“I’ve seen a lot of people who thought they were cool, then again Lord, I’ve seen a lot of fools.”
- Lynryd
Skynyrd – lyrics from their song “The Needle and the Spoon”
from the record Second Helping
‘Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors.”
- President John F. Kennedy
“There are three rules to writing a novel.
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
- Somerset Maugham
“Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”
- Sir Winston
Churchill
Love is a fruit in season at all times
and within the reach of every hand.
Anyone may gather it and no limit is set.
Everyone can reach this love through meditation, prayer, sacrifice,
and an intense inner life.
- Mother Teresa
“There is something in the Autumn, that is native to my blood. Touch of manner, hint of mood and my heart is like a rhyme.
- Bliss Carman
- Thich Nhat Hanh
*Thich
Nhat Hanh, is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, a best selling author and a
Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
"Toward the One"
- A traditional Sufi blessing
Sahib mera nit navan
Sada sada daata
My God is new everyday
He is the giver (of newness)
- A Traditional Sikh Scripture
“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“There is only one time in life when it is essential to awaken…that time is now.”
- Buddha
"Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one."
- Ezra Pound
"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."
- Anonymous
“Deep run the roots of wisdom from the heart of the world tree.”
- Ancient Viking Proverb
“Listen for the truth, whispered now and again, upon the murmur of autumn rain and howl of winter winds.”
-Ancient Celtic Druid Proverb
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you imagined.”
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"Those who are willing to be vulnerable, move among mysteries.”
- Theodore Roethke
"Again and again some people in the crowd wake up,
They have no ground in the crowd,
And they emerge according to much broader laws.
They carry strange customs with them
And demand room for bold gestures.
The future speaks ruthlessly through them."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"The stamping out of the artist is one of the blind goals of every civilization. When a civilization becomes so standardized that the individual can no longer make an imprint on it, then that civilization is dying."
-
Elie Faure
"One age misunderstands another; and an age without vision misunderstands all others in its own nasty way."
-
Ludwig Wittgenstein
"Is ours a culture that wishes to murder the past?"
A
question asked by Graham Hancock in his book Heaven's Mirror
"We hang petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."
Aesop
"We do not own the land. We belong to it. And by our sweat and
breath shall she know us, and welcome us upon our return."
Ancient
Pueblo Proverb
Forests and fields, sun and wind and sky, earth and water, all speak the
same language: peace, solitude, silence.
-
Rumi
A Canticle of Echoes
We are as children on this land, a shadow on the still life of time.
We measure our presence in generations; we cannot dig down ten thousand years and find our bones. Our arrival is scribed upon the line of history; it does not drift upon the winds of story, or float upon the shrouds of myth. We are still explorers and discoverers, seeking meaning through movement and examination. But we are coming to a time of listening. Our sweat and breath are now upon this land. Voices rise up, and we begin to hear the echoes in the stones.
-
Kent Nerburn, from his book A Haunting Reverence: Meditations on a Northern
Land
"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything will appear…as it is, infinite."
William
Blake
"When the legends die, the dreams end. When the dreams end, there is no more greatness."
-
T.S. Eliot
"He who understands music understands the cosmos."
-
An ancient Egyptian proverb
"For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been’."
-
John Greenleaf Whittier
"History is a set of lies agreed upon."
-
Napoleon Bonaparte
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral
crises maintain their neutrality."
-
Dante
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know
peace.”
-
Jimi Hendrix
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently
opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur
Schopenhauer - Philosopher, 1788-1860
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principal
is contempt prior to investigation. "
-
Herbert Spencer
"Our lives begin to end,
the day we become silent,
about things that matter"
-
Martin Luther King
Not equal are the things
that are bad and things that are good,
even though the abundance of the bad
may dazzle thee.
Koran,
Sura V Maida 103
Love is the Water of Life
Everything other than love for the most beautiful God is agony of the spirit, though it be sugar- eating. What is agony of the spirit? To advance toward death without seizing hold of the Water of Life.
-
Rumi
I thank you God for most this amazing day
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
- e e cummings
…in place of the Old Bottom Line of money and power, a New Bottom Line of Love and Generosity is possible. People of all faiths need to shape a political and social movement that reaffirms the most generous, peace-oriented, social justice-committed, and loving truths of the spiritual heritage of the human race.
Rabbi
Michael Lerner, The National Chair of The Interfaith Peace And Justice
Organization, The Tikkun Community (www.tikkun.org)
For the breath of life is in the sunlight
and the hand of life is in the wind.
-
Kahlil Gibran, from The Prophet
One prays for the life of tomorrow
ephemeral life though it be
this is the habit of a mind
that passed away yesterday
- Master Ikkyu, a
15th century Japanese Zen Master
All things come out of an unmanifested state
stay awhile in a state of manifestation
then return to the original unmanifested state.
A scripture of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
To be rewarded for doing good is to rob goodness of any moral quality. It then becomes good business. It pays to be good. Morality is NOT a commercial enterprise.
-
Rabbi Levi A. Olan
The eyes that regard God are also the eyes through which God regards the world.
-
Traditional Sufi saying
Live at the empty heart of paradox.
I’ll dance with you there, cheek to cheek.
-Rumi
Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back,
And choose the path that leads to wisdom.
- The Buddha
My life is my message.
- Mahatma Gandhi
The doors of the hidden land are opened before you…Osiris, conqueror of millions of years, come unto thee.
- A Passage from the Egyptian Book of What is in the Duat
Ekam Sat Viprah Bahudah Vadanti
The wise call the One, Truth by many names
-
The Hindu Rig Veda
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Mark Twain
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein"It takes a noble person to plant a tree to provide shade to those whom he or she will never meet."
Ancient Jewish ProverbDo not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
- Jimi Hendrix
“The poor is where God lives.”
- Bono
“Facts interest me less than the trailing smoke of stories.”
- Naomi Shihab Nye
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“May your soul already be in heaven an hour before the devil knows you’re dead”
- Ancient Christian Irish Proverb
“I am not here as a man of the cloth, unless that cloth is leather.”
- Bono
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety
- Ben Franklin
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London (1896-1916)
the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be
replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another
theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
- Bono, lead singer for legendary Irish rock band U2
