Week 2020-13

"The sublime must always be great; the beautiful can also be small. The sublime must be simple; the beautiful can be adorned or ornamented. A great height is just as sublime as a great depth, except that the latter is accompanied with the sensation of shuddering, the former with one of wonder. Hence the latter feeling can be the terrifying sublime, and the former the noble." (Immanuel Kant, "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime", 1764)

"Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves." (William Hazlitt, "Criticisms on Art", 1844)
 
"Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change." (Herbert G Wells, "The Time Machine", 1895)

"Given a fair chance, human beings can govern themselves, and govern themselves better." (Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World Revisited", 1932)

"The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two." (Ken Wilber, "No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth", 1979)

"In everyday life, you will find that your boss, your lover, or your government often try to manipulate you. They propose to you a ‘game’ in the form of a choice in which one of the alternatives appears definitely preferable. Having chosen this alternative, you are faced with a new game, and very soon you find that your reasonable choices have brought you to something you never wanted: you are trapped. To avoid this, remember that acting a bit erratically may be the best strategy. What you lose by making some suboptimal choices, you make up for by keeping greater freedom." (David Ruelle, "Chance and Chaos", 1991)

"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it. " (Terry Pratchett, "Monstrous Regiment", 2004)

"There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition, and a willingness to be surprised." (Gordon Livingston, "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now", 2009)

"Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing and some definite work; dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all you are not, and to believe in your own individuality." (Henri-Frédéric Amiel)

"We are generally more effectually persuaded by reasons we have ourselves discovered than by those which have occurred to others."(Blaise Pascal)

Week 2019-23

"All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything." (Swami Vivekananda)

"What I have learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized." (Leonard Mlodinow, "The Drunkard's Walk", 2008)

“There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.” (Albert Camus)

"In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice." (Boethius)

“Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions for itself.” (Robert G Ingersoll)

"No great thing comes without a curse" (Sophocles)

"All truth is a shadow except the last. But every truth is substance in its own place, though it be but shadow in another place. And the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance." (Isaac Pennington)

"There is no arithmetician like him who hath learned to number his days, and to apply his heart unto wisdom." (George Swinnock, "The Epistle Dedicatory", 1868)

"The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it." (Eric Hoffer, "The Passionate State of Mind", 1955)

"A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts." (James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh", 1903)

Week 2017-45

"In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught." (Baba Dioum)

"Humanity seeks self-sufficiency, while nature demands relationship. Humanity wants to be invulnerable, but nature reminds it that it is bonded to all other things." (Jeremy Rifkin)

"The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one’s eyes." (George Sand)

"The wind blows over the lake and stirs the surface of the water. Thus, visible effects of the invisible are manifest." (I Ching)

"There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore be content." (Swami Sivananda)

"Happiness can exist only in acceptance." (George Orwell)

"People who pride themselves on their 'complexity' and deride others for being 'simplistic' should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth." (Thomas Sowell)

"The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone." (Goethe)

"If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you, and you'll never learn." (Ray Bradbury)

Week 2017-41

"Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." (Rabindranath Tagore)

"The knowledge which lies behind is our natural help to that which lies before." (Peter M Latham)

"Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed any more." (Terry Pratchett)

"Knowing what you know, be serene also, like a mountain; and do not be distressed by misfortune. Knowledge without serenity is an unlit candle; together they are honey-comb; honey without wax is a noble thing; wax without honey is only fit for burning." (Hakim Sanai)

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." (Philip K. Dick)

"The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give." (Philip K. Dick)

"Search a beautiful heart, not a beautiful face. Beautiful things are not always good, but good things are always beautiful." (Sufi saying)

"Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and being comfortable with not knowing." (Eckhart Tolle)

"A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life." (Winston Churchill)

"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." (Albert Einstein)

Week 2017-38

"The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." (Eden Phillpotts, “A Shadow Passes”, 1918)

"Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world." (Schopenhauer)

"Fate loves to invent patterns and designs. Its difficulty lies in complexity. But life itself is difficult because of its simplicity. It has only a few things of a grandeur not fit for us." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart (Helen Keller )

"[Nansen:] The Way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is confusion. When you have really reached the true Way beyond doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as space. How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong?" (Mumon Ekai, Mumonkan)

"The most inspiring leaders are not those who do their job, but those who pursue a calling." (Chris Gardner)

"If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams and endeavors to live the life they have imagined, they will meet with a success ‘unexpected in common hours’." (Henry David Thoreau)

"The miracle is that the universe created a part of itself to study the rest of it, and that this part in studying itself finds the rest of the universe in its own natural inner realities." (John C. Lilly)

Week 2017-28

"Realizing that our inability to control life is not the same as having no way to navigate it, leads to freedom and liberation. Just because I can't control the sea doesn't mean I can't learn how to swim in it." (Rami Shapiro)

"With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love." (Rumi)

"What worries you, masters you." (John Locke)

"Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." ( Nathaniel Hawthorne )

"A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears." (Michel de Montaigne)

"We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand." (Eric Hoffer)
  
"Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace." ( Karl Kraus)

"If you don't like something, change it.
If you can't change it, change the way you think about it." (Mary Engelbreit)

"Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow." (Tony Schwartz)

"To be truly happy and contented, you must let go of the idea of what it means to be truly happy or content." (Confucius)

Week 2017-23

[#reality, #illusion]
"The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it." (Chuck Palahniuk)

[#meaning]
"Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human." (Viktor E. Frankl)

[#wisdom, #doubt]
"The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth." (Pierre Abélard)

[#knowledge, #wisdom]
"Don't be conceited about your own knowledge. Take advice from the ignorant as well as the wise, since there is no single person who embodies perfection nor any craftsman who has reached the limits of excellence. The perfect word is as rare as an emerald, yet it may be found among the maidservants working at the millstone." (Ptah-hotep)

[#limits, #belief]
"When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw." (Nelson Mandela)

[#knowledge, #mystery]
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge." (Kahlil Gibran)

[#love, #identity]
"The things that we love tell us what we are." (Thomas Aquinas)

[#quest, #learning]
"I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul." (Rumi)

[#beauty, #fragility]
"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)

[#patience, #trust]
"Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn." (Rumi)


[#understanding, #discrimination]
"Those who judge will never understand, and those who understand will never judge." (Wilson Kanadi)

Week 2017-07

"Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination." (Roy M. Goodman)

"If you are going to doubt something, doubt your limits." (Don Ward)

"Be quiet in your mind, quiet in your senses, and also quiet in your body. Then, when all these are quiet, don't do anything. In that state truth will reveal itself to you." (Kabir)

"Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire." (Anatole France)

"Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable." (Theodore N. Vail)

"Stand up to your obstacles; do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have." (Zen saying)

"If you want to succeed in this world you don't have to be much cleverer than other people, you just have to be one day earlier." (Leó Szilárd)

"Regardless of your lot in life, you can build something beautiful on it." (Zen saying)

"Look for knowledge not in books but in things themselves." (William Gilbert)

"Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe." (Anatole France)

Week 2016-40

"Without a narrative, life has no meaning. Without meaning, learning has no purpose." (Neil Postman)

"You become responsible forever, for what you have tamed." ( Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." (William Blake)

"If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone." (Maxwell Maltz)

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince”)

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross)

"[...] without conscious effort, the brain always tries to close the distance between
observed phenomena and knowledge or wisdom that can help us survive." (Alberto Cairo)

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't." (Anatole France)

"The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand." (Frank Herbert)