Journey |
| You
can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can something
about the width and depth. |
Evan
Esar |
| We
do what we must and call it by the best names. |
Emerson |
| Finish
every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some
blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as
you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with
too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day
is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on yesterdays. |
Emerson |
| Make
it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and
to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life
may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent
on anybody. |
Thessalonians,
4:11-12 |
| Anything
you fully do is an alone journey. |
Natalie
Goldberg |
| The
art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in as much as it,
too, demands a firm and watchful stance against any unexpected onset.
|
Marcus
Aurelius, 7:61 |
| A
consciousness of wrong doing is the first step to salvation. |
Epicurus
as quoted in Seneca , Letter XXVIII |
| I
never come back home with quite the same moral character I went out
with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal
peace, some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears
on the scene. |
Seneca,
Letter VIII |
| Wild
animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have
escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what
is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm,
for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it
on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present. |
Seneca,
Letter VII |
| It
is indeed desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to
our ancestors. |
Plutarch |
| How
can you wonder your travels do you no good when you carry yourself
around with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you
away. |
Socrates
as quoted in Seneca, Letter XXVIII |
| .
. . when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to
go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out
your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take
you where you do not wish to go. |
John
21:18 |
| |
Progress |
| |
I learned
this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently
in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life
which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common
hours. |
|
Henry
David Thoreau, Walden |
| |
If you don't
play the game, you can't know enough to make the rules. If you are
not engaged in the sweaty work of the world, you should not be in
charge of the deodorant concession. And if you cannot find a way
to aid progress in human affairs, then know that the smirking
cynicism of the sideline critic is a form of plague -- and to be one
of those is to be a carrier of death instead of a preserver of life. |
|
Robert
Fulghum |
| |
Brothers,
I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing
I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal . . . |
| |
Philippians
3:13-14 |
| |
Awareness |
| |
When
a spider makes a beautiful web, the beauty comes out of the spider's
nature. It's instinctive beauty. How much of the beauty of our own
lives is about the beauty of being alive? How much of it is conscious
and intentional? That is a big question. |
| |
Joseph
Campbell, The Power of Myth, 100 |
| |
All
of life is a meditation, most of it is unintentional. |
| |
Joseph
Campbell, The Power of Myth, 19 |
| |
Attitude |
| |
Do you
know what it means to be considerate? When you see a sharp stone on
a path trodden by many bare feet, you remove it, not because you have
been asked, but because you feel for another -- it does not matter
who he is, and you may never meet him. |
| |
Krishnamurti,
Think on These Things, 20 |
| |
By accepting
life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than
fighting them, we become free. |
| |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 21 |
 |
Death |
|
How we deal with
death, of course, is tied in with how we respond to all the little
deaths in our lives -- the loss of friends, family, lovers, of particularly
special times and places, of jobs or opportunities, hopes and dreams,
or belief systems. |
| |
Carol
Pearson, The Hero Within, 7 |
| |
The
tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside us while
we live. |
|
Norman
Cousins |
|
The Hero's Quest |
| The
courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities
into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience
-- that is the hero's deed. |
Joseph
Campbell, The Power of Myth, 49 |
|
Thought |
| I
am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends
more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those
events themselves. |
Alexander
Humboldt |
| Everyone
is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejuidines,
just recognize them. |
Edward
R. Murrow, 12/31/55 |
| I
know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become. |
Oprah
Winfrey |
| Concentration
comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger. |
Arnold
Palmer |
| The
only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar
territory. |
Paul
Fix, veteran character actor |
| As
you think, so you become. Avoid superstitiously investing events with
power or meaning they don't have. |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 25 |
| Your
mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed
the color of its thoughts. |
Marcus
Aurelius, 5:16 |
| Early
impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has
been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness? |
St.
Jerome |
| Finally,
brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -- if
anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things. |
Philippians
4:8 |
|
Silence |
| Surely
human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent
were the same as that to speak. |
Spinoza |
|
Influence |
| What
is important is that those of you who are dealing with children should
not impose upon them your own fallacies, your own notions about ghosts,
your own particular ideas and experiences . . . gradually they communicate
to the children their own anxieties, fears and superstitions, and
the children naturally repeat what they have heard. |
Krishnamurti,
Think on These Things, 16 |
|
Reading |
| Be
as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for
your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former
as by the latter. |
Paxton
Hood |
| Books
are the training weights of the mind. |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 97 |
| You
should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable,
deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything
from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind. |
Seneca,
Letter II |
|
Education |
| The
average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one
graveyard to another. |
J.
