Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
Thought subsides when you pet your dog or you have a purring cat on your chest. Even just watching an animal can take you out of your mind. It is more deeply connected with the source of life than most humans, and that rootedness in Being transmits itself to you. Millions of people who otherwise would be completely lost in the conceptual reality of their mind are kept sane by living with an animal.
I don't think anything can substitute long talks, and long talks are somehow never as easy to schedule again as they were in school, when most people - at least in my little socioeconomic corner of the world - live not with their families or sexual partners, but with same-sex friends. I really miss that from college. I never really thought at the time about how things would never be that way again.
It is through the tender austerity of our troubles that the Son of Man comes knocking. In every event He seeks an entrance to my heart, yes, even in my most helpless, futile, fruitless moments. The very cracks and empty crannies of my life, my perplexities and hurts and botched-up jobs, He wants to fill with Himself, His joy, His life...He urges me to learn of Him: 'I am gentle and humble in heart.
We who have seen him now, light on his feet, smooth moving as a leopard, a young man with an old man's science, the most beautiful fighting machine I have ever seen, may live to see him fat, slow, old, and bald taking a beating from a younger man. But I would like to hazard a prediction that whoever beats Joe Louis in an honest fight in the next fifteen years will have to get up the floor to do it.
Here is a myth for you if myths are your pleasure: "There is no more opportunity in this world." Most people held this false belief fifty years ago, the majority agreed with it five years ago, and practically everyone clings to it today. Clearly, this myth will also be the screaming rage in the future. Hang on to this myth, and you are destined to miss great opportunities for the rest of your life.
Let your alignment (with Well-Being) be first and foremost, and let everything else be secondary. And not only will you have an eternally joyous journey, but everything you have ever imagined will flow effortlessly into your experience. There is nothing you cannot be or do or have—but your dominant intent is to be joyful. The doing and the having will come into alignment once you get that one down.
Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself.
I am not personally a parent. But I do have two godchildren and am expecting a third. I am naturally concerned for their future. If I ruled the world you could bet your boots that none of them would ever set their eyes on any such contraptions as digital clocks and pocket calculators. But alas, I do not rule the world and that, I am afraid, is the story of my life - always a godmother, never a God.
Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.
Does anyone pray before they cut a tree? I haven't seen anyone do that yet in the timber industry. But my vision is that that day is coming. I have a vision of a world in which we relate to each other as souls - not as personalities - not as bodies and minds and capabilities to accomplish things in this domain of the five sense, but as immortal spirits learning together how to co-create this world.
He gulped. "No, we aren't done chatting. Why aren't you afraid of dying?" "Everything and everyone has an end," she said. "I mean, you're going to be killed soon and though I loathe the thought, you don't see me crying about that, either. I know what will happen, and I accept what cannot be changed. I'm trying to live while I can. While we can. Dwelling on the bad is what destroys all hints of joy.
We think the problem is out there, when the problem is really in here - who we are and how we experience the world around us. The acoustic ecologist listens, as the primary sense, to the world around us, and I believe that they have a significant contribution to make to all environmental groups who think that they're solving environmental problems, when we're actually all on a spiritual pilgrimage.
It is an occult law moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as 'separateness' and the nearest approach to that selfish state which the laws of life permit is in the intent or motive.
However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the lay, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.
It is a very true and expressive phrase, "He looked daggers at me," for the first pattern and prototype of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye.... It is wonderful how we get about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that one gets seriously looked at.
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.
Men with fine gifts think it worth while to live to paint a few great pictures which shall be looked at and admired for generations; or to write a few songs which shall sing themselves into the ears and hearts of men. But the woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.
Play for young children is not recreation activity, It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity. Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.
When it’s too good, you do it over again. Too good is too easy. If it’s too easy you have to worry. If you’re not lying awake at night worrying about it, the reader isn’t going to, either. I always know that when I get a good night’s sleep, the next day I’m not going to get any work done. Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It’s not all inspirational.
Characters who are absolutely sure about what they do, who plunge ahead without fear, are not that interesting. We don’t go through life that way. In reality, we have doubts just like everyone else. Bringing your Lead’s doubts to the surface in your plot pulls the reader deeper into the story, and this is an excellent way to coax the reader to lose himself in the story world you’re about to create.
Make your copy straightforward to read, understand and use. Use easy words; those that are used for everyday speech. Use phrases that are not too imprecise and very understandable. Do not be too stuffy; remove pompous words and substitute them with plain words. Minimize complicated gimmicks and constructions. If you can't give the data directly and briefly, you must consider writing the copy again.
...The Chinese in the 9th century AD utilized a book entitled The Thousand Golden Prescriptions, which described how rice polish could be used to cure beri~beri, as well as other nutritional approaches to the prevention and treatment of disease. It was not until twelve centuries later that the cure for beri~beri was discovered in the West, and it acknowledged to be a vitamin B-1 deficiency disease.
There is also an underlying, less specific fear - what some might call an ontological or existential anxiety - that shrouds our days and seeps into our dreams. We feel empty and seek meaning. We feel empty and seek meaning. We yearn and know not what we yearn for. There is a black hole at the center of our understanding that engulfs and crushes our every attempt to explore it. Something is missing.
We are aware that the order of God requires the exercise of humility, but not of servility of slaves; but a humility that can be associated with undoubted courage and unflinching integrity; at the same time there is no room for pride, self-sufficient pride, that rests solely upon its own capabilities, and refuses to look for the support and countenance of others.--MS 7:91 [MS is the Millenial Star]
If you have great people around you, they will take you higher than your dream will. Leaders are never self-made. Those closest to you determine your level of success, so choosing the right companions as partners in pursuit of your vision is an important decision. My advice is to surround yourself with talented people who will challenge you, help you grow and inspire you to maximize your potential.
