m sorry that my voice was hard. Look down on yourselves from the stars, I cried, look down on yourselves from the stars…

We, my lord, are your dream, which finds you innocent for now.

Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different. Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.

My apologies to great questions for small answers.

How can we talk of order overall when the very placement of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?

Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light…

We call it a grain of sand but it calls itself neither grain nor sand…

The view doesn’t view itself. It exists in this world colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless.

There’s no life that couldn’t be immortal if only for a moment…

Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan…

For the sake of research, the big picture and definitive conclusions, one would have to transcend time, in which everything scurries and whirls.

I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds — a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.”
- Wislawa Szymborska

“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

There is a thing inherent and natural,
Which existed before heaven and earth.
Motionless and fathomless,
It stands alone and never changes;
It pervades everywhere and never becomes exhausted.
It may be regarded as the Mother of the Universe.
I do not know its name. If I am forced to give it a name, I call it Tao, and I name it as supreme.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

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, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, “We did this ourselves.”

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.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.

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.

Wise men don’t need to prove their point;
men who need to prove their point aren’t wise.
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

“If you want love, be love. If you need hope, be hope. If you long for a hero, be heroic.”
- Cory Booker

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.

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.

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.

Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
- Albert Einstein

“Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
- Albert Schweitzer

“Love cannot remain by itself; it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action & that action is service.

Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
- Mother Teresa

“If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
- Frank A. Clark

“Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?”
- Sai Baba

“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”
- Holocaust Museum

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
– Thomas Mann

“Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow.”
– Arthur Stringer

“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”
– Isaac Asimov

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
- Victor Hugo

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
- Henry David Thoreau

Amplify’d from www.spacetelescope.org

Smaller, dimmer galaxies appear to flit like moths around a radiant street light in this image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The brilliant central object is a supergiant elliptical galaxy, the dominant member of a galaxy cluster with the mouthful of a name MACSJ1423.8+2404. This great swarm of galaxies is located about five billion light-years away in the constellation Boötes (the Herdsman). MACSJ1423.8+2404 and other distant galaxy clusters offer astronomers a peek into the earlier days of our Universe when these colossal groupings were still taking shape. Over the 13.7 billion-year history of the cosmos, such galaxy clusters have emerged as the largest observed gravitationally bound structures.

But there is much more than meets the eye when it comes to galaxy clusters — they also hint at the vast majority of the Universe’s substance that we have not yet directly detected. Astronomers study clusters such as MACSJ1423.8+2404 to better understand the influence of dark energy, a mysterious force credited with accelerating the expansion of the Universe and accounting for some 72 percent of the mass of the Universe.

The application of what we can see and detect to the study of what we cannot does not end there with MACSJ1423.8+2404 and its ilk. Dark matter, estimated to account for about 23 percent of the mass of the Universe, exists in great quantities in galaxy clusters. The “normal” matter that comprises stars, planets and us trickles in at less than 5 percent.

Astronomers observe clusters to study how this dark matter gravitationally gathers visible matter and underpins these vast cosmic metropolises. The galactic moths are drawn to the clusters not by their light, but by the vast unseen reservoir of dark matter.

This image was created from images taken using the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The exposures were 75 and 76 minutes respectively, through yellow (F555W) and near-infrared (F814W) filters. The field of view is 3.2 arcminutes across.

Credit:

 ESA/Hubble and NASA

Galactic Moths Drawn to a Bright Light

See more at www.spacetelescope.org

 

A Massive Star In NGC 6357 – Voltaire, Berkman, Singer, Rumi, Emerson, Sagan, Ono, Hanh, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare

“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

“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/

“”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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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