"I wonder sometimes if fog is just the clouds that could not stand being away from the earth any longer. Just the ones that were too tired to float any more, and wanted to feel soil once again." - Tyler Knott Gregson
Friday, November 29, 2013
Places
It is better to fall in love with places than people. It is better to dedicate poetry to them.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
William T Vollmann
“So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors; she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I've drunk.”
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Something to die for
“List of Social Changes that Would Assist the Flourishing of Literary Beauty” by William T. Vollmann. Originally published in his essay, “Something to Die For.”
1. Abolish television, because it has no reverence for time.
2. Abolish the automobile, because it has no reverence for space.
3. Make citizenship contingent upon literacy in every sense. Thus, politicians who do not write every word of their own speeches should be thrown out of office in disgrace. Writers who require editors to make their books “good” should be depublished.
4. Teach reverence for all beauty, including that of the word.
1. Abolish television, because it has no reverence for time.
2. Abolish the automobile, because it has no reverence for space.
3. Make citizenship contingent upon literacy in every sense. Thus, politicians who do not write every word of their own speeches should be thrown out of office in disgrace. Writers who require editors to make their books “good” should be depublished.
4. Teach reverence for all beauty, including that of the word.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Science
SINCE ITS INCEPTION, Science has been a thorn in the side: incessantly inconvenient, calculatingly cold, and questioning of one's deeply held beliefs. It disregards personal feelings and eschews political correctness.
But that's not the worst of it.
Science is the reason why Earth is no longer at the center of the Universe. We humans used to be so significant. Everything revolved around us until Science and it's meddling, pesky purveyors got in the way. Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo couldn't leave well enough alone. They simply had to burst our geocentric bubble of superiority. But we showed those scientists. We cast them out, banned their ideas, and placed them under trial. But alas, in the end, we couldn't stop them. The ideas far outlived their mortal originators. Now, the Earth is just a rock in a solar system, one of billions.
But that's not the worst of it.
Science is the reason why Earth is no longer at the center of the Universe. We humans used to be so significant. Everything revolved around us until Science and it's meddling, pesky purveyors got in the way. Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo couldn't leave well enough alone. They simply had to burst our geocentric bubble of superiority. But we showed those scientists. We cast them out, banned their ideas, and placed them under trial. But alas, in the end, we couldn't stop them. The ideas far outlived their mortal originators. Now, the Earth is just a rock in a solar system, one of billions.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Never
They say never say 'always'.
They also say never say 'never'.
So isn't never say always a contradiction then.
So I suppose you can say 'always' sometimes
They also say never say 'never'.
So isn't never say always a contradiction then.
So I suppose you can say 'always' sometimes
Random
Verbal disagreement, vocab mismatch, statistical semantics
High information-encountering individual
Reading your body clock.
High information-encountering individual
Reading your body clock.
Serendipity
The word serendipity itself comes from Horace Walpole, who wrote that the main characters in “The Three Princes of Serendip” were “always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” We seem to have no trouble remembering the accident part of chance findings, but the second part is worth repeating: a successful discovery lies just not in the unexpectedness of what we find, but in our ability to make sense of it and connect it to what we already know.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Favorite pastime
Sometimes she would sit and feel.. That used to be her favorite pastime.
And sometimes she overdid feeling so much that no words could contain the extent of her passion. Then her eyes would speak.
And sometimes she overdid feeling so much that no words could contain the extent of her passion. Then her eyes would speak.
Possibilities
The proud surrender. That's love. She'd surrendered but with trepidation. Nothing came out of it though. Luckily. The possibilities in life intimidated her sometimes and all then she wanted to do was run and hide. How do you deal with myriad of possibilities?
Sunday, March 3, 2013
“reason is, and ought to be, only the slave of the passion”- Hume
"This is not meekness, be assured; I do not come naturally by meekness."
Power
I have no power over you that you don't give me, and you have no power over me that I don't give you. … Your greatest creation is yourself. Like any great work of art, creating a great self means putting in hard work, every day, for years.
- Vi Hart
- Vi Hart
The Lottery
"When people are part of a group, they often experience deindividuation, or a loss of self-awareness. When people deindividuate, they are less likely to follow normal restraints and inhibitions and more likely to lose their sense of individual identity."
