Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

Quotes for the Day:

1 of 2

As the same fire assumes different shapes when it consumes objects differing
in shape, so does the One Self take the shape of every creature in whom He is present


The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different
expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle


Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle


Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig


Anger cannot be dishonest


The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury


Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil


Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor
(Died this day 180)



If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it

[Tamrin]

2 of 2:

Our life is what our thoughts make it


Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the
character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts


Men exist for the sake of one another


We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey,
or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne


To understand the true quality of people, you must look
into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions


The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane


The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer


Marcus Aurelius
(Died this day 180)



Poverty is the mother of crime

[Tamrin]

I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught; yet I am established here in Ireland where
I profess myself bishop. I am certain in my heart that "all that I am," I have received
from God. So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God


If I have any worth, it is to live my life for God so as to teach
these peoples; even though some of them still look down on me


I do not overreach myself, for I too have my part to play with
"those whom he has called to himself and predestined" to teach the gospel
in the midst of considerable persecutions "as far as the ends of the earth"


I cannot keep silent, nor would it be proper, so many favours and graces
has the Lord deigned to bestow on me in the land of my captivity


Can it be out of the kindness of my heart that I carry out such a labor of mercy on a people
who once captured me when they wrecked my father's house and carried off his servants?
For by descent I was a freeman, born of a decurion father; yet I have sold this nobility of
mine, I am not ashamed, nor do I regret that it might have meant some advantage to others


Let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I
hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years
before they happened, who knew everything, even before the beginning of time


It would take too long to discuss or argue every single case, or to sift through the
whole of the Law for precise witness against such greed. Sufficient to say, greed
is a deadly deed. You shall not covet your neighbor's goods. You shall not murder


Patrick (Palladius)
Patron Saint of Ireland
(Died this day 462, 492 or 493)



I am at a loss to know whether to weep more for those they killed or those that are captured:
or indeed for these men themselves whom the devil has taken fast for his slaves

[Tamrin]

We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others


A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win


We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before
others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves


It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one's being clever


True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen


Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding


The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others


François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
French author of maxims and memoirs
(Died this day 1680)



Only the contemptible fear contempt

[Tamrin]

The public! why, the public's nothing better than a great baby


It has been said that there is nothing more uncommon than common sense


A man's needs are few. The simpler the life, therefore, the better.
Indeed, only three things are truly necessary in order to make life happy:
the blessing of God, the benefit of books, and the benevolence of friends


O Heavenly Father, convert my religion from a name to a principle!
Bring all my thoughts and movements into an habitual reference to Thee!


Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs
it or not. He may be a blot radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of
society, or he may be a blessing spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world


But a blank he cannot be: there are no moral blanks; there are no neutral characters


Live for something! Do good and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the
storm of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on
the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with, year by year, and you will never
be forgotten. Your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind,
as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven


Bro. Thomas Chalmers
Scottish pastor, social reformer, author and scientist
(Free Church of Scotland)
(Born this day 1780)



O God, impress upon me the value of time, and give
regulation to all my thoughts and to all my movements

[Tamrin]

It is remarkable of physical laws, that we see them operating on every
kind of scale as to magnitude, with the same regularity and perseverance


The first idea which all this impresses upon us is, that the formation of bodies in space is still and
at present in progress. We live at a time when many have been formed and many are still forming


While the external forms of all these various animals are so different, it is very remark-
able that the whole are, after all, variations of a fundamental plan, which can be traced
as a basis throughout the whole, the variations being merely modifications of that plan
to suit the particular conditions in which each particular animal has been designed to live


The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent,
are, then, to be regarded as a series of advances of the principle of development, which have
depended upon external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals are appropriate


We are drawn on to the supposition, that the first step in the creation of life upon this
planet was a chemico-electric operation, by which simple germinal vesicles were produced


The monkeys themselves, without instruction from any quarter,
learn to use sticks in fighting, and some build houses — an act which
cannot in their case be considered as one of instinct, but of intelligence


This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes their being under the presidency of law.
Man is seen to be an enigma only as an individual: in the mass he is a mathematical problem


Robert Chambers, FRSE FGS
Scottish geologist, evolutionist and author
(Died this day 1871)



The progress of knowledge is very irregular, somewhat resembling the movements
of an army, of which some battalions are in vigorous health, while others are sickly
or overburdened with baggage. The experimental marches on at a good pace;
the observational proceeds but slowly; the speculative is left far in the rear

[Tamrin]

The Enlightenment may have indeed outlived its usefulness, but it is only through Reason's
protocols that one can make a coherent case for Reason's limitations. O ye of little
skepticism, kindly acknowledge your debt to that idiom on which you so glibly heap scorn


What good is it having God for a mother if she never sends you a birthday card?


