If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

~George Orwell

Pain is the best teacher

"If you could really get to know someone and know that they weren't lying to you, then you would know the world was real. Because you could agree on things, you could compare notes. That must be why people get married or make Art. So they'll be able to really know something and not go insane."

- Eric Bogosian

Man is the only animal that makes promises and fulfills threats...

-Nietzsche

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more.

~Jules Renard

pulp fiction is a great movie

If you don't get your hopes up, you're never disappointed.

-Lasereth

If life is a journey, then your instincts are your map.

-peat

It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy.

~George H. Lorimer, editor (1868-1937)

life is better in the dark

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

~Aristotle

"You are what you think about all day long"

-fortune cookie (no lie)

...............................

I find it very meaningful...

"Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner."

On the same idea, my Mom always told me that when you hate a person you are putting yourself in a kind of bondage, and they then have some control over you. Keeping yourself free of hate and other forms of bondage allows you to live your life the way you want to live it.

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I find self-control to be the hardest to achieve, by far, of those three. But I wonder if self-knowledge were the one that I really lacked, would I know?

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night." ~ Rilke

spring is here and it's a time of renewal for both us and the earth.

sweetpea

"if you can get past your next breath, you'll be immortal"

it's a nice way for me to remember to take every breath as they come, enjoy every moment you can, and always try to make the next breath better than the one before it.

Beyond that, and you enter too many variables into the equation.

"
If you are not getting as much from life as you want to, then examine the state of your enthusiasm."

Norman Vincent Peale

................................

I sense I am on the right track with things as I understand them to be when I am seeing myself as responsible for what happens to me...

"Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Each of us has been places in our lives and felt things that may not be obvious right away.

sweetpea

"I can fix everything but a broken heart..."

..my DAD

"If you are not getting as much from life as you want to, then examine the state of your enthusiasm."

Norman Vincent Peale

Heaven grant us patience with a man in love.


Rudyard Kipling

it's so hard to understand the fight between instinct and logic...

"The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. " ~ Rilke

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found. - Pema Chodron

"The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves."

Sophocles

"You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes."

Moses ben Maimon
philosopher (1135-1204)

"People need to quote me more often."

-BigBen, modern philosopher and smartass; TFP, 2006

"We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be. "
May Sarton

sweetpea

"The satiated man and the hungry one do not see the same thing when they look upon a loaf of bread."

Rumi
poet and mystic (1207-1273)

"People need to quote me more often."

-BigBen, modern philosopher and smartass; TFP, 2006

"We don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

Howard Zinn
Historian

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.
Rainer Maria Rilke

sweetpea

“Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” - Alan Watts

"The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship."

Amelia Earhart

Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

William James

Listen to your feelings. They tell you when you need to take care of yourself, like finding a friend if you feel lonely, crying if you feel sad, singing and smiling if you feel happy, and acting frisky if you feel good.
--Pat Palmer

"Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness. " ~May Sarton

sweetpea

A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika. - Dorothy Parker

"Choose well: Your choice is brief and yet endless."

Ella Winter (1898-1980)
Journalist

"There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most. "
~ May Sarton

"A nice kick in the ass will sober almost anyone up."

"Never trust an idiot's perception."

my SO

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."

Morrie Schwartz, Tuesdays With Morrie

"Law 4: Always say less than necessary"

Robert Greene, The 48 laws of power

Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away. - Aitken Roshi

Recipe for Happiness:
An insatiable curiosity, a joy of discovery, quick to forgive, hold no grudges, love without condition, stay loyal to the end, see the best and ignore the rest -- wow, we can learn a lot of man's best friend.

Nick Bolletieri
by way of my Starbucks paper cup...

Recipe for Frustration:

trying to get my inside to feel how someone else's outside looks........

Oh 't ain't what you do it's the place that you do it
'T ain't what you do it's the time that you do it
'T ain't what you do it's the way that you do it
That's what gets results

--Sy Oliver & Trummy Young

We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same.

--Carlos Castenada, mystic and author (1925-1998)

What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are.

--F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Blowing out another's candle will not make yours shine brighter.
--unknown

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.

--Ogden Nash

There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue.
--Yamamoto Tsunetomo

If we now use just 10% of our brains, imagine how dumb we'd be if we used 100%

ARTelevision

"I think all artists, and especially poets, are forever in search of a community. It's a solitary act, and you need a community of like-minded souls to survive and to flourish. So the search for a community is really a lifetime engagement."

Stanley Kunitz

"We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself." - Louis Armstrong

"If you can keep your head while all the others around you are losing theirs--get somebody to explain the situation to you."

Author unknown

I love ^^ that quote... it's been my screen saver for years... :)

Honor isn't about making the right choices. It's about dealing with the consequences.
Midori Koto

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the others willing to let them.