"Twice makes a tradition."
"Twice makes a tradition."
Sunday, February 24, 2013
There is another sky by Emily Dickinson
There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields—
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields—
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!
Saturday, February 23, 2013
This bond will not die
Our time together is ending.
You never know, our paths might cross again, which
would be a kind destiny.
But this might be it.
The time in our lives where our spirits have touched is ending.
We have come to know each other and to trust each other
in ways unguessed at the beginning--
a comfort past expressing.
Hand in hand with the sad parting
there is the swelling softness of the bright realization
of how we have grown together.
This bond will not die.
Our living experiences change us.
The solitary presence of us each now
is richer for the combined presence we have grown into.
On the open journey now we carry each other.
- Charles C Finn
You never know, our paths might cross again, which
would be a kind destiny.
But this might be it.
The time in our lives where our spirits have touched is ending.
We have come to know each other and to trust each other
in ways unguessed at the beginning--
a comfort past expressing.
Hand in hand with the sad parting
there is the swelling softness of the bright realization
of how we have grown together.
This bond will not die.
Our living experiences change us.
The solitary presence of us each now
is richer for the combined presence we have grown into.
On the open journey now we carry each other.
- Charles C Finn
Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
–Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky
If you trust yourself and believe in your dreams and follow your star, you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.
–Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
When Newton was asked years later how he had discovered his laws of celestial dyamics, he replied, “By thinking of them without ceasing.
– Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
–Albert Einstein
–Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky
If you trust yourself and believe in your dreams and follow your star, you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.
–Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
When Newton was asked years later how he had discovered his laws of celestial dyamics, he replied, “By thinking of them without ceasing.
– Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
–Albert Einstein
Halo
“Halo effect,” or, as psychologist Robert Cialdini writes, society’s propensity to “automatically assign to good-looking individuals...favorable traits.”
Almost Poetry
"Do you know a cure for me?"
Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water."
Salt water?" I asked him.
Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea."
— Karen Blixen (Seven Gothic Tales)
Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water."
Salt water?" I asked him.
Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea."
— Karen Blixen (Seven Gothic Tales)
Long List of Quotes
“The point is, you see…that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might as well just give in and save your sanity for later.” -Douglas Adams
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” -Herm Albright
“I wouldn’t mind dying so much if it wasn’t that I would be dead at the end of it.” -Woody Allen
“The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.” -Philip W. Anderson
“Thou art but a little soul bearing about a corpse.” -Marcus Arelius
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” -Aristotle
“The worst men often give the best advice.” -Sir Francis Bacon
“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” -(attributed to) Yogi Berra
“You are NOT thinking! You’re merely being rational!” -Niels Bohr, to Albert Einstein
“I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.” -Ashleigh Brilliant
“The face of ‘evil’ is always the face of total need.” -William S. Burroughs
“Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” -Albert Camus
“Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac?” -George Carlin
“When a man wants your advice he generally wants your praise.” -Lord Chesterfield
“Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.” -F. Forrester Church
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” -Winston Churchill
“War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.” -Georges Clemenceau
“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” -Samuel Clemens
“I do feel… that I now have a better understanding of what the key problems are than I did ten years ago. At times I even persuade myself that I can glimpse some of the answers, but this is a common delusion experienced by anyone who dwells too long on a single problem.” -Francis Crick
“I have been loved, Edward told the stars.
So? said the stars.” -Kate DiCamillo
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick
“David Hume, the greatest skeptic of them all, once remarked that after a gathering of skeptics met to proclaim the veracity of skepticism as a philosophy, all of the members of the gathering nonetheless left by the door rather than the window.” -Philip K. Dick
“Listen: if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it?” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
“You know what kind of man I think you are? You’re the kind of man who would stand there and smile at his torturers while they were tearing out his guts–if only he could find faith or a god.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
“To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously.” -Fyodor Dostovesky
“We become what we think about all day long.” -Wayne Dyer
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” -Albert Einstein
“It is best, it seems to me, to separate one’s inner striving from one’s trade as far as possible. It is not good when one’s daily break is tied to God’s special blessing.” -Albert Einstein
“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” -Albert Einstein
“Obviously, the truth is what’s so. Not quite so obviously, its also ‘so what?’” -Est
“Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” -William Faulkner
“Physiological response to thinking and to pain is the same; and man is not given to hurting himself.” -Martin H. Fischer
“Originality is the art of concealing your sources.” -Benjamin Franklin
“The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you’re finished.” -Benjamin Franklin
“There’s the ventriloquist’s dummy, the chairman… and a wise old person, a mechanic, demons, a fool… the disunited states of myself… and the town meeting is always in session.” -Robert Fulghum
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” -Mahatma Gandhi
“Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.” -Katharine Fullerton Gerould
“Darwin teaches us that species are only assemblies of genes, interacting at random with each other and the shifting environment. Species cannot control their fates. Species do not exist.” -John Gray
“I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed.” -Matthew Henry
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.” -Bill Hicks
“The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” -Napoleon Hill
“The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.”
