Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Her hand fluttered over her heart. "Did you just say the word shopping without flinching?" "I did. So?" "So, that's gotta be a record. It's a worldwide fact men hate shopping." "How can I hate it when I've never done it?" Her lips curled into a slow, beautiful smile. "If you weren't already an angel, I'd dub you a saint. Poor guy. You have no idea what you're in for.
Each is but a means to an end; in the perfected end we find the intent, and there God — not in the laws themselves, except as his means of revealing himself. For that same reason, human science cannot discover God. For human science is but the backward undoing of the tapestry-web of God's science, it works with its back to him, and is always leaving him — his intent.
The key to the city of Florence was about two feet long, and painted a garish gold. Hamilton was fascinated by it. "Wow! How big is the lock?" Jonah laughed. "There is no lock, cuz. It's an honorary gig. Back in my crib in LA, I've got a whole shed full of keys from different cities. Want to know the kicker? I can't get at them. The gardener lost the key to the shed.
But what is your true self is the God within you who became you, and when you realize that you are not yourself but you are he, then you discover that you and he are one, just as Jesus said. Jesus was a great master, and he had great teachings for the world, and when it says in the Bible, "All those who received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God."
Nothing of that which is conducive to help man, collectively or individually, to live not "happily" but less unhappily in this world, ought to be indifferent to the Theosophist-Occultist. It is no concern of his whether his help benefits a man in his worldly or spiritual progress; his first duty is to be ever ready to help if he can, without stopping to philosophize.
Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.
Writing in a journal each day, with a structured, strategic process allows you to direct your focus to what you did accomplish, what you're grateful for, and what you're committed to doing better tomorrow. Thus, you more deeply enjoy your journey each day, feel good about any forward progress you made, and use a heightened level of clarity to accelerate your results.
It is suggested that all written works, including this one, have dangerous implications to the vitality of an oral tradition and to the health of a civilization, particularly if they thwart the interest of a people in culture, and following Aristotle, the cathartic effects of culture. "It is written but I say unto you" is a powerful directive to Western civilization.
The breakage and agony rending us today will be our salvation if they drive us by new routes to meet it. No one can proxy for us a masterpiece of loving or experience for us the rapture of art or launch for us book ships freighted with sweet bread to strengthen man. As of old we must be our own seers, musicians and explorers, and to an extent vaster than ever before.
Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climbs, and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I read it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night.
It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even.
What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence (says Johnson)? it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.
I think that what we need is a balance between men and women. I don't believe in the value of the matriarchy as a model for human organizations any more than I believe in the value of patriarchy as a successful model. I think that what we need is a balance of male and female, the yin and the yang, the tantric union of god and goddess, enlightenment of the individual.
The two words that I've arrived at to describe what we all need to feel about ourselves, children and adults, in order to perceive ourselves accurately, are worthy and welcome. If you don't feel worthy and welcome, you really won't know what to do with yourself. You won't know how to behave in a world of other people. You won't think you deserve to get what you need.
This is really good,” Donovan Caine said, attacking his third strawberry pancake. “You sound surprised,” I said. He shrugged. “I just didn’t think an assassin would be able to cook like this.” “Well, I do get lots of practice with knives. You could say I’m multitasking.” The detective froze, his fork halfway to his mouth. “I’m kidding. I enjoy cooking. It relaxes me.
At its heart, the quest that trans people are on is to have the same thing that straight — and gay — people have: the ability to wake up in the morning and be ourselves, without permission, without apology. Our lives should not be defined by wigs, or surgery, or which bathroom we use. Our lives should be defined by our identities, and the truth we bear in our hearts.
The Christian family is under attack on all fronts. Christian marriages are disintegrating at an alarming rate. Children are not receiving the proper training and modeling from their Christian parents. And, from my perspective, a major contributor to this tragic slide is usually a husband and father who is not fully assuming his God-ordained role as spiritual leader.
People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.
