Quotes That Helped You Know Yourself

Quotes That Helped You to Know Yourself

In the course of reading volumes of works, specific phrases or observations sometimes make a powerful impact on an individual’s understanding of him- or herself. Perhaps members of A Pearl of Wisdom and Enlightenment might share a quote or two that helped them/us on the path of personal spiritual discovery. A couple of my favorites are the following:

“I can pluck more from dream than from life, for dream is like a better life, whose roses I would like to plant in my reality.”—Juan Ramon Jimenez

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”—Anais Nin

"Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved."
- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

"i'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance" e e cummings

Dilige et quod vis fac.
Love, and do what you will.

Augustine of Hippo

I ams what I ams and that's all that I ams
Popeye The Sailor

"Put your ear close down to your soul and listen hard." ~Anne Sexton, giving advice to young poets.

Better a bitter truth than a sweet lie.

Our enemies' opinions of us come a good deal closer to the truth than our own opinions about ourselves. --La Rouchefoucauld

You accept that's what your work is, and you normalize it. -- a mine rescue coordinator

God is not God's name but an opinion about God. -- Pope Sixtus, second century

Onward and upward through the fog. -- Pogo

If I have to choose between false modesty and honest arrogance, I choose honest arrogance. (paraphrased) -- Frank Lloyd Wright

Supreme eroticism is always barren. -- On the Nature of Things Erotic , F. Gonzalez-Crussi

"I would much rather be unhappy
than accept this false, lying happiness
that is thrust upon me here." -Aldous Huxley

"At the still point of the turning world...
...at the still point, there the dance is." -T.S. Eliot

"Sometimes it's hard to tell the dancer from the dance." -I don't remember

"Where there is silence, the absurdity of conversation is too apparent." -Gerald Lange

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?" is the final line of the W. B. Yeats poem "Among School Children."

http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Yeats/Among.htm

'Boredom is the only blasphemy'

"The mind is always the dupe of the heart." From Maxims by La Rochefoucauld, as quoted in the essay "Maxims, Etc." by Michael Dirda in Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments.

I had a poster in my room back in 1974 with this quote at the bottom:
"Too much sanity may be madness, and the maddest of all: to see life as it is and not as it should be."
--Cervantes
This quote saw me through some dark times.

Hello all--

My name is Jody, and I'm new to this group. I wanted to share a favorite quote of mine that I try to live by, or at least keep in mind. It's from Hamlet:

"There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy"

Thanks!

"An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." Mohandas K. Ghandi

Nice to be on board with this group. Here's a quote that has stuck with me for thirty years, from Alan Watts The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are:
"How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god?
And when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment – from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies – how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with living?"

"Go forth on your path, as it exists only through your walking." Saint Augustin 354-430

see more quotes

1. Can you accept that there is no essential substance or concept that is permanent?

2. Can you accept that all emotions bring pain and suffering?

3. Can you accept that all phenomena are illusory and empty?

4. Can you accept that enlightenment is beyond concepts; that's it's not a perfect blissful heaven, but instead a release from delusion?

What Makes You Not a Buddhist by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse.

José, thanks for the invitation. I will be reading the posts here. Best regards. Clara.

"Truth is a pathless land."-Krishnamurti

That was excellent Child_of_Light. Krishnaji was a beautiful being indeed. I edited the group and added a picture of him with that phrase. Thanks!

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Faith is a journey, not a guilt trip. (bumper sticker)

The tao that can be tao'ed is not the Tao. (Tao Te Ching)

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. (Xenocrates)

Whatever you think is delusion. (Katagiri Roshi)

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. --- Voltaire

"You must be the change you want to see in the world". - Mahatma Gandhi

Those who wander aren't always lost.-bumper sticker

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. Herm Albright

"You might be locked into a world not of your own making,...but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities." - Barack Obama, "Dreams From My Father"

Well, this is more a Buddhist story than a saying, but I thought I'd share it anyway. This is from memory, so it might not be the exact wording.

Two Bikkhus (monks) are walking along a path when they come to a river. A woman is standing on the bank of the river, waiting to cross. One of the Bikkhus offers to carry her across, she accepts, and the two monks continue on their way. Later on, the monk who had not carried the woman turned to his fellow and said "Brother, are we not taught to be celibate? Why did you carry that woman across the river?" The first Bikkhu then turned to the second and replied, "Brother, I set her down long ago. Why do you still carry her?"