-William Dean Howells
“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.” -Jerome K. Jerome
“Experience is that marvellous thing that enables you recognise a mistake when you make it again.” -F. P. Jones
“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.” -Erica Jong
“No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head.” -Terry Josephson
“The first casulty when war comes is truth.” -Hiram Johnson
“…depression has something to tell me; because often depression is an appropriate reaction; because I am terrified of changing the function of my brain in any way; because I believe that depression is ‘me,’ and that without it I would not be ‘me’; because I can’t imagine my life without the time off I get from periodic depression.” -Susanna Kaysen
“The debate was wearing me out. Once you’ve posed that question, it won’t go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won’t. -Susanna Kaysen
“The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of life, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom.” -Susanna Kaysen
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” -Sam Keen
“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” -Alan Keightley
“Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it.” -Garrison Keillor
“Know when to tune out; if you listen to too much advice you may wind up making other peoples mistakes.” -Ann Landers
“Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing that makes it water and nobody knows what that is.” -D. H. Lawrence
“People find life entirely too time-consuming.” -Stanislaw J. Lec
“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” -Robert E. Lee
“Apollo, the God of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number — Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don’t look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar and have a beer with Dionysos every now and then.” -U.K. LeGuin
“There are no right answers to wrong questions.” -U.K. LeGuin
“To oppose something is to maintain it.” -U.K. LeGuin
“If you see a whole thing – it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.” -U.K. LeGuin
“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” -John Lennon
“When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” -C.S. Lewis
“He who holds a hammer believes that everything is a nail.” -Abraham Maslow
“It’s no good trying to keep up old friendships. It’s painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.” -W. Somerset Maugham
“Laugh at yourself before anyone else can.” -Elsa Maxwell
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” -H.L. Mencken
“It is so much easier to tell intimate things in the dark.” -William McFee
“We are never prepared for what we expect.” -James A. Michener
“Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you’re really strangers.” -Mary Tyler Moore
“Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow’s speed.” -Howard Nemerov
“We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.” -Blaise Pascal
“No man becomes a hero by dying for his country; he becomes a hero by making some other poor bastard die for his.” -George S. Patton
“We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions.” -Ian Percy
“You purchase pain with all that joy can give, and die of nothing but a rage to live.” -Alexander Pope
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem it was intended to solve.” -Karl Popper
“You are sad because they abandon you and you have not fallen.” -Antonio Porchia
“We tear life out of life to use it for looking at itself.” -Antonio Porchia
“For as long as and insofar as it cannot be, it is almost always a reproach to everything that can.” -Antonio Porchia
“When everything is finished, the mornings are sad.” -Antonio Porchia
“I am chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of my eyes.” -Antonio Porchia
“If only I could leave everything as it is, without moving a single star or a single cloud. Oh, if only I could!” -Antonio Porchia
“I like boring, it lasts.” -Terry Pratchett
“The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.” -Anthony Robbins
“If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?” -Bertrand Russell
“Consciousness is knowing what you thought last; free-will is not knowing what you’ll think next.” -Justin B. Rye
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” -Carl Sagan
“Whenever a woman says ‘We need to talk,’ it means she’s reached a decision and it’s already too late for you to talk back.” -Tim Sandlin
“Bravery isn’t what you do so much as how you look back at what you did.” -Tim Sandlin
“Movement eases turmoil.” -Tim Sandlin
“That life is worth living is the most essential of assumptions and, if not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.” -George Santayana
“Sanity is madness put to good uses.” -George Santayana
“Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.” -Carl Schurz
