Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws
of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin


The highest possible stage in moral culture is when
we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts


A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions
and their motives — of approving of some and disapproving of others


Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge:
it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so
positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science


To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes
even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact


It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change


I have called this principle, by which each slight variation,
if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection


Charles Darwin, FRS
English naturalist (Origin of Species)
(Died this day 1882)



I love fools' experiments. I am always making them

[Tamrin]

Intellectuals are rebels, not revolutionaries


I have the desire to work and to live my life with dignity. I am not a bohemian: poverty is very pain-
ful, and it's no part for me, unlike for others ... My will veers between the point at which one is
reduced to the sole desire for death and the intention of conquering the world by sword and fire


There are desires to return, to love, to not disappear, and there are
desires to die, fought by two opposing waters that have never isthmused


The arts (painting, poetry, etc.) are not just these.
Eating, drinking, walking are also arts; every act is an art


Mechanics is a means or discipline for the realization of life,
but not life itself. It ought to carry us to life itself


Aviation in air, in water and in spirit. Its laws are different in all three cases. The spirit soars
the more it weighs and sinks into itself. The heavier the spirit, the higher and farther it flies


The pure and poorly adapted one who crashed against the world of fakes and cheats


César Vallejo
Peruvian poet (Los Heraldos Negros)
(Born this day 1892)



I was born on a day God was sick

[Tamrin]

The patient says "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." "Then don't do that!”


“Doctor, my leg hurts. What can I do?" The doctor says "Limp!”


I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places.
He told me to quit going to those places


The doctor says to the patient, "Take your clothes off and stick your tongue out the
window". "What will that do" asks the patient. The doctor says "I'm mad at my neighbor!"


A doctor gave a man six months to live.
The man couldn't pay his bill, so he gave him another six months


Those two are a fastidious couple. She's fast and he's hideous


I've got all the money I'll ever need, if I die by four o'clock


Henny Youngman
British-born American comedian and violinist
(Born this day 1906)



Take my wife ... Please!

[Tamrin]

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety


My observations are those of a beginner. As they are completely fresh in my mind and
concern the first difficulties a beginner encounters, they may be more useful to beginners
making their first ascents than treatises written by professionals. These are no doubt more
methodical and complete, but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. The
entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner acquire this preliminary experience a little faster


Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn
it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation


Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value
on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared exper-
iences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds


Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain.
What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable


A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error


You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again


René Daumal
French writer, philosopher and poet (The Lie of the Truth)
(Born this day 1908)



What is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above

[Tamrin]

We have to speak the truth always, at any cost, and no matter what


We must experience the Truth in a direct, practical and real way; this is only possible
in the stillness and silence of the mind, and this is achieved by means of meditation


What is the use of education if we do not become creative, conscious and truly intelligent?
Real education does not mean knowing how to read and write.
Any stupid person, any fool can know how to read and write. We need to have
intelligence and it only awakens within us when the consciousness awakens


The teachings of the Zend Avesta are in accordance with the doctrinal principles contained in
the Egyptian book of the dead, and contain the Christ-principle. The Illiad of Homer, the Hebrew
Bible, the Germanic Edda and the Sibylline Books of the Romans contain the same Christ-principle.
All these are sufficient in order to demonstrate that Christ is anterior to Jesus of Nazareth


All things, all circumstances that occur outside ourselves, on the stage of this world, are
exclusively the reflection of what we carry within. With good reason then, we can solemnly
declare that the 'exterior is the reflection of the interior.' When someone changes intern-
ally and if that change is radical, then circumstances, life and the external also change


The mind must free itself from all kinds of “schools,” religions, sects, beliefs, etc. All those “cages”
are obstacles which render the mind incapable of thinking freely. It is necessary for the mind to become
free of the illusions of this world and become a fine and marvelous instrument of the Inner Being


Whoever submits himself to a super-discipline can expect great triumphs


Samuels Aun Weor
Colombian writer (Universal Christian Gnostic Movement)
(Born this day 1917)



We advise disciples not to follow anyone. Let them follow themselves.
Each one should follow his resplendent and luminous inner Being

[Tamrin]

Have you ever seen a child sitting on its mother’s knee listening to fairy stories? As long as the
child is told of cruel giants and of the terrible suffering of beautiful princesses, it holds its head
up and its eyes open; but if the mother begins to speak of happiness and sunshine, the little one
closes its eyes and falls asleep with its head against her breast. . . . I am a child like that, too.
Others may like stories of flowers and sunshine; but I choose the dark nights and sad destinies


‘What Gosta,' he said to himself, 'can you no longer endure? You have been hardened in
poverty all of your life; you have heard every tree in the forest, every tuft in the meadows
preach to you of sacrifice and patience. You, brought up in a country where the winter is
severe, and the summer joy is very short, have you forgotten the art of bearing your trials?’


