June 2009
6 posts
“Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
“Any idiot can face a crisis. It is this day-to-day living that wears you out.” - Anton Chekhov
“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.” - Bertrand Russell
“To know that one life has breathed easier because I have lived. This is to have succeeded.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The Internet has shoved us in our own face.” - Susan Weber
“If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.”
- Saint Thomas Aquinas
May 2009
29 posts
“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.”
- R. Buckminster Fuller
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Life is always walking up to us and saying, “Come on in, the living’s fine,” and what do we do? Back off and take its picture,”
- Russell Baker
“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”
- Ernest Gaines
“Motivation alone is not enough. If you have an idiot and you motivate him, now you have a motivated idiot.”
- Jim Rohn
“Death: the one appointment we must all keep and for which no time is set.”
- Charlie Chan
“…Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.” - Pope Paul VI
“Death is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time.”
- Susan Cheever
“We ask a lot of love. All the things we don’t like in ourselves, we expect love will change. That’s a pretty difficult task for something so fragile.”
- David Gould/Dylan Gary/Cynthia Mort
“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which come to me as blossom,...
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words ‘make’ and ‘stay’ become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
-...
“The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes.”
- Pema Chodron
“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself...
“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”
- Sergei Rachmaninoff
“We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say-and to feel- “Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.” You’re not as alone as you thought.”
- John Steinbeck
“Some things should just be done for the fun of it, not because they’re inexpensive, practical, organic, logical, fashionable, modest, brilliant, green, expected, proper, spiritual, thinning, fattening, prudent, or allergen-smoke-chemical free.”
- Mike Dooley
“When I open my eyes, I can only sigh, for what I see is contrary to my creed: and I must despise the world for not perceiving that music is a higher revelation than any wisdom or philosophy.”
- Ludwig van Beethoven
“Better than a meaningless story of a thousand words is a single word of deep meaning which, when heard, produces peace.”
- Gautama Buddha
“I know you think you’re not good for anything, the world makes you feel so small. Get on your wooden horse. This is a ride, not a fight. No need to save face; say goodnight, Grace.”
- The Weepies
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I do not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.”
- Pablo Neruda
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all...
“You got through a day and wondered what your reward was. It soon became evident the prize was you got to withstand tomorrow too. You got through it, hour by long hour, but at the end you looked up without much expectation. You had begun to understand the score. Sure enough: today’s prize was the same. Outwardly calm, but with a scream building like the sound of a long-forgotten steam...
“I realized then why we respond to the sound of the waves, and the falling of rain, and wind in the trees. Because they are meaningless. They are nothing to do with us. They are outside our control. They remind us of a time, very early in our lives, when we did not understand the noises around us, but simply accepted them in our ears; and so they provided blessed relief from our continual...
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
- Anais Nin
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…”
- Jack Kerouac
“When was the last time you wanted to say it all to the right person? To have it all come out right, to surprise yourself at how together you could be. When was the last time you ever met someone who made you want to give it all to them? I mean give yourself to them. Where you couldn’t express yourself enough - like you wanted to cut off one of your arms to be understood. That’s...
“I must learn to love the fool in me — the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterfuly tyrant who would rob me of my aliveness, humility and dignity, but for my...
“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
- Henry David Thoreau