I found god in myself, and I loved her, I loved her fiercely.
Ntozake Shange

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
Zora Neale Hurston

Upon watching a neighbor beat his wife when I was a young girl, my mother called me into the house and said.
"Love don't hurt."

Dear 'kencf' (message 19, above).

Hello!

No problem with 1, 2 and 3.

BIG problem with number 4.

As someone who has had at least six utterly perfect 'nirvana' (dropping of 'ego') experiences, I can assure you enlightenment is most certainly 'heavenly', a bliss beyond all 'concepts.'

After four years of deep thought regarding these experiences, I finally came back to the skeptical position regarding the supernatural I have held all my life.

The point is, it was something stronger than an intellectual 'release from delusion' that made me spend four years taking seriously the idea that there is an afterlife.

Thank you. Peace.

My favourite quote is by Theodore Isaac Rubin:

'Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.'

"It's never too late to become what you might have been." - George Eliot

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know. Oscar Wilde

Yes I can!

In regard to varielle's quote from George Eliot: this inspired me to start the journey toward becoming a doctor as a thirty-something without much academic confidence. I am now a 41 year old second year medical student.
Another favorite of mine is "Be kind, for everyone is fighting a great battle." -Plato.

"Quocunque Jeceris Stabit " (latin)

translated :Whithersoever you throw it, it will stand

Manx Motto

"The Journey of Spiritual Enlightenment is a path your mind walks,but your soul knows by heart."

LucyCrissinger@122006

congratulations ! good luck to you

The opposite of love is not hate;the opposite of love is indiffereince. Elie Wiesel

Don't believe everything you think. Pema Chodron.

'Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday and all is well' -Proverb

'Carpe diem'

If you see a good man, emulate him; if you see a bad man, look within yourself

"There is no power but energy." - anon

"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein

I love this post - I've grabbed a few that are new to me to add to my quote book!

My two personal favorites are as follows:

"This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul, and your very flesh shall become a great poem."
- Walt Whitman

and

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
-Thomas Jefferson

I have a poster showing Frodo and Gandalf, with a quote from Lord of the Rings by Tolkien:

"I wish the ring had never come to me... I wish none of this had happened."

"So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

"Hold fast to whatever fragments of love that exist, fopr sometimes a mosaic is more beautiful than an unbroken pattern."
Dawn Powell

How beautiful..thank you

"If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you."

-- The Gospel of Thomas

"Dr. Miller says we are pessimistic because life seems like a very bad, very screwed-up film. If you ask 'What the hell is wrong with the projector?' and go up to the control room, you find it's empty. You are the projectionist, and you should have been up there all the time."

-- Colin Wilson

"Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. And music is the BEST."

-- Frank Zappa

“First, decide who you would be. Then, do what you must do.” – Epictetus

Wow, what a great thread! There are so many good ones here.

This is a quote my Dad used to say...I'm not sure where it comes from.

"Where ever you go, there you are."

And #46! (skatoolaki) Love that quote from Whitman! It's one of my favorites!

Let the beauty we love be what we do
Rumi

I want to beseech you…to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the
questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, evolve some distant day into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke from 'Letters to a Young Poet'.

GOD BE WITH THE MOTHER
God be with the mother.
As she carried her child, may she carry her soul.
As her child was born, may she give birth and life and form to her own higher truth.
As she nourished and protected her child, may she nourish and protect her inner life and her independence.
For her soul shall be her most painful birth
and her most difficult child,
And the dearest sister to her children.
Michael Leunig

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began....
Mary Oliver. ‘The Journey’

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver. 'Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches'

I Matter
it was when she first dared to see her truth that the winds howled. after a time it strengthened her and she spoke her truth and the earth shook. and when finally she believed her truth the stars rejoiced, the universe opened and even her bones sang her song: "I Matter!"
Terri St. Cloud bonesigharts.com

If you want the truth, I’ll tell you the truth.
Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you.
Kabir

......and the Anais Nin quote in #1.

Sorry so many - I'm having trouble choosing....

It is a responsibility for a woman to have forced an elephant into the sky.
(Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry)

#52 Buckaroo Bonzai (played by Peter Weller) "remember, no matter where you go, there you are." One of my favorite movie quotes of all time!