“Unhappy fellow, you are a slave to men, you are a slave to your business, you are a slave to life. For life, if courage to die be lacking, is slavery.” -Seneca
“Would you not think him an utter fool who wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago? And is he not just as much a fool who weeps because he will not be alive a thousand years from now? It is the same, you will not be, and you were not; neither of these times belongs to you.” -Seneca
“Therefore let us press on and persevere. There remains much more of the road than we have put behind us; but the greater part of progress is the desire to progress.” -Seneca
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” -George Bernard Shaw
“The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.” -Susan Sontag
“No one wants advice – only corroboration.” -John Steinbeck
“My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.” -Tom Stoppard
“I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.” -Lily Tomlin
“I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want to do and then advise them to do it.” -Harry S. Truman
“Science says: ‘We must live,’ and seeks the means of prolonging, increasing, facilitating and amplifying life, of making it tolerable and acceptable. Wisdom says: ‘We must die,’ and seeks how to make us die well.” -Miguel de Unamuno
“The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.” -Paul Valery
“Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.” -Pancho Villa’s last words
“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh.” -Voltaire
“Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.” -Voltaire
“Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.” -Jane Wagner
“What is reality anyway! It’s nothing but a collective hunch.” -Jane Wagner
“Show me a man with both feet on the ground, and I’ll show you a man who can’t put his pants on.” -Arthur K. Watson
“At fourteen you don’t need sickness or death for tragedy.” -Jessamyn West
“The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.” -Oscar Wilde
“Argument are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.” -Oscar Wilde
“There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’ When someone asks how I lost my mind, that is all I can say too.“ -Elizabeth Wurtzel
“There’s probably some sort of law that states that a philosophical problem cannot be solved until the solution has practical ramifications.” -Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is [sic] handicapped.” -Tabla Rasa, ILP; quoting Desiderius Erasmus
“A person who can’t lead and won’t follow makes a dandy roadblock.” -Unknown
“There are three sides to every story: your side, the other side, and the truth.” -Unknown
“History is written by those in power to justify the present. Memory is the same thing on a smaller scale.” -Unknown
“[Stephen Pinker] argues that political equality does not require sameness, but policies that treat people as individuals with rights; that moral progress doesn’t require the human mind to be naturally free of selfish motives, only that it have other motives to counteract them; that responsibility doesn’t require behavior to be uncaused, only that it respond to praise and blame; and that meaning in life doesn’t require that the process that shaped the brain must have a purpose, only that the brain itself must have purposes.” -Wikipedia
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” -Herm Albright
“I wouldn’t mind dying so much if it wasn’t that I would be dead at the end of it.” -Woody Allen
“The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.” -Philip W. Anderson
“Thou art but a little soul bearing about a corpse.” -Marcus Arelius
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” -Aristotle
“The worst men often give the best advice.” -Sir Francis Bacon
“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” -(attributed to) Yogi Berra
“You are NOT thinking! You’re merely being rational!” -Niels Bohr, to Albert Einstein
“I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.” -Ashleigh Brilliant
“The face of ‘evil’ is always the face of total need.” -William S. Burroughs
“Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” -Albert Camus
“Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac?” -George Carlin
“When a man wants your advice he generally wants your praise.” -Lord Chesterfield
“Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.” -F. Forrester Church
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” -Winston Churchill
“War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.” -Georges Clemenceau
“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” -Samuel Clemens
“I do feel… that I now have a better understanding of what the key problems are than I did ten years ago. At times I even persuade myself that I can glimpse some of the answers, but this is a common delusion experienced by anyone who dwells too long on a single problem.” -Francis Crick
“I have been loved, Edward told the stars.