I know the God hypothesis has its partisans, but, oh, what a boring idea.
Where did the universe come from? He did it. How do we account
for rivers and rocks and ring-tailed lemurs? He made them. Ho-hum


When a species fixates on the supernatural, it ceases to mature


There are none so blind as those who see angels... None so deaf as those who hear gods


The wonders of nature, she learned, from wing of bee to sonar of bat to eyeball of baby, were not
so much perfect machines as adequate contraptions. If nature bespoke a mind, it was a confused
and inchoate one, a mind incapable of locating the optic nerve on the correct side of the retina,
a mind unable to accomplish much of anything without resort to jerry-building and extinction


The real reason Charles Darwin distresses people, I would argue, is not that he stumbled
on an argument against theism. No, the problem was that he replaced theism — replaced
it with a construct more beautiful and majestic than any account of the Supreme Being
outside the Book of Job, a construct that invites us to see every variety of life, from aphids
to archbishops, zygotes to zoologists, as vibrant threads in an epic tapestry, its warp
and woof stretching across the eons and back to the Precambrian ooze, the seminal sea-
vents, the primordial clay-pits, or wherever it all began. An astonishing construct, a mind-
boggling construct, a construct of which Jehovah is understandably and insanely jealous


James Morrow
American fiction author and scientific humanist
(The Philosopher’s Apprentice)
(Born this day 1947)



When and why had the teachings of Jesus Christ become an optional component of Christianity?

[Tamrin]

The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed


All I knew about the word “cyberspace” when I coined it, was that it seemed like an
effective buzzword. It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless. It was suggestive of
something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page


All any drug amounts to is tweaking the incoming data. You have to be incredibly
self-centered or pathetic to be satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data


Have you ever considered the relationship of clinical
paranoia to the phenomenon of religious conversion?


I think of religions as franchise operations. Like chicken franchise
operations. But that doesn't mean there's no chicken, right?


The future is not google-able


I'd buy him a drink, but I don't know if I'd loan him any money


William Gibson
American-Canadian sci-fi author (Neuromancer)
(Born this day 1948)



Acceptance. Acceptance of the impermanence of being. And acceptance of
the imperfect nature of being, or possibly the perfect nature of being, depending
on how one looks at it. Acceptance that this is not a rehearsal. That this is it

(when asked, “What will save humanity?”)

[Tamrin]

A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy;
it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live


A doctrine is something that pins you down to a given mode of conduct and dozens
of situations which you cannot foresee, which is a great mistake in principle


Now this problem of the adjustment of man to his natural resources, and the problem of
how such things as industrialization and urbanization can be accepted without destroying
the traditional values of a civilization and corrupting the inner vitality of its life — these
things are not only the problems of America; they are the problems of men everywhere


The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas – complicated,
unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse


Until people learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the sowing of bitterness, sus-
picion, and intolerance as crimes in themselves — as perhaps the greatest disservice that
can be done to the cause of popular government — this sort of thing will continue to occur


We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the
great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say


It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the
thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough
and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right


George Kennan (“the father of containment”)
American foreign policy advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian
(Died this day 2005)



One sometimes feels a guest of one's time and not a member of its household

[Tamrin]

Tuesday's Quotes:

For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies


I am persuaded that every time a man smiles — but much more
so when he laughs — it adds something to this fragment of life


Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, — though the cant of
hypocrites may be the worst, — the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!


There have been no sects in the Christian world, however absurd, which have
not endeavoured to support their opinions by arguments drawn from Scripture


Titles of honor are like the impressions on coins, which add
no value to gold or silver, but only render brass current


Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture
the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions


In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself


Laurence Sterne
Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman
(Died this day 1768)



Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not