I have many favorite quotes, and keep a nerdly quote journal, here's a few favorites:

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. -Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890)

A bit beyond perception's reach / I sometimes believe I see / that life is two locked boxes / each containing the other's key. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996

How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward. -Spanish proverb

Truth is a fire, and to speak it means to shine and to burn. -Gustav Klimt

Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep. -Carl Sandburg

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." - T. E. Lawrence

"Learning to Read" --

As one has to learn to read or to practice a trade, so one must learn to feel in all things, first and almost solely, the obedience of the universe to God. It is really an apprenticeship. Like every apprenticeship, it requires time and effort. He who has reached the end of his training realizes that the differences between things or between events are no more important than those recognized by someone who knows how to read, when he has before him the same sentence reproduced several times, written in red ink and blue, and printed in this, that, or other kind of lettering. He who does not know how to read only sees the differences. For him who knows how to read, it all comes to the same thing, since the sentence is identical. Whoever has finished his apprenticeship recognizes things and events, everywhere and always, as vibrations of the same divine and infinitely sweet word. This does not mean that he will not suffer. Pain is the color of certain events. When a man who can and a man who cannot read look at a sentence written in red ink, they both see the same red color, but this color is not so important for the one as for the other.

-- Simone Weil, Waiting for God

"Oh, Ratty! Can't we have everything back like it was?" Asked Moley in "The Wind and the Willows".

"First, stop being failures. It's absurd to judge ourselves against a scale larger than our own efforts. Do the right thing, help one another, raise the less fortunate without ulterior motives. Live simply, never lie, never steal, limit personal wealth, donate to charity, meditate, practise self-denial, live a pure life and spend some time as a monk. Above all, don't be afraid of nothingness, because the universe is full of it and therefore it must be natural and good. In this way of being 'no-mind', we escape ajiva and achieve enlightenment."
--Buckaroo Banzai

"There is always hope, because it's the one thing nobody has figured out how to kill yet."
--Galen, _Babylon-5: Crusades_

"When you think you've lost your way, it only means that you've gone as far as you can with what you have now."
--Nicki, _Videodrome_

"Remember, it's a great, big disco world."
--Kurt Harland

"Fiat veritas pereat vita."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

"A stranger world than this I fear I have yet to visit."
--Samurai Jack

Orpheus sang his best in Hell.

"A mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its former shape."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Dear Readaholic12,

I, too keep a nerdly quote journal! Well, it's really more of a diary/collection of musings/quote journal mix. It doesn't make sense to me to keep these things in separate notebooks because they all build on each other. It's hand-bound with a print of a Ma Yuan painting of some herons on a mountainside on the front. Anyway, here are some of my very favorite quotes:

"Zen students...mingle easily with so-called worldlings. They play with children; respect kings and beggars, and handle gold and silver as pebbles and stones." -- Nyogen Senzaki

"This day will not come again. / Each minute is worth a priceless gem." -- Takuan

A student asked Soen Nakagawa during a meditation reatreat, "I am very discouraged. What should I do?" Soen replied, "Encourage others."

"The unexamined life is not worth living." --Socrates

"If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, is more starry, is more immortal--that is your success....The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little stardust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched." --Henry David Thoreau

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." --Matthew 6:19-21

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." --Matthew 6:24

What an awesome idea for a thread... =D

"It's Mind, all Mind." C. Lynnwood Sweat

I love this one.

"The supreme value of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason."
Blaise Pascal

"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
G. K. Chesterton

"If you aren't growing, you're dying."
James Arthur Ray, "Harmonic Wealth"

No mincing of words, there.

This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day thou cans't not be false to any man.

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further; it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea.

My husband has this hanging over our computer:
"In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves...Self-discipline with all of them came first."
Harry Truman, 33rd U.S. president

I can't think of any quotes right now, but I just had to post to keep track of this thread!

"I fear nothing, I hope for nothing, I am free.

- Nikos Kazantzakis

"Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart" -Confucious.

(maybe I just like this because of the word "wheresoever" ?)

and my very favorite quote in the world, from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

"The moving finger writes
and, having writ, moves on
nor all your piety nor wit,
shall lure it back
to cancel half a line;
nor all your tears wash out
a word of it."

Thanks for this thread, I previously encountered some of the quotes above and have been inspired or moved at one time or another by their wisdom. Here are some words of others that moved me along in my journey.

"Don't tell lies and don't do what you hate"
Reply from Jesus when asked 'how should we pray?" as recorded in the Gospel of Thomas.