'Oh Gosta, a man must bear all that life gives him with a courageous heart and a smile on his lips,
else he is no man. Sorrow as much as you will. If you love your beloved, let your conscience burn
and chafe within you, but show yourself a man and a Varmlander. Let your glances beam with
joy, and meet your friends with a gay word on your lips! Life and nature are hard. They bring forth
courage and joy as a counterweight against their own hardness, or no one could endure them’


I see the green earth covered with the works of man or with the ruins of men’s work.
The pyramids weigh down the earth, the tower of Babel has pierced the sky, the lovely
temples and the gray castles have fallen into ruins. But of all those things which hands have
built, what hasn’t fallen nor ever will fall? Dear friends, throw away the trowel and mortar-
board! Throw your masons’ aprons over your heads and lie down to build dreams! What are
temples of stone and clay to the soul? Learn to build eternal mansions of dreams and visions!


We are the poem's ancient band of twelve that proceeds through the ages.
There were twelve of us, when we ruled the world on the cloud-covered
top of Olympus, and twelve when we lived as birds in Ygdrasil's green crown


Wherever poetry went forth, there we followed. Did we not sit, twelve men strong, at King
Arthur's round table, and did twelve paladins not go in Charles the Twelfth's great army?


One of us has been Thor, another Jupiter, as any man should be able to see
in us yet today. The divine splendour can be sensed under the rags, the lion's
mane under the donkey hide. Time has treated us badly, but when we are
there, the smithy becomes Mount Olympus and the cavalier's wing a Valhalla


Selma Lagerlöf
Swedish author (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils)
(Died this day 1940)



He needed so much to weep. All the distrust of life which misfortunes had brought to
the little Värmland boy needed tears to wash it away. Distrust that love and joy, beauty
and strength blossomed on the earth, distrust in himself, all must go, all did go, for it
was Easter; the dead lived and the Spirit of Fasting would never again come into power

[Tamrin]

1 of 3:

I profess my Faith. For me, the existence of all this complexity and awareness and intent and
beauty, and my ability to apprehend it, serves as the ultimate meaning and the ultimate value.
The continuation of life reaches around, grabs its own tail, and forms a sacred circle that
requires no further justification, no Creator, no super-ordinate meaning of meaning, no purpose
other than that the continuation continue until the sun collapses or the final meteor collides.
I confess a credo of continuation. And in so doing, I confess as well a credo of human continuation


The role of religion is to integrate the Cosmology and the Morality, to render the cosmo-
logical narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment
to its emergent moral understandings. As each culture evolves, a unique Cosmos and
Ethos appear in its co-evolving religion. For billions of us, back to the first humans, the
stories, ceremonies, and art associated with our religions-of-origin are central to our matrix


Any global tradition needs to begin with a shared worldview —
a culture-dependent, globally accepted consensus as to how things are.
From my perspective, this part is easy. How things are is, well, how things are


The Big Bang, the formation of stars and planets, the origin and evolution of life on this
planet, the advent of human consciousness and the resultant evolution of cultures — this
is the story, the one story, that has the potential to unite us, because it happens to be true

We are embedded in the great evolutionary story of planet Earth, the spare, elegant
process of mutation and selection and bricolage. And this means that we are anything but alone


The evolution of the cosmos invokes in me a sense of mystery; the increase
in biodiversity invokes the response of humility; and an understanding of
the evolution of death offers me helpful ways to think about my own death


Death is the price paid to have trees and clams and birds and grasshoppers, and death is the price
paid to have human consciousness, to be aware of all that shimmering awareness and all that love


Ursula Goodenough
American evolutionary biologist (Sacred Depths of Nature)
(Born this day 1943)



Human consensus does not generate reality. Were it able to do so,
the Sun would have taken to orbiting the Earth some time ago

[Tamrin]

2 of 3:

Naturalism has been defined by many people. It's just a world
view that does not include the supernatural, so it's everything else


The religious naturalist is provisioned with tales of natural emergence that are,
to my mind, far more magical than traditional miracles. Emergence is inherent
in everything that is alive, allowing our yearning for supernatural miracles
to be subsumed by our joy in the countless miracles that surround us


The concept of an independent "spiritual realm" does not augment, for me,
the magic of the mystical dimension, whereas to think of this dimension as
emergent from our minds makes it all the more wondrous to be a human


We are, each one of us, ordained to live out our lives in the context of ultimate questions, such as:
Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?
Where did the laws of physics come from?
Why does the universe seem so strange?
My response to such questions has been to articulate a covenant with Mystery.
Others, of course, prefer to respond with answers, answers that often include a concept
of god. These answers are by definition beliefs since they can neither be proven nor refuted