Frank Dobie, A Texan in England, 1945 |
| Indra
says, "I ask. Teach." (That, by the way, is a good Oriental
idea: you don't teach until you are asked. You don't force your message
down people's throats. |
Joseph
Campbell, The Power of Myth, 78 |
| To
be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for
surprise is to be educated. |
James
P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games |
| Nothing
in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates
in the form of inert facts. |
Henry
Adams |
| Do
you know what it means to learn? When you are really learning throughout
your life and there is no one special teacher to learn from. Then
everything teaches you -- a dead leaf, a bird in flight, a smell,
a tear, the rich and the poor, those who are crying, the smile of
a woman, the haughtiness of a man. You learn from everything, therefore
there is no guide, no philosopher, no guru. Life is your teacher,
and you are in a state of constant learning. |
Krishnamurti,
Think on These Things, 6 |
| Our
present education consists in telling us what to think, it does not
teach us how to think . . . |
Krishnamurti,
Think on These Things, 24 |
| The
ideal condition would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct;
but since we are all likely to go astray, the reasonable thing is
to learn from those who can teach. |
Sophocles |
|
Notebooks |
| Keepers
of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and
resistent rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted
apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. |
Joan
Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook" in Slouching Toward Bethlehem |
|
Fear |
| We
all need money, but there are degrees of desperation. |
Anthony
Burgess, author of "A Clockwork Orange" |
| "
. . . a god has nature to thank for his immunity from fear, while
the wise man can thank his own efforts . . ." |
Seneca,
Letter LIV |
|
Courage |
| .
. . to seek out the opportunity in situations requires a great deal
of courage . . . |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 47 |
| Real
courage is risking something you have to keep on living with, real
courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your
thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage
is risking ones cliches. |
Tom
Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction |
|
Self |
| We
forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people. |
Arthur
Schopenhauer |
| Above
all things, reverence yourself. |
Pythagorus |
| When
the soul cries out, it is a sign that we have arrived at a necessary,
mature stage of self-reflection. |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 83 |
| .
. . there's no state of slavery more disgraceful than one which is
self-imposed. |
Seneca,
Letter XLVII |
| .
. . a man who follows someone else not only does not find anything,
he is not even looking. |
Seneca,
Letter XXXVIII |
| It
is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy
in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in
the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence
of solitude. |
Emerson,
"Self-Reliance" |
| When
something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward
it; you can either accept it or resent it. |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 7 |
| The
real test of personal excellence lies in the attention we give to
the often neglected small details of our conduct. |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 54 |
| What
progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend. That is
progress indeed. Such a person will never be alone, and you may be
sure he is a friend of all. |
| Seneca,
Letter VI |
|
Friendship |
| After
friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge. |
Seneca,
Letter III |
|
Words from Friends |
| Sin
comes when people try to fulfill needs they don't have. |
| Rabbi
Z., paraphrased |
|
Discipline |
| Let
our aim be a way of life not diametrically opposed to, but better
than the mob. |
Seneca,
Letter V |
| One
ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem,
see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable
words. |
Goethe |
Everyone
in this world is important. If you really want peace of mind and
success in your endeavors, forego self-importance.
Conceit
is an iron gate that admits no new knowledge, no expansive possibilities,
nor constructive ideas. Indulging in excessive pride in your own
knowledge, abilities, or experiences and attempting to take on more
power or authority than is your due is fatal. Such preening not
only alienates others, since an overbearing lout is suffocating
to be around, but also leads to complacency, precluding change in
a wholesome direction. |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 87 |
| .
. . anything inborn or ingrained in one can by dint of practice be
allayed but not overcome. |
Seneca,
Letter IX |
| Mankind
censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and
not because they shrink from committing it. |
Plato |
| Remaining
dry and sober takes a good deal more strength of will when everyone
about one is puking drunk . . . |
Seneca,
Letter XVIII |
|
Philosophy |
| Philosophy's
main task is to respond to the soul's cry; to make sense of and thereby
free ourselves from the hold of our griefs and fears. |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 83 |
| Philosophy
is intended for everyone, and it is authentically practiced only by
those who wed it with action in the world toward a better life for
all. |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 84 |
|
Wisdom |
| The
best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge
the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live
that way, you are really a wise man. |
Euripides |
| .
. . even the beginnings of wisdom make life bearable. |
Seneca,
Letter XVI |
|
Patience |
| Forbid
that I should refuse to my own household the courtesy and politeness
which I think proper to show to strangers. |
John
Baille |
| .