Robert Frost

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. It it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

--E.B. White

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." (Mark Twain)

He didn’t understand that it’s all connected,
that one subject leads to another
and forms a kind of chain
that raises its head and nods like a cobra
when you’re sucking on a bong after three days of no sleep.
On acid it’s even wilder, and appears to eat things.
But, not having gone to college,
my dad had no concept of a well-rounded liberal-arts education.
He thought that all my classes should be murder-related,
with no lunch breaks or anything.
Fortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

David Sedaris

We find comfort among those who agree with us, growth among those who don't.

--Frank A. Clark

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.

--Robert Brault

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

-Henry Ford

My new signature pretty much sums it up. I'll post it anyhow, in case I change my sig later.
Mind you this was 150 years ago... *sigh*

“Things are going worse. It has been three and half years since they came to power, and nothing has been improved." “Where is government? Why have the politicians left the people to face their destiny while the government hides behind the walls of the heavily protected green zone?”

Raheem Kadem- Sadr City, Iraq, in a New York Times article.

"Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough."
Emily Dickinson

"The mind knows only what lies near the heart."

- (Norse) The Poetic Edda

"You are what you think about all day long."

Dr. Robert Schuller

Sheri Hostetler

"Instructions

Give up the world; give up self; finally, give up God.
Find god in rhododendrons and rocks,
passers-by, your cat.
Pare your beliefs, your absolutes.
Make it simple; make it clean.
No carry-on luggage allowed.
Examine all you have
with a loving and critical eye, then
throw away some more.
Repeat. Repeat.
Keep this and only this:
what your heart beats loudly for
what feels heavy and full in your gut.
There will only be one or two
things you will keep,
and they will fit lightly
in your pocket. "

sweetpea

A learned man once went to a Zen master to inquire about Zen. As the Zen master talked, the learned man would frequently interrupt him with remarks like, "Oh yes, we have that too...", ect.
Finally the Zen master stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man; however, he kept on pouring until the tea cup over flowed.
"Enough, no more can go into the cup!" the learned man interrupted.
"Indeed I see", answered the Zen master. "If you do not first empty you cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?"

During a bit of conversation between a friend and I, we were talking about how some things are baseless and inane. Her example was, "the tv is on, democracy is failing". I thought it over a bit and we both seemed to realize, that's quite profound.
Or we were both quite tired, yet, it still strikes me so.

The only thing to fear is fear itself. And if anything can go wrong it will at the worst possible time. Remember- Murphy was an optimist.

Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.

Charles Richards

Learn as though you would never be able to master it; hold it as though you would be in fear of losing it.

Confucius

You want to fight for this love, but honey you cannot wrestle a dove - James Mercer

This line from Gone for Good really struck me this morning, so I made it my signature.

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent."

Calvin Coolidge

"Money don't make my world go 'round... I'm reaching out to a higher ground."

Desree

"Take care of you, because, in the end, you're all you have"

"Evil is easy, and has infinite forms."

Blaise Pascal
Les Provincials (1656-57)

It’s not the difference between people that’s the difficulty. It’s the indifference.

Author unknown

I'm not like you.


Just like everyone else.

I have just as much baggage as the person sitting next to me.
Mine's just mostly carry-on.



There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe and it has a longer shelf-life. ~~Frank Zappa

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. - Mark Twain

He who binds to himself a joy,
Does the winged life destroy;
He who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in Eternity's sun rise.

William Blake

Nize!

...........

Be the change you want to see in the world~ Mahatma Ghandi

Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.

Elbert Hubbard

We all do better when we all do better.

Paul Wellstone (RIP)

What experience he had had had been bad.

-Piers Anthony

The most beautiful thing in the world is the conjunction of learning and inspiration.

Wanda Landowski
(1879-1959) Musician

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know. - Ambrose Bierce

"After 62 sleepless nights, 5 bottles of headache relief capsules, and 47 pounds of really good coffee I finally understand..." -Rachael Ray

You never can tell, when your own feet smell.

- Grampa

"its not having what you want, its wanting what you've got"

-Cheryl Crow

I just had a dream where he said this to his wife on his deathbed.... did he really ever say these words who knows but it sounds possible. SO I credit this to him.....

George Harrison, " I've played in two great bands, and have met some of the most beautiful people. But I have seen their hearts torn out and watched them crumble, each for different reasons. What did they all have in common though. No matter how rich, how much money they could spend.... the money never made them happy or mended their hearts."

So deep and beautiful wish, the dream had been.

I can stare at a puddle and see a million places I love...

"watching water" alias

Conduct is more convincing than language.

John Woolman (1720-1772)
Abolitionist