October 2012

Death destroys the body, as the scaffolding is destroyed after the building is up and finished. And he whose building is up rejoices at the destruction of the scaffolding and of the body. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

You know what getting married is? It's agreeing to taking this person who right now is at the top of his form, full of hopes and ideas, feeling good, looking good, wildly interested in you because you're the same way, and sticking by him while he slowly disintegrates. And he does the same for you. You're his responsibility now and he's yours. If no one else will take care of him, you will. If everyone else rejects you, he won't. What do you think love is? Going to bed all the time? -Jane Smiley, novelist (b.1949)

Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

The worst kind of people are those who confuse kindness for weakness. -Werner Makowski, banker (b. 1929)

A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain. -Mildred Witte Stouven

Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you - Susan Sontag :D

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death. -Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)

Between truth and the search for truth, I opt for the second. -Bernard Berenson, art historian (1865-1959)

In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away. -T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965)

Gopi's Collection

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet, don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with triumph and disaster,
And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken,
Twisted by knaves to make traps for fools,
Or watch the things you gave life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of your winnings,
And risk it in one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve sinew,
To serve you long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on';

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
If you can walk with kings and not lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
With sixty seconds worth of distance run - 
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - what is more - you'll be a man my son!

- Rudyard Kipling


All that matters is Love and Work.
- Sigmund Freud

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerour men, for they act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
- T.E. Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (1926)

Your energy, you passion, your ability to lose yourself in the entirety and nitty-gritty of your venture to the exclusion of everything else is more important than capital. Thinking is the capital; enterprise is the way; hard work is the solution.
- APJ Abdul Kalam

You see things; and you say, 'Why?', but I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'
- George Bernard Shaw

'If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants'.
- Ogilvy  on Advertising

'In all healthy affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.'
- Bertrand Russell

Most of us don't get what we deserve because we do not ask for it.
- GRG

But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best laid plans of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leaves us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy.
- Robert Burns poem 'To a Mouse'

Indecision is in itself grief.
- W. Shakesphere

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at flood, leads to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in the shallows and in miseries.
On a such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
- W. Shakesphere (Brutus in Julius Caesar)

If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions.
- Johann Wolfgang Goethe

If I am unable to make the Gods above relent, I shall move hell.
- Virgil

You can never plan the future by the past.
- Edmund Burke

I shall tell this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost's poem 'The Road Not Taken'

It is not that I am a genius; I am infinitely more curious and I stay with the problem longer.
- Albert Einstein

Lead kindly light...
Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step is enough for me.
- Church Hymn - Lead Kindly Light

If a man does not know to which port he is steering no wind is favorable to him.
- Seneca

Fortune favors the brave.
- Virgil

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone...
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Lord Alfred Tennyson in Ulysses

...

"Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come Great Work."
- Rabindranath Tagore
(quote pasted on the spine of a folder at CPR library)



Our chief want in life, is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)


Everyday people die and the rest live as if they are immortal. That, is the greatest wonder - Yudhisthir, Yaksha Prashna, Madhya Parva, The Mahabhararta

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help.
- Thich Naht Hanh


What is to give light must endure burning. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)


When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist. -Helder Camara, archbishop (1909-1999)


To a mind that is still, the whole world surrenders.
- Lao Tsu

..

Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)


"To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves."
- Novelist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963).




The tragedy in the lives of most of us is that we go through life walking down a high-walled land with people of our own kind, the same economic situation, the same national background and education and religious outlook. And beyond those walls, all humanity lies, unknown and unseen, and untouched by our restricted and impoverished lives.
-Florence Luscomb, architect and suffragist (1887-1985)

Before you judge others or claim any absolute truth, consider that - 
- you can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% if the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are travelling at 220 kilometers per second across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not "you". The atoms in your body are 99.99999999999999999% empty space and note of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato. The existence of a rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don't just look at a rainbow, you create it. This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colors you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum.


Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, that processes of co-ordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the co-ordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved. -John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)

No man was ever more than about nine meals away from crime or suicide. -Eric Sevareid, journalist (1912-1992)

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. -Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)

...

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
- Albert Einstein

...

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)


 "I would let the winds of the world blow through the doors and windows of my house but I will not be blown away."  - Rabindranath Tagore


Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. -William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer (1921-1994)

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or question. -Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist, biologist, author (1941-2002)

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)


If you know only one language, you're a prisoner, stuck in the tyranny of that one language. -Andrew Cohen, professor of linguistics (b. 1944)

There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)

I'm not at all contemptuous of comforts, but they have their place and it is not first. -E.F. Schumacher, economist and author (1911-1977)

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956) 

...

My pain may be the reason for somebody's laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody's pain.
- Charlie Chaplin


"The skillful employer of men will employ the wise man, the brave man, the covetous man, and the stupid man. For the wise man delights in establishing his merit, the brave man likes to show his courage in action, the covetous man is quick at seizing advantages, and the stupid man has no fear of death."
- Sun Tzu - The Art of War

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.
-Oprah Winfrey


Tell the truth, and you don't have to remember anything
-Mark Twain


What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. 
-Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890)

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
- Rumi


It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably, and justly; or to live prudently, honorably, and justly, without living pleasurably.
-Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)


We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.
-Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus), Rhetorician (c. 35-100)



"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"
- apocryphally attributed to Edmund Burke


Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground 
- Rumi


Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. ~John Quinton


We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. ~Aesop


“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” 
- Theodore Roosevelt

"There is no fineness of accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining."
- Saul Bellow


Some drink deeply from the river of wisdom. Others only gargle
- Woody Allen :D

Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love - Turkish Proverb