Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

That virgin, vital, beautiful day: today


Every soul is a melody which needs renewing


Dreams have as much influence as actions


Yes, I know, we are merely empty forms of matter, but we are indeed sublime
in having invented God and our soul. So sublime, my friend, that I want to gaze
upon matter, fully conscious that it exists, and yet launching itself madly into Dream,
despite its knowledge that Dream has no existence, extolling the Soul and all the
divine impressions of that kind which have collected within us from the beginning
of time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void which is truth, these glorious lies!


Magical shadow with symbolic powers! A voice from the
distant past, an evocation, is it not mine prepared for incantation?


The flesh is sorrowful, alas! And I’ve read all the books


The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book


Stéphane Mallarmé
French symbolist poet (The Afternoon of a Faun)
(Born this day 1842)



I wait, but do not know for what or why

[Tamrin]

Don't worry so much where you live but how you live. Make the family of man your family as well


When ye are prepared for a thing, the opportunity to use it presents itself


There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the
best of us, it doesn't behoove any of us to speak evil of the rest of us


Great numbers of children will be born who understand electronics and atomic power
as well as other forms of energy. They will grow into scientists and engineers of a new
age which has the power to destroy civilization unless we learn to live by spiritual laws


If the experience is used for self-indulgence, self-aggrandizement, or self-exaltation, the entity does
so to its own undoing, and creates for itself that which has been called karma and which must be met


You can never lose anything that really belongs to you,
and you can't keep that which belongs to someone else


It isn't always the individual that plans to accomplish some great deed that does the
most. It is the one who meets the opportunities and privileges which are accorded it
day by day. As such opportunities are used, there are better ways opened. For what
we use in the way of helpfulness to others, increases in itself. Begin with what you are!


Edgar Cayce ("the Sleeping Prophet")
American “psychic” (Association for Research and Enlightenment)
(Born this day 1877)



Encouraging the weak and the faint; giving strength and courage to those who have faltered

[Tamrin]

Never fear: Thank Home, and Poetry, and the Force behind both


My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity


What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns


A few, a few, too few for drums and yells, may creep
back, silent, to still village wells, up half-known roads


All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me


All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want


All a poet can do today is warn.
That is why the truest poets must be truthful


Wilfred Owen
British poet and soldier
(Born this day 1893)



Be bullied, be outraged, be killed, but do not kill

[Tamrin]

Only philosophy can teach man to be born well, to live well, to die well, and in perfect
measure be born again. Into this band of the elect — those who have chosen the life
of knowledge, of virtue, and of utility — the philosophers of the ages invite YOU


Today man, a sublime creature with infinite capacity for self-improvement, in an
effort to be true to false standards, turns from his birth-right of understanding —
without realizing the consequences — and plunges into the maelstrom of material
illusion. The precious span of his earthly years he devotes to the pathetically futile
effort to establish himself as an enduring power in a realm of unenduring things


Ignorant of the cause of life, ignorant of the purpose of life, ignorant of
what lies beyond the mystery of death, yet possessing within himself the
answer to it all, man is willing to sacrifice the beautiful, the true, and the
good within and without upon the blood-stained altar of worldly ambition


The criers of philosophy call all men to a comradeship of the spirit: to a
fraternity of thought: to a convocation of Selves. Philosophy invites man
out of the vainness of selfishness; out of the sorrow of ignorance and the
despair of worldliness; out of the travesty of ambition and the cruel clutches
of greed; out of the red hell of hate and the cold tomb of dead idealism


Briefly stated, the true purpose of ancient philosophy was to discover
a method whereby development of the rational nature could be
accelerated instead of awaiting the slower processes of Nature


Swinging open the doors of this antechamber, the illumined pass into the greater and
more perfect existence. The ignorant dwell in a world bounded by time and space


We must learn to realize that the greater the knowledge, the greater the penalty
for abusing it. The sin that is excusable in the child is unforgivable in a man


Bro. Manly P Hall
American mystic and author (Secret Teachings of All Ages)
(Born this day 1901)



Those who represent an ideal beyond the comprehension of the masses must face the per-
secution of the unthinking multitude who are without that divine idealism which inspires
progress and those rational faculties which unerringly sift truth from falsehood. The lot of the
Initiate-Teacher is therefore almost invariably an unhappy one. Pythagoras, crucified and his
university burned; Hypatia, torn from her chariot and rendered limb from limb; Jacques de
Molay, whose memory survives the consuming flame; Savonarola, burned in the square of
Florence; Galileo, forced to recant upon bended knee; Giordano Bruno, burned by the Inquis-
ition; Roger Bacon, compelled to carry on his experiments in the secrecy of his cell and leave
his knowledge hidden under cipher; Dante Alighieri, dying in exile from his beloved city;
Francis Bacon, patient, under the burden of persecution; Cagliostro, the most vilified man of
modern times — all this illustrious line bear unending witness of man's inhumanity to man.
The world has ever been prone to heap plaudits upon its fools and calumny upon its thinkers

