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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 7:05:02 GMT 10
Bath twice a day to be really clean, once a day to be passably clean, once a week to avoid being a public menace
We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation
If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christ-like potential of others
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent, experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it, if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something
We are supposed to be the children of Seth; but Seth is too much of an effete nonentity to deserve ancestral regard. No, we are the sons of Cain, and with violence can be associated the attacks on sound, stone, wood and metal that produced civilization
Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy
Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rareAnthony BurgessEnglish author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic (Born this day 1917) Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 7:08:18 GMT 10
Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don't make sense
The scientist, like the magician, possesses secrets. A secret — expertise — is somehow perceived as antidemocratic, and therefore ought to be unnatural. We have come a long way from Prometheus to Faust to Frankenstein. And even Frankenstein's monster is now a joke
To be capable of embarrassment is the beginning of moral consciousness. Honor grows from qualms
War is so terrible that it desperately requires any limits anyone can agree on, any gesture toward dignity, any mitigation suggesting civil- ized scruple. There isn’t even persuasive evidence that torture makes its victims tell their secrets, instead of saying whatever we want to hear
From an international leader in the cause of human rights and democratic values, the U.S. has turned into an unaccountable bully
Prisons are a growth industry in a country that has stopped building schools because we would rather not pay our property taxes
When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final thingsJohn LeonardAmerican literary, TV, film and cultural critic (Born this day 1939) The culture as a whole is losing its individual notes, its diversity. And this is … not only sad. It's devastating. It's devastating because routine language means routine thought. And it means unquestioning thought
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 7:11:16 GMT 10
You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it, and people only get it when they’re ready to get it
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
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning. While my guitar gently weeps. With every mistake we must surely be learning, still my guitar gently weeps
Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover
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
I really want to see you, really want to be with you, really want to see you lord, but it takes so long, my lord
If everybody who had a gun just shot themselves there wouldn’t be a problemGeorge HarrisonBritish songwriter, musician and film producer (The Beatles) (Born this day 1943) Do what you want to do, and go where you're going to. Think for yourself 'cause I won't be there with you
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 25, 2014 7:12:31 GMT 10
These people who expect to be saints in heaven, though they were not on Earth, have ignored the wisdom of the founders of the great religions. This wisdom is that the kingdom of heaven is within you and that you do not go to heaven unless you are already in it. The magic must be wrought by you and you alone. God has no fairy wand to tap the pig and turn it into a swan
Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got
The fortune of the man who sits also sits
Dullard: Someone who looks up a thing in the encyclopedia, turns directly to the entry, reads it, and then closes the book
As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth
What man does, no matter how seemingly insignificant, vibrates through the strands and affects every man
It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sanePhilip Jose Farmer, American novelist (Died this day 2005) Nature is an experimenter
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 26, 2014 8:55:45 GMT 10
Wednesday’s Quotes:Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss! Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!
What nourishes me, destroys me
You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute, and now and then stab, when occasion serves
I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance
Hell is just a frame of mind
Well, bark, ye dogs; I'll bridle all your tonguesChristopher MarloweEnglish poet and dramatist ( Doctor Faustus) (Baptised this day 1564) Is it not passing brave to be a king, and ride in triumph through Persepolis?
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 26, 2014 8:56:25 GMT 10
'Tis the hardest thing in the world to be a good thinker without being a strong self-examiner
Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance
The most natural beauty in the world is honesty, and moral truth. For all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of a face; and true proportions the beauty of architecture; as true measures that of harmony and music
We may have an excellent ear in music, without being able to perform in any kind. We may judge well of poetry, without being poets, or possessing the least of a poetic vein: But we can have no tolerable notion of goodness, without being tolerably good
I would be virtuous for my own sake, though nobody were to know it; as I would be clean for my own sake, though nobody were to see me
True courage … has so little to do with anger, that there lies always the strongest suspicion against it, where this passion is highest. The true courage is the cool and calm
'Tis not wit merely, but a temper which must form the well-bred man. In the same manner, 'tis not a head merely, but a heart and resolution which must complete the real philosopherAnthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of ShaftesburyEnglish philosopher and politician (Born this day 1671) Truly... as accidental as my life may be, or as that random humour is, which governs it; I know nothing, after all, so real or substantial as my-self. Therefore if there be that thing you call a substance, I take for granted I am one. But for anything further relating to this question, you know my sceptick principles: I determine neither way
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 26, 2014 8:57:26 GMT 10
Education made us what we are
Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it
Discipline is, in a manner, nothing else but the art of inspiring the soldiers with greater fear of their officers than of the enemy
There are men whom a happy disposition, a strong desire of glory and esteem, inspire with the same love for justice and virtue, which men in general have for riches and honours
Genius is nothing but continued attention
The man who believes he can do it is probably right
To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdainBro. Claude Adrien HelvétiusFrench philosopher and litterateur(Born this day — or January 26th — 1715) By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man with- out passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 26, 2014 8:59:40 GMT 10
Such is the privilege of genius; it perceives, it seizes relations where vulgar eyes see only isolated facts
On certain occasions, the eyes of the mind can supply the want of the most power- ful telescopes, and lead to astronomical discoveries of the highest importance
The ancients had a taste, let us say rather a passion, for the marvellous, which caused them to forget even the sacred duties of gratitude. Observe them, for example, grouping together the lofty deeds of a great number of heroes, whose names they have not even deigned to preserve, and investing the single personage of Hercules with them. The lapse of ages has not rendered us wiser in this respect. In our own time the public delight in blending fable with history. In every career of life, in the pursuit of science especially, they enjoy a pleasure in creating Herculeses
Let us award a just, a brilliant homage to those rare men whom nature has endowed with the precious privilege of arranging a thousand isolated facts, of making sed- uctive theories spring from them; but let us not forget to state, that the scythe of the reaper had cut the stalks before one had thought of uniting them into sheaves!
In the experimental sciences, the epochs of the most brilliant progress are almost always separated by long intervals of almost absolute repose
The calculus of probabilities, when confined within just limits, ought to interest, in an equal degree, the mathematician, the experimentalist, and the statesman
To get to know, to discover, to publish — this is the destiny of a scientistBro. François AragoFrench Catalan mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician (Born this day 1786) I was often humiliated to see men disputing for a piece of bread, just as animals might have done. My feelings on this subject have very much altered since I have been personally exposed to the tortures of hunger. I have discovered, in fact, that a man, whatever may have been his origin, his education, and his habits, is governed, under certain circumstances, much more by his stomach than by his intelligence and his heart
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 26, 2014 9:00:22 GMT 10
1 of 2:I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary
Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life
The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone
Evil. Mistrust those who rejoice at it even more than those who do it
Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other
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
He who opens a school door, closes a prisonVictor HugoFrench Martinist and author ( Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables) (Born this day 1802) To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 26, 2014 9:03:21 GMT 10
2 of 2: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. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear
A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour
Logic ignores the Almost, just as the sun ignores the candle
Civil war? What does this mean? Is there any foreign war? Is not every war between men, war between brothers? War is modified only by its aim. There is neither foreign war, nor civil war; there is only unjust war and just war
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 instru- ments of torture are today. And we will be amazed to think that these things once existed!
He who opens a school door, closes a prisonVictor Hugo(Born this day 1802) Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers
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