So? said the stars.” -Kate DiCamillo
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick
“David Hume, the greatest skeptic of them all, once remarked that after a gathering of skeptics met to proclaim the veracity of skepticism as a philosophy, all of the members of the gathering nonetheless left by the door rather than the window.” -Philip K. Dick
“Listen: if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it?” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
“You know what kind of man I think you are? You’re the kind of man who would stand there and smile at his torturers while they were tearing out his guts–if only he could find faith or a god.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
“To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously.” -Fyodor Dostovesky
“We become what we think about all day long.” -Wayne Dyer
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” -Albert Einstein
“It is best, it seems to me, to separate one’s inner striving from one’s trade as far as possible. It is not good when one’s daily break is tied to God’s special blessing.” -Albert Einstein
“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” -Albert Einstein
“Obviously, the truth is what’s so. Not quite so obviously, its also ‘so what?’” -Est
“Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” -William Faulkner
“Physiological response to thinking and to pain is the same; and man is not given to hurting himself.” -Martin H. Fischer
“Originality is the art of concealing your sources.” -Benjamin Franklin
“The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you’re finished.” -Benjamin Franklin
“There’s the ventriloquist’s dummy, the chairman… and a wise old person, a mechanic, demons, a fool… the disunited states of myself… and the town meeting is always in session.” -Robert Fulghum
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” -Mahatma Gandhi
“Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.” -Katharine Fullerton Gerould
“Darwin teaches us that species are only assemblies of genes, interacting at random with each other and the shifting environment. Species cannot control their fates. Species do not exist.” -John Gray
“I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed.” -Matthew Henry
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.” -Bill Hicks
“The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” -Napoleon Hill
“The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.”
-William Dean Howells
“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.” -Jerome K. Jerome
“Experience is that marvellous thing that enables you recognise a mistake when you make it again.” -F. P. Jones
“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.” -Erica Jong
“No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head.” -Terry Josephson
“The first casulty when war comes is truth.” -Hiram Johnson
“…depression has something to tell me; because often depression is an appropriate reaction; because I am terrified of changing the function of my brain in any way; because I believe that depression is ‘me,’ and that without it I would not be ‘me’; because I can’t imagine my life without the time off I get from periodic depression.” -Susanna Kaysen
“The debate was wearing me out. Once you’ve posed that question, it won’t go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won’t. -Susanna Kaysen
“The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of life, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom.” -Susanna Kaysen
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” -Sam Keen
“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” -Alan Keightley
“Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it.” -Garrison Keillor
“Know when to tune out; if you listen to too much advice you may wind up making other peoples mistakes.” -Ann Landers
“Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing that makes it water and nobody knows what that is.” -D. H. Lawrence
“People find life entirely too time-consuming.” -Stanislaw J. Lec
“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” -Robert E. Lee
“Apollo, the God of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number — Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don’t look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar and have a beer with Dionysos every now and then.” -U.K. LeGuin
“There are no right answers to wrong questions.” -U.K. LeGuin
“To oppose something is to maintain it.” -U.K. LeGuin
“If you see a whole thing – it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.” -U.K. LeGuin
“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” -John Lennon
“When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” -C.S. Lewis
“He who holds a hammer believes that everything is a nail.” -Abraham Maslow
“It’s no good trying to keep up old friendships. It’s painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.” -W. Somerset Maugham
“Laugh at yourself before anyone else can.” -Elsa Maxwell
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” -H.L. Mencken
“It is so much easier to tell intimate things in the dark.” -William McFee
“We are never prepared for what we expect.” -James A. Michener
“Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you’re really strangers.” -Mary Tyler Moore
“Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow’s speed.” -Howard Nemerov
“We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.” -Blaise Pascal
“No man becomes a hero by dying for his country; he becomes a hero by making some other poor bastard die for his.” -George S. Patton
“We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions.” -Ian Percy
“You purchase pain with all that joy can give, and die of nothing but a rage to live.” -Alexander Pope
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem it was intended to solve.” -Karl Popper
“You are sad because they abandon you and you have not fallen.” -Antonio Porchia
“We tear life out of life to use it for looking at itself.” -Antonio Porchia