"Things should be made simple but never simpler"
Einstein supports my affinity with complex ideas and assists me in rebutting my friend's constant assertion that I must "Keep everything simple"

'Worry' is praying for things you don't want' (unknown to me)

" Beware the man who works hard to learn something, learns it and finds he is no wiser than before, he is full of murderous resentment for those who have not come by their ignorance the hard way"
Kurt Vonnegut in Cat's Cradle helps me to understand my place in relation to formal education and its gatekeepers.

' If ' - my favorite Rudyard Kipling poem should be mandatory reading for all intending parents. Google it if you don't already know it i.e. !

A skeptic walks up to a Zen master and asks:
"Is there life after death?"
"How should I know?" the master replied.
"But you are a Zen master!"
"Yes," the Zen master says, "but not a dead one."

- Zen mondo

:-)

;-)

"In the midst of Winter, we find within ourselves the Invincible Summer!" (Camus)

"In the end, only kindness matters." (Jewel)

"Be Nice!" (My Swedish Aunt Eleanor - RIP - decades ago in response to my scolding to my son by saying "Bad boy!" when he spilled something; she jumped all over me saying "That's what's wrong with America these days; kids are being raised to think they're bad ... YOU SAY "BE NICE!" (Damn it!)")

I've had a home-made "Be Nice!" bumper sticker on my cars for about 15 years now and it's great to see folks wave and smile as they pass in these days of Road Rage.

Found this one today that I really liked:

You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now.

-- from Become What You Are by Alan W. Watts

From my Zen Calendar, Jan. 12:

"What is the true meditation? It is to make everything - coughing, swallowing, waving the arms, motion, stillness, words, action, the evil and the good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss, right and wrong - into one single koan."

- Hakuin

'On ne tourne pas en rond, on avance concentriquement.'

We're not turning in circles, we advance concentrically.

Les dents du recoin by Boucq

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived."-Thomas Merton

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream:
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

- from the Diamond Sutra

"By definition the Divine or Absolute is 'that' which is nonrelative and the only thing that can be nonrelative is a void of voids. This void of voids or absolute nothing IS Christ.

- Bernadette Roberts
Christian apophatic contemplative

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue;
Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.
- Lao Tzu, from the Tao Te Ching

Wherever you go, there you are.

"Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing glove."
- P.G. Wodehouse

"It is not given to us to know how our life will affect the world. What is given to us is to tend the intentions of our heart and to plant beautiful seeds with our deeds. Do not doubt that your good actions will bear fruit, and that change for the better can be born from your life."
-Jack Kornfield

I read a lot of quotes, and there are a few that come to mind....

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought".

- Basho

" Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional".
Zen Wisdom

"You become that which you think you are. Or, it is not that you become it, but that the idea gets very deeply rooted - and that's what all conditioning is."
Osho

" If you can become a mirror you have become a meditator. Meditation is nothing but skill in mirroring. And now, no word moves inside you so there is no distraction".
Osho

"I am who I am. So, let me enjoy being this".
Innerspace

Inspirational Zen Quote by Buddha
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become".

"If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it"?
Dogen

"Zen: Seeing into one's own nature".
Hui-neng

"What is truth?"

- Pontius Pilate

I became water
and saw myself
a mirage
became an ocean
saw myself a speck
of foam
gained Awareness
saw that all is but
forgetfulness
woke up
and found myself
asleep.

--Binavi Badakhshani

Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is absurd.
- Voltaire

I have so many favorites that each apply at different times. Right now after 9 died on their way home from an average monday in DC on the metro...

Carpe Diem

I don't know if I made it up or heard it elsewhere but...

I am the most important being in the universe, and the least.

This one really touches me though...

The universe has chosen you as the vehicle through which to experience the uncanny thrill of cutting up cabbage for dinner, the wonder that is inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, the fabulous spectacle of watching your clothes dry at a coin-op laundry where the radio is stuck on E-Z listening. The universe had demanded that you be you. Ain't no avoidin' it.
Brad Warner

"Life is but a walking shadow,
A poor player that struts and frets its way across the stage
And then is heard no more" Macbeth

I came across a translation of Occam's Razor when I was young that for what ever reason became the overall guiding principle of my life...."It is vain to do with more that which can be done with fewer."

Jack Kerouac described " a life of spontaneous and radiant effortlessness"...glorious words to try to manifest in your own life.

