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Post by Tamrin on Feb 24, 2014 8:47:58 GMT 10
I don't feel alienated. I'm interested in seeing how things connect
I'm a perfectionist, which I think is a mistake
I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions
I try to look at this music career thing as the means to an end. And really, at the end of it, I see myself on a sailboat, sailing off the edge of the world
Ideals are not something I can control. It's not logic that convinces me of something, it's what my heart says. My heart has a way of involving me in things, which can only be good for the music
I walked along that slippery slope where if you fail through lack of faith, you sell your soul to the devil
I describe myself as a knee-jerk anarchist, if that helpsMichelle Shocked (Michelle Karen Johnston)American singer, songwriter (Born this day 1962) Some women can be sweet because they don't know how else to move through the world. I'm sweet because I can afford to be
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 24, 2014 8:50:31 GMT 10
Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life
Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question
All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent
Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person
The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory
The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocksTennessee WilliamsUS playwright ( Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) (Died this day 1983) I have always depended on the kindness of strangers
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 24, 2014 8:51:27 GMT 10
He learned how quickly love died when you weren't looking; if you weren't looking
Proportion is all; and, in sports at school, I lost it by surrendering to the awful significance of my self-consciousness. Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people
Travel by air is not travel at all, but simply a change of location; so my wife and daughter and I went to San Francisco by train, leaving Boston on a Wednesday morning in June and, then after lunch in New York, boarding Amtrak’s Broadway to Chicago
Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you’ll see in your arms is yourself
Living in the world as a cripple allows you to see more clearly the crippled hearts of some people whose bodies are whole and sound. All of us, from time to time, suffer this crippling. Some suffer it daily and nightly; and while most of us, nearly all of us, have compassion and love in our hearts, we cannot of will not see these barely visible wounds of other human beings, and so cannot or will not pick up the telephone or travel to someone’s house or write a note or make some other seemingly trifling gesture to give to someone what only we, and God, can give: an hour’s respite, or a day’s, or a night’s; and sometimes more than respite: sometimes joy
What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?
For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of loveAndre Dubus American novelist and essayist ( Broken Vessels) (Died this day 1999) Very early, I understood that women were required to be other than what they were
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 24, 2014 8:52:27 GMT 10
Beware: Ignorance protects itself. Ignorance promotes suspicion. Suspicion engenders fear. Fear quails, irrational and blind, or fear looms, defiant and closed. Blind, closed, suspicious, afraid, ignorance protects itself, and protected, ignorance grows
All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change
Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery
It’s when people begin using their religion as just a way of getting power over other people that scares me. I’m afraid that’s what’s going on in a lot of cases right now. When people deliberately tell lies, Creationism for instance, and pretend, “Oh, it’s not really religion”. I mean they know they’re lying, and yet they’re the religious people. There’s something wrong there
People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me
When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing
In order to rise from its own ashes a phoenix first must burnOctavia E. ButlerAmerican science fiction writer ( Lilith’s Brood) (Died this day 2006) There is no end to what a living world will demand of you
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 6:54:38 GMT 10
Tuesday’s Quotes:He who talks much cannot always talk well
The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it
He who never leaves his country is full of prejudices
A wise traveler never depreciates their own country
Noble bold is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great
Pretexts are not wanting when one wishes to use them
The blush is beautiful, but it is sometimes convenientBro. Carlo Goldoni, Italian writer (Born this day 1707) Each day a day goes by
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 6:57:00 GMT 10
My promises to the people for whom I have waged war have been fulfilled — to accomplish their independence and leave the choice of their rulers to their own will
One should be under no illusions as to the future of the Old World. The real contest in the present day is purely social. In a word the struggle lies between him who has nothing and him who has
My best friend is he who rights my wrongs or reproaches my mistakes
The conscience is the best and most impartial judge that a righteous man has
If there is victory in overcoming the enemy, there is a greater victory when a man overcomes himself
You will be what you must be, or else you will be nothing
Let us be free, the rest matters notM.W. Bro. José Francisco de San MartínLiberator of Argentina, Chile & Perú (Born this day 1778) Mercedes — this is the exhaustion of death. Mariano — back to my room(last words)
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 6:58:02 GMT 10
Reverence, enthusiasm, and a sense of guardianship, these three are actually the panacea, the magical remedy, in the soul of the educator and teacher
You have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is as teacher
To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world
Where the realm of freedom of thought and action begin, the determination of individuals according to generic laws ends
What is necessary to keep providing good care to nature has completely fallen into ignorance during the materialism era
The occultist sees in the man of today a being in the full swing of evolution. Man is at the same time a fallen God and a God in the becoming
Live through deeds of love and let others live with tolerance for their unique intentionsBro. Rudolf SteinerAustrian philosopher and educator (Anthroposophy) (Born this day 1861) May my soul bloom in love for all existence
