"God doth not need either man's work or his own gifts. Who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, and post o'er land and ocean without rest; they also serve who only stand and wait." ~John Milton
I never knew the origin of this quote, and have only heard it in a military context.
Which, it turns out, wasn't at all what the author intended.
"I dream of a quiet man who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows where the rarest wildflowers are blooming, and who goes, and finds that he is smiling not by his own will." ~Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry is a fascinating man. Check out his Wikipedia page HERE.
"Look at you comforting others with the words you wish to hear."
The above quote is attributed to William Wordsworth, but I was unable to find a primary source. I don't think he said it, but somebody did.
"Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it." ~Ajahn Chah
and that reminded me of this:
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” ~Sherlock Holmes
Pickles by Brian Crane is online HERE.
All of the Sherlock Holmes stories are in the public domain, and may be downloaded or read online for free at Project Gutenberg, HERE.
"Come fairies, take me out of this dull world. For I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame." ~W.B Yeats
via Mr. Disappointment:
Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”
"Often times, a person will think they know you by piecing together tiny facts and arranging those pieces into a puzzle that makes sense to them. If we don’t know ourselves very well, we’ll mistakenly believe them, and drift toward where they tell us to swim, only to drown in our own confusion.
"Here’s the truth: it’s important to take the necessary steps to find out who you are. Because you hold endless depths below the surface of a few facts and pieces and past decisions. You aren’t only the ripples others can see. You are made of oceans." ~Victoria Erickson
It's kind of touching to see Rock Star David Gilmour happily taking a supporting role while his daughter Romany sings and plays lead.
Full lyrics HERE.
"A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away." ~George Eliot
I think the secret not just to friendship but to life is to know what to keep and what to blow away.
I have heard this quote before, but didn't really understand it until I saw it with this little illustration.
If compassion is to be doled out only to the best-behaved among us, I think ours is a very cruel world.
That quote is from a wonderful article by Elizabeth Grey about compassion, addiction, and Anne Heche. You can read it online HERE.
Sports without clocks:
Add the ones I overlooked in the comments.
The first thing you notice in this artwork by Erin Blowers is, of course, the boobies. Everybody likes boobies.
But then you start to notice all the subtle differences, the different races and colors, sizes and shapes. Tan lines. Mastectomy scars. Colostomy bags. Tattoos. Jewelry. Fashion. Vitiligo. Fingernails.
It ends up being about a lot more than just boobies.
I like this version much better than the original by Tears for Fears.
When the line is "Shout! Shout! Let it all out!" it seems obvious to me that the line should be shouted, not whined.
Full lyrics HERE.
"The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation." ~Milarepa
It's certainly racist, regardless of the context of the times, but it's much worse than that.
The "humor" stems from provoking a powerless individual into rage, then laughing at his impotence.
That's not funny, that's bullying, and it's cruel.
"A state of permanent joy, hidden at the very center of consciousness, is the Eden to which the long journey of spiritual seeking leads. There, the mystics of all religions agree, we uncover our original goodness. We don't have to buy it; we don't have to create it; we don't have to pour it in; we don't even have to be worthy of it. This native goodness is the essential core of human nature." ~Eknath Easwaren, in Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day, ©1990
There are quite a few jazz compositions of Beethoven's Ode to Joy on YouTube, but this one is my favorite.
"If it can't be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production." ~Pete Seeger
"Where do you begin? There's so much to say about him. He was a benign, lovable guy and he was also a magic man, a shaman. There was a feeling of going out in the world with kindness that Jerry Garcia represented. That shines through beyond all the other stuff." ~Mickey Hart
I have discovered a lot of great music at SomaFM. I first heard this on their Suburbs of Goa channel.