But the fact of it was that I liked it out there, a ruin devoid of human vanities, clean of human illusions, an empty place reclaimed by the weather where a woman plays an organ to stop the wind's whining and an old man plays ball with a dog named Duke. I could tell you that I came back because I had promises to keep, but maybe it was because nobody asked me to stay.
I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.
You should prepare to follow the program for 90 days. Why? Because behavioral research indicates that it takes 90 days to prepare for change, build a new behavior, become confident in the face of high-risk triggers, and move past the likelihood of relapse. Brain research also suggests that it takes a few months of practicing a new behavior to create permanent change.
So I sent Halt to straighten matters out. Thought it might be a good idea to give him something to keep him busy." So what's Digby got to complain about?" Rodney asked. It was obvious from his tone that he felt no sympathy for the recalcitrant commander of Barga Hold. The Baron gestured for Lady Pauline to explain. Apparently," she said,"Halt threw him into the moat.
What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
Do we claim to believe in God? He's a missionary God. You tell me you're committed to Christ. He's a missionary Christ. Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? He's a missionary Spirit. Do you belong to the church? It's a missionary society. And do you hope to go to heaven when you die? It's a heaven into which the fruits of world mission have been and will be gathered.
There is a secret about human love that is commonly overlooked: Receiving it is much more scary and threatening than giving it. How many times in your life have you been unable to let in someone's love or even pushed it away? Much as we proclaim the wish to be truly loved, we are often afraid of that, and so find it difficult to open to love or let it all the way in.
I think one of the ways you avoid being angry is to avoid being angry at the people in power. They might do crappy things, and piss you off, and make bad decisions, but they shouldn't be hated simply because they're in power. And I thought it was important to humanize them if the book was going to be even-handed to all the different ways you encounter people at work.
Life can be so good if you let it. But you must trade with life. You give something and you get something, then you give something of yourself again and you receive something again. Life goes bad when people try to take from it without giving. Then they came away empty-handed, and they grab harder and more often, growing more disappointed and disillusioned each time.
They’re going to ask what you said. And if I tell Mr. Twindell you said heaven will be like this, he’ll be very disappointed. He’s counting, you know, on gold streets and angels and horses with wings.” “I see where that could be a problem,” Ian agreed, and he tenderly laid his hand against his son’s cheek. “In that case, you can tell him I said this is almost heaven.
I'm a big believer in first impressions," he finally said. "Tell me what your first thought was when Jason walked into the courtroom." Taylor took a sip of her drink and grinned. This one was easy. "I vowed to hate him forever." Jeremy's brown eyes twinkled at this. "That's exactly what I said nineteen years ago, five minutes after he first walked into our dorm room.
There are certain principles, all of which center around building systems and practices that teach workforces how to internalize and master these three attributes, that are realistic optimism, subservience to purpose, and finding order in chaos. Its important to note than one never fully masters them, the pursuit lasts a lifetime, but it is a very gratifying pursuit.
Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. The cross, crucified, and that turned into victory. Mohammad was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.
I'm often drawn to darker subjects. There's a lot of awful stuff in literature - and in life. Every day I read the paper and think how much I'd love certain people to just go away. But the flipside is that much of life is really good and sweet and tender and true. That's another thing pets teach us. That, and the importance of holding on to those good things in life.
I think we need to be put back in touch with our childhood...to be reminded of what's important, like memories about people we loved, or things that happened to us that affected our lives, things we can laugh about and shed a few tears about... I think storytelling is a way of saying 'I love you. I love you enough to tell you something that means a great deal to me.'
And they need not cause you grief. As my Highland grandmother said-and she had the Sight-Tis not the dead ye have to be concerned about! Beware of the Living! And she was a wise woman. The dead are beyond your help or mine, poor things. But the living need us. Thirty souls at the least, Phryne, are still on that island to praise God who might now be angels-or devils.
I do know enough about economics - and so do you - to understand that the 'stimulus program' of Barack Obama and his ravenous parasitic hordes, supposedly designed to 'repair' America's broken economy, reveals him to be unimaginably stupid, gibberingly insane, or simply the biggest, most barefaced criminal thug ever to occupy the White House. And that's saying a lot.
Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their hieroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to the thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality.
One does not learn anything except by believing something, and -- conversely -- if one doubts everything one learns nothing. On the other hand, believing everything uncritically is the road to disaster. The faculty of doubt is essential. But as I have argued, rational doubt always rests on faith and not vice versa. The relationship between the two cannot be reversed.
I began by asking myself, “What do I want out of life?” And the answer was happiness. Investigating further, I went into the moment when I was feeling happiest. I discovered something which to me was startling at the time. It was when I was loving that I was happiest. That happiness equated to my capacity to love rather than to being loved. That was a starting point.
He was so far from the gallant knights in her romantic fantasies ... He was tarnished, scarred, imperfect. Deliberately he had destroyed any illusions she might have had about him, exposing his mysterious past for the ugly horror that it was. His purpose had been to drive her away. But instead she felt closer to him, as if the truth had bonded them in a new intimacy.
If it be asked, Why does God not bestow the same or equal blessing upon all people? we can only answer, that has not been fully revealed. We see that in actual life He does not treat all alike. For wise reasons known only to Himself He has given to some blessings to which they had no claim…and has withheld from others gifts which He was under no obligation to bestow.
Your prosperity consciousness is not dependent on money; your flow of money is dependent on your prosperity consciousness. As you can conceive of more, more will come into your life. There is an ocean of abundance available! There is plenty for everyone. You cannot rob another and they cannot rob you, and in no way can you drain the ocean dry... there is always more.
It has always seemed to me. ever since early childhood, amid all the commonplaces of life, i was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil. I could never draw it quite aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it and I caught a glimpse of the enchanting realms beyond-only a glimpse-but those glimpses have always made life worthwhile.
Nobody draws the light for covered wine rooms from the south or west, but rather from the north, since that quarter is never subject to change but is always constant and unshifting. So it is with granaries: grain exposed to the sun's course soon loses its good quality, and provisions and fruit, unless stored in a place unexposed to the sun's course, do not keep long.
Riley squinted. He ran his fingers along my neck. When he found the collar he explored the surface and tried to tug it. "No seams. It doesn't fell like metal. The colour is amazing". "Why?" (Trella) "It blends in. It matches your skin. Didn't you know?" (Riley) "No mirrors in my cell." (Trella) He gasped with mock horror. "So cruel! How did you ever survive?" (Riley)
I surrender it to God, knowing that the pain itself is a product or a reflection of how I am interpreting whatever it is that is causing me pain. Some pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain that I try to make room for. I honor my grief. I try to be kinder to myself. I give myself time to move through and to process whatever is making me sad.
A religion that comes of thought, and study, and deliberate conviction, sticks best. The revivalized convert who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before.
I'm convinced that the Christian claim is really true, that this is just a warm up to the big event. That this is just the appetizer to the feast, and if we can plug into that and understand that this part of our story is just the introduction, it is not even the first line of the first paragraph, it's just the first letter or first word. We are just getting started.
Naturally, if you love somebody, you do want to see their face every now and again, but that's not a condition of your love. People often get possession mixed up with love, and they say, "If you really loved me, you would call me." How - when life is going on? I think of you all the time, and the thought of you always lifts my spirits. But I'm not right at the phone!
I discovered that some things are written for us. It's not that we can't change our ancestral bearings, or that the path or purpose of any of our lives is really written in stone. But what tends to happen sometimes is the path is so deeply inscribed in the birth that it becomes you and every variation away from it brings you back in ways that you are not controlling.
But as you age, you lose other, even more important things, like friends-hopefully only bad friends, who maybe weren't as good for you as you once thought. With luck, you'll be able to hang on to your true friends, the ones who were always there for you....even when you thought they weren't. Because friends like that are more precious then all the tiaras in the world