"There is no division between the observer and the observed." J. Krishnamurti

I am no god. I am Awake.
- The Buddha

King James: Proverbs 23/27

Ecclesiastes 9: 4 - 11

"Existence precedes essence" takes care of "that".

"Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first."
- Ernestine Ulmer

try this:
http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:3C19ynSe-_EJ:www.bigeye.com/donjuan.htm+%22d...

GB Shaw had a tendency to beat around the bush.

I prefer the Marquis:

http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0293.pdf

Have a nice day.

Yea and verily; selah!

Try Proverbs 23-27

> 100, 102, 105

He who smelt it dealt it.

- anon.

Once more: "If you see a good man, emulate him; if you see a bad man, look within yourself." (?)

"The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."
- Sir Richard Francis Burton

"If we define religion as the state of being grasped by an infinite concern we must say: Man in our time has lost such infinite concern. And the resurgence of religion is nothing but a desparate and mostly futile attempt to regain what has been lost." - Paul Tillich

"They amuse themselves by playing an irrelevant ecclesiastical game called Let's Pretend. Let's pretend that we possess the objective truth of God in our inerrant Scriptures or in our infallible pronouncements or in our unbroken apostolic traditions."
- Bishop John Shelby Spong

"We have met the enemy and he is us."
- Pogo

"The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge."
- Meister Eckhart

"The death of God isn't a triumphant call of "we won that argument." Rather it's a recognition of what's considered by these existential thinkers to be an observable, sociological fact--that God and the church aren't at the center of town anymore. More important, they aren't at the center of people's thinking and no longer have the clout to undertwite values and meaning in modern society."--Existentialism For Dummies

That thou mayest have pleasure in everything, seek pleasure in nothing.

That thou mayest know everything, seek to know nothing.

That thou mayest possess all things, seek to possess nothing.

That thou mayest be everything, seek to be nothing.

- St. John of the Cross

“We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.”

- Alan Watts

Empirically lacking, a statement such as this "iGod is a hidden God, Who conceals His name and manifests Himself" is the starting point for speculations, for which no reasonable defense can ever be given but :"Just BELIEVE!"

"The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness."
- Albert Einstein

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism."
- Albert Einstein

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
- Albert Einstein

Kneejerk reaction warning (usually I calm down before I respond, but):

What layers of Poppycock Michael Novak piles upon his own preconceptions. That last quote of Einstein is so off the mark, that I wonder if he's taking something out of context (if not, it reaffirms my conviction that Einstein was not, indeed, a god-like ultimate authority on these matters, but, rather, just another confused bloke like you or me).

I am an atheist. I am not a slave feeling the weight of the chains I've thrown off, but, rather, the freedom of seeing the world as it really is, with all its beauty and ugliness, with all its treasures and its eyesores, with all its kindnesses and its treacheries. In short, all its soothing, inspiring, cacaphonious, jarring, grating, harmonious "music of the spheres."

All of it is reality and I can choose to do something about parts of it where I (think I) can help out and I can choose to leave other things alone and not screw things up any more than we've already done.

I try to choose with my eyes wide-open, based upon what I see and what I've learned and what exists, right now, in this one moment of choice. I don't always have outcomes that I thought I wanted or that are "correct," but I try to learn from those mistakes. Most importantly, I try not to make decisions based upon theological or nationalistic or money-driven programming that we've all had to endure for so many eons.

Again, I am an atheist. I marvel at a sunset, just like you. I feel so lucky to be alive when a small child trustingly wraps her tiny hand around my finger as we walk together. The sound of the wind high up in trees at night is the most beautiful music I can imagine. Talking long into the night with a good friend by a campfire is one of the greatest treasures that can happen.

You don't need god to "own" these things. You just need to open your own ears and eyes and skin and noses and tongues and take it in and breathe it out again and, knowing that soon, for you, it will all be over, makes it so much more precious than some promised land of milk and honey.

Speaking of "imagining beautiful music," now let's all hold hands and sing together.

Anyhow, that's the end of this outburst. It's not very well thought-out (or edited), but, well, it's what I feel right now. I prefer tar and feather to crucifixion, so have at it, folks!

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

(well, ok ... I did one edit!)

