| (Some things that other people have said that made me stop and think....) |
| Nikos Kazantzakis A person needs a little madness, or else thay never dare cut the rope and be free. My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry. I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free. |
| What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, radishes, and out come sighs, laughter, and dreams! - Nikos Kazantzakis |
| What is to give light must endure burning - Viktor Frankl |
| Tao Teh Ching We put 30 spokes together and call it a wheel. But it is on the spaces where there is nothing that the utility of the wheel depends. We turn clay to make a vessel, but it is on the space where there is nothing that the utility of the vessel depends. We pierce doors and windows to make a house, and it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the utility of the house depends. Therefore, just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognise the utility of what is not. |
| Peter Matthiessen from The Snow Leopard "Kierkegaard declared that too much "possibility" led to the madhouse. But when I came upon these cautionary words, I already had what Kierkegaard called, "this sickness of infinitude," wandering from one path to another with no real recognition that I was on a search and scarcely a clue as to what I might be after. I only knew that at the bottom of each breath there was a hollow place that needed to be filled." |
| Teddy Roosevelt "It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." |
| Viktor Frankl We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. |
| Rainer Maria Rilke "We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called "visions," the whole so-called "spirit-world," death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God. But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. " |
| There are very few monsters deserving of the fear that they inspire in us... - Andre Gide |
| Eugene O'Neill "Those who succeed and do not push on to greater failure are the spiritual middle classers. Their stopping at success is proof of their compromising insignificance. It is only through the unattainable that a man achieves a hope worth living and dying for, and so attains himself." |
| Rene Daumal You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees, one descends; one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know. |
| Bryce Courtenay Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it. Always listen to yourself. It is better to be wrong than to simply follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you will grow stronger. If you are right... |
| We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.... Oscar Wilde |
| Henry David Thoreau The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. |
| Soren Kierkegaard I am a Janus bifrons; I laugh with one face, I weep with another. |
| Catullus I hate and love. You ask how that can be? I know not, but I feel the agony. |
| Isabel Allende Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars. |
| Marcus Aurelius What then is that about which we ought to employ our serious pains? This one thing: thoughts just, and acts social, and words which never lie, and a disposition which gladly accepts all that happens as necessary, as usual. |
| Nikos Kazantzakis - from Report to Greco What had this prophet done? What did he tell us, above all, to do? He told us to deny all consolations � gods, fatherlands, moralities, truths � and, remaining apart and companionless, using nothing but our own strength, to begin to fashion a world which would not shame our hearts. Which is the most dangerous way? That is the one I want! Where is the abyss? That is where I am headed. What is the most valiant joy? To assume complete responsibility! |
| Paul Theroux My life mattered more than my work, but my work gave no hint of this. |
| John Hersey - from Too far to Walk �failure doesn�t consist of negative judgements from without. It comes from within � a drying up, a diminution of response� |
| Paul Theroux � from Picture Palace And that was how I learned the difference between love and pity. Pity was easy, but love seemed a kind of confusion that made lover both cannibal and missionary, touched with every emotion except doubt. I loved him, I knew I would be blind without him. He had grace, he was blameless because he was beautiful; he was my missing half, whom I did not in the least resemble. It is not odd that I associate love with childhood. Lovers are always children, because love is ignorant risk-taking � a stifling illusion of the unattainable, most passionate at it�s most impossible and non-existent otherwise. I never once remembered what he was, I only knew what I wanted him to be, because together, in him and me, I saw perfection: body and soul. |
| James A. Michener I decided that perhaps I was taking a risk, but that if I didn�t� I would henceforth be ashamed to walk among free men. |
| Hermann Hesse If my life were not a dangerous, painful experiment, if I did not constantly skirt the abyss and feel the void beneath my feet, my life would have no meaning, and I would not have been able to write anything |
| Ancient instruction to medieval Samurai You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair. |
| Taisen Deshimaru � from The Zen way to the Martial Arts Life�s problems are different for each of us and each of us needs a different way of solving them. Therefore, each of us has to create his own method. If you imitate, you�ll be wrong. You have to create for yourself. |
