Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Beginning under the Roman Empire, intellectual leadership in the West had been provided by Christianity. In the middle ages, who invented the first universities - in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge? The church.
In Gnosticism, the physical world did not ultimately matter - which meant physical suffering did not matter either. Seeking 'enlightenment' meant cultivating an attitude of detachment, even indifference.
No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.
Successful people make decisions quickly (as soon as all the facts are available) and change them very slowly (if ever). Unsuccessful people make decisions very slowly, and change them often and quickly.
Opportunity ... It has a sly habit of slipping in by the back door, and often it comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. Perhaps this is why so many fail to recognize opportunity.
Don't disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don't understand their logic. Don't pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific 'evidence'.
The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.
Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go. And don't worry too much about security. You will eventually have a deep security when you begin to do what you want.
Passion is the love of turning being into action. It fuels the engine of creation. It changes concepts to experience.... Never deny passion, for that is to deny Who You Are, and Who You Truly Want To Be.
I tell you this: There is no coincidence, and nothing happens "by accident." Each event and adventure is called to your Self by your Self in order that you might create and experience Who You Really Are.
You are free to announce and declare Who You Are in every moment of Now. Indeed, you are doing so, without even knowing it. You are not free, however, to declare who someone else is, or who they must be.
Enjoy everything. Need nothing. Needing someone is the fastest way to kill a relationship .. The greatest gift you can give someone is the strength and the power not to need you, to need you for nothing.
Life proceeds out of your intention. Your true intention is revealed by your actions, and your actions are determined by your true intention. As with everything in life (and life itself), it is a circle.
Personal happiness seems mysteriously and frustratingly elusive. Even when people achieve it, they can't hold onto it. That is the greatest clue, the biggest hint, the surest sign that something's amiss.
But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, and red and orange and yellow, like the ember in a nursery fire of a winter's evening. I remember them.
He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing that ever a man had been called.
So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding.
I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped up in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations.
This is how you can tell a real photographer: mostly, a real photographer does not say 'I wish I had my camera on me right now'. Instead a real photographer pulls out her camera and takes the photograph.
There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.
He shivered. His coat was thin, and it was obvious he would not get his kiss, which he found puzzling. The manly heroes of the penny dreadfuls and shilling novels never had these problems getting kissed.
Whereas there are lots of good novels out there; there are a few good movies out there. People have been writing great poems for years, but there aren't a lot of good comics. I like trying to write them.
When you meet a head of state, and you say, 'What is your most precious natural resource?' they will not say children at first, and then when you say, 'children,' they will pretty quickly agree with you.
While a significant part of learning certain comes from teaching - but good teaching and by good teachers - a major measure comes from exploration, from reinventing the wheel and finding out for oneself.
Just try the effect of putting beauty into your life, a little every day. You will find it magical. It will broaden and light up your outlook upon the world as the acquisition of money or fame never can.
The mere fact that so many continue to rise, year after year, out of just such conditions as you may think are fatal to your advancement, ought to convince you that you also can conquer your environment.
Once an idea is out and about, it can't be called back, silenced or erased. You can't contain it, any more than you could put the head of a dandelion back together after the wind has scattered its seeds.
DON'T wear loud clanging bangles at work, it's disruptive and noisy and your coworkers won't appreciate it! Bangles should have a gentle wind-chimey tinkle, not the crash bang of a million pots and pans.
The idea of being able to build things bottom up, atom by atom, has made [scientists] all into tinkerers. And all of a sudden scientists are seeking designers, just like designers are seeking scientists.
What I heard was that Bush is now positioned to have victory after victory. He'll have Social Security reform passed, that he'll have tax reform passed, that he'll have conservative judges on the courts.
"Spirituality" in business sounds lofty. How practical is it? The answer is "very." There's a fundamental way in which Spirit and consciousness contribute to worldly success-and it has long been ignored.
It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you. It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled. It's not a weakness. It's your best strength.
I don't purposely push the boundaries... I think if you pay attention to a story, it will have exactly as much 'difficult material' as it needs, and nobody will complain about it because you've earnt it.
As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way to approach something, challenging yourself and never, never trying to write the same book twice.
Traditionally, our ancestors boiled mushrooms in water to make a soothing tea. Boiling served several purposes: killing contaminants, softening the flesh, and extracting the rich soluble polysaccharides.
Knowledge is power, which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret of it. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from hiding it.
The fewer data needed, the better the information. And an overload of information, that is, anything much beyond what is truly needed, leads to information blackout. It does not enrich, but impoverishes.
The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try. I would never promote to a top-level job a man who was not making mistakes...otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.
I wrote strong advocacy stories, and when I got to fiction, I made a deliberate effort to leave that behind and enter a country where I had no ax to grind, no advocacy issues that I was carrying with me.
Decorators never quite saw the point of massing books. Books brought colour to a room and filled it up, but shelves bearing just one thing struck them as a decorative display opportunity tragically lost.
I cling to the basic set of tenets laid out in Tom Wolfe's 'New Journalism' - to get out there like the great French novelists of the 19th century and study life. I am a Tom Wolfe fan of the first order.
I'm sure it came as no surprise to my friends and family when I became an illustrator and then a writer because, from about the age of five, I was one of those children who always had his nose in a book.
We in the church have humility and contrition to offer the world, not a formula for success. Almost alone in our success-oriented society, we admit that we have failed, are failing, and always will fail.
Nothing, it appears to me, is of greater value in a man than the power of judgment; and the man who has it may be compared to a chest filled with books, for he is the son of nature and the father of art.
Modern man has lost any sense of God's nearness, but Christianity teaches that God reveals himself through every single thing he has ever brought into being, whether a created object or historical event.
I have read in books that we are called 'caged birds'. I cannot speak for others, but I had so much in this cage of mine that there was not room for it in the universe- at least that is what I then felt.
Taking full advantage of all that college offers can be tough for teens facing a major life transition under pressure to perform. Perhaps we should all lower our expectations and let kids find their way.
I took an interest in the Civil Rights Movement. I listened to Martin Luther King. The Vietnam War was raging. When I was 18, I was eligible for the draft, but when I went to be tested, I didn't qualify.
Eleanor had never thought about killing herself – ever – but she thought a lot about stopping. Just running until she couldn’t run anymore. Jumping from something so high that she’d never hit the bottom.
What's that thing you wrote about Simon once, that his eyes followed Baz 'like he was the brightest thing in the room, like he cast everything else into shadow'? That's you. You can't look away from him.