"The Tao does nothing, and yet nothing is left undone."
- Lao-Tsu

"Do not permit the events of your daily lives to bind you, but never withdraw yourselves from them. Only by acting thus can you earn the title of "A Liberated One."
- Huango Po

"The truly religious man does not embrace a religion; and he who embraces one has no religion."
- Kahlil Gibran

Jay D -

No offense taken toward you. You seem to be sincere (and articulate) in your own beliefs. I reserve the unjustified right, even though I haven't actually read anything by Novak, to be indignant toward any generalizations of atheists by anyone, including one of my own heros ... AE.

My! Have we gotten off topic here or what (grin?!). Maybe we should all just calm down and let others get back to posting their own inspirational passages (without peppering them with buckshot because we don't happen to agree). There are plenty of other forums for us to "discuss" (ad nauseum) our differences (snicker).

Douglas

"In the end, only kindness matters."

"Brush up your Shakespeare; start quoting him now..."

"Hell is other people."
- from the play "No Exit" by J.P. Sartre

Also, by Sartre: “Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”

…(The) Buddha…said… the knowledge he gained in Awakening was like all the leaves in the forest; the knowledge he imparted about the four noble truths was like a handful of leaves. He restricted himself to teaching the handful because that’s all he needed to lead his students to their own knowledge of the whole forest...
- Thanissaro Bhikkhu

You have met the enemy , and look in a mirror, he is you .......

I just noticed this interesting site, and have found that most of our children speaking ,have been blaming everybody, but themselves. "No one can love you, until you love yourself, COMPLETELY" Do not put your self "Issues" upon another person, until, you are "ONE with YOURSELF".

Life is like water, It is the only element that can be Gas, Solid, Or flowing. It is the element of all life......!!! :) So be like water and flow with ALL. If you "BECOME" like water you can wear your enemy down.

to: http://www.librarything.com/profile/doogiewray

I am a "Doogie" too,
and I have found that, there are a lot of "talents", that I never really studied, but I don't know where I learned them...... I don't believe in "man's religion's, but I believe in a HIGHER "dimension" ... If you can't explain where "Dreams" come from, then .?????? Don't close your mind to ...????????????????...

P.S.

I am continually looking for answers to the universe. I
have been working on an equation for, they call it "warp core technologies" and with all dreamers and physics engineers,

its IS possible....So don't close your your mind to tomorrow. Remember, Learn from the past, (you can't change the past, You can't predict the future, Just live for """NOW""".

"Now who can argue with that?"

- Me.

Whoa! I'm starting to have flashbacks to the '60's!

Far out (and, just a bit groovy, too)!

(Grin, ok?)

When one sees Eternity in things that pass away and Infinity in finite things, then one has pure knowledge.
- The Bhagavad Gita

Always Remember,

"If two people agree on everything, one is not necessary ..........????!!!!!!"

And also "The Highest task of Intelligence is to Grasp and Recognize Genuine Opportunity" ....

"If I could have two things in one: the peace of the grave, and the light of the sun."

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

" "

- Everyone who has died

(and, hopefully, a lesson to be learned by some of us still living)

Un viellard qui meurt est un bibliothèque qui brûle.
One old person dying is a library burning.
(Amadou Hampaté Ba, address to UNESCO 1960)

Life is a candle before the wind.

- Japanese proverb

Existence precedes essence - Sartre

If it weren't for cynicism, I wouldn't believe in anything.

- Me.

I don't believe in the word "believe"; it becomes "either or" -Me

"From one bathtub
To another bathtub
All Nonsense."

- Issa

#128 > Here is a Shakespearean quote for you:

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Julius Cæsar. Act IV Scene 3
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

This one is for many of us, collectors or hoarders of books:

"The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."
Lin YuTang - The Art of Living

"Life is but a walking shadow; a poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage and then is heard no more" Macbeth

You are far more insignificant than you could ever imagine.

- Lawrence Krauss

As King James would say "Yea and verily: Selah"

"If I tell somebody who believes the world is 6,000 years old that he is ignorant, I am paying him the compliment of assuming that he is not stupid, insane or wicked."  - Richard Dawkins

You are merely a metaphor for the animal species - Me

"Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that."

- Charlotte Joko Beck

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

- from Stanza 51 of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

There is not "road ahead". The "road" is all back there.

"What spirit is so empty and blind that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?" Michelangelo

Particularly apropos in this day and age.

"If you do not have a moral question at the center of your process, you do not have a process that will succeed." Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper for the Onondaga Nation.

(A personal quote) "If it's not cricket, don't play the game."