[Tamrin]

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of
the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world


To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as
advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client


We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable


If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be
men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money


Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life


The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion


The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever


John Updike
American novelist and poet
(Born this day 1932)



From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but
that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few

[Tamrin]

I read once that you need two things to be happy: any two of health, money, and love.
You can cover the absence of one with the other two... But now I realized this was
unmitigated bullshit, because health and money did not compare with love at all


Look, I understand that for a lot of people, the US is superior to their country of
residence in myriad ways, but I'm Australian. We have it all: the weather, the
beautiful cities, the brand of football that involves neither padding yourself up
like Santa Claus nor standing in a line in front of goal and covering your testicles


She looked at her note cards and took a breath. "Why I Love America, by Hayley
McDonald's. America is the greatest group of countries in the world because we
have freedom. In countries like France, where the Government isn't privatized, they
still have to pay tax and do whatever the Government says, which would really suck.
In USA countries, we respect individual rights and let people do whatever they want


The easier your job, the more you got paid. John had suspected this
for many years, but here was the proof: pulling down five hundred
bucks an hour to sit in the afternoon sun on top of an L.A. office tower


There's no requirement that jobs be meaningful.
If there was, half the country would be unemployed


Last month we had to sit through a presentation on eliminating redundancy,
and it was a bunch of Power Point slides, plus a guy reading out what was on
the slides, and then he gave us all hard copies. I don’t understand these things


That's the thing you learn about values: they're what people make up to justify what they did


Max Barry
Australian author (Machine Men), essayist and blog writer
(Born this day 1973)



I feel comfortably qualified to talk about anything,
but that's a personal problem and I'm dealing with it

[Tamrin]

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he
potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality


Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies


In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead.
In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead


Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve


Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence


Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the
condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self


The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself
is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity


Erich Fromm
German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, humanistic philosopher
(Died this day 1980)



There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself

[Tamrin]

Without heroes, we're all plain people, and don't know how far we can go


There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to
– if there are no doors or windows – he walks through a wall


I for one believe that not enough has been made of the tragedy of the destruction
of 6 million Jews. Somebody has to cry — even if it's a writer, 20 years later


I think I said "All men are Jews except they don't know it." I doubt I expected any-
one to take the statement literally. But I think it's an understandable statement
and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men


A meshummed gives up one God for another. I don't want either. We live in a world
where the clock ticks fast while he's on his timeless mountain staring in space. He
doesn't see us and he doesn't care. Today I want my piece of bread, not in Paradise


You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention


What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering


Bernard Malamud
American novelist and short-story writer
(Died this day 1986)



Life is a tragedy full of joy

[Tamrin]

A distinguished economist, on being asked to define the subject
matter of his science, once replied, "Economics is what economists do"


Economic problems have no sharp edges. They shade off imperceptibly into
politics, sociology, and ethics. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say
that the ultimate answer to every economic problem lies in some other field


The ability to work with systems of general equilibrium is
perhaps one of the most important skills of the economist


In calling society an ecological system we are not merely using an analogy; society
is an example of the general concept of an "ecosystem" that is, an ecological
system of which biological systems — forests, fields, swamps — are other examples


Private property is a means, and neither its abolition
nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself


Every culture, or subculture, is defined by a set of common values, that is, generally agreed upon
preferences. Without a core of common values a culture cannot exist, and we classify society into
cultures and subcultures precisely because it is possible to identify groups who have common values


Conflict may be defined as a situation of competition in which the parties are
aware of the incompatibility of potential future positions, and in which each party
wishes to occupy a position that is incompatible with the wishes of the other


Kenneth Boulding
American economist, systems scientist and philosopher
(Died this day 1993)



The controversy as to whether socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists,
and it is a fundamental axiom of my philosophy, at any rate, that anything that exists, is possible

[Tamrin]

Wednesday’s Quotes:

Facts are stubborn things


The capital is become an overgrown monster; which like a dropsical head,
will in time leave the body and extremities without nourishment and support


Glory is the child of peril


Who bravely dares must sometimes risk a fall


Thy spirit, Independence, let me share, Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye. Thy
steps I follow with my bosom bare, nor heed the storm that howls along the sky


One half the nation is mad — and the other half not very sound


Thy fatal shafts unerring move, I bow before thine altar, Love!


Tobias Smollett, Scottish writer
(Baptized this day 1721)



Some folk are wise, and some are otherwise