| C.G. Jung The fact that many a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing . . . He must obey his own law, as if it were a d�mon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths . . . There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the voice, whereupon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing. In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. "You are no different from anybody else," they will chorus, or "there's no such thing," and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as "morbid" . . . He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. "His own law!" everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law . . . The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization - absolute and unconditional - of its own particular law . . . To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being . . . he has failed to realize his life's meaning. The undiscovered vein within us is a living part of the psyche; classical Chinese philosophy names this interior way "Tao", and likens it to a flow of water that moves irresistibly towards its goal. To rest in Tao means fulfillment, wholeness, one's destination reached, one's mission done; the beginning, end, and perfect realization of the meaning of existence innate in all things." |
| Hermann Hesse You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation� and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it; do not flee from it. Give yourself to it. It is only your aversion that hurts, nothing else. |
| Ovid � from Metamorphoses All other creatures look down towards the Earth, but man was given a face so that he might turn his eyes towards the stars and his gaze upon the sky. |
| Peter Matthiessen �the one danger of the mystical search: there is no way back without doing oneself harm. Many paths appear, but once the way is taken, it must be followed to the end. |
| Herman Hesse ( Narcissus &Goldmund) O' How incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic... And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all; but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old and looked cunning... or wise...and still one knew nothing, perhaps, or was still listening and waiting. |
| Hermann Hesse Every life stands beneath it�s own star. |
| Antoine De Saint-Exup�ry �and then, set free by the coming of night, I shall chart my course in the stars. |
| J.R.R. Tolkien Not all those who wander are lost. |
| Merce Cunningham I think of Dance as a constant transformation of life itself. In one way or another, what we�d thought we couldn�t do was altogether possible, if only we didn�t let the mind get in the way. I�ve always felt that movement itself is expressive, regardless of intentions of expressivity, beyond intention itself. |
| John Steinbeck � from The Grapes of Wrath Results, not causes; results, not causes. The causes lie deep and simple-the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times; and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times. The last clear definite function of man- muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need--this is man.... |
| Hermann Hesse The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and time again the ones who are detested by their teachers and frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure. But some � and who knows how many? � waste away with quiet obstinacy and finally go under. |
| Simon and Garfunkel � American Tune And I don�t know a soul who�s not been battered, I don�t have a friend who feels at ease; I don�t know a dream that�s not been shattered, Or driven to it�s knees� �but it�s alright, it�s alright� |
| Aldous Huxley How impossibly crude our language is! If you don't mention the physiological correlates of emotion, you're being false to the given facts. But if you do mention them, it sounds as though you were trying to be gross and cynical. Whether it's passion or the desire of the moth for the star, whether it's tenderness or adoration or romantic yearning--love is always accompanied by events in the nerve endings, the skin, the mucous membranes, the glandular and erectile tissues. Those who don't say so are liars. Those who do are labeled as pornographers. It's the fault, of course, of our philosophy of life; and our philosophy of life is the inevitable by-product of a language that separates in idea what in actual fact is always inseparable. It separates and at the same time it evaluates. One of the abstractions is �good�, and the other is �bad.� �Judge not that ye be not judged.� But the nature of language is such that we cannot help judging. What we need is another set of words. Words that can express the natural togetherness of things. |
| Antoine De Saint-Exup�ry It is not charity that is tormenting me, not an urge to weep over an endlessly reopened wound. Those who carry the wound do not feel it. It is in effect the human race, and not the individual, that is wounded here, wronged here. I have little or no belief in pity. What torments me is the gardener�s point of view. What torments me is not this poverty in which, after all, a man can settle just as he can settle in idleness. What torments me will not be cured by soup kitchens. What torments me is not these hollows, nor these humps, nor this ugliness, but a part of the murder of Mozart in every one of these men. |
| Andre Gid� - from The Fruits of the Earth Know that every unsatisfied desire may plague you for the rest of your life. I thought I was the salt of the Earth. And I was afraid to lose my flavour. The salt of the sea does not lose its flavour, but my lips are already too old to feel it. Why haven�t I inhaled the air of the sea while my soul was craving for it? May you satisfy your thirst while your soul is smiling and your desire for love while your lips are still beautiful enough to invite kisses and while your embrace is joyous. For later you will think, you will say: the fruits were there, their weight already bending the branches; my mouth was there full of desire but it remained closed and my hands could not reach out for they were clasped in prayer; and my soul and my flesh remained hopelessly thirsting� |