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 7:00:20 GMT 10
Don 't worry, be happy
I have come not to teach but to awaken. Understand therefore that I lay down no precepts
If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be naught else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept
Do not search for God outside of you. God can only be found within you, for His only abode is the heart
The experiences which drugs induce are as far removed from Reality as is a mirage, from water
All illusion comes and goes, but the soul remains unchanged. What is meant by God- realization is to actually experience this important thing — that the soul is eternal
I tell you all, with my Divine Authority, that you and I are not “WE,” but “ONE”Meher BabaIndian spiritual figure (self-declared avatar of the age) (Born this day 1894) To love Me for what I may give you is not loving Me at all. To sacrifice anything in My cause to gain something for yourself is like a blind man sacrificing his eyes for sight. I am the Divine Beloved worthy of being loved because I am Love. He who loves Me because of this will be blessed with unlimited sight and will see Me as I am (final message)
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 7:01:58 GMT 10
I believe we have a profound fundamental need for areas of the earth where we stand without our mechanisms that make us immediate masters over our environment
It is not long since man thought of himself as the center of the universe, thought even of the Sun — the very source of all our life — as a light by day revolving about the Earth. As our new understanding has come — through science — science also has brought us many other new and wonderful discoveries, and the new knowledge of what we are has been overlooked by many of us in our eagerness for the new knowledge of what we can do
We have become as proud over what we can do as ever our ancestors could have been over themselves as the center of the universe. We deeply need the humility to know ourselves as the dependent members of a great community of life, and this can indeed be one of the spiritual benefits of a wilderness experience
Without the gadgets, the inventions, the contrivances whereby men have seemed to establish among themselves an independence of nature, without these distractions, to know the wilderness is to know a profound humility, to recognize one’s littleness, to sense dependence and interdependence, indebtedness, and responsibility. Perhaps, indeed, this is the distinctive ministration of wilderness to modern man, the characteristic effect of an area which we most deeply need to provide for in our preservation programs
We are part of the wilderness of the universe. Some of us think we see this so clearly that for ourselves, for our children’s, our continuing posterity, and our fellow men we covet with a consuming intensity the fullness of human development that keeps its contact with wildness
Working to preserve in perpetuity is a great inspiration. We are not fighting a rear- guard action, we are facing a frontier. We are not slowing down a force that inevit- ably will destroy all the wilderness there is. We are generating another force, never to be wholly spent, that, renewed generation after generation, will be always effective in preserving wilderness. We are not fighting progress. We are making it. We are not dealing with a vanishing wilderness. We are working for a wilderness forever
By very definition this wilderness is a need. The idea of wilderness as an area with- out man's influence is man's own concept. Its values are human values. Its pre- servation is a purpose that arises out of man's own sense of his fundamental needsHoward Zahniser"Father of the US Wilderness Act" (Born this day 1906) The wilderness that has come to us from the eternity of the past we have the boldness to project into the eternity of the future
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 7:04:04 GMT 10
Men make their own history; but they make it under given conditions, and they become entangled thereby in a fate which is in part the result of other men having made their own history earlier
In the classical Greek view, human affairs are subject to the will and whim of the gods. Good and ill fortune alternate in quite unpredictable ways. Hence, knowledge has the purpose of fortifying the soul and assuaging the envy of the gods. The wise man always reflects upon the extreme vicissitudes of fate. In times of the greatest triumph he bears in mind the transitoriness of life; in times of the greatest calamity he reflects upon the unpredictability of fortune, perhaps even the possibility of a renewal. Knowledge is virtue where it helps men attain inner peace in the midst of the fate that is their lot
Looking backward always presents an over determined depiction of fate; by this perspective we leave out of focus the possibilities of action which existed at the time
Power needs ideas and legitimation the way a conventional bank needs investment policies and the confidence of its depositors. Rulers are always few in number and could never obtain compliance if each command were purely random and had to be backed by force sufficient to compel obedience
Likewise, banks rely on the confidence of their depositors, which allows them to retain only a small fraction of their assets in liquid funds in order to meet the expected rate of withdrawal by depositors. All is well as long as depositors believe that the bank will cash their checks on demand, and part of that trust depends on a vague knowledge about the bank's adherence to certain accepted business standards
In the nation-state, all is well as long as citizens believe that the government knows what it is about, has the ability to deliver on some of its promises, and has sufficient force to back up its commands when necessary ... Legit- imation achieves what power alone cannot, for it establishes the belief in the rightness of rule which, as long as it endures, precludes massive challenges
Reason is a necessary instrument, to be used for good or evil, but it has no moral qualitiesReinhard BendixGerman-American sociologist ( Kings or People) (Born this day 1916) In his Presidential Address before the American Sociological Association in 1970 he pleaded for the protection of a scholarly community of independent inquiry, free discussion and academic self-government and for a faith in reason as a defense against an empty advocacy of action which could “do away with learning and deliberation altogether”(University of California: In Memoriam, 1991)
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