Excerpted from the article "When Cities Treated Cars as Dangerous Intruders" by Peter Norton, published in The MIT Press Reader:
City people saw the car not just as a menace to life and limb, but also as an aggressor upon their time-honored rights to city streets. “The pedestrian,” explained a Brooklyn man, “as an American citizen, naturally resents any intrusion upon his prior constitutional rights.” Custom and the Anglo-American legal tradition confirmed pedestrians’ inalienable right to the street. In Chicago in 1926, as in most cities, “nothing” in the law “prohibits a pedestrian from using any part of the roadway of any street or highway, at any time or at any place as he may desire.” So noted the author of a traffic survey commissioned by the Chicago Association of Commerce. According to Connecticut’s first Motor Vehicle Commissioner, Robbins Stoeckel, the most restrictive interpretation of pedestrians’ rights was that “All travelers have equal rights on the highway.”
It's hard to imagine a time when streets were for people, not machines, and the right to use those streets for human activities was considered a constitutional right.
I'd love to find a way to put that genie back in the bottle, at least a little bit.
You can read the full article HERE.
"È bello non avere rimpianti nella vita, quando la tua anima è consapevole di aver agito sempre con il cuore e non solo con la mente…" ~N.Dell'Aquila
Google Translation:
"It is nice not to have regrets in life, when your soul is aware that it has always acted with the heart and not only with the mind…" ~N.Dell'Aquila
"These days it seems the people most likely to identify themselves as Christians tend to be Republicans as well the most vicious, hateful, un-Christian sons of bitches you'd ever want to meet." ~Roy Edroso (source)
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"We take pride in our identities. We are Lakota and it's time to return to our ways," she continued. "We don't want any more assimilation. We don't need any more churches and we don't need your god."
"Christianity didn't become a world religion because of the quality of its teachings, but by the quantity of its violence," said Eleanor Ferguson, Oglala Lakota and representative of the International Indigenous Youth Council, during the tribal council meeting.
"If you let your mind dwell on ghosts, you'll become a ghost yourself. If you fix your mind on God your life will be filled with God. Now: which are you going to choose?" ~Sri Ramakrishna
I don't really know why this became so iconic, but Howard Cosell's shock and excitement has always stuck with me.
"Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes." ~Jack Kornfield
The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing.
And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
I found this on a Reddit thread.
I guess if you're at a lake and notice some wild tomatoes growing on the banks, don't get in the water:
"Wherever you go, you will always bear yourself about with you, and so you will always find yourself." ~Thomas A. Kempis
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"Remember: no matter where you go, there you are." ~Buckaroo Banzai
In these two excerpts from Katrina Guliver's review of Meet Me By the Fountain by Alexandra Lange, online at City-Journal.org, she describes the best and worst of American malls:
In their ideal form, malls offer a smorgasbord of shopping options in a safe, climate-controlled environment. Around the next corner is another store, with another window, offering something new. Meantime, one finds places to eat, places to sit, and piped-in music to maintain the mood. What you want is not simply the object you shop for but to be at the mall. The “Gruen Transfer,” named for mall designer Victor Gruen, is defined as the point in time that mall-going ceases to be about running an errand and becomes about enjoying the visit itself.
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For me, malls are now sites of occasional desperation, as when I find myself in a strange town and need to get something quickly. I’ll wander into a Macy’s or a Nordstrom Rack, where the lingerie department looks like the aftermath of a police raid. Finding anything that fits is like picking a winning lottery ticket. Meantime, my meeting is in two hours, and I’m trying to remember where I parked the rental car (Blue 12? Green 9?). No Gruen transfer here.
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
An August Afternoon
by Bronislaw Maj
(via)
An August afternoon. Even here is heard
the rush of the glittering Raba.
We look at the mountain,
my mother and I. How clear the air is:
every dark spruce on Mount Lubon
is seen distinctly as if it grew in our garden.
An astonishing phenomenon—it astonishes my mother
and me. I am four and I do not know
what it means to be four. I am
happy: I don’t know what to be means
or happiness. I know my mother
sees and feels what I do. And I know
that as always in the evening
we will take a walk
far, up to the woods, already before
long.