OK it's not enlightenment but both cute and instructive:

'Tis better to keep your mouth shut and be considered stupid than to open it and remove all doubt!

-unknown

>159 chg1: I think thats Benjamin Franklin, but could be mistaken.

The "on switch" goes up. You just went down.

If you want others to be happy,
practice compassion…
Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible…
- the Dalai Lama

Aum tat sat.

-If you do something for the right reasons, you will be able to do anything.
?

Shazam! Or, was that the sperm penetrating the ovum that brought about my appearance? Which ever was the "right reason", for my appearance would then make my "karma" the "anything". Quad Erat Demonstrandum.

shazam

You must attain "no attainment".

- Soen Sa Nim

शिद्धत्थ ङोतम

"Om Purnamadah purnamidam purnat purna mudachyate, Purnasya purnam adaya purnam ewavashishyate."

Om mani padme hum., etc., etc.

Nothing is as good or as bad as it first seems

I am in awe of the complexity abd beauty of science and nature, the first quote is very meaningful to me.

Perhaps "science" (statistics) permits us to easily label objects/things and thus all become commodities and, therefore people can also be commodities (employees, etc.) filling slots in a census. With nature, we become living subjects interacting with other lives.

A specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less and, fin ally, knows everything about nothing.

A generalist is someone who knows less and less about more and more and, finally, knows nothing about everything. -- Ralph Barton Perry

The first of these sentences used to be very often quoted -- without acknowledgement of the author. Only years after hearing "A specialist is..." did I learn that he went on to say "A generalist is... ".

there but for the grace of god goes i.
john bradford

for me the key to this is EMPATHY.

“Tao. Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither...

…Tao. It is the Way and the Way-goer. It is the eternal road along which walk all beings, but no being made it, for itself is being. It is everything and nothing. From it all things spring, all things conform to it, and to it at last all things return. It is a square without angles, a sound which ears cannot hear, and an image without form. It is a vast net and though its meshes are as wide as the sea it lets nothing through. It is the sanctuary where all things find refuge. It is nowhere, but without looking out of the window you may see it. Desire not to desire, it teaches, and leave all things to take their course. He that humbles himself shall be preserved entire. He that bends shall be made straight. Failure is the foundation of success and success is the lurking-place of failure; but who can tell when the turning point will come? He who strives for tenderness can become even as a little child. Gentleness brings victory to him who attacks and safety to him that defends. Mighty is he who conquers himself.”

- from “The Painted Veil” by W. Somerset Maugham

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Leo Tolstoy

Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes--
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Why, when God's world is so big,
did you fall asleep in a prison
of all places?
Rumi

The mountains & hills & the sky - are not all of these the body of Buddha?
--Yes, but it is a pity to say so.
Zen story

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.
Aldo Leopold

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
James 1:22

"The Purpose of Time is to Prevent Everything from Happening at Once"
Title of a poem by X.J. Kennedy

America - the greatest of opportunities, the worst of influences.
George Santayana

It seems that every mystic that I know loves the poem by E.B. Browning. The sad thing is that in this busy life I have yet to be able to discuss the brilliance of the line " the rest sit round it and pick blackberries".
All receive nourishment from the bush. The brilliance of the poet. Why are we in such a hurry? Where are we hoping to go that is so much better than where we are? Why is it so difficult to slow down, much less, be still?

"Existentialism is not a comprehensive philosophy or way of life, it is an endeavor to grasp reality." - Rollo May: The Discovery of Being.

"Change takes but an instant. Resistance to change can last a lifetime."

-- Hebrew Proverb

Ludwig Wittgenstein: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

"This is near enough true bliss."

Paul Simon

"A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push."
Ludwig Wittgenstein

"If you're not a Buddhist you think there are Buddhists and non-Buddhists, but if you're a Buddhist you realize everybody's a Buddhist - even the bugs."

- Shunryu Suzuki

"All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth."

Mohandas Gandhi

Tat Twam Asi

"God bless the people of this book-movie."
-- Jack Kerouac

"I will act AS IF what I do makes a difference."

—William James

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

—The Diamond Sutra, §32

‘Beauty is truth—truth beauty’—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

- from ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1819) by John Keats

"You are already complete. You just don't know it."

- Seung Sahn

"The black hole is not a negative...The black hole is the inverse phase...of cosmic evolution. What humans have spontaneously identified as good and bad - or as positive and negative - are evolutionary complementations in need of more accurate identifications."
- R. Buckminster Fuller

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world."