Deism spoils my covenant with Mystery. To assign attributes
to Mystery is to disenchant it, to take away its luminance


Perhaps we should all settle down and think about what's good in the world and what we
want to do here. If we find this planet and its history and its story to be sacred, let's preserve
and nourish it, and then we can go home at night and say whatever prayers we choose


I have come to understand that the self, my self, is inherently sacred. By
virtue of its own improbability, its own miracle, its own emergence … And
so I lift up my head, and I bear my own witness, with affection and tender-
ness and respect. And in so doing, I sanctify myself with my own grace


Ursula Goodenough
(Born this day 1943)



I don't have any problem accessing experiences of unity. I feel completely part of the
universe and all that's going on. When I try to describe it, people say I'm obviously
a mystic. It doesn't seem mystical to me in a theistic sense. It's not a state that engenders
in me any sense that God is watching over me and paying attention to what I'm doing.
It's much more what I understand the Eastern traditions to be talking about — a belong-
ing to the universe, an overflow of astonishment and wonder and peace and tranquility

[Tamrin]

3 of 3:

We all eat or are eaten. That's the way life works, it's a greater rhythm. And that's why science
and the understandings it has uncovered can be a source of joy. This all relates to assent, a very
important Judeo-Christian concept. "Thy will be done" is a God-kind of assent. "God works in
mysterious ways," and you're supposed to give assent even if you don't like it. As a religious
naturalist, I think of assent differently. Assent is saying, "Okay, for whatever reason, this is the
way life works. It's an acceptance of what is. After that fundamental acceptance, I can live my life
to minimize suffering and promote as much as good as I can, and try through whatever work I do
to help others." We can't get around death, but we can get around poverty. We can try to avoid
women being brutalized. We can curb environmental degradation. One can start from the per-
spective of a religious naturalist or from the perspective of the world religions and arrive at the
same place: a moral imperative that this Earth and its creatures be respected and cherished


Emergence. Something more from nothing but. Life from nonlife, like wine from
water, has long been considered a miracle wrought by gods or God. Now it is seen
to be the near-inevitable consequence of our thermal and chemical circumstances


All life has a kind of seamlessness. All creatures have to be aware of their environment, and there
has been an evolution of the capacities needed for detecting increasingly complex stimuli. I have no
problem calling this "meaning," since all creatures pick out meaningful facets of their environment.
For the first creatures, these facets were physical and mediated by receptor proteins. Sperm and
eggs find each other by protein shapes; photosynthetic bacteria find light by protein shapes. The
impetus to figure out what's going on is still very much programmed into our highly complex brains


We nurture our children selflessly. But we also recognize them as our most tangible sources of
renewal — for a child, the world is always new. Renewal has been a religious theme throughout
the ages … All of us see in children — our own and all children — the hope and promise of what
we humans can become. As the forbears of our children we are called to transmit to them a joyous
and sustainable vision of their future — meaning that we are each called to develop such a vision


Once there is empathy, then there can be the feeling we call compassion. A version of
the Golden Rule — Do unto others as you would have them do unto you — is found in
most religious traditions. … and emergent from our sense of compassion, in mortal conflict
with our insistent sense that we should win, is our haunting sense that things should be fair


Reverence is the sense that there is something larger than the self, larger
even than the human, to which one accords respect and awe and assent


Life, we can now say, is getting something to happen against the odds, and remembering how to do it


Ursula Goodenough
(Born this day 1943)



What scares me? The way the world is going. People seem to think that development is more
important than sustainability. That fundamentalism is more important than openness. That racial
differences should dictate political decisions. That a person's sexuality is somebody else's business

[Tamrin]

I can kill with a single word. I can hurl a ball of fire into the midst of my enemies.
I rule a squadron of skeletal warriors, who can destroy by touch alone.
I can raise a wall of ice to protect those I serve. The invisible is discernible to my eyes.
Ordinary magic spells crumble in my presence... But I bow in the presence of a master


Do not enter with defeat in your heart for that is the first victory of evil


Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break
the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the
path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak


Truth wasn't something you went out and found. It was wide and vast and
deep and unending, and all you could hope to see was a tiny part of it.
And to see that part and to mistake it for the whole was to make of Truth a lie


Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep
him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it. "Are you saying we shouldn't hope?"
I'm saying we should remove the carrot and walk forward with our eyes open!


A man with nothing to die for has even less for which to live


If I am to be judged by those who come after me, let me be judged for the truth


Margaret Weis
American fantasy novelist
(Born this day 1948)



I have sinned enough against the world. Teaching magic to a kender would ensure my damnation