QUOTES MISC OF INTEREST Know thyself. I know with a certainty that no evil can befall a good man either in life or after death. - Socrates Homo homini lupus. People are not disturbed by things, but by the view which they take of things. You are a distinct portion of the essence of God, and contain a part of Him in yourself. Why then are you ignorant of your noble birth? The ills (evils) are necessary to bring out our best qualities. There are only three evils: those we bring on ourselves by misdeeds, those others do to us, those that are a result of forces of nature. - Epictetus No man finds poverty a trouble to him, but he that thinks it so; and he that thinks it so, makes it so. - Seneca What have you done to surpass man? When there is a "why", one can live with almost any "how". The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night. That which does not kill me makes me stronger. - Friedrich Nietzsche One should not be virtuous for hope of heavenly reward; one should be virtuous for the sake of being virtuous. - Benedict Spinoza Talents, virtues, understanding, etc. cannot be considered good; only the will behind them can be considered good or bad. Morally, the only good will (motive) is the one that one ought to do what is right. Religion is useful only insofar as it inspires its followers to a better life and high moral standards. Two things ever fill the mind with increasing awe - the starry heavens above and the moral law within. - Immanuel Kant Life ain't all beer and skittles. -George Du Maurier Life is a predicament which precedes death. - H. James The first hundred years are the hardest. - W. Mizner When the Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game. - G. Rice See that ye be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass. - Jesus Christ INVICTUS Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be, For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced or cried aloud, Under the bludgeonings of chance, My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears, Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years, Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how straight the gate, Or how marked with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. - William Ernest Henley Litany Against Fear I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I face my fear. I permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there is nothing. Only I remain. - Maud'Dib For whatever a man soweth, that he shall also reap. - Paul of Tarsus (Galatians 5:7) In this world, people are fettered by action unless it is performed as sacrifice. Therefore, let thy acts be done without attachment, as sacrifice only. - Bhagavad Gita As to the healing arts, use what you have in hand, day by day. Knowledge and understanding comes along with application, and with self's experience in doing what is known to be in accord with God's will. - Edgar Cayce Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. - Jeremiah 33:3 You must clean out those clogged channels and bring them back into service; the service of a world desperately in need of healing. - Keith Sherwood English and Pearson's Criteria for Emotional Maturity 1. Able to work a reasonable amount each day without undue fatigue or strain, and feel that the work is serving a useful purpose. 2. Able to like, and accept many lasting friendships; and be able to love and be tender/affectionate with a few close friends. 3. Have confidence in one's self so that one is not harassed by guilt, doubt, or indecision - has self-confidence. 4. Be as free of prejudice as possible and treat all men and women with appropriate respect. 5. Be able to give and receive love with joy in a conventional heterosexual way free of guilt/inhibition. 6. Extend interest in an ever widening circle from self to family, friends, community, state, nation, and seek to take a part in contributing to the general welfare of mankind. 7. Interested in advancing his own welfare without exploitation of his fellow man. 8. Able to alternate work with play, recreation, reading, and the enjoyment of nature, poetry, art, and music. 9. Dependable, truthful, open-minded, and imbued with a philosophy that includes a willingness to suffer a little in order to grow, improve, and achieve wisdom. 10. Free of undue body strains, stresses, and tensions when performing everyday duties, as when confronted with adversity. 11. Interested in passing on hard-won knowledge to the young. The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow- creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate, but almost disqualified for life. We exist for our fellow men. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed out candle. It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear-that engendered religion. Hence I most seriously believe that one does people the best service by giving them some elevating work to do and thus indirectly elevating them. I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward. Can you imagine Moses, Jesus, or Ghandi armed with the money bags of Carnegie. The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. I feel that the free play of economic forces, the unregulated and the unrestrained pursuit of wealth and power by the individual, no longer leads automatically to a tolerable solution of the problems. We stand, therefore, at the parting of the ways. Whether we find the way of peace or continue along the old road of brute force, so unworthy of our civilization, depends on ourselves. On the one side the freedom of the individual and the security of society beckon to us, on the other slavery for the individual and the annihilation of our civilization threaten us. Our fate will be according to our desserts. Is it not a terrible thing to be forced to do things which every individual regards as abominable crimes? Only a few have the moral greatness to resist; them I regard the true heroes of war. I am in favor of abolishing large cities. A solution for our troubles would be: 1. Statutory reduction of working hours, graduated for each department of industry, in order to get rid of unemployment, combined with the fixing of minimum wages for the purpose of adjusting the purchasing- power of the masses to the amount of goods available. 2. Control of the amount of money in circulation and of the volume of credit in such a way as to keep the price-level steady, all special protection being abolished. 3. Statutory limitation of prices for such articles as have been practically withdrawn from free competition by monopolies or the formation of cartels. The interests of each country must be subordinated to the interests of the wider community. The struggle for this new orientation of political thought and feeling is a severe one, because it has the tradition of centuries against it. Administrations come and go, but it is human relations that finally turn the scale in the lives of nations. If one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it, of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity. - Albert Einstein You are the sum total of your choices. Your constant companion and reminder is "Your-Own-Death." Your time is brief - do what YOU really want to do. Live...Be You...Enjoy...Love. Needing approval is tantamount to saying, "Your view of me is more important than my own opinion of myself." I control my thoughts; my feelings come from my thoughts; thus I can control my feelings. The two most futile emotions are guilt and worry. Live for the moment. Only the insecure strive for security... Be free and experience the unknown. Be open to new experiences. Be spontaneous. Life is unfair. Have an edge on everyone else-simply don't care. - Dr. Wayne Dyer I want to travel as far as I can go, I want to reach the joy that's in my soul, And change the limitations I know, And feel my mind and spirit grow, I want to live, exist, "to be", And hear the truth inside of me. - Doris Worshay Someday I'll walk away And be free And leave the sterile ones Their secure sterility I'll leave without a forwarding address And walk across some barren wilderness To drop the world there Then wander free of care Like an unemployed Atlas. - James Kavanaugh Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? What one loses, one loses, make no mistake about that. The right time is any time that one is still so damn lucky as to have. Live!!! - Henry James People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstance they want, and if they can't find them, make them. - George Bernard Shaw If I were to read, much less to answer all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing it right up to the end. If the end brings me out alright, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. - Abraham Lincoln Once you label me, you negate me. - Soren Kierkegaard Neti, neti. I have revised some fold wisdom lately. One of my edited proverbs is: "Nothing fails like success." You don't learn a damn thing from success. We only learn from failure. Success only confirms our superstitions. - Ken Boulding Two roads diverged in the wood and I-, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost There is no great and no small To the Soul that maketh all And it cometh everywhere I am owner of the sphere Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain. There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. he that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. The world exists for the education of each man. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacre, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their hear, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same tanscendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mid. Absolve you to yourself, and youshall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, "What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?" my friend suggested -"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to this or that; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. 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. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. Whith consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. he may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. All concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.