Proust, In Search of Lost Time vol. 2

“The man of Truth is beyond good and evil,”…has ridden to All-Is-One...has learnt that Illusion is the only reality, and that substance is an impostor…That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality. Time is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has motion, and is the cause of change, is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions there are no such things as past, present, and future. Men think of time only because of what they call change, yet that too is illusion. All that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously.” - From “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” by H.P. Lovecraft

...You have thrown aside a creed, but you have preserved the ethic which was based upon it. To all intents you are a Christian still, and if there is a God even you will undoubtedly receive your reward. The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out. If you keep His laws I don’t think He can care a packet of pins whether you believe in Him or not.’...

- from "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham

"…It was a night so beautiful that your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of the body. You felt that it was ready to be wafted away on the immaterial air, and death bore all the aspect of a beloved friend..."

"...Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labor..."

"…My own thoughts were then constantly occupied with love, but I never could imagine connubial bliss till after tea..."

- three quotes from "The Moon and Sixpence" by W. Somerset Maugham

"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation & keep out of prison, but anything that that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."
Bertrand Russell

"Not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress."
The Sierra Club (?)

"The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and to keep it forever, I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the Pearl may be found it may not be sought. The Literature of Illumination reveals this above all; although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return from the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears: my tongue flaps in my mouth, ailinon, alleluia!! I cannnot cause light; the most I can do try to do is put myself in the path of its beam."
Annie Dilliard

"In solitude, all things find their just emphasis."
Rainer Maria Rilke

"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."
Andre Gide

"The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything."
Julian of Norwich

"Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of children deathly sick."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"The ancients knew the sorrows of exile:
If you weren't hanged, they'd pack you off
to the far ends of the earth,
to go on grumbling, writing endless petitions,
that would never reach the emperor."
Charles Simic

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"There is more dawn to come. The Sun is but a morning star."
--Henry David Thoreau

"I am not a human being but a human becoming."

"Life is short, Fall in love, Maiden."

"There is no such thing as an absolute answer in life, all that matter is that you searched hard enough to your heart's content." Or "Who cares about an answer? There is no such thing like that to begin with. All that matters is that you do something for yourself until you are satisfied. If you are content, there won't be any regrets."

"I once asked my mother, What is the meaning of life? My mother barked back, meaning of life? I don't have time for such nonsense! The only thing my mother ever did was to raised me as best she could, and the only thing I ever knew what to do was to raise you ingrates up the best I could so you can come back from college and ask me stupid questions!"

"True love is like ghosts, a lot of people believe in them but none has ever seen one."

"The only thing equal in life is time. Some are born with talent, some are born with good looks, some are born with money, and yet some are born without anything at all, but the only they all have in common is that all of them only has 24 hours to a day. It's up to you on how to use it."

Random quotes from my head, and to be honest, I don't remember where they came from. I hope some of you can enjoy them as much as I do.

Found this in an old notebook that contained such thoughts. It is Aldous Huxley from the "Doors of Perception".

"The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend"

> 180

that one sounds like an pontification of >159was

If you want others to be happy,
practice compassion.
If you want to be happy,
practice compassion.

Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible.

-- the Dalai Lama

160>This is from the quote page on Wikipedia (re:159)

# Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

* Variant: Better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln but taken from Solomon's Proverbs)

204: I've also seen it attributed to Ben Franklin.

205>

Poor Richard is a good attribution for anything intelligent; Mr. Franklin was a wise man.The other usual suspects are Shakespeare and the Bible.

206>

It seems a lot of things are improperly attributed to the Bible. I'm not Christian, but it seems to me more people should read it. Even if you aren't Christian, its probably the one book thats had the single largest influence on Western civilization.

207>

Yes, a lot of things are improperly attributed to the Bible. Perhaps if people read it more, they'd get their attributions more accurate! If indeed the quote came from Proverbs, then it IS from the Bible (I hadn't looked it up,yet).

"One must still have chaos within oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"Exuberance is Beauty; the cistern contains, the fountain overflows"
William Blake

"To me, as I am well disposed toward life, butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever among men is of their kind seem to know the most about happiness."
more Nietzche

"I want God, I want poetry,
I want danger, I want freedom,
I want goodness, I want sin."
Aldous Huxley

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

Buddha quotes (Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.)

"I do believe in reincarnation, but I do not believe in life before noon." Florence King