“For as long as and insofar as it cannot be, it is almost always a reproach to everything that can.” -Antonio Porchia
“When everything is finished, the mornings are sad.” -Antonio Porchia
“I am chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of my eyes.” -Antonio Porchia
“If only I could leave everything as it is, without moving a single star or a single cloud. Oh, if only I could!” -Antonio Porchia
“I like boring, it lasts.” -Terry Pratchett
“The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.” -Anthony Robbins
“If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?” -Bertrand Russell
“Consciousness is knowing what you thought last; free-will is not knowing what you’ll think next.” -Justin B. Rye
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” -Carl Sagan
“Whenever a woman says ‘We need to talk,’ it means she’s reached a decision and it’s already too late for you to talk back.” -Tim Sandlin
“Bravery isn’t what you do so much as how you look back at what you did.” -Tim Sandlin
“Movement eases turmoil.” -Tim Sandlin
“That life is worth living is the most essential of assumptions and, if not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.” -George Santayana
“Sanity is madness put to good uses.” -George Santayana
“Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.” -Carl Schurz
“Unhappy fellow, you are a slave to men, you are a slave to your business, you are a slave to life. For life, if courage to die be lacking, is slavery.” -Seneca
“Would you not think him an utter fool who wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago? And is he not just as much a fool who weeps because he will not be alive a thousand years from now? It is the same, you will not be, and you were not; neither of these times belongs to you.” -Seneca
“Therefore let us press on and persevere. There remains much more of the road than we have put behind us; but the greater part of progress is the desire to progress.” -Seneca
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” -George Bernard Shaw
“The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.” -Susan Sontag
“No one wants advice – only corroboration.” -John Steinbeck
“My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.” -Tom Stoppard
“I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.” -Lily Tomlin
“I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want to do and then advise them to do it.” -Harry S. Truman
“Science says: ‘We must live,’ and seeks the means of prolonging, increasing, facilitating and amplifying life, of making it tolerable and acceptable. Wisdom says: ‘We must die,’ and seeks how to make us die well.” -Miguel de Unamuno
“The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.” -Paul Valery
“Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.” -Pancho Villa’s last words
“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh.” -Voltaire
“Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.” -Voltaire
“Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.” -Jane Wagner
“What is reality anyway! It’s nothing but a collective hunch.” -Jane Wagner
“Show me a man with both feet on the ground, and I’ll show you a man who can’t put his pants on.” -Arthur K. Watson
“At fourteen you don’t need sickness or death for tragedy.” -Jessamyn West
“The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.” -Oscar Wilde
“Argument are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.” -Oscar Wilde
“There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’ When someone asks how I lost my mind, that is all I can say too.“ -Elizabeth Wurtzel
“There’s probably some sort of law that states that a philosophical problem cannot be solved until the solution has practical ramifications.” -Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is [sic] handicapped.” -Tabla Rasa, ILP; quoting Desiderius Erasmus
“A person who can’t lead and won’t follow makes a dandy roadblock.” -Unknown
“There are three sides to every story: your side, the other side, and the truth.” -Unknown
“History is written by those in power to justify the present. Memory is the same thing on a smaller scale.” -Unknown
“[Stephen Pinker] argues that political equality does not require sameness, but policies that treat people as individuals with rights; that moral progress doesn’t require the human mind to be naturally free of selfish motives, only that it have other motives to counteract them; that responsibility doesn’t require behavior to be uncaused, only that it respond to praise and blame; and that meaning in life doesn’t require that the process that shaped the brain must have a purpose, only that the brain itself must have purposes.” -Wikipedia
From somewhere I no more remember
Of the Origin and Use of Money: With division of labor, the produce of one's own labor can fill only a small part of one's needs. Different commodities have served as a common medium of exchange, but all nations have finally settled on metals, which are durable and divisible, for this purpose. Before coinage, people had to weigh and assay with each exchange, or risk "the grossest frauds and impositions." Thus nations began stamping metal, on one side only, to ascertain purity, or on all sides, to stipulate purity and amount. The quantity of real metal in coins has diminished, due to the "avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states," enabling them to pay their debts in appearance only, and to the defraudment of creditors.
Moody Blues
"When all the stars are falling down
Into the sea and on the ground,
And angry voices carry on the wind,
A beam of light will fill your head
And you'll remember what's been said
...By all the good men this world's ever known.
Another man is what you'll see,
Who looks like you and looks like me,
And yet somehow he will not feel the same,
His life caught up in misery, he doesn't think like you and me,
'Cause he can't see what you and I can see."
-Moody Blues, Melancholy Man
Into the sea and on the ground,
And angry voices carry on the wind,
A beam of light will fill your head
And you'll remember what's been said
...By all the good men this world's ever known.
