230809

To find a fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.

- Plutarch

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes -- ah, that is where the art resides.

- Artur Schnabel, pianist(1882-1951)

There is a light that shines beyond all things on Earth,

beyond us all,beyond the heavens,

beyond the highest,the very highest heavens.

This is the light that shines in our heart.

- Chandogya Upanishad 3.13.7

To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.

-William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)

With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too.

- Yiddish Proverb

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it. -Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)

Promises are like the full moon: if they are not kept at once they diminish day by day. - German proverb

Men cannot see their reflection in running water, but only in still water.- Chuang Tzu, philosopher (c. 4th century BCE)

Whatever limits us we call Fate. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back. -Chinese proverb

Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness. - Henrik Ibsen, playwright (1828-1906)

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. - Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)

Home is not where you live but where they understand you. - Christion Morgenstern, writer (1871-1914)

The highest exercise of charity is charity towards the uncharitable. - J.S.Buckminster, clergyman and editor (1797-1812)

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. - Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
- Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. - Joseph Addison, writer (1672-1719)

Growth in wisdom can be measured precisely by decline in bile. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries. - Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)

I leave to others the importance of what I have or have not done; but let me say that all I have done is to have stood on the shoulders of others so that I can see a little further.- Issac Newton

If you would not be forgotten,As soon as you were dead and rotten,either write things worth reading,or do things worth the writing. - Benjamin Franklin

When money speaks, the truth keeps silent. -Russian proverb

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. - Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat. - Jean-Paul Sartre, writer and philosopher (1905-1980)

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. - Pericles, statesman (430 BCE)

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. - Victor Hugo, poet, novelist,and dramatist (1802-1885)

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. - Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish. - Yiddish proverb

No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place. - Zen saying

The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

If you are planning for one year, grow rice. If you are planning for 20 years, grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow men. -Chinese proverb

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. - Heraclitus, philosopher (c. 540-470 BCE)

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., US Supreme Court Justice (1841-1935)

What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul. - Jewish proverb

Those who wish to sing always find a song. -Swedish proverb

To a person instructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenth of which have their faces turned to the wall.- Thomas Huxley

To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy. - Hippocrates, physician (460-c.377 BCE)

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity. - Albert Einstein

To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness. - Confucius, philosopher and teacher(c. 551-478 BCE)

Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use. -Charles Schulz, cartoonist (1922-2000)

A bit beyond perception's reach / I sometimes believe I see / that life is two locked boxes / each containing the other's key. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996)

Never spend your money before you have it. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. - Dalai Lama

If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain. - Emile Herzog, writer (1885-1967)

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money, and hide them in a hole, which a cat observing, asked, "Why he would hoard upthose round shining things that he could make no use of?" "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole chestfull, and makes no more use of them that I do." -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

He who fears losing face has no face to lose. - Confucius

'If you can't convince them, confuse them.' - The dictum of Hamish McLintock

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give. -P.D. James, writer(1920- )

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. -John Morley, statesman and writer (1838-1923)

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles Schultz

In matter of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock. - Thomas Jefferson

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. -John Donne, poet (1573-1631)

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company. - Charles Evans Hughes, jurist (1862-1948)

030808

All kids are gifted; some just open their packages earlier than others.
-Michael Carr

For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.
-Doug Larson

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.
-Stephen King, novelist (b. 1947)

Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them. -Alvin Toffler, futurist and author (b. 1928)

Roads endure longer than pyramids.
-Karol Bunsch, novelist (1898-1987)

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
-George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.
-Norman Douglas, novelist (1868-1952)

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.
-Ezra Pound, poet (1885-1972)

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little.
-Sydney Smith, writer and clergyman (1771-1845)

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
-Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Tear man out of his outward circumstances; and what he then is; that only is he. -Johann Gottfried Seume, author (1763-1810)

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. -Horace Mann, educational reformer (1796-1859)

The perfection of a clock is not to go fast, but to be accurate.
-Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, moralist and essayist (1715-1747)

How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make -- leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone -- we all dwell in a house of one room -- the world with the firmament for its roof -- and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)

"His interest in diplomacy seems to be motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths....he distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections."
- Fareed Zakaria on Barack Obama, Newsweek, July 2008

The physician can buy his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.
- R.G. Collingwood

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.
- Gladys Browyn Stern, writer (1890-1973)


It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
-Rollo May, psychologist (1909-1994)


I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)


The living are soft and yielding; the dead are rigid and stiff. Living plants are flexible and tender; the dead are brittle and dry.
-Lao Tzu, philosopher (6th century BCE)

010608

There can be no government without an army
No army without money
No money without prosperity
And no prosperity without justice and good administration.

- Ibn Qutayba (ninth-century Muslim scholar)

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.
-Peyton C. March, general (1864-1955)

What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.
-Ezra Pound, poet (1885-1972)

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
-Desiderius Erasmus, humanist and theologian (1466-1536)

The best way to be more free is to grant more freedom to others.
-Carlo Dossi, author and diplomat (1849-1910)

We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.
-George Steiner, professor and writer (b. 1929)

Yoshida Kenko (1283-1352) in Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness)

Thoughts on - suggestion, irregularity, simplicity, perishability

"Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless?...In all things, it is the beginnings and the ends that are interesting."

"In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth"

"The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty"

"A man with no business will never intrude into an occupied house simply because he so pleases. If the house is vacant, on the other hand, travellers journeying along the road will enter with impunity, and even creatures like foxes and owls, undisturbed by any human presence, will take up their abodes, acting as if the place belonged to them. Tree spirits and other apparitions will also manifest themselves.

It is the same with mirrors: being without color or shape of their own, they reflect all manner of forms. If the mirrors had color and shape of their own, they would probalbly not reflect other things.

Emptyness accommodates everything. I wonder if thoughts of all kinds intrude themselves at will on our minds because what we call our minds are vacant? If minds were occupied, surely so many things would not enter them"

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Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question,'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But,
conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must
take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must
take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.
-  Martin Luther King Junior

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Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
- James Russel Lovell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891) .

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Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his
own company.
- Seneca, philosopher (BCE 3-65 CE)

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
-Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (1821-1881)


Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
-William James, psychologist (1842-1910)

Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must
shine light on it.
-Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (b. 1948)


If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.
-Edward Bulwer-Lytton, author (1803-1873)


I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day; I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way.
-Edgar Guest, poet (1881-1959)


If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
-Desmond Tutu, clergyman (b. 1931)


The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
-Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author (1900-1980)

160108

We have been told that all paths lead to truth ・you have your path as a Hindu and someone else has his path as a Christian and another as a Muslim, and they all meet at the same door ・which is, when you look at it, so obviously absurd.

Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static,but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to ・then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are ・ your anger, your brutality, your violence, your despair, the agony and sorrow you live in. In the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understand it only if you know how to look at those things in your life. And you cannot look through an ideology, through a screen of words, through hopes and fears.
- J. Krishnamurthy

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I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.
-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

For money you can have everything it is said. No that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun,but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money.
-Arne Garborg, writer (1851-1924)