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Inside you there's an artist you
don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in
moonlight. - Jalaluddin Rumi
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Nature has
placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure... they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think:
every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to
demonstrate and confirm it. - John Bentham
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Yes, there is
a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in
putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.
- Khalil Gibran
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Just as a flower gives out its
fragrance to whomsoever approaches or uses it, so love from within us
radiates towards everybody and manifests as spontaneous service. -
Swami Ramdas
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Many people believe that humility is
the opposite of pride, when, in fact, it is a point of equilibrium. The
opposite of pride is actually a lack of self esteem. A humble person is
totally different from a person who cannot recognize and appreciate
himself as part of this worlds marvels. - Rabino Nilton Bonder
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Self-observation brings man to the
realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a
man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in
his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an
instrument of self-change, a means of awakening. - George Gurdjieff
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We have to look at our own inertia,
insecurities, self-hate, fear that, in truth, we have nothing valuable
to say. When your writing blooms out of the back of this garbage
compost, it is very stable. You are not running from anything. You can
have a sense of artistic security. If you are not afraid of the voices
inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
- Natalie Goldberg
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We are responsible for what we are,
and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make
ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past
actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can
be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act. -
Swami Vivekananda
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If thou desire the love of God and
man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is
beloved of none but itself. Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor
strength, nor reason can prevail.
- Francis Quarles
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When you are courting a nice girl an
hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second
seems like an hour. That's relativity. - Albert Einstien
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Men fear thought as they fear nothing
else on earth more than ruin more even than death. Thought is subversive
and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to
privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought
looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift
and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. -
Bertrand Russell
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I am only one, but still I am one. I
cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot
do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do. - Edward
Everett Hale
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If I care to listen to every
criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed
for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end
result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end
result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make
the difference. - Abraham Lincoln
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A devotee who can call on God while
living a householder's life is a hero indeed. God thinks: 'He is blessed
indeed who prays to me in the midst of his worldly duties. He is trying
to find me, overcoming a great obstacle - pushing away, as it were, a
huge block of stone weighing a ton. Such a man is a real hero.'
- Ramakrishna Paramhansa
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It is not the critic who counts. Not
the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of
deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is
actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who
knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in
a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high
achievement, and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither
victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
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A lie can run around the world before
the truth can get it's boots on.
- James Watt
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My patriotism is not an exclusive
thing. It is all-embracing, and I should reject that patriotism which
sought to mount the distress or exploitation of other nationalities. By
patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people; if I secure it at the
hands of my opponent, I should bow down my head to him. - Mahatma
Gandhi
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The first requisite for success is
the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem
incessantly without growing weary. - Thomas Edison
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We are all ruled in what we do by
impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in
general serve for our self preservation and that of the race. -
Albert Einstein
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Life is like a game of cards. The
hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is
free will. - Jawaharlal Nehru
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I want it said of me by those who
knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where
I thought a flower would grow.
- Abraham Lincoln
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It is love,
not reason, that is stronger than death. -
Thomas Mann
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He who has followed the path of
love's initiation in the proper order will on arriving at the end
suddenly perceive a marvelous beauty, the source of all our efforts -
Plato
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As long as there is one heart on
Earth where I still live, my memory will not die. - Alexander Pushkin
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Literature is as old as speech. It
grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become
more needed. - John Steinbeck
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Without free speech no search for
truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a
thousand-fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse
dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs
the hope of the race. - Charles Bradlaugh
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In our time, what is at issue is the
very nature of man, the image we have of his limits and possibilities as
a man. History is not yet done with its exploration of the limits and
meanings of 'human nature'. - C. Wright Mills
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Civilization is a stream with banks.
The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing,
shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the
banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing
songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization
is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists
because they ignore the banks for the river. - Will Durant
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Revenge is a kind of wild justice;
which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
- Francis Bacon
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It is sound judgment to put on a bold
face and ply your hand for a hundred times what it worth; forty-nine
times out of fifty nobody dares to 'call', and you roll in the chips.
- Mark Twain
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Because of their courage, their lack
of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The
truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person knows
full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worthless. The
creative person is flexible - he is able to change as the situation
changes, to break habits, to face indecision and changes in conditions
without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid,
inflexible people are. - Frank Goble
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A hundred times every day I remind
myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men,
living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the
same measure as I have received and am still receiving. - Albert
Einstein
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The Impossible Generalized Man
today is the critic who believes in loving those unworthy of love as
well as those worthy - yet believes this only insofar as no personal
risk is entailed. Meaning he loves no one, worthy or no. This is what
makes him impossible. - Nelson Algren
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Hope is the companion of power, and
mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of
miracles. - Samuel Smiles
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Hope is itself a species of
happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords:
but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope
must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end
in disappointment. - Samuel Johnson
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Construed as turf, home just seems a
provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes
on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view
across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were
a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses -
those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are
also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to
that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence. -
Richard Ford