Another man is what you'll see,
Who looks like you and looks like me,
And yet somehow he will not feel the same,
His life caught up in misery, he doesn't think like you and me,
'Cause he can't see what you and I can see."
-Moody Blues, Melancholy Man
More quotes
"Some will sell their dreams for small desires, And lose the race to rats,
Get caught in ticking traps, and start to dream of somewhere to relax their restless flight."
-Rush
"I have legalized robbery, called it a belief, I have run with the money and hid like a thief, rewritten history with my armies and my crooks, invented memories, I did burn all the books. And I can still hear his laughter, and I can still hear his song. The man's too big, the man's too strong."
-Dire Straits - -The Man's Too Strong.
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday, is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow - Robert H. Goddard
"All dreams in movies are blurred" - Alfred Hitchcock
" Lived and Learned from fools and from sages" -Aerosmith, Dream On
"So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye
So you think you can love me and leave me to die"
-Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
"Battle not with Monsters, lest ye become a Monster." - Nietzche
There's someone in my head, but it's not me. - Pink Floyd
"Cry out to legions of the brave
Time again to save us from the jackals of the street
Ride out, protectors of the realm
Captains at the helm
Sail across the sea of lights"
-Black Sabbath, Neon Knights
Get caught in ticking traps, and start to dream of somewhere to relax their restless flight."
-Rush
"I have legalized robbery, called it a belief, I have run with the money and hid like a thief, rewritten history with my armies and my crooks, invented memories, I did burn all the books. And I can still hear his laughter, and I can still hear his song. The man's too big, the man's too strong."
-Dire Straits - -The Man's Too Strong.
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday, is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow - Robert H. Goddard
"All dreams in movies are blurred" - Alfred Hitchcock
" Lived and Learned from fools and from sages" -Aerosmith, Dream On
"So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye
So you think you can love me and leave me to die"
-Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
"Battle not with Monsters, lest ye become a Monster." - Nietzche
There's someone in my head, but it's not me. - Pink Floyd
"Cry out to legions of the brave
Time again to save us from the jackals of the street
Ride out, protectors of the realm
Captains at the helm
Sail across the sea of lights"
-Black Sabbath, Neon Knights
The Naked Ape
"In all exploratory behaviour, there is an ever present battle between the neophilic and neophobic urges.
The former drives us on to new experiences, makes us crave for novelty. The latter holds us back, makes us take refuge in the familiar. We are constantly in a state of shifting balance between the conflicting attractions of the exciting new stimulus and the friendly old one. If we lost our neophilia, we would stagnate. If we lost our neophobia, we would rush headlong into disaster. We explore and we retrench, we investigate and we stabilize. Step by step, we expand our awareness and understanding, both of ourselves and the complex environment we live in" (From 'The Naked Ape')
The former drives us on to new experiences, makes us crave for novelty. The latter holds us back, makes us take refuge in the familiar. We are constantly in a state of shifting balance between the conflicting attractions of the exciting new stimulus and the friendly old one. If we lost our neophilia, we would stagnate. If we lost our neophobia, we would rush headlong into disaster. We explore and we retrench, we investigate and we stabilize. Step by step, we expand our awareness and understanding, both of ourselves and the complex environment we live in" (From 'The Naked Ape')
I knew him from before
"Throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence." - John Muir
"It has often been said there's so much to be read, you never can cram all those words in your head.
So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads.
That's why my belief is the briefer the brief is, the greater the sigh of the reader's relief is."
-- Dr. Seuss
Who?
Was she the person he left? Was she the person he wanted back? Was she even wanted back? Does it matter now at all?
Didn't she become rebellious just for the sake for it? Wasn't it disaster management after the disaster? Didn't it lead to a chain of disasters?
Had the world been an ideal place, she would have been an ideal daughter too.
Utopia, she wondered how it would be to live there. She wondered if she could even survive the utopia. Some things had become a part of her, the pain for instance.
Rainer Maria Rilke
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
Quotes
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver -
The dream was always running ahead of one. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was a miracle.
- Anais Nin -
Love after Love
"Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life."
— Derek Walcott
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life."
— Derek Walcott
"...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick e
ndings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic."
— Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
That is their mystery and their magic."
— Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours." |
Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours." |
Atlas Shrugged
“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved
― Toni Morrison, Beloved
Friday, February 22, 2013
Burning
But don't burn me,
if you aren't going to carry water
don't make me feel special,
don't bother
i hurt myself and realized
i do feel pain,
this strength i detest
which doesn't let me cry
my condition almost grotesque
i don't remember pleasant evenings
i don't remember the smile
i remember how everything seemed wile
and the strategy cunning
caught me unaware
in that moment of despair
when everything crumbled
what i thought was truth
was imagination
and i had stumbled
but one moves on in life
because such things though painful
are just a rife
'happens' as they say
though with dismay
but time doesn't wait
life doesn't stop
and one doesn't die
how unfortunate
one suffers
one lives
one learns
and yearns
for the times that passed by
which were almost perfect
like flowers in hell
but one should've known
this could've only been a mirage
flowers don't bloom
in utter doom
so one pays for their dimness
the imaginary world disintegrates
and you wake up
to witness ugliness
yet again..
Humbled
I smell the breeze, can feel birds soar
the piece of paper has carried impressions galore
but these words, their trail
miserably fail
i making me feel vain
for it happened such
that i feel much
humbled.
Contradictions
What are you worth in somebody's life, what will they let go of to be with you, what transient pleasures can they give up to have your companionship speaks a lot about your place in their lives. So when they leave you, you aren't hurt because they aren't going to be around but because it questions the times when they were around.
Also whatever I am today is because of my parents. This life that I am enjoying is all because of their efforts. A part of me is them. They dreamt for me when I didn't know how to dream and what to dream about. They invested time and effort and money to get us where we are today. Is that why one is supposed to respect them? Because respecting them indirectly means respecting yourself?
I have no basis to be mad at anyone since there is no cure for misinterpretation. If you can't believe a person when he says that he is a bad person and invest all your effort in designing your life with them, then it is your shortcoming and not the other's fault. You built your castles on imagination and did not base them on reality, such castles crumble sooner or later once the realization strikes you. But isn't it beautiful to have your castle for that brief amount of time? Isn't it worth the effort? What was true for a brief moment, will it remain true forever? So many contradictions.
Ugly peace
I'll be so much at peace,
if someone tells me that love doesn't exist
we are lesser creatures,
looking at places for pleasing features
tell me it's all about sensual pleasure,
take off the mask, i am not afraid of closure
who are you fooling anyways,
we don't live in black and white but shade of greys
Yes you were a pin-up and I was a whore
i tried painting our bond with colors pure
but who has ever painted coal white
the darkness there shines bright
presuming and consuming
how long could we have persevered
we were meant to end
it was too long a pretence
to endure
if someone tells me that love doesn't exist
we are lesser creatures,
looking at places for pleasing features
tell me it's all about sensual pleasure,
take off the mask, i am not afraid of closure
who are you fooling anyways,
we don't live in black and white but shade of greys
Yes you were a pin-up and I was a whore
i tried painting our bond with colors pure
but who has ever painted coal white
the darkness there shines bright
presuming and consuming
how long could we have persevered
we were meant to end
it was too long a pretence
to endure
Skinned animal
Sadness prevails in my heart and mind
need someone who be kind
to this melancholic and restless heart
what i'd give for someone to hold my hand, kiss my forehead
who revisits with me the paths i tread
in my brian
ohh its a desert
hot and dry and exhausting drain
of ghastly stories and unfinished tales
of unrequited love and bonds that failed
of menace and cowardice
of scheming that was too foul
of lost innocence and sore soul
like a skinned animal alive
even a gust of wind now hurts as a spike
because i've been hurt so much
and left writhing in pain as such.
need someone who be kind
to this melancholic and restless heart
what i'd give for someone to hold my hand, kiss my forehead
who revisits with me the paths i tread
in my brian
ohh its a desert
hot and dry and exhausting drain
of ghastly stories and unfinished tales
of unrequited love and bonds that failed
of menace and cowardice
of scheming that was too foul
of lost innocence and sore soul
like a skinned animal alive
even a gust of wind now hurts as a spike
because i've been hurt so much
and left writhing in pain as such.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
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