. . what annoys us does not necessarily do us any harm. |
Seneca,
Letter XLVII |
|
Sacred |
| Work
is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness. |
George
MacDonald |
| This
is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room,
or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the
newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you
don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes
to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring
forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative
incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But
if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen. |
Joseph
Campbell, The Power of Myth, 115 |
| God
is an intelligible sphere -- a sphere known to the mind, not to the
senses -- whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. |
Joseph
Campbell, The Power of Myth, 111 |
| God
is near you, is with you, is inside you. Yes, Lucilius, there resides
within us a divine spirit, which guards us and watches us in the evil
and the good we do. As we treat him, so will he treat us. |
Seneca,
Letter XLI |
|
Faith |
| My
way of understanding some aspects of our Jewish theology is this:
G_d will not judge us for how many commandments we observe. He will
judge us for how seriously we try to improve our observance. |
Rabbi
Z., Ahavath Sholom newsletter, 9/1/05 |
| Faithfulness
is not blind belief; it consists of steadfastly practicing the principle
of shunning those things which are not within your control, leaving
them to be worked out according to the natural system of responsibilities. |
Epictetus,
The Art of Living, 45. |
| Have
courage for the great sorrows in life and patience for the small ones.
And when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to
sleep in peace. God is awake. |
Victor
Hugo |
| It
seems to me a case of negligence if, after becoming firm in our faith,
we do not strive to understand what we believe. |
Anselm,
quoted in Richard Tarnas, Passion of the Western Mind, 177 |
| He
is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
|
Colossians 1: 17 |
|
Prayer |
So
just go to sleep as a baby goes;
Without even asking if you may,
God knows when His child is too tried to pray.
He judges no solely by uttered prayer,
He knows when the yearnings of love are there.
He knows you do pray. He knows you do trust,
And He knows, too, the limits of poor, weak dust. |
Ella
Conrad Cowherd, quoted in "Streams in the Desert," L.B.
Cowman |
|
Religion |
| According
to Judaism, then, God judges humans not according to their particular
creed, not according to which group or institution receives their
stuppot, but rather for the kind of people they make of themselves. |
Rabbi
Bradley Shavit Artson, The Bedside Torah, 14 |
|
Poetry |
"No
pity, Lord, could change the heart
From red with wrong to white as wool;
The rod must heal the sin: but Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!
"Tis
not by guilt the onward sweep
Of truth and rigt, O Lord, we stay;
Tis by out follies that so long
We hold the earth from heaven away.
These
clumsy feet, still in the mire
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands,
We thrust among the heart-strings of a friend." |
Edward
Roland Sill, "The Fool's Prayer," stanzas 4, 5, 6 |
Some
say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. |
"Fire
and Ice," Robert Frost, complete |
Why
I have persevered to shun
The
common paths that others run,
And on a strange road journeyed on,
Headless alike of wealth and power,
Of Glory's wreath, and Pleasure's flower. |
Emily
Bronte, "Speak, God of Visions," 3rd stanza |
The
nightingales are sobbing in
The orchards of our mothers,
And hearts that we broke long ago
Have long been breaking others;
Tears are round, the sea is deep:
Roll them overboard and sleep. |
"Song
of the Master and Boatswain," W.H. Auden 3rd stanza |
I
must go down to the sea again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted
knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trip's over. |
John
Masefield, "Sea Fever," 3rd stanza |
You
to the left and I to the right,
For the ways of men must sever.
And it well may be for a day and a night,
And it well may be forever.
But whether we live or whether we die
(For the end is past our knowing)
Here's two frank hearts and an open sky,
Be a fair or ill wind blowing!
Here's luck!
In the teeth of all winds blowing. |
Ricard
Hovey, "At the Crossroads," 4th stanza |
Oh,
I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split couds . . . and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of . . . wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue.
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space . . .
. .
. put out my hand, and touched the face of God. |
John
Gillespie Magee, Jr, "High Flight," complete |
|
Words |
| paraskevidekatriaphobia
- fear of Friday the 13th |
| vergangheitzbewaltigung
- Gr., the process of coming to terms with one's own past |
|
Lyrics |
I
head there was a secret chord,
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall and the major lift,
The baffled king composing hallelujah,
Hallelujah.
|
"Hallelujah"
Leonard Cohen (multiple recorded versions)
|
Ugly
ducklings don't turn into swans
And glide off down the lake,
Whether your sunglasses are off or on
You only see the world you make. |
"Thing
Called Love," Bonnie Raitt |
| People
think of lonely things when leaves begin to fall. |
"I
Don't Need A Thing At All," Gene Watson |
|
Movie Lines |
| Ever
civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its
own values. |
Character
of Golda Meir, "Munich" |
| Do
or do not. There is no try. |
Yoda
(George Lucas) |
| You're
gonna need a bigger boat. |
Martin
Brody in "Jaws"
Note:
I have long considered this the ulimate hero's refusal of the
quest.
|
| Show
me all the blueprints. |
Howard
Hughes in "The Aviator"
Note: Now a code phrase with friends for a "day from hell." |
| 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. |
Gandalf
to Frodo, "Fellowship of the Ring" |
| "You
take the blue pill, the story ends here, you wake up and believe whatever
you want to believe. You take the red pill . . . and I'll show you
just how deep the rabbit hole goes." |
Morpheus
to Neo in "The Matrix" |
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The Commonplace Book of an Eclectic Mind 