Easy climb, Kurokuma. You do it easily.' 'Not on your life,' Horace said... 'That's what we have Rangers for. They climb up sheer rock walls and crawl along narrow, slippery ledges. I'm a trained warrior, and I'm far to valuable to risk such shenanigans.' 'We're not valuable?' Will said, feigning insult. Horace looked at him. 'We've got two of you. We can always afford to lose one,' he said firmly.
I couldn’t help but think about school and everything else ending. I liked standing just outside the couches and watching them—it was a kind of sad I didn’t mind, and so I just listened, letting all the happiness and the sadness of this ending swirl around in me, each sharpening the other. For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.
So the main question is not, Which humans brought about the death of Jesus but, What did the death of Jesus bring about for humans - including Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and nonreligious secularists - and all people everywhere?When it is all said and done, the most crucial question is: Why? Why did Christ suffer and die? Not why in the sense of cause, but why in the sense of purpose?
In every sound convert the judgment is brought to approve of the laws and ways of Christ, and subscribe to them as most righteous and reasonable; the desire of the heart is to know the whole mind of Christ; the free and resolved choice of the heart is determined for the ways of Christ, before all the pleasures of sin, and prosperities of the world; it is the daily care of his life to walk with God.
And then, well . . . He might have slept for a bit. He rather hoped he was sleeping, because he was quite certain he’d seen a six-foot rabbit hopping through his bedchamber, and if that wasn’t a dream, they were all in very big trouble. Although really, it wasn’t the rabbit that was so dangerous as much as the giant carrot he was swinging about like a mace. That carrot would feed an entire village.
Annabel looked down. Her hands were shaking. She couldn't do this. Not yet. She couldn't face the man she'd kissed who happened to be the heir to the man she didn't want to kiss but whos she probably was going to marry. Oh yes, and she could not forget that if she did marry the man she didn't want to kiss, she was likely to provide him with a new heir, thus cutting off the man she did want to kiss.
Gregory,” she said, “you cannot leave me here. What if someone finds you and removes you from the house? Who will know I am here? And what if…and what if…and then what if…” He smiled, enjoying her officiousness too much to actually listen to her words. She was definitely herself again. “When this is all over,” he said, “I shall bring you a sandwich.” That stopped her short. “A sandwich? A sandwich?
Without chemical slaughterhouses, without a systematic mass murder, the tragedy of the Jews is just one out of the numerous tragedies that befell the nations of Europe during the Second World War. The Jewish people thus loses its martyr status, and the State of Israel, whose establishing was approved by the world under the impression of an alleged 'unparalleled genocide,' would lose its legitimacy.
Writers are outsiders, and usually not by their own choosing. It’s why they’re writers. If they didn’t feel alienated from human experience, they wouldn’t feel so drawn to writing to make sense of their lives. It’s not the outsider’s facility for language that makes her a writer — many a student body president or homecoming queen can turn a phrase — but her ability to howl at the moon, on the page.
There would be no one there to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistance with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
It's a common perception that science and religion are mutually exclusive. But there are many scientists who would consider themselves to be spiritual people. Not only that, but in the case of climate change - a scientific issue with strong moral implications and difficult decisions to be made - it's essential to connect the science to our values. And for many of us, our values come from our faith.
This is about Ku’Sox, isn’t it,” I said, more of a statement than a question. He made a sighing groan, and I knew it was. “Then you’ve met,” he said, his thoughts clearly on the day-walking demon. “Funny, you don’t look dead.” His hand touched my chin, shifting it so he could see where I’d been pixed, the blisters itchy and red. “I’m surprised you survived the little designer dump. I nearly didn’t.
All pain in life comes from wishing things were different than they are. Conversely, peace and happiness must come from accepting life as it is and breaking through the barriers of illusion to do so... All things that we label good or bad often hold in them surprises if we stay open. Each of us has choice in how we interpret life's events and in this way we are each responsible for our own reality.
We clear the harbor and the wind catches her sails and my beautiful ship leans over ever so gracefully, and her elegant bow cuts cleanly into the increasing chop of the waves. I take a deep breath and my chest expands and my heart starts thumping so strongly I fear the others might see it beat through the cloth of my jacket. I face the wind and my lips peel back from my teeth in a grin of pure joy.
The inflections of community are important because they get at the very meanings of marriage. Marriage is a gift God gives the church. He does not simply give it to the married people of the church, but to the whole church, just as marriage is designed not only for the benefit of the married couple. It is designed to tell a story to the entire church, a story about God’s own love and fidelity to us
As the planet wobbles, once every 26,000 years we visually align with the center of the galaxy. But it's such a slow movement that as we enter the galactic equator (The band of stars in the sky - The Milky Way), it takes 18 years to get to the middle of it, and another 18 to exit it. So astronomically, "The 2012 experience" is a 36 year alignment process, not something that happens on Dec 21, 2012.
The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry our their dream.
What nobler relationship than that of friend? What nobler compliment can man bestow than friendship? The bonds and ties of the life we know break easily, but through eternity one bond remains - the bond of fellowship - the fellowship of atoms, of star dust in its endless flight, of suns and worlds, of gods and men. The clasped hands of comradeship unite in a bond eternal - the fellowship of spirit.
Before our globe had become egg-shaped or round it was a long trail of cosmic dust or fire-mist, moving and writhing like a serpent. This, say the explanations, was the Spirit of God moving on the chaos until its breath had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its month--emblem of eternity in its spiritual and of our world in its physical sense.
The rage building up, generation after generation, among what has become a permanent underclass in many parts of the world cannot continue. We are desperately undereducating our children. In the United States, we are turning prison-building into the single largest urban industry. These are like toxic chemical factors any one of which could cause a raging fire. God help us if they begin to interact.
A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it -- which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